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The European Union economy will continue to grow despite recent market turbulence because its fundamentals are strong, EU leaders said on Friday, but they stressed the need for reforms to help the bloc compete globally. EU leaders also said that because of the ongoing credit crunch it was crucial to keep monitoring markets, improve supervision and transparency for investors, markets and regulators, and review the role of credit rating agencies. "Consistent macroeconomic policies and stable financial markets are vital for sustained economic growth," the leaders said in a draft declaration after a quarterly summit. "The European Council, in view of the recent developments in the financial markets, emphasises that macroeconomic fundamentals in the EU are strong and that sustained economic growth is expected," they said. The global liquidity crunch in financial markets, triggered by the subprime mortgage market crisis in the United States, is one of the main reasons behind an expected slowdown in EU economic growth to 2.4 percent next year and in 2009 from 2.9 percent forecast by the European Commission for this year. The leaders said that to make the EU economy more resilient to external shocks and help it tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by global markets, EU members should continue to reform their economies. They said the so-called Lisbon Strategy of reforms, named after the Portuguese capital where it was initially agreed on in 2000, was working well and member states should continue to implement it. The European Commission said earlier this week that reforms aimed at boosting employment and economic growth rates since 2005 have boosted the potential growth rate of the 13 countries using the euro by 0.2 percent to 2.25 percent now. But some economists point out that while reforms may have played a role too, the recent improvement in EU public finances, record low unemployment or the millions of new jobs created since 2005 were more a result of fast economic growth. The leaders agreed they should spend more on education, innovation and research as central for the future of Europe. Focus should also be on higher employment rates, less red tape and simpler rules for companies as well as more energy efficiency, diverse energy sources and combating climate change. "This will... enhance Member States' capacity to compete in a globalised world," the joint declaration said. "The Lisbon Strategy is delivering. Further reforms at national and Community levels remain the key to long-term economic success."

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

Bushfires burned across three Australian states on Tuesday, destroying houses and blackening an area larger than Luxembourg, with one major fire front stretching 250 km (155 miles). A firestorm on the southern island state of Tasmania struck the east coast town of Scamander, destroying up to 23 houses, although hard-pressed firefighters had little time to assess the damage as gusting winds opened fresh fronts. "You could hear houses exploding and trees going down, you could see the flames roaring up over the hill," resident Sue Brown told local media. In Victoria, bushfires sparked by lightning strikes continued to burn in rugged bushland in the northeast of the state, destroying more than 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres). Two of the largest fires had linked to form a 250-km front, although cooler weather was assisting a 2,000-strong force of firefighters, troops and 45 water-bombing aircraft before the forecast return of soaring temperatures later in the week. "Towards the end of the week we will be back in to having higher fire danger indexes and potentially extreme fire conditions," Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) spokesman Craig Ferguson told local radio. In New South Wales state, a blaze lit by firefighters to rob bushfires of fuel leapt containment lines to destroy an ancient protected Blue Gum forest in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. And southwest of the Australian capital, Canberra, firefighters were struggling to contain a wildfire fanned by strong winds near the mountain town of Tumut. Firefighters say Australia faces an extreme fire danger this summer after a drought that has turned many rural areas into tinder boxes. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall to the country. Bushfires are a regular feature of Australia's summer. In January 2005, the deadliest bushfires in 22 years killed nine people in South Australia. Over the past 40 years, more than 250 people have been killed in bushfires in Australia.

Leading firms Waste Management and Republic Services Inc are included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, a benchmark for socially conscious investing. The firms' major investors include funds controlled by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and wealth-management icon Larry Fink, founder of BlackRock Inc, who are both leading advocates for corporate climate action. But the waste industry may be doing far more harm to the planet than investors think, according to a years-long aerial survey commissioned by California air-quality regulators. The survey found "super-emitter" landfills accounted for 43% the measured emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane - outpacing the fossil-fuel and agricultural sectors. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and leak-detection firm Scientific Aviation have been conducting the flyovers since 2016. They found that some trash dumps operated by top US landfill companies including Republic Services and Waste Management have been leaking methane at rates as much as six times the facility-level estimates from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The ten biggest methane-emitting landfills pumped out the gas at rates averaging 2.27 times the federal estimates, which are produced by waste firms using EPA methodology. The California research may have wide-ranging global implications by showing the waste-management industry is playing a bigger role in accelerating climate change than regulators had believed. The surveys could also reveal flaws with United Nations guidelines for estimating methane emissions that are followed by the major governments including the United States, according to scientists involved in the surveys and regulators interviewed by Reuters. The research could also bring scrutiny on the waste management industry from both policy-makers and green investors - who until now have been focused mainly on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels, said Eliot Caroom, a researcher at TruValue Labs, which provides investors with environmental and social-governance data and analysis. “One of the largest emitting industries, waste management, deserves more attention,” he said. Gates - who earlier this year published a book titled, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster - owns more than a third of Republic Services. He owns about 8% of Waste Management through stakes held by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and his personal investment vehicle Cascade Investment LLC, according to fund disclosures. BlackRock owns a 4.6% share of Republic Services and 5% of Waste Management, mainly through funds that track third-party indexes. Officials representing Gates and BlackRock did not comment for this story. Inclusion in the Dow Jones sustainability indices is based on S&P Global scores for a number of environmental, social and governance criteria. Waste Management has the highest environmental score in the broader commercial services sector and a near-perfect score for climate change strategy. Republic Services also earned high marks for climate strategy. Officials for Republic Services and Waste Management said they were cooperating with the California flyover surveys. Waste Management said it was expanding efforts to reduce methane leaks, including better monitoring, adding more soil to cover landfills and capturing the gas for reuse. Republic Services said in a statement that the aerial survey data represents snapshot data that may not accurately capture routine emissions at its facility. It called itself a leader in responsible landfill management. FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS Methane traps much more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, although for a shorter period of time. All told, one tonne of methane does about 25 times more damage to the climate over a 100-year period than one tonne of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA. Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising rapidly in recent years, alarming world governments seeking to cap global warming under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Measuring those concentrations in the atmosphere is relatively easy, but tracking the sources of the emissions is hard. That difficulty has become a major stumbling block for global policy-makers hoping to curb the problem. The United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued guidelines for governments in 2006 on how to estimate methane emissions from landfills without direct measurements such as aerial surveys. Instead, the UN has said, methane at landfills can be estimated using factors such as the amount and content of waste stored on site and assumed rates of waste decay. Such methods "really don't do the job anymore," said Jean Bogner, a University of Illinois researcher who has studied methane emissions in landfills since the 1970s. The IPCC said it would revisit its guidelines if UN member nations asked it to do so. The UN estimates that landfills and wastewater produce about a fifth of the world’s human-caused methane emissions, behind only agriculture and the oil-and-gas industry. Landfills produce methane when organic materials like food and vegetation are buried within them, rotting in low-oxygen conditions. The gas can leak out if the soil covering the dump is too thin, for instance, or if pipes intended to capture methane are broken. About one-fifth of trash in the United States is food, according to the EPA, a major driver of the problem. Methane emissions from landfills are less of a problem in many developing nations, which tend to waste less food and use open-air dumps rather than covering trash with soil, according to the IPCC. UNDER THE RADAR On February 26, an airplane flown by Scientific Aviation buzzed about 1,500 feet above the Republic Services’ Forward landfill in Manteca in the Central Valley and snapped a series of pictures using an infrared spectrometre. Scientists said the image showed the trash dump was emitting more than a quarter tonne of methane into the atmosphere each hour, the climate equivalent of nearly 12,000 cars idling on the nearby freeways. That rate is about six-times higher than the EPA had estimated for the facility. Previous fly-overs of the facility since 2017 had shown similar readings. The California Air Resources Board (CARB), which commissioned the survey, hopes the effort to find leaks will eventually help to curb emissions. A month after the February flyover, state inspectors accompanied officials from the San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control District on a trip to examine the Forward landfill. The group discovered methane leaks that exceeded allowed limits in various locations, issuing two notices of violation to the landfill's operator, according to an inspection report seen by Reuters. In the most recent series of overflights which began last fall, regulators asked landfill operators to use information relayed to them in real-time from the aerial surveyors to find and fix leaks on the ground. The state is planning to issue a report on the effort later this year. Many of the leaks are easily fixed by adding more soil or fixing broken pipes meant to capture methane for use as a fuel, said Jorn Herner, head of CARB's research planning, administration and emissions mitigation. The Biden administration last month announced it would require more US landfills to install gas-capture systems to help limit methane emissions. A White House official did not comment for this story. The state hopes to eventually replace the planes with space satellites. California in April announced a $100 million project, backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, to launch satellites in 2023 that will pinpoint large emissions of greenhouse gases from landfills and other sources, such as refineries, pipelines and farms.

Dhaka, Oct 24 (bdnews24.com)—The United Nations must press for global action on climate change and food security for poverty alleviation in the current world scenario, the finance minister said on Saturday. "Man is a social being and wants to live in peace," finance minister AMA Muhith said as chief guest at a seminar marking United Nations Day. "To ensure peace, the focus must be addressing climate change and food security alongside eradication of poverty," he said "Many countries of the world including Bangladesh are falling victim to natural disasters like cyclone, tidal bores and flood due to climate change." "As a result, food production is hampered and so are poverty alleviation efforts," he said The UN should attach maximum importance to the three issues now, Muhith said Former diplomat Afsarul Kader presented the key paper at the event chaired by justice Kazi Ebadul Haque. The seminar was hosted by the United Nations Association of Bangladesh at Hotel Rajmoni Isha Khan.

OSLO, Fri Mar 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - President Barack Obama's negotiators make their debut at UN climate talks on Sunday but US promises of tougher action are unlikely to brighten prospects for strong treaty now overshadowed by recession. Up to 190 nations meet in Bonn from March 29-April 8 to work on plugging huge gaps in a pact due to be agreed in December. Some industrial nations -- Japan, Russia and Ukraine -- have not even set goals for key 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The UN's climate chief said the mood in Bonn, the first climate negotiations since December, would be helped by US plans for stronger action but cautioned against expecting too much from Obama, struggling with the economic downturn. "People are very excited to see the US back," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. Todd Stern, US special envoy for climate change, will head the US delegation. "Of course they're not coming back with a blank check. They are coming with their own requirements in the context of the current political reality," he said. He said time was running worryingly short to work out the vastly complex deal. "There's a great deal of work still to be done," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the head of a UN committee who drafted a 30-page text for Bonn condensing a former 120 pages of ideas for a treaty, ranging from carbon markets to financial aid. Obama wants to cut US emissions by about 15 percent back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the UN treaty -- far tougher than President George W. Bush who foresaw US emissions peaking only in 2025. Under Bush, the US was isolated in opposing the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the plan for cutting emissions backed by all his industrial allies. Delegates even booed US delegates at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007. BACKTRACKING But many nations have rowed back on climate plans, focusing instead on spending trillions of dollars on rescuing banks and shoring up the sagging world economy. A G20 summit in London on April 2 will test appetite for fighting climate change. Spending on green projects, such as renewable energies or railways, accounts for about 15 percent of economic stimulus cash of $2 to $3 trillion. "The seriousness of the climate problem becomes more stark and disturbing with each passing year," Stern said in a speech on March 3. He said that Washington's policies would be guided by science, but also set clear limits. The United States could not make the deepest emissions cuts laid out by the U.N. Climate Panel, of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels, since it was now "beyond the realm of the feasible," he said. The UN Climate Panel projects more floods, droughts, more powerful storms, heatwaves and rising sea levels from heat-trapping gases. One big climate dispute in 2009 will be between developed nations, which have promised "comparable" efforts in cuts. The European Union has been more ambitious than Washington, promising cuts of 20 percent below 1990 levels. And developing nations led by China and India are expected to curb their rising emissions, such as by promising more efficient power plants and vehicles. The UN talks need to work out details of a possible registry for such actions. Poor nations say the rich should give new finance and clean technology. China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, this month rejected a US idea of tariffs on some imports from countries that do not place a price on carbon.

The protests by Insulate Britain, a group demanding that the government insulate millions of homes, have caused long tailbacks and halted traffic on roads such as the M25 motorway that encircles London, angering drivers and politicians. Insulate Britain said the nine people, aged between 20 and 58, were convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to between three and six months in prison. Insulate Britain launched their campaign in September, walking onto busy motorways to glue themselves to the road and stop traffic from passing. They have targetted major motorways, roads in London and the Port of Dover. Britain's transport minister Grant Shapps said every motorway and major A road was covered by injunctions preventing people from blocking the road. "Anyone who causes misery to mostorists may face prison," he said.

Trips over ice to the North Pole may be impossible in summer in just a decade or two because of global warming, one of the world's leading polar adventurers said on Wednesday. Norwegian Boerge Ousland, who has skied alone across the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic, said he would recommend one piece of equipment for anyone planning a trek to the North Pole in a few years' time: a kayak. "It's a bit strange to think that the trips I have been doing may not be possible in 10-20 years," he told reporters after attending a climate seminar in the Norwegian parliament. "But it may well happen." That would end just over a century of trips across the ice -- American Robert Peary was the first to claim to reach the North Pole in 1909. "Over time I have seen the changes myself," said Ousland, aged 45, who has been to the North Pole several times. On a first trip in 1990 the ice was about three metres thick around the North Pole. "Now it is 30 percent thinner," he said. There were also far more and wider gaps in the ice with open water, requiring risky swims in a special survival suit while tugging provisions and other gear along in a floating sledge. The Arctic ice shrank in September 2007 to the smallest on record, eclipsing a 2005 low, according to U.S. satellite data. It is now expanding again as winter approaches but many climate scientists say that the ice could vanish in summer well before the end of the century because of a build-up of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels. HELICOPTER TO ICE And the summer ice now starts several hundred kilometres (miles) further north than a century ago. Few expeditions can now begin from Russia's Cape Arkticheskiy, as Ousland did in 1990, because a helicopter ride is needed to reach firm ice. The receding ice is also revealing new islands. Ousland and a colleague this year, retracing a 1896 trip by Norwegian polar hero Fridtjof Nansen, found that an island called Northbrook Island in the Russian Arctic was in fact two -- melting ice had exposed a channel between them. They took a photograph of walruses swimming between the two islands. Polar bears in the region looked thin, forced to eat nesting seabirds rather than seals, which live on the ice. Ousland said that even a trip he made with South African Mike Horn staring in January 2006 -- the first winter trek to the North Pole -- revealed gaps in the ice. "It was a shock to find open ice," he said. "We swam 5-6 times on that expedition because the ice was so thin."

Global financial mayhem is dimming prospects for a strong new U.N. pact to fight climate change, but it might aid cheap green schemes such as insulating buildings to save energy, analysts said. The turmoil, straining government coffers with bank bailouts, may sap interest in more costly projects such as burying heat-trapping carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, refining biodiesel or some renewable energies. "There will be a shift in investments" toward energy efficiency, said Nick Mabey, director of E3G think-tank in London. Saving energy, such as by insulating buildings, gives quick returns and can help create jobs. A year ago, many governments were billing the fight against warming as humanity's top long-term challenge after the U.N. Climate Panel said human use of fossil fuels would bring more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising seas. Now, with the United States caught in a financial storm that may cost $700 billion of taxpayers' money to fix, a plan to agree a new U.N. treaty to fight global warming in Copenhagen in December 2009 is looking ever more ambitious. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday the market difficulties would make it harder to agree a climate deal, while U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said last week he may be forced to scale back his planned investments in energy. "It's starting to weigh on peoples' minds that the whole process could go completely wrong," said Mabey. In the worst case, the negotiations could collapse, like U.N. trade talks. "The problem of climate change is going to stick with us. But the pace and the scale of ambition may be less in the near term," said Elliot Diringer, a director at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington. SMARTER "Hopefully the crisis will make us smarter in spending our money," said Bjorn Lomborg, Danish author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," who says many governments like Britain focus too much on costly projects such as offshore windmills. More mundane carbon-saving projects may benefit. Consultants McKinsey & Co. reckon emissions-cutting measures such as better building insulation, fuel efficiency in vehicles, more efficient lighting and air conditioning end up paying for themselves via lower energy bills. But policies such as burying carbon dioxide, refining biodiesel or avoiding deforestation are among the most costly ways of slowing emissions, it says. In the United States, both Obama and Republican candidate McCain have promised to do more than President George W. Bush, who said the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions until 2012, would be too expensive. The U.N. Climate Panel has estimated the costs of slowing climate change at only 0.12 percent of world gross domestic product to 2030, with vast benefits in avoiding human suffering. Diringer said the next U.S. president should re-cast the fight against warming as a way to break dependence on oil imports and as a tool to help economic recovery -- some revenues from future carbon trading could go to the Treasury. The worst financial crisis since the 1930s may also mean less aid to help developing nations, such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia, tackle their soaring emissions. FORESTS Norway, which has led international donor efforts to slow burning of tropical forests blamed for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, said it was still committed to help. "We believe this is not an act of charity, this is an investment," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters of the plan, which includes up to $1 billion to Brazil to protect the Amazon. Sven Teske, renewable energy director for environmental group Greenpeace, said investments still made sense. The wind energy market totaled $37 billion in 2007 and added more than 19 gigawatts to the grid, he said. "Money would be better spent on this," he said. Lomborg said the pendulum could swing too far against climate action. "There is a real risk that we could end up under-worrying about climate change just as we are over-worrying today," he said. (Editing by Matthew Jones)

China would "definitely do more" to cut its contribution to climate change if rich nations were willing to share clean energy technologies, its chief climate negotiator Yu Qingtai told Reuters on Thursday. The stance may smooth talks to agree a global deal on climate change, which kick off in Bali next week and are balanced on how far developing nations should join rich countries' efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. "Particularly with regard to the more energy efficient technologies available in the hands of more developed countries, if co-operation is forthcoming... we definitely will be able to do more," said Yu. China would also like to explore how to take into account that a big chunk of its carbon dioxide emissions comes from making goods that are exported to rich countries, which he called a "major concern". China would not be pressured over its ballooning total output of carbon dioxide, poised this year to exceed top emitter the United States. Washington refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because it set no caps on developing nations. What mattered was China's much lower emissions per head, said Yu, a former Africa diplomat, recently appointed to lead his nation's climate negotiating team. He laid out China's climate change priorities days ahead of what are expected to be contentious talks, opening ground for compromise but stressing the government's opposition to emissions caps for developing countries. "I've been brought up to believe that men are born equal, we cannot be expected to accept that our per capita emissions would be half the OECD (industrialised) average or one third of another particular country, this is not something that we will agree to," he said, speaking in polished English. The United Nations Development Programme this week published data showing that Americans produced on average 20.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide each in 2004, versus Chinese 3.8 tonnes. The world must also acknowledge the large role Western consumers played, because of their appetite for Chinese goods. "We make a lot of products for export, subsequently we suffer from this, what we call, transfer emissions ... It is a major concern for China and those developing countries in the same position as China." Climate researchers at Britain's Tyndall Centre last month estimated that net exports accounted for nearly one quarter of China's carbon emissions, similar to Japan's entire emissions. NO SECTOR TARGETS China has set itself tough targets on energy efficiency and renewables, as it struggles to cut ballooning pollution and bolster energy security, and has made these the centre of its national climate change policy. Yu said the goals, which have impressed international policymakers and investors, reflected concern at the highest levels about the impact of changing weather patterns on China. Mankind faces more floods, droughts and rising sea levels, very likely because of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, a major UN report concluded earlier this month. "For China the threat is obvious.... we are basically an agricultural country, if climate change brings about frequent shifts of climate conditions, disasters, flooding and drought, our agriculture will suffer and our food security," Yu said. But he poured cold water on an idea popular with some western industry, policymakers and academics, that rapidly developing countries like China should impose western efficiency standards on some industrial sectors, such as steel or cement. "I think everybody could look at the real world and see the situation. How could anybody expect Europe to be at the same level of economic development or economic capabilities as an African country, or as a developing country like China." The Bali talks are expected to set a deadline of two years for reaching a new global climate pact to succeed or extend the Kyoto Protocol from 2013, a timeline that Yu said he supported but which did not depend on China to agree.

Joe Biden and Sarah Palin agreed that climate change is real, but differed on whether human activity was its root cause in Thursday's US vice presidential debate. Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, acknowledged that human activities may play a role in heating up the planet, but also said natural cycles are part of the picture. "I don't want to argue about the causes," she said in St. Louis. "What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?" To Biden, a Democratic senator from Delaware running with Sen. Barack Obama in the November 4 election, knowing the cause is critical to finding a cure. "If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution," Biden said. "We know what the cause is. The cause is man-made. That's the cause. That's why the polar icecap is melting." Palin's environmental policies have drawn criticism from green groups. She supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which her presidential running-mate, Sen. John McCain, opposes. She said McCain favored an "all-of-the-above" approach to battling climate change, including the use of alternative fuels and conservation. Biden said McCain has voted 20 times in the 15 years against funding alternative energy sources including solar, biofuels and wind power. Obama, McCain and Biden have supported legislation to limit climate-warming carbon emissions, and on Thursday, Palin said she too favored this. But she also linked increased domestic oil production to the fight against global warming. "As we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for," she said, when talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

After four years of fraught UN talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperilled island states against rising economic powerhouses, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will unveil the latest text of a climate deal on Saturday at 9am (0800 GMT). He hopes to secure a sweeping agreement to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions within hours. If that fails, the talks could run into Sunday. Officials from 195 nations were locked in negotiations through the night, seeking to resolve the final sticking points, none seemingly insurmountable: the phrasing of a goal for phasing out carbon emissions later this century; the frequency of further negotiations meant to encourage even faster action. "All the conditions are in place to have a universal, ambitious final deal," Fabius told reporters late on Friday, urging a drive to resolve what are still deep disagreements on issues such as finance for developing nations. "There has never been such a strong momentum." The result, including pledges to expand billions of dollars in funding to ease the shift to low-carbon fuels and to help developing nations cope with impacts of climate change ranging from floods to heat waves, is likely to be hailed by many for its ambition, while vilified by others for its lack thereof. If successful, it will be a powerful symbol to world citizens and a signal to investors -- for the first time in more than two decades, the world will have a common vision for cutting back on the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for overheating the planet, and a roadmap for ending two centuries of fossil fuel dominance. By charting a common course, they hope executives and investors will be more willing to spend trillions of dollars to replace coal-fired power with solar panels and windmills. "It will be up to business, consumers, citizens and particularly investors to finish the job," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Yet unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal agreed in 1997, the Paris pact will not be a legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the US Congress. Instead, it will be largely up to each nation to pursue greener growth in its own way, making good on detailed pledges submitted ahead of the two-week summit. And in the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a dangerous endeavour that threatens to trade economic prosperity for an uncertain if greener future. A deal in Paris would mark a legacy-defining achievement for US President Barack Obama, who has warned not to "condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair", and puts to rest the previous climate summit in Copenhagen six years ago, when attempts to agree even deeper carbon curbs failed. A late break Leaders of vulnerable low-lying nations -- who brought together more than 100 nations in a "high ambition coalition" at the talks, striving for the strongest possible language -- have portrayed the Paris talks as the last chance to avoid the catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Without joining together for immediate action, they had warned, greenhouse gas emissions would be certain to push the planet's ecosystem beyond what scientists view as a tipping point: 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures. It is already 1 degree C higher. The current draft seeks to restrain the rise to "well below 2C", a more ambitious goal than past efforts stopping at 2C, but one that faced opposition from some oil-exporting nations. While scientists say national pledges thus far are still too little to prevent that happening, the agreement should set out a roadmap for steadily increasing or 'ratcheting up' those measures in order to head off calamity. How often to do so was one of the few remaining points of dissention. President Xi Jinping has promised that carbon dioxide emissions from China's rapidly developing economy will start falling from around 2030, and does not want to revisit the target. Delegates said China had also reasserted demands that developed nations do far more to curb greenhouse gas emissions, mostly the result of burning coal, gas and oil. A final deal is expected to provide developing nations greater financial security as they wean themselves away from coal-fired power, and also suffer the financial consequences of a warming climate on the earth's flora and fauna. Rich nations are likely to increase and extend an earlier pledge to provide $100 billion a year in funding by 2020, one of the principal sticking points. The strength of that commitment was still being crafted late on Friday, with some of the negotiators showing the effects of a two-week-long diplomatic marathon. "There will be a new draft text tomorrow and hopefully a final agreement. I hope so because I want to go back home," said Izabella Teixeira, Brazil's minister of environment. "I love France but I miss Brazil too much."

French cyclist Jeannie Longo is taking part in her seventh Olympics in Beijing aged 49, and does not rule out going for a record eighth in London. "London could be fun, and it's not far from home," said Longo, road Olympic champion in 1996 and twice a time-trial silver medallist, in 1988 and 1996. Longo, whose Olympic career started in Los Angeles in 1984, insisted she had always been sincere when bidding farewell to the Games every four years. "I'm not a liar, but every time, the urge comes back and I resume training and I feel fine," said Longo. "This season I told myself 'why not give it another try?' and the training went well." As a result, Longo added three more national titles to the 52 she had already won and earned another Olympic qualification. "I think I have a chance on this course if the race toughens early in the big stretch leading to the final circuit," she said of the Olympic course finishing at the foot of the Great Wall. "The climb is hard and goes up step-by-step, but the descent is too easy and will make it difficult to break away." In 24 years, Longo has had plenty of time to witness the evolution of the Olympics, and she said it was now a different world from the Los Angeles Games. "I think 1984 were the first modern Olympics as we know them, with an athletes village similar to those we have now, with the profusion we have now. Money has definitely poured in and changed everything," she said. Prone to allergies, she said she had not been affected by pollution when she trained on the course on Thursday. "I spend a lot of time in the Reunion Island which has a similar climate, very damp and hot, but with a little bit more sun. Mind you, I saw the sun briefly today at the top of the wall," said Longo, whose record also includes 13 world championship titles. In six previous Olympics, she has never taken part in the opening ceremony and her race schedule will not allow her to chance her habits. "Road cycling races usually take place early in the Olympic programme and it's nonsense spending three hours standings in a stadium on the eve of competition," she said.

The head of the UN climate panel expressed hope that climate talks in Bali will end on Friday with a clear timetable for fixing greenhouse gas emission cuts to help fend off dangerous global warming. The 190-nation talks aimed at launching two years of talks on a global pact to fight global warming have been deadlocked over emissions goals with the United States, Japan and Canada opposed to any reference to numerical goals for emissions. "If we have a very strong statement about reduction of emissions by 2020 and a clear timetable by which the numbers have to be decided on I would treat that as progress," Rajendra Pachauri told reporters after arriving from Oslo where he collected the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of his UN panel. He said that a deal about a timetable would could pave the way to firm targets for emissions goals by rich nations to be decided "maybe not here but maybe six months' later". "Certainly there is some merit in the clear mention of the targets by 2020," he said. The U.N. panel this year blamed mankind for causing warming and said it would bring more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas. "If they don't arrive at that kind of number I think at the minimum we need a very strong statement that by 2050 we should have stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and that perhaps the exact level of reductions should be decided in the next six months. We should lay down the timetable." The Dec. 3-14 Bali talks are split over the guidelines for starting two years of formal negotiations on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. pact capping greenhouse gas emissions of all industrial nations except the United States until 2012. The EU wants Bali's final text to agree a non-binding goal of cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 for industrial economies. The United States, Japan and Canada are opposed, saying any figures would prejudge the outcome. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, refused to comment on U.S. opposition, saying he hoped the negotiations would be able to sort out all differences. "I hope we can resolve this difference of opinion," Pachauri said. "The very fact that they are discussing fairly stringent targets of 25 to 40 percent is not bad at all and is an indication they accept the science that we brought out and they accept the inevitability of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases," he said. "Otherwise we'll certainly suffer the impacts of climate change which would be very serious."

Cape Town Apr 25 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A group of developing countries, among the world's fastest-growing carbon emitters, said on Sunday a legally binding global agreement to limit climate change needed to be completed by 2011 at the latest. Environment ministers of the so-called BASIC bloc -- Brazil, South Africa, India and China -- met in Cape Town to look at how to fast-track such a deal to curb global warming. "Ministers felt that a legally binding outcome should be concluded at Cancun, Mexico in 2010, or at the latest in South Africa by 2011," the ministers said in a joint statement, referring to U.N. climate talks. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment and forestry minister, told reporters: "Right now it looks as if we will have to come back to Cape Town in 2011. There is no breakthrough in sight ... we have a long way to go." The Kyoto Protocol, which the United States did not ratify, binds about 40 developed nations to cutting emissions by 2008-12. U.N. climate meetings have failed to reach a legally binding agreement on what happens post-2012. More than 100 countries have backed a non-binding accord, agreed in Copenhagen last year, to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, but it did not spell out how this should be achieved. It included a goal of $100 billion (65.08 billion pounds) in aid for developing nations from 2020. The United States supports the Copenhagen Accord but many emerging economies do not want it to supplant the 1992 U.N. Climate Convention, which more clearly spells out that rich nations have to take the lead in cutting emissions and combating climate change. The BASIC ministers on Sunday proposed to use $10 billion of "fast-start funding" this year to test and demonstrate ways of adapting to and mitigating climate change. They said the world could not wait indefinitely for the United States, the second-biggest carbon emitter after China, to pass domestic legislation needed to conclude negotiations. A bipartisan working group on Saturday delayed a compromise climate change bill, a top priority of President Barack Obama that has been closely watched by other nations sceptical of U.S. commitment to fight global warming. "Of course there is no way to fight climate change without the United States and we believe that we can be able to build an agreement that (would enable) the United States to come on board," Izabella Teixeira, Brazil's environment minister, told journalists. Her South Africa counterpart, Buyelwa Sonjica, said if the United States did not soon pass necessary domestic climate laws, "that would impact on vulnerable countries, making them remain at risk." Emissions from industrial countries fell by 2.2 percent in 2008 as the world fell into recession, the sharpest fall since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Experts say there is no basis for believing the decline was the result of a coordinated effort to tackle emissions. Industrialised nations have been unwilling to take on new commitments beyond 2012 unless major emerging nations, such as India and China, also sign up.

In the dense forests of the idyllic Danube island of Persin, home to the endangered sea eagle and the pygmy cormorant, lie the ghastly remains of a communist-era death camp. Hundreds "enemies of the regime" perished from beatings, malnutrition and exhaustion in 1949-59 in Bulgaria's Belene concentration camp, where dead bodies were fed to pigs. Twenty years after the fall of communism, Belene is largely forgotten -- only a small marble plaque tells its horrific story. And nostalgia for the past is growing in the small Balkan country and across the former Soviet bloc. Capitalism's failure to lift living standards, impose the rule of law and tame flourishing corruption and nepotism have given way to fond memories of the times when the jobless rate was zero, food was cheap and social safety was high. "(The bad) things have been forgotten," said Rumen Petkov, 42, a former guard now clerk at the only prison still functioning on the Persin island. "The nostalgia is palpable, particularly among the elderly," he said, in front of the crumbling buildings of another old jail opened on the site after the camp was shut in 1959. The communists imprisoned dozens of ethnic Turks here in the 1980s when they refused to change their names to Bulgarian. Some young people in the impoverished town of Belene, linked to the island with a pontoon bridge, also reminisce: "We lived better in the past," said Anelia Beeva, 31. "We went on holidays to the coast and the mountains, there were plenty of clothes, shoes, food. And now the biggest chunk of our incomes is spent on food. People with university degrees are unemployed and many go abroad." In Russia, several Soviet-themed restaurants have opened in Moscow in recent years: some hold nostalgia nights where young people dress up as pioneers -- the Soviet answer to the boy scouts and girl guides -- and dance to communist classics. Soviet Champagne and Red October Chocolates remain favourites for birthday celebrations. "USSR" T-shirts and baseball caps can be seen across the country in summer. While there is scant real desire for old regimes to be restored, analysts say apathy is a vital outcome. "The big damage of the nostalgia...is that it dries out the energy for meaningful change," wrote Bulgarian sociologist Vladimir Shopov in the online portal BG History. DISENCHANTMENT Across former communist eastern Europe, disenchantment with democracy is widespread and pollsters say mistrust of the elites who made people citizens of the European Union is staggering. A September regional poll by US Pew research centre showed support for democracy and capitalism has seen the biggest fall in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Hungary. The poll showed 30 percent of Ukrainians approved of the change to democracy in 2009, down from 72 percent in 1991. In Bulgaria and Lithuania the slide was to just over half the population from nearer three-quarters in 1991. Surveys by US-based human rights group Freedom House show backsliding or stagnation in corruption, governance, independent media and civil society in the new EU-member states. The global economic crisis, which has wounded the region and put an end to six or seven years of growth, is now challenging the remedy of neoliberal capitalism prescribed by the West. Hopes of catching up with the wealthy Western neighbours have been replaced by a sense of injustice because of a widening gap between the rich and the poor. In Hungary, one of the countries worst hit by economic downturn, 70 percent of those who were already adults in 1989 say they were disappointed with the results of the regime change, an October survey by pollster Szonda Ipsos showed. People in the former Yugoslav countries, scarred by the ethnic wars from the 1990s and still outside the EU, are nostalgic for the socialist era of Josip Broz Tito when, unlike now, they travelled across Europe without visa. "Everything was better then. There was no street crime, jobs were safe and salaries were enough for decent living," said Belgrade pensioner Koviljka Markovic, 70. "Today I can hardly survive with my pension of 250 euros ($370 a month)." GOLDEN ERA In Bulgaria, the 33-year rule of the late dictator Todor Zhivkov begins to seem a golden era to some in comparison with the raging corruption and crime that followed his demise. Over 60 percent say they lived better in the past, even though shopping queues were routine, social connections were the only way to obtain more valuable goods, jeans and Coca Cola were off-limits and it took up to 10 years' waiting to buy a car. "For part of the Bulgarians (social) security turned out to be more precious than freedom," wrote historians Andrei Pantev and Bozhidar Gavrilov in a book on the 100 most influential people in the Balkan country's history. Nearly three years after joining the EU, Bulgaria's average monthly salary of about 300 euros and pension of about 80 euros remain the lowest in the club. Incomes in the more affluent Poland and the Czech Republic, which joined the bloc in 2004, are also still a fraction of those in western Europe. A 2008 global survey by Gallup ranked Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania among the 10 most discontented countries in the world. "Our parents' generation was much more satisfied with what they had. Everybody just wants more of everything these days," said Zsofia Kis, a 23-year old student in Budapest, referring to the way communist regimes artifically held down unemployment. DALAVERA, MUTRI, MENTE After two decades of patchy, painful reforms, the majority of people refuse to make more sacrifices, as would be needed to complete a revamp of the economy and the judiciary. Demoralisation and heightened popularity for political parties promising "a firm hand" are other consequences. Not without reason. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, described the fall of the Soviet Union as the "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". Kremlin critics have accused the authorities of a creeping rehabilitation of the Soviet Union to justify their clampdowns on the media and opposition parties. "There is an idealisation of the Soviet past," said Nikita Petrov, an historian from the Memorial human rights group. "It's a conscious policy. They are trying to show the Soviet authorities looking decent and attractive to today's generation." In Bulgaria, oligarchs who control entire sectors of the economy have emerged from the former communist party's ranks and its feared secret services. The names of corrupt politicians and crime bosses are an open secret, but Bulgaria has not convicted a single senior official of graft and has jailed only one gang boss since 1989. No one has been convicted for the communist repressions. Some of the most popular words among ordinary Bulgarians are "dalavera", a Turkish word meaning fraud, "mutri", a nickname for ugly mafiosi and "mente", which means counterfeit products. "People are losing faith that one can achieve success in an honest, decent way. Success is totally criminalised," said Boriana Dimitrova of Bulgarian polling agency Alpha Research. She said the sense of injustice was particularly strong in the Balkans, Europe's poorest corner, where untouchable parallel structures of power reign. "Some people say: 'yes, the old regime was repressive but at least there was law and order.'" A promise to end the climate of impunity helped tough-talking Prime Minister Boiko Borisov of the centre-right populist GERB party to a landslide election win in Bulgaria in July. Public discontent and recession mean only populist governments can survive in the region, analysts say. "The level of mistrust in the political elite and institutions is so high that you cannot convince people to do anything under unpopular governments," said Ivan Krastev of Sofia's Liberal Strategies Institute. Some in Bulgaria accuse the West of duplicity for easily swallowing the communist past of members of the new elite. The election of Bulgarian Irina Bokova, 57, a former communist apparatchik and ambassador to Paris, as head of the UN culture and education body UNESCO in September was a stark example of the West's hypocrisy, critics say. Bokova studied in Moscow during the communism and climbed the diplomatic career ladder in the 1990s thanks to her past. "AMERICANISATION" On one front at least, some eastern Europeans say they have succeeded in catching up with and even outstripping capitalist standards -- the thirst for materialism. A big chunk of the loans taken in the boom years was spent on fancy cars and yachts, flat TV screens, designer clothes, silicon surgeries and exotic trips abroad. Copying foreign standards went as far as giving babies Western names and flooding TV screens with reality shows like "Big Brother". "Bulgaria is becoming Americanised," said renowned Bulgarian artist, Nikola Manev, who lives in Paris. "I pick up the phone and they talk to me in English, I go to a restaurant and it's called Miami. Don't we have our own names for God's sake? "Looking on the surface, I see new buildings, shops, shiny cars. But people have become sadder, more aggressive and unhappy," he said, prescribing spiritual cures. This autumn for the first time in many years, tickets at Sofia's theatres are selling out weeks in advance.

The cost to aid budgets of the world economic downturn is headed for billions of dollars, slashing assistance to the world's poorest people just as it becomes harder for them to make money for themselves. In the United States, the heads of more than 50 groups in the InterAction coalition, whose 175 members manage a total of $9 billion annually, say they expect donations from individuals, businesses and foundations to fall by about $1 billion this year. "If this (recession) goes into 2010, we will be seeing a significant reduction in delivery of programmes in the world's poorest areas," InterAction president Sam Worthington told Reuters, adding weaker organizations may fall by the wayside. British-based charities are suffering additionally from the pound's decline, making their money worth less abroad. The squeeze has come as the needs of many crisis-hit communities, such as those in Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, are rising. "The problems in Darfur haven't changed one iota because of Western bank failures. If anything, it's just gone off the agenda," said John Low, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which helps charities manage money. A CAF survey in January of 322 British charities -- including groups working on overseas aid -- found half expected their income to fall in the next year and 41 percent had seen their income drop in the previous three months. Groups in Africa, which receive much of their funding from international charities and government donors, are worried about the effect on their work. They include Uganda's National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. "With HIV, the major effect of the global financial problems is fear: fear that there might be less funds committed to the campaign and fear that there might be a shortage of essentials like drugs and condoms," said director Major Rubaramira Ruranga. MORE RELAXED In South Asia, the mood is calmer, partly because most countries are less reliant on international donors than in Africa, where aid makes up close to half some national budgets. Agencies in India told Reuters they had secured resources for the coming year but were cautious. "It is important to ring those alarm bells of concern at this time because across South Asia there are people who are already teetering on the edge and a sustained wound to the head would be fatal," said Sarah Crowe, regional head of communications for the U.N. Children's Fund. The World Bank has warned that almost 40 percent of 107 developing countries are highly exposed to the effects of the credit crunch and up to 53 million more people are being trapped in poverty as economic growth falters. The British-based agency Oxfam points out that a fall in remittances from migrant workers will have a huge effect in countries such as Bangladesh, where one family in every village is dependent on them. Experts say it is hard to predict how far the global downturn will cut into aid budgets. Italy has halved its 2009 assistance and Ireland has cut 17 percent from its overseas aid in three reductions since July. "We realize that the government finds itself in extremely difficult circumstances with tough choices to make, but it is shocking that the option taken has hit at the poorest and most vulnerable," said Tom Arnold, chief executive of Dublin-based agency Concern Worldwide. Aid contributions from European Union countries, which had been expected to top $92 billion in 2010, could be $15 billion to $25 billion less because of currency weakness and lower growth, according to Nick Highton of the London-based think-tank Overseas Development Institute. "Just when poor countries are most going to need it is when rich countries draw in their horns," he said. POUND'S WEAKNESS British charities working overseas say the most harmful effect of the crisis so far has been the weakness of the pound. The CAFOD agency estimates the dollar value of British government aid may fall by as much as $41 billion between 2008 and 2014. Groups funded by CAFOD in developing countries have already seen the dollar value of their sterling grants drop 25 to 30 percent compared with the middle of last year. "We're basically passing on the pain to our partners with profound apologies," said policy adviser George Gelber. In Kenya, Charles Mwangi Waituru, country coordinator for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, says the financial crisis will slow progress toward U.N. benchmark targets for reducing extreme poverty, which have a deadline of 2015. "We are going to see drawbacks in key campaigns against poverty, disease and the new burden of climate change," he said. "In the long run the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved in the stipulated time frame." In the country's Rift Valley, 24-year-old Michael Ole Sayo runs a small agency that runs projects for Maasai nomads. They have funding requirements of a few thousand dollars each, a tiny drop in the multi-billion-dollar aid industry. They are Ole Sayo's life's work. "Most of the programmes are donor-funded. So if the donors don't get money we, who are the last kind of grassroots people, are not getting funding either," he said. One of a new generation of educated young Maasai equally at home in their parents' remote huts and the internet cafes of Nairobi, Ole Sayo has given up several job opportunities in the city to stay and work with the community. His projects include building rainwater collection tanks at a school, helping Maasai bead workers market their crafts, increasing awareness of female circumcision and improving inoculation and water supplies for cattle. "It is a new problem," he says, "one I'm not sure how we can fight." Some charity fundraisers argue lean times will result in better accountability. Caroline Underwood, director of partnerships for Save the Children UK, expects businesses to put more pressure on aid groups to use their donations wisely and creatively. "Charities will have to work smarter," she said.

Then the connection failed. Gieler, mayor of this small village in the Ahr Valley, a lush winemaking region in western Germany that became the epicentre of devastating floods last month, was only five minutes down the road from his mother, but he could not help her. He was trapped on the top floor of his own house with his wife and children after the gentle brook he had played in as a boy had turned into a 33-foot raging river that roared past his second-floor windows on both sides carrying rooftops and whole camper vans. The river swallowed not just Gieler’s entire childhood home that July night, but the ground it once stood on. His mother’s body was found 5 miles downriver 10 days later. “I have never felt so small and powerless,” he said one recent afternoon gazing at the now empty space on the opposite bank of the river. “We have to rebuild, but we have to rebuild differently,” he said. “We have to completely rethink how we live with our environment.” Three weeks after the megaflood killed 189 people and cut a wide path of destruction through western Germany, people in the valley are still in shock. There is grief, desperation, fear of the next heavy rainfall and anger at politicians who did not heed urgent warnings in the days before. German prosecutors have opened an investigation into two officials in the region on suspicion of “negligent homicide.” But amid the cacophony of recriminations there is also something else. A sense of humility in the face of a calamity that no one had thought possible. The disaster brought home the realisation that climate change is here, already, and even a rich country such as Germany is living its effects. And it forced a painful recognition that the flooding was made worse by many bad decisions over decades, even centuries, that turned the Ahr Valley into a death trap. “There have always been floods here but never like this,” said Guido Nisius, a local politician. “It’s the sum of all our mistakes that caused the catastrophic dimension of this.” Nisius sees the evidence of this every day. He lives south of Rech, near the Nürburgring, Germany’s most famous car-racing ring. It was built in 1925 at the expense of a water-retention reservoir, which had been planned after a devastating flood in 1910 but was derailed by World War I. At the time, strapped local politicians faced a trade-off: Build the reservoir as a flood-protection measure. Or build the racing ring, which would put 2,500 unemployed locals to work for two years and give one of Germany’s poorest regions a nationwide attraction tied to one of the most promising innovations at the time: the automobile. “There is no question that this water reservoir would have helped us today,” said Wolfgang Büchs, a biologist who grew up in the region and has written about the geography and vegetation in the Ahr Valley. Economics has a way of trumping other arguments, Büchs said. He points to the monocultures of spruce trees dotted around the mountain sides. They were first planted here in the 19th century because they grow faster and produce more wood than the native oak and birch trees. But their shallow roots do not bind the earth together as well, and these days they absorb no water at all because they are dead or dying of a bark beetle plague caused by warmer summers. Fields of sweet corn are cultivated for cheap animal feed, but they retain much less water than grassland. The vineyards have been planted vertically, rather than horizontally, because it makes them easier to work and more productive — but the design gives rainwater a clear path into the valley. And then there are the roads and the buildings that have encroached on the river, sealing the ground on what should be natural flood plains. “In a way, the river has taken back what we took from it,” said Büchs, whose sister lost her job after the pharmacy she worked for was destroyed in the floods. “Our past sins, they are coming back to haunt us.” There is a bigger lesson in the floods, he said. Germans have long lived under the illusion that the catastrophic consequences of climate change would be felt elsewhere. That helps explain why urgent warnings from meteorologists in the days before the floods were not taken seriously by regional and local politicians and many residents. “It was a failure of our imagination,” said Andreas Solheid, a doctor and member of the fire brigade who was on duty for two weeks straight after the floods hit. “We simply could not imagine it. We thought this happens to other countries. We see something like this on the news every week, but then we change the channel and forget about it.” Like most Germans, Solheid never doubted that climate change was real and human-made. He tracks his carbon footprint. His parents have solar panels on their roof. But the floods have disabused him and many others here of the notion that small fixes, rather than fundamental changes, are enough. “It’s here,” he said. “We have to do what we can to limit it. And we have to learn how to adapt to it.” There have always been floods in the Ahr Valley. But the number has increased. There was high water in 2013 and again in 2016, although no one died. “We have been called out for extreme weather more frequently,” said Solheid, who has served in the fire brigade for 18 years. None of the historic floods were as destructive as this one. In Rech alone, 13 houses were washed away and six others were so badly damaged that they are being torn down. A bridge that was hundreds of years old and had withstood all past floods was destroyed. The train tracks running along the edge of the vineyards behind the village were ripped up. For those old enough to remember World War II, the collapsed buildings, the houses with their facades ripped off and mountains of rubble conjure past traumas. “It looks like in 1945,” said Günter Prybyla, 86, who spent five days buried under rubble in a bombed-out basement when he was 8 years old. “But this is a war without bombs. Nature is hitting back.” There is something almost biblical about the situation, said Adolf Schreiner, a winemaker in Rech. The droughts in 2018, the pandemic and now the floods. His family has been making wine in the valley for four generations and never before did the water make it to their home, which is set back from the river on the incline. But this time, all his barrels and wine tanks were submerged. One-third of his vines were destroyed and may never be replanted. But Schreiner took a philosophical view. “Maybe a step back would not be so bad,” he said as he washed mud off hundreds of wine bottles that had been submerged in his flooded basement. “Most of us live in excess.” Gieler, the mayor of Rech, is determined that his mother’s death and all the destruction must not be in vain. “We need to build back in a way that is sustainable,” he said. He wants to connect the village to a greener district heating grid, which seemed prohibitively expensive before because it required many miles worth of new plumbing. But with roads and sewers destroyed, the plumbing needs to be rebuilt anyway. He wants to electrify the train line, which lies in ruin. And he wants to rethink how to give more space to the river. “I don’t know that we can or should rebuild houses and vineyards where they were destroyed,” he said. It won’t be easy, he admitted. Eighty percent of the village lives off wine. “We will need help,” he said, both money and expertise. “If not now, when?” he said.       © 2021 The New York Times Company

Kuwait will also require incoming travellers to quarantine at home for 10 days unless they receive a negative PCR test for the coronavirus within 72 hours of their arrival.

ROME/MILAN, Tue Oct 7,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The Western world needs to rethink its rush to biofuels, which has done more harm pushing up food prices than it has good by reducing greenhouse gases, a United Nations report said on Tuesday. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said policies encouraging biofuel production and use in Europe and the United States was likely to maintain pressure on food prices but have little impact on weaning car users away from oil. "The report finds that while biofuels will offset only a modest share of fossil energy use over the next decade they will have much bigger impacts on agriculture and food security," it said in its annual State of Food and Agriculture report. Growing demand for biofuels will boost prices of agricultural commodities in the next 10 years, the report said. For instance, if demand for biofuel agricultural feedstock rose 30 percent by 2010 from 2007, it would drive sugar prices up by 26 percent, maize prices by 11 percent and vegetable oil prices by 6 percent, FAO said. With global stocks low and crops strongly dependent on weather, food prices would remain volatile, it said. Anti-hunger campaigners have blamed biofuels, which convert crops such as maize, sugar, oil seeds and palm oil into liquid fuel for use in cars, for pushing up global food prices, contributing to soaring food bills in the last two years. The global food import bill is expected to jump 26 percent to $1,035 billion in 2008, powered by price rises in rice, wheat and vegetable oils, FAO said. Looking ahead to 2010, FAO forecast a 7 percent rise in the world output of main agricultural crops -- wheat, rice, coarse grains, rapeseed, soybean, sunflower seed, palm oil and sugar -- compared to 2007. URGENT The food versus fuel debate was stoked last year when then U.N. envoy on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said using arable land to make fuel was a "crime against humanity". The FAO report uses far less dramatic language and does not quantify biofuels' contribution to commodity price spikes which were also due to poor harvests and demand for a richer diet in places like China and India. But it does say the rise in biofuels has put more people at risk of hunger and requiring food aid and other assistance. It also pours doubt on the claim that biofuels reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Crops soak up CO2 -- the main greenhouse gas blamed for climate change -- when they grow, but fuel used in their cultivation and processing reduces that efficiency and if trees are cleared to plant them, any gains can be lost. "In many cases, increased emissions from land-use change are likely to offset or even exceed the greenhouse gas savings obtained by replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, and impacts on water, soil and biodiversity are also a concern," FAO said. With the exception of sugar cane ethanol production in Brazil, biofuel production only thrives when subsidised. "There is an urgent need to review current policies supporting, subsidising and mandating biofuel production and use," the report said, recommending more funding be directed to "second generation" biofuels which will come from non-food plant matter such as straw or algae. Transportation accounts for 29 percent of the world's total energy consumption and only 0.9 percent of that comes from biofuels, a proportion that the International Energy Agency says could rise to 2.3 percent by 2015 and 3.2 percent by 2030. Biofuels' rise could provide an opportunity for farmers in developing countries to develop the new cash crops, the report said, but that would only happen if subsidy regimes were changed to favour poorer countries rather than richer ones.

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

European Union leaders agreed an offer to put on the table at global climate talks in Copenhagen in December after healing a rift over how to split the bill. Developing countries will need 100 billion euros ($148 billion) a year by 2020 to battle climate change, leaders said at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday. About 22-50 billion euros of the total will come from the public purse in rich countries worldwide and the EU will provide a share of that. Many countries expect the EU's portion to be somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. "I think this will be seen as one of the major breakthroughs that is necessary for us to get a Copenhagen agreement," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said. East European countries said the summit had settled a rift over how to split the EU's portion of the bill in a way that would not hurt their economies as they recover from crisis. "We consider this a success for Poland," said the Polish minister for Europe, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz. "We want to develop quickly. We don't want to become the museum of folklore of eastern Europe." Leaders fell short of agreeing a concrete formula for carving up the bill and handed that job to a new working party. "I would prefer this burden-sharing mechanism to be ready now, but this proved too difficult," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. MANDATE The two-day summit secured a complex negotiating mandate for the Copenhagen talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations anti-climate change scheme expiring in 2012. Success at those talks is likely to hinge on money. Developing countries say they will not sign up to tackling climate change without enough funds from rich nations, which bear most of the responsibility for damaging the atmosphere by fuelling their industries with oil and coal over decades. Developing countries might use such funds to adapt their agriculture or find new sources of water in drought zones. But the European leaders put on hold earlier plans to come up with "fast start" financing for developing nations in the three years before any new climate deal takes effect. Anti-poverty group Oxfam said Europe's bid was insufficient and lacked guarantees that the money would not simply be diverted from existing aid commitments. "If rich countries steal from aid budgets to pay their climate debt, the fight against poverty will go into reverse," Oxfam's Elise Ford said. HOT AIR The opposition to a deal from east European countries largely dissipated after Sweden, which chaired the talks, leveraged the divisive issue of so-called "hot air" -- the 17 billion euros of carbon permits held by eastern Europe. The eastern European states, Russia and Ukraine hold spare permits for about 9 billion tonnes of carbon emissions, left over when their economies collapsed after communist rule ended. The spare permits, known as AAUs, can be sold to big polluters such as Japan for about 10 euros per tonne. The eastern European countries want to keep selling AAUs under the deal that replaces Kyoto. But some countries such as Germany say they undermine the integrity of the agreement and want to scrap them because they lessen the need for action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Sweden won eastern Europe's support for the overall deal in return for postponing any bold action on AAUs, one EU diplomat said. The deal also included action on domestic emissions, with a pledge to strengthen cuts to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if other nations take similar steps.

The projections, based on new computer models and reviewing what the scientists said was an "exceptional number of extreme heatwaves" in the past decade, are more alarming than the conclusions of the UN panel of climate scientists last year.That report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the UN body that collates scientific research from around the world - merely said of heatwaves: "It is very likely that the length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heatwaves will increase over most land areas" this century.Monthly heat extremes in summer - such as the heatwaves in Australia this year, parts of the United States in 2012 or Russia in 2010 - now affect five percent of the world's land area, the report said."This is projected to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2040," the scientists wrote of their new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.The tropics would be most affected by increased heatwaves, followed by areas including the Mediterranean, Middle East, parts of western Europe, central Asia and the United States."In many regions, the coldest summer months by the end of the century will be hotter than the hottest experienced today," unless emissions of greenhouse gases are curbed, said Dim Coumou, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.The IPCC says heat-trapping gases, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are nudging up temperatures, and are likely to cause more severe downpours, heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.Almost 200 governments have agreed to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times and plan to agree, by the end of 2015, a deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.Global average surface temperatures have risen by 0.8C (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution.

A new mathematical model predicts the country's southern regions along the Bay of Bengal will be the first impacted by sea level rise, causing displacement that would eventually affect all of the nation's 64 districts. Some migrants could displace existing residents, triggering further movement of people, said the study published by the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific group. The population of Dhaka, a popular hub for migrants, is expected to shrink after an initial surge as residents seek to move away from an overburdened capital, researchers said. With more than 600 million people at risk of being displaced by sea level rise in coastal regions worldwide in this century, researchers say their model could help countries prepare by ensuring cities are equipped to deal with an influx of migrants. "The paper seeks to understand not only the immediate displacement due to sea level rise, but the cascading effects that their migration will trigger through the country," co-author Maurizio Porfiri told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday. "The model will initially tell you that Dhaka is the place to go, but ultimately, as the place gets overpopulated... people will have to distribute everywhere. So every place will get a fraction of the migrants." Bangladesh, a country of more than 160 million, is a low-lying nation often included on lists of countries most at risk from the impacts of rising global temperatures, from more extreme storms to floods. Last year, the nation witnessed flooding that lingered for an unusually long time and experts feared the economic impact was worsened due to job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The study's authors say their model can be used to assess migration trends caused by any kind of environmental disaster, from droughts and wildfires to earthquakes. "Mathematical modelling is the only way we have to ground our future decisions," said Pietro De Lellis, an engineer at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and the study's lead author, in a press release. The study's model considers human behaviour, such as whether people are willing or able to leave home and if they later are likely to return there. "(The study) has rightly focused on the complexity of human behaviour that is involved in the decision-making process of potential migrants," said Saleemul Huq, director of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate Change and Development. "Towns in other parts of the country, besides Dhaka, need to prepare to receive climate migrants in the future.

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

WASHINGTON, Aug 9, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada -- also known as "the three amigos" -- begin a summit on Sunday in Mexico to talk about simmering trade issues and the threat of drug gangs. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are gathering in Guadalajara for dinner Sunday night followed by three-way talks on Monday. At the top of their agenda is how to power their economies past a lingering downturn, keep trade flowing smoothly and grapple with Mexican gangs dominating the drug trade over the U.S. border and up into Canada. Obama's national security adviser, Jim Jones, doubted the leaders would announce major agreements, predicting the annual summit "is going to be a step in the continuing dialogue from which agreements will undoubtedly come." Obama is expected to get some heat from Calderon to resolve a cross-border trucking dispute. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican trucks are supposed to be allowed to cross into the United States, but American trucking companies charge Mexican trucks are not safe. The issue has festered for years. Mexico imposed retaliatory tariffs of $2.4 billion in U.S. goods in March after Obama signed a bill canceling a program allowing Mexican trucks to operate beyond the U.S. border zone. U.S. business groups have been pressing the White House to resolve the dispute, saying the ban threatens to eliminate thousands of U.S. jobs. "We would like to see a final closure and a final solution to the issue of trucking," said Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan. He said he would like an agreement by year's end. A top White House official, Michael Froman, told reporters the Obama administration is "quite focused" on the issue and was working with the U.S. Congress to resolve safety issues. CARTEL VIOLENCE Canadian officials are expected to raise their concerns about "Buy American" elements of a $787 billion economic stimulus bill that they fear could shut out Canadian companies from U.S. construction contracts funded by the stimulus. Canada is the United States' largest trading partner. Froman said the Obama administration was talking to Canada and other nations "to try and implement the 'Buy American' provision in a way consistent with the law, consistent with our international obligations, while minimizing disruption to trade." Obama took a potential sore point off the table ahead of his trip: That he might be willing to unilaterally reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) treaty as he had talked about on the campaign trail last year. Given the weakened economies of the three nations, he told Hispanic reporters on Friday, it is not the time to try to add enforceable labor and environmental protections to the treaty as some in his Democratic Party would prefer. "In terms of refining some of our agreements, that is not where everyone's focus is right now because we are in the middle of a very difficult economic situation," Obama said, although he added that he was still interested in learning how to improve the treaty. Another top issue at the summit is what to do about Mexican drug gangs who are killing rivals in record numbers, despite Calderon's three-year army assault on the cartels. The death rate this year from the violence is about a third higher than in 2008, and police in the United States and as far north as the western Canadian city of Vancouver have blamed the Mexican traffickers for crime. Obama is backing Calderon's efforts. "He is doing the right thing by going after them and he has done so with tremendous courage," Obama said. Obama promised full support to Calderon during a visit in April, but Mexico complains that anti-drug equipment and training are taking too long to arrive and hopes the summit will move things ahead. The leaders also promise a statement on H1N1 swine flu and will jointly address climate change as they prepare for major international talks in Copenhagen in December.

Take the October issue of GQ, which features Paul McCartney. For decades he has leaned on familiar Beatles anecdotes, presuming that decades-old chestnuts may still pass for warm. But in GQ, over the course of several long conversations, he revealed himself to be unstudied, slightly wishy-washy and much less preoccupied with the sanctity of his own image than you might think — he even offered a recollection about the Beatles’ teenage sexual adventures that led to a characteristically sweaty New York Post headline: “Beat the Meatles.” The story worked in two ways: For the reader and fan, it was appealingly revealing; for McCartney, who’s been famous so long he is more sculpture than human, it was a welcome softening. This took a willingness to answer questions, to submit to the give and take that comes with a profile of that scale. But not all big stories demand such transparency of their subjects: say, the September issue of Vogue with Beyoncé on the cover. The accompanying article is titled “Beyoncé in Her Own Words” — not a profile, but a collection of brief, only-occasionally-revealing commentaries on a range of topics: motherhood and family, body acceptance, touring. Anna Wintour refers to the story in her editor’s letter as a “powerful essay” that “Beyoncé herself writes,” as if that were an asset, not a liability. There was a journalist in the room at some point in the process — the piece has an “as told to” credit at the end — but outside perspectives have effectively been erased. For devotees of Beyoncé, this might not matter (though it should). But for devotees of celebrity journalism — the kind of work that aims to add context and depth to the fame economy, and which is predicated on the productive frisson between an interviewer and interviewee — this portends catastrophe. And it’s not an isolated event. In pop music especially, plenty of the most famous performers essentially eschew the press: Taylor Swift hasn’t given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years. For Drake, it’s been about a year (and a tumultuous one at that). Frank Ocean has all but disappeared (again). What’s replaced it isn’t satisfying: either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media. Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press. Since the 1960s, in-depth interviews have been a crucial part of the star-making process, but also a regular feature of high-level celebrity maintenance — artists didn’t abandon their obligations to the media just because they had reached the pinnacle of fame. Answering questions was part of the job. It was the way that the people making the most interesting culture explained themselves, whether it was John Lennon on the breakup of the Beatles, Tupac Shakur speaking out from jail, or Courtney Love in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death. It was illuminating to fans, but also something of a badge of honour for the famous, especially when the conversations were adversarial. Stars like Ice Cube and Madonna used to thrive in those circumstances — the interviews revealed them to be thoughtful, unafraid of being challenged and alive to the creation of their image. But that was in a climate in which print publications had a disproportionate amount of leverage, and the internet and TMZ hadn’t wrested away narrative control. When stars’ comings and goings began to be documented on a minute-by-minute basis, those changes triggered celebrity reticence. On its own, that wouldn’t signal the death knell of celebrity journalism as it’s been practiced for decades. But the pressure being applied to celebrity journalism from the top might pale in comparison to the threat surging from below, where a new generation of celebrities — YouTube stars, SoundCloud rappers, and various other earnest young people — share extensively on social media on their own terms, moving quickly and decisively (and messily) with no need for the patience and pushback they might encounter in an interview setting. This generation is one of all-access hyper-documentation, making the promise of celebrity journalism — emphasising intimate perspective and behind-the-scenes access — largely irrelevant. An emblematic example is the rapper Lil Xan, who in recent months has played out several micro-dramas online: discussing his health struggles and how they put him at odds with his management (his phone was forcibly grabbed from his hand while he was live on Instagram discussing family drama); falling for and then breaking up with Noah Cyrus, Miley’s younger sister. Traditional media might catch up to his story someday, but he’s not waiting to be asked for a comment before providing one. (He recently announced on Instagram that he was filming a series for Netflix, again bypassing old platforms.) Sometimes, social media posts take the place of what was once the preserve of the tell-all interview: Ariana Grande mourned her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, in an Instagram post; the rapper XXXTentacion replied to allegations of sexual assault on his Instagram Story; the YouTube star Logan Paul used his usual platform to apologise for a video in which he filmed a dead body. These are one-sided stories, with no scrutiny beyond the comments section. And so they’ve become highly visible safe spaces for young celebrities, especially in an era when one’s direct social media audience — via Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and more — can far exceed the reach of even the most prestigious or popular publication, and in a way that’s laser-targeted to supporters. All of which leaves celebrity journalism in a likely unsolvable conundrum. The most famous have effectively dispensed with it, and the newly famous have grown up in an age where it was largely irrelevant. Over time, the middle space may well be squeezed into nothingness. What’s more, creation of content has been diversified — for the casual consumer, it can be difficult to tell the difference between original reporting and aggregation, content created by journalistic outlets and content created by brands. This blurriness incentivises the famous away from traditional media, where they don’t control the final product. And as old-media extinction looms, the new ecosystem is often used as a corrective — or loud distraction. Selena Gomez is on the cover of Elle this month, and the accompanying story is relatively innocuous. But when it appeared online, she replied with a long Instagram post expressing frustration. “Speaking from my heart for over an hour to someone who puts those thoughts into paid words can be hard for me,” she wrote. “The older I get the more I want my voice to be mine.” She then listed the specific things she sought to promote in the interview, and lamented that other things — namely, her personal life, and her church — were given too much attention. And so as the power dynamic tilts in favour of the famous over the press, publications — weakened, desperate, financially fragile — have been forced to find ever more contorted ways to trade, at minimum, the feeling of control in exchange for precious access. Celebrities guest edit — “edit” — special issues of magazines. And while Swift did appear on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar this year, in the accompanying article, she is the interviewer, asking questions of the rock muse Pattie Boyd. In 2015, Rihanna photographed herself for the cover of The Fader. (The shoot was executed in concert with a professional photographer.) It was, yes, a meta-commentary on panoptic fame, and also the cover star taking her own photograph. If those options aren’t available, magazines can simply assign a friend of the celebrity to conduct the interview. In Elle, Jennifer Lawrence interviewed Emma Stone. Blake Lively conducted Gigi Hadid’s Harper’s Bazaar May cover interview. Katy Perry’s March Glamour cover interview was by the Instagram affirmation specialist Cleo Wade. Interview, a magazine predicated on these sorts of intra-celebrity conversations, was recently resurrected; in the comeback issue, Raf Simons talks with George Condo (a journalist chimes in occasionally) and Jennifer Jason Leigh talks to Phoebe Cates. The friend doesn’t even have to be famous. In Rolling Stone’s current feature with the press-shy pop star Sia, the author announces himself as a longtime friend of hers. And New York magazine’s recent exclusive interview with Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife, was conducted by a longtime friend of Allen, to howls of dismay on Twitter. These stories trade on the perceived intimacy of friendships as a proxy for actual insight, abdicating the role of an objective press in the process. The covenant implicit in celebrity profiles is that the journalist is a proxy for the reader, not the subject. But in the thirst for exclusive access, the old rules get tossed by the wayside — ethics become inconvenient. Friendship should be a disqualifier, not a prerequisite. That is a disservice to fans, who miss out on what happens when someone in the room is pushing back, not merely taking dictation. Imagine how wildly illuminating probing conversations with Beyoncé about “Lemonade” or Swift about “Reputation” would have been, a boon to the curious as well as an opportunity for the interview subjects to be shown in their full complexity. But rather than engage on those terms, these stars have become hermetic. It’s a shame: We’ll never know the answers to the questions that aren’t asked.   © 2018 New York Times News Service

Britain will study whether it can commit to cutting its carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday in his first major speech on the environment since taking office this year. Brown has been challenged to take a strong stance on global warming by an opposition Conservative Party that increasingly stresses environmentalism. His popularity has sunk in recent weeks to the lowest since he took over from Tony Blair in June. Brown's government published a draft Climate Change Bill a week ago committing to a 60 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, but environmentalist groups have said it should look at even deeper cuts. The government will set up an independent committee to study whether it should commit to even deeper cuts of 80 percent. "Our vision has one overriding aim: holding the rise in global average temperature to no more than 2 degrees centigrade. This requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak within the next 10 to 15 years and be cut at least by half by 2050," Brown told a meeting hosted by environment group WWF. "A global carbon market is at the heart of our approach -- not the old way of rigid regulation but the modern way: harnessing the power of the market to set a global price for carbon," he added. TOUGH CURBS Brown said it was vital that the world's developed nations, who have produced most of the climate changing carbon gases, take the lead in committing to tough curbs on their emissions -- including the United States which has so far refused. He also endorsed the European Union's commitment in March this year to getting 20 percent of primary energy from renewables by 2020 -- a goal that some elements of the government have tried to back away from. Scientists say average world temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods, droughts, famines and putting millions of lives at risk. But while noting the scale and urgency of the crisis, Brown also underscored the job and business opportunities it offered. "Globally, the overall added value of the low carbon energy sector could be as high as 3 trillion dollars per year worldwide by 2050," he said. The industry could create 25 million new jobs, including a million in Britain. The speech comes two weeks before UN environment ministers meet on the Indonesian island of Bali to try to launch a rapid round of negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol carbon cutting accord that expires in 2012.

COPENHAGEN, Dec 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Danish hosts re-launched UN climate talks on Thursday after the United States backed a $100 billion global fund to support poor countries and world leaders gathered for a final effort to reach a deal. Ministers urged action as Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen dropped plans to present his own proposed draft texts which had stalled the process for more than 24 hours -- developing countries had insisted everyone should be involved. "The United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilising $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a news conference. The European Union has proposed a $150 billion global fund, and the head of the African group of countries Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday supported climate aid for the world's poorest of $100 billion. Agreement on a climate fund could add political drive to the UN talks which meant to agree a host of other measures on Friday, from saving rainforests to boosting carbon markets and stiffening global carbon emissions cuts. Denmark's Rasmussen removed one obstacle to the talks on Thursday, withdrawing his disputed plan to nominate small groups of countries to storm through complex texts littered with long lists of options. Negotiators have nearly run out of time to present world leaders with intelligible drafts to sign at the end of the Dec. 7-18 meeting. "The conference is now at a critical juncture and we have now agreed how to proceed," said Rasmussen. "We now rely on the willingness of all parties to take that extra step to make that deal that is expected of us." BLAME GAME Earlier on Thursday prospects for a strong U.N. climate pact appeared remote at the climax of two-year talks as ministers and leaders blamed leading emitters China and the United States for deadlock on carbon cuts. But ministers and leaders urged fresh urgency. "Copenhagen is too important to fail," China's climate change ambassador Yu Qingtai said, adding that the presence of Premier Wen Jiabao, who arrived in Copenhagen on Wednesday evening, was testament to China's commitment. "China is not interested in becoming a party to the efforts by some people to try to blame other countries for 'a failure' at Copenhagen," Yu said. India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh accused rich countries of planning a "propaganda campaign" to blame developing nations for any breakdown. Developing economies are expected to add almost all future growth in carbon emissions. "We are in the end game. It's only a matter of time before the blame game starts," said Ramesh. Clinton said that any US contribution to a global $100 billion fund for the world's poor depended on developing nations standing behind their actions to curb growth in emissions under a new pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. Clinton said unless developing nations, specifically China, committed to transparency on their emissions curbs, a deal would fail. Dozens of heads of state arrived in the Danish capital to address the Dec. 7-18 conference. The summit is meant to agree a global climate deal, as a basis for a legally binding treaty next year, to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, to avoid dangerous climate change and drive a greener global economy less dependent on fossil fuels.

A new set of United Nations laws may be needed to regulate new Arctic industries such as shipping and oil exploration as climate change melts the ice around the North Pole, legal experts said on Sunday. They said existing laws governing everything from fish stocks to bio-prospecting by pharmaceutical companies were inadequate for the polar regions, especially the Arctic, where the area of summer sea ice is now close to a 2007 record low. "Many experts believe this new rush to the polar regions is not manageable within existing international law," said A.H. Zakri, Director of the U.N. University's Yokohama-based Institute of Advanced Studies. Fabled shipping passages along the north coast of Russia and Canada, normally clogged by thick ice, have both thawed this summer, raising the possibility of short-cut routes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Dozens of legal experts are meeting in Iceland from September 7-9 to debate the legal needs of the polar regions. Other threats include a surge in tourism, with 40,000 visitors to Antarctica in 2007 against just 1,000 in 1987. Many legal specialists believe there is a lack of clarity in existing laws about shipping, mining, sharing of fish stocks drawn northwards by the melting of ice, and standards for clearing up any oil spills far from land. "Oil in particular and risks of shipping in the Arctic are big issues. It's incredibly difficult to clean up an oil spill on ice," said conference chairman David Leary of the Institute of Advanced Studies, which is organizing the conference with Iceland's University of Akureyri. "The question is: do we deal with it in terms of the existing laws or move to a new, more global framework for the polar regions?" he told Reuters. "SEVERE" CONDITIONS Some experts say the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea is unclear, for instance, when it speaks of the rights of states to impose restrictions -- such as compulsory pilots for ships -- off their coasts in "particularly severe climatic conditions" or when ice covers the sea for "most of the year." With the ice receding fast, defining what conditions are "particularly severe" could be a problem, said law professor Tullio Scovazzi of the University of Milano-Bicocca. Leary said the eight nations with Arctic territories -- the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland -- have so far preferred to limit discussion to existing international laws. The WWF environmental group is among those urging a new U.N. convention to protect the Arctic, partly fearing that rising industrial activity will increase the risk of oil spills like the Exxon Valdez accident off Alaska. "We think there should be new rules, stricter rules. We are proposing a new convention for the protection of the Arctic Ocean," said Tatiana Saksina of the WWF. Alaska's state governor Sarah Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate in November 4's U.S. election, is an advocate of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A boom in tourism in Antarctica meanwhile risks the accidental introduction of new species to an environment where the largest land creature is a flightless midge. Bio-prospecting may also need new rules. Neural stem cells of Arctic squirrels could help treat human strokes, while some Arctic fish species have yielded enzymes that can be used in industrial processes.

HAIKOU, China, Sat Jun 15,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - With a tropical climate and unspoilt, palm-fringed beaches, Hainan has all the ingredients to become one of Asia's top tourist resorts. But "China's Hawaii", as Hainan has been dubbed, only now seems poised to fulfill that ambition as it recovers from an economic slump that has left it lagging other parts of China. For years, the 48-storey tower that is the tallest building in Hainan province gathered dust as a half-built skeleton like hundreds of other ill-fated construction projects caught in one of China's nastiest property bubbles. Now construction is almost over and the plush Haikou Master hotel and serviced apartments is a symbol of the island's efforts to recover from a meltdown in the early 1990s after a wave of speculation pushed property into the stratosphere. "Sales are going very well," said agent Hong Weibin as he showed a new luxury flat in the complex. Almost all of the 16 million sq m (172.2 million sq ft) worth of construction left unfinished after the crash has either been completed or bulldozed, and investors are returning to Hainan. The anything-goes development model is gone, replaced by an intense focus on forging the tropical island in southwest China into a tourist destination to rival Thailand's beach resorts. Top resorts are opening in droves. The island is planning to broaden a visa exemption scheme, opening duty-free shops, improving infrastructure, building airports, expanding air links and promoting foreign language studies. "Tourism is the industry in Hainan with the most distinguished features, the most potential and the most competitiveness," vice governor Chen Cheng said late last month unveiling a strategic blueprint for development. "It's very attractive," said Ian Zheng, Managing Director of the Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund, which holds a $150 million stake in the group that owns Hainan's main airports and is also invested in a Beijing property firm working in Hainan. "I really don't foresee any big, material risks." NO LIGHTS ON If the island's azure coast doesn't immediately attract droves of international beachgoers, then the fast expanding pool of domestic tourists will almost certainly prop up the industry. The potentially huge Chinese market is a major draw for the resorts, who hope to leverage on the millions of people who have benefited from the country's economic boom and are increasingly adopting Western lifestyles and aspirations. "Some of the estimates I've seen suggest 450 million middle class Chinese in 10 years from now," said the Banyan Tree Sanya's general manager Peter Pedersen. "I think Sanya has a huge potential." Last month alone saw the Ritz-Carlton, the luxury arm of the world's number three hotel operator, and the Banyan Tree open resorts in Sanya, where the island's premier beach resort sits. The Mandarin Oriental follows later this year. It marks a huge change for Hainan, which until recently has been mainly known in China as a place for cheap package tours. "Sanya is one of the real new tropical destinations in Asia, and in China in particular of course it is the only tropical island," Pedersen told Reuters. "It's becoming more and more in demand for both the local market and the international tourist market. It makes a perfect spot," he added, standing on the top of one of the resort's individual pool villas, which go for some 5,000 yuan a night. SHENANIGANS A test-tube for development after becoming the country's youngest and economically freest province in 1988, Hainan's economy revved into a frenzy to the point where giddy officials even tried to sell the city's main park to developers. While other coastal provinces blossomed, Hainan languished. Now, Hainan finally seems to be finding its feet, but analysts and investors warn that imbalances and friction could upset the island's revival. In Haikou, the capital, some 60 percent of new flats are bought as second homes by people who aren't from Hainan, a problem the mayor Xu Tangxian acknowledges. "There are some areas where the homes are all sold, but there are no lights on at night," Xu said in an interview. While most tourists to Hainan are mainland Chinese -- 18 million last year against just 750,000 overseas visitors -- the government is working hard to attract affluent foreigners, who it hopes will boost the island's reputation and coffers. The goal is to "within five years, attract 20 famous international hotel management groups, and make the number of five star, international-standard resorts rise to 60 or more", provincial tourism bureau head Zhang Qi said last month. As developers drool over the tourism boom, tales of the usual shenanigans are emerging. In the rural township of Longqiao, about a 40-minute drive from Haikou, rust red earth is tilled up in long, wide swaths across the low hills, golfing fairways in the making. Locals say officials convinced them to sell their land for a golf course. In early April, when a rumor circulated that the government had sold the land to the golf course developer for some 10 times what the locals were paid, they were irate. An angry mob flipped a police car. Later, when a crowd gathered in a nearby schoolyard, police fired tear gas, witnesses said. In the southern town of Sanya, some say bottlenecks and corruption are starting to take a toll. One Western investor said he was having trouble getting a project off the ground due to "off the charts" graft. "The permit process has taken months longer than we expected," he said. Yet despite the hassles, the bullishness about Hainan's natural prospects in tourism is die-hard. "I think what you see in Sanya is only the tip of the iceberg. The island of Hainan is still very big. You have beaches more or less all the way up to the capital Haikou. The island is 350 km in diameter," said Banyan Tree Sanya's Pedersen. "The sky's the limit here".

It has taken weeks for EU countries to agree on the contours of the measure, and intensive talks will continue over the weekend before the European Commission, the bloc’s executive, puts a finalised proposal on paper for EU ambassadors to approve. The ambassadors will meet Wednesday and expect to give their final approval by the end of the week, several EU officials and diplomats involved in the process say. The diplomats and officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly on the progress of the sensitive talks. The oil embargo will be the biggest and most important new step in the EU’s sixth package of sanctions since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. The package will also include sanctions against Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, which has so far been spared, as well as additional measures against high-profile Russians, officials said. Barring an unlikely last-minute demand by Hungary, which has been dragging its feet, the process should be completed without requiring an EU leaders’ meeting — avoiding the time-consuming effort of dragging all 27 heads of state to Brussels. The embargo is likely to affect Russian oil transported by tankers more quickly than oil coming by pipeline, which could take a matter of months. In both cases, however, it is likely that the bloc will allow its members to wind down existing contracts with Russian oil companies as it did with its coal ban, which was given four months to be fully put in place. Germany’s position has been critical in finalising the new measure. The country, the bloc’s economic leader, was importing about one-third of its oil from Russia at the time of the Ukraine invasion. But its influential energy minister, Robert Habeck, said this week that Germany had been able to cut that to just 12% in recent weeks, making a full embargo “manageable.” “The problem that seemed very large for Germany only a few weeks ago has become much smaller,” Habeck told the news media during a visit to Warsaw, Poland, on Tuesday. “Germany has come very, very close to independence from Russian oil imports,” he added, but he did not explain how it was able to accomplish that so quickly. Russia is Europe’s biggest oil supplier, providing about one-quarter of the bloc’s yearly needs, according to 2020 data — about half of Russia’s total exports. As the oil embargo is phased in, officials said the bloc would seek to make up the shortfall by increasing imports from other sources, such as Persian Gulf countries, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The embargo, even if softened by a monthslong phase-in period, is likely to put pressure on global oil prices, compounding already high energy costs around the world. An idea to lessen the impact, floated by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week, was to impose tariffs or a price cap on Russia’s oil instead of an outright embargo. But that did not gain traction with Europeans, officials said. © 2022 The New York Times Company

The world’s longest serving monarch has designated Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn to represent him in granting an audience for the presentation of the letters of credence of the new ambassadors. Bangladesh mission in Bangkok on Friday said while presenting the credentials at Ambara Villa, Tasneem also handed over the goodwill messages of President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to the King. She also vowed to strengthen the bilateral relations in all fronts during her tenure. She is also the non-resident ambassador of Bangladesh to Cambodia, and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UNESCAP. Last year in November, soon after her arrival in Bangkok, she presented her ‘letter of introduction’ as Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative to UNESCAP to its executive secretary. In June this year, she presented her credentials as the non-resident ambassador of Cambodia. As per Thai practices, it takes time to submit credentials in Bangkok. But ambassadors become functional officially soon after their joining the mission. During the exchange of views, the Crown Prince praised the people of Bangladesh as “hard-working and resilient” in the face of many challenges, including that of climate change. He highlighted that Bangladesh and Thailand “share similar kinds of challenges, particularly related to climate change and disaster risk reduction”. The Crown Prince also recalled the two visits by his sister Princess Maha Chakri  Sirindhorn to Bangladesh in 2010 and 2011 and expressed interest to continue the Thai Royal development projects in Bangladesh. Ambassador Tasneem underlined the importance of strengthening connectivity between Buddhist devotees of the two nations and also enhancing the two countries shared Buddhist heritage by expanding Buddhist circuit tourism.

WASHINGTON, Sun Nov 2,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - As the US presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush administration is also sprinting to enact environmental policy changes before leaving power. Whether it's getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste or making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes have found little favor with environmental groups. The one change most environmentalists want, a mandatory program to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, is not among these so-called "midnight regulations." Bureaucratic calendars make it virtually impossible that any US across-the-board action will be taken to curb global warming in this administration, though both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have promised to address it if they win Tuesday's US presidential election. Even some free-market organizations have joined conservation groups to urge a moratorium on last-minute rules proposed by the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. "The Bush administration has had eight years in office and has issued more regulations than any administration in history," said Eli Lehrer of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "At this point, in the current economic climate, it would be especially harmful to push through ill-considered regulations in the final days of the administration." John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, which joined Lehrer's group to call for a ban on these last-minute rules, said citizens are cut out of the process, allowing changes in U.S. law that the public opposes, such as rolling back protections under the Endangered Species Act. WHAT'S THE RUSH? The Bush team has urged that these regulations be issued no later than Saturday, so they can be put in effect by the time President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20. If they are in effect then, it will be hard for the next administration to undo them, and in any case, this may not be the top priority for a new president, said Matt Madia of OMB Watch, which monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, through which these proposed regulations must pass. "This is typical," Madia said of the administration's welter of eleventh-hour rules. "It's a natural reaction to knowing that you're almost out of power." Industry is likely to benefit if Bush's rules on the environment become effective, Madia said. "Whether it's the electricity industry or the mining industry or the agriculture industry, this is going to remove government restrictions on their activity and in turn they're going to be allowed to pollute more and that ends up harming the public," Madia said in a telephone interview. What is unusual is the speedy trip some of these environmental measures are taking through the process. For example, one Interior Department rule that would erode protections for endangered species in favor of mining interests drew more than 300,000 comments from the public, which officials said they planned to review in a week, a pace that Madia called "pretty ludicrous." Why the rush? Because rules only go into effect 30 to 60 days after they are finalized, and if they are not in effect when the next president takes office, that chief executive can decline to put them into practice -- as Bush did with many rules finalized at the end of the Clinton administration. White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied the Bush team was cramming these regulations through in a hasty push. Fratto discounted reports "that we're trying to weaken regulations that have a business interest," telling White House reporters last week the goal was to avoid the flood of last-minute rules left over from the Clinton team. There is at least one Bush administration environmental proposal that conservation groups welcome: a plan to create what would be the world's largest marine wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean. That could go into effect January 20.

So vast are the potential changes that the scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany comment that they doubt if humans have the capacity to manage the impacts it will have.A temperature rise of 5ºC would cause all ice-free land on the planet to experience dramatic changes in its eco-systems – for example, tundra turning to forests and African grasslands to deserts.In a paper published today in the international scientific journal Earth System Dynamics, the scientists say they are surprised at how much worse the impacts would become once the 2ºC threshold is passed. At the moment, they say, the failure of politicians to make commitments to cut emissions means that the temperature is set to reach and pass the danger zone of 3.5ºC.While the scientists spell out what will happen to the vegetation and the water availability, they do not venture into predicting what conflict might arise if a billion people or more whose food supply would collapse embarked on mass migration to avoid starvation.The “green” areas of the world most affected are the grasslands of Eastern India, shrub lands of the Tibetan Plateau, the forests of Northern Canada, and the savannas of Ethiopia and Somalia. The melting permafrost of the Siberian tundra will also be significant, releasing further greenhouse gases.The changes in vegetation are only part of the story. The report also concentrates on the effect of temperature on water shortages for the human population. Even if global warming is limited to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, another 500 million people could suffer water scarcity, and this will grow substantially as the temperature rises.Water scarcityDr Dieter Gerten, research expert on water scarcity, and lead author of one of the three studies contained in the PIK paper, said mean global warming of 2ºC − the target set by the international community − is projected to expose an additional 8% of humankind to new or increased water scarcity.However, a rise of 3.5 degrees – likely to occur if national emissions reductions remain at currently pledged levels – would affect 11% of the world population, while a rise of 5 degrees could increase this to 13%.“If population growth continues, by the end of our century under a business-as-usual scenario these figures would equate to well over one billion lives touched,” Gerten says. “And this is on top of the more than one billion people already living in water-scarce regions today.”Parts of Asia, North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable to further water scarcity. The eastern side of the United States and northern Mexico, already short of water, will suffer further stress.Maps published with the paper show the areas most at risk from both water shortages and vegetation changes. One of the worst affected regions is an area that includes Pakistan and the border area of India − which is already suffering from floods, droughts and a subsequent loss of crop production.Dire consequencesThe scientists use their findings to show that the current world leaders have the key to the fate of the planet. If they reduce emissions now, they could prevent the worst of the temperature rises, but if they fail to do so the consequences will be dire.The paper says a warming of 5ºC − likely to happen in the next century if climate change goes on unabated − would put nearly all terrestrial natural ecosystems at risk of severe change. “So despite the uncertainties, the findings clearly demonstrate that there is a large difference in the risk of global ecosystem change under a scenario of no climate change mitigation, compared to one of ambitious mitigation,” says geo-ecologist Sebastian Ostberg, lead author of the third section of the study.While the report does not speculate on the actual effects these changes will have on the ability of the human population to survive, the scientists permit themselves the observation that it is hard to see how humans can adapt to such rapid changes.Much more irrigation would be needed to grow the same amount of food, the scientists suggest, but this would put even more strain on scarce resources.

Over his first nine months, Trump has used an aggressive series of regulatory rollbacks, executive orders and changes in enforcement guidelines to rewrite the rules for industries from energy to airlines, and on issues from campus sexual assault to anti-discrimination protections for transgender students. While his administration has been chaotic, and his decision-making impulsive and sometimes whimsical, Trump has made changes that could have far-reaching and lingering consequences for society and the economy. Some have grabbed headlines but many, no less consequential, have gone largely unnoticed amid the daily controversies and Twitter insults that have marked Trump's early months in office. Under Trump, oil is flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline. Arrests of immigrants living illegally in the United States are up. More federal lands are open for coal mining. The administration has left its mark in smaller ways, as well. Trump has rolled back or delayed Obama-era rules and regulations that protected retirement savings from unscrupulous financial advisers, made it harder for companies that violated labor laws to land federal contracts and restricted what internet service providers could do with their customers’ personal data. Those kinds of low-profile policy shifts are far from the dramatic change promised by the headline-loving Trump, who won the White House with a vow to fundamentally reshape Washington. But the effects can be just as real. “Trump is doing an awful lot to shape policy and blow up policy,” said Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Stymied by his failure to win congressional approval for his big-ticket promises like a repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform, known as Obamacare, and a border wall with Mexico, Trump has turned to administrative action. He has rolled back hundreds of rules and regulations, signed 47 executive orders and used a previously obscure legislative tool, the Congressional Review Act, 14 times to undo regulations passed in the final months of Obama’s presidency. The law had only been used once before, 16 years ago. 'Regulatory rollback' The Trump administration has withdrawn or delayed more than 800 Obama-era regulatory actions in its first six months. Proposals for new rules, including those to delay or rescind existing rules, dropped 32 percent from the same period in 2016 under Obama, and are down from similar six-month periods under presidents George W. Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat, according to the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. At the same time, Trump has limited new federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two rules for every new one they create. He has asked each agency to name a regulatory reform officer to take aim at unneeded rules. “By far, this is the most significant regulatory rollback since Ronald Reagan,” said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The Trump mode so far is to regulate bureaucrats rather than the public.” Many business leaders have applauded the moves, aimed at fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to end policies he says are strangling the economy. But critics say his reductions in environmental and worker protections put corporate profits before public health and safety - in direct contradiction to the populist campaign rhetoric that helped Trump win blue-collar votes. “Where Trump has had success in changing the rules of the road it has been used against the very people who helped elect him,” said Ben Olinsky, vice president for policy and strategy at the liberal Center for American Progress. Neomi Rao, who is helping to lead Trump’s deregulatory drive as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said the reforms would promote economic growth and job creation. “Regulatory reform benefits all Americans,” she said in a statement, adding that it can have “particular benefits for low- and middle-income workers.” The “Trump effect” also goes far beyond policy. After a precedent-shattering campaign, Trump has redefined presidential behavior with his freewheeling and sometimes confrontational use of Twitter, his refusal to step away from his businesses and his reliance on family members as top advisers. He has rattled longtime foreign allies with his sometimes bellicose statements and stoked social and political divisions at home, most recently with his attacks on mostly black professional football players who kneel in protest against racial injustice during the national anthem. Many of Trump’s biggest policy proposals, including a ban on transgender people serving in the military, withdrawal from the Paris climate change accord and an end to the Obama-era program protecting from deportation young adults brought to the United States illegally as children, remain in limbo or under review in an administration where policymaking is often messy. But Trump has found ways to make headway on some other stalled initiatives. While a repeal of Obamacare has faltered in Congress, his threats to cut the subsidy payments that help cover expenses for low-income consumers have created enough uncertainty that major insurers have pulled out of some state markets or asked much higher monthly premiums for 2018. Tough rhetoric has impact The administration has slashed advertising and cut grants to community groups that help people sign up, raising fears that many people will forgo coverage or forget to re-enroll in health plans for next year. While plans for a border wall are stalled in Congress, Trump’s tough rhetoric had an apparent effect on illegal border crossings, with the number of apprehensions on the southwest border falling 63 percent from 42,000 in January to nearly 16,000 in April. Since then, they have begun creeping up again, but are still below levels seen last year. A crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally also led to a sharp increase in arrests in the interior of the country. In Trump’s first 100 days, the number of arrests by immigration agents increased by nearly 40 percent over the same period a year earlier. The number of immigrants without criminal histories arrested by immigration agents and booked into detention has jumped by more than 200 percent from January to July of this year, according to data reviewed by Reuters. A flood of lawsuits has been filed against the new Republican administration, with Democratic state officials often leading the charge. The lower federal courts, stocked with judges appointed by Obama, have at least temporarily blocked several Trump initiatives. Trump has been forced to rewrite a travel ban the administration says is aimed at protecting federal borders after the first two versions faced legal challenges from critics who said it discriminated against Muslims. The latest version imposes travel restrictions on eight countries. One of Trump’s most lasting accomplishments is likely to be the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who restored the US Supreme Court’s conservative majority and at age 50 is likely to serve for decades. “I think Trump actually has accomplished a lot. There are a lot of things for conservatives to be happy about,” said Tommy Binion, director of congressional and executive relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “And I‘m optimistic there will be more.”

Google's threat to quit China over censorship and hacking intensified Sino-US frictions on Wednesday as Washington said it had serious concerns and demanded an explanation from Beijing. China has not made any significant comment since Google, the world's top search engine, said it will not abide by censorship and may shut its Chinese-language google.cn website because of attacks from China on human rights activists using its Gmail service and on dozens of companies, including Adobe Systems. Chinese authorities were "seeking more information on Google's statement," the Xinhua news agency reported in English, citing an unnamed official from China's State Council Information Office, the government arm of the country's propaganda system. Friction over the Internet now seems sure to stoke tensions between the United States and China, joining friction over climate change, trade, human rights and military ambition. With China the largest lender to the United States, holding $800 billion (491.5 billion pounds) in Treasury bills, these Internet tensions will make steering this vast, fast-evolving relationship all the more tricky, especially with the U.S. Congress in an election year. "China has been taking a harder line," said Shi Yinhong, an expert on relations with the United States at Renmin University in Beijing. "The next few months are going to see some turbulence in China-U.S. relations. We may see some tactical concessions from China, but the general trend isn't towards compromise." China has said it does not sponsor hacking. Pressing China for an explanation, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton said: "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy. "We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns," Clinton said in Honolulu. Chinese industry analysts said the issue had snowballed beyond Google and its problems. "If this becomes heavily politicised, and there are signs that it is, and people in the Chinese government say, 'This is good. It serves you right, and we won't bow our heads to the United States, then there'll be no way out," said Xie Wen, a former executive in China for Yahoo and other big Internet companies, who is now a prominent industry commentator. "The impact on China's image will gradually also affect the enthusiasm of investors," he added. "It's not the pure economic losses -- a billion or so -- it's the deteriorating environment." TENSIONS OVER INTERNET China's policy of filtering and restricting access to Web sites has been a frequent source of tension with the United States and tech companies, such as Google and Yahoo Inc. Google's announcement suggested the recent intrusions were more than isolated hacker attacks. "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's chief legal officer David Drummond said in a statement posted on the company's blog. Some 20 other companies also were attacked by unknown assailants based in China, said Google. RBC Capital Markets analyst Stephen Ju said the move was a turnaround for Google. "Just about every earnings call recently has been that they are focussed on the long-term growth opportunities for China and that they are committed." Shares of Google dipped 1.3 percent although an executive described China as "immaterial" to its finances. Shares in Baidu, Google's main rival in China, surged 7 percent. A Google spokesperson said the company was investigating the attack and would not say whether the company believed Chinese authorities were involved. U.S. President Barack Obama, during a visit to China in November, told an online town hall that he was "a big supporter of non-censorship." CHINA SILENT, NO BACKDOWN SEEN After the Google announcement, searches on its google.cn search engine turned up images and sites previously blocked, including pictures from the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing. Other searches remained restricted, carrying messages warning users that some content was blocked. China's ruling Communist Party, wary of the Internet becoming an uncontrolled forum for the country's 360 million Internet users, is unlikely to allow Google to avoid repercussions. "Hostile Western forces have never abandoned their strategic schemes to Westernise and divide us, and they are stepping up ideological and cultural infiltration," the Party's chief propaganda official, Li Changchun, wrote last month. If google.cn, launched in 2006, shuts down, Beijing could seek to restrict access to Google's main search engine, which can also do searches in Chinese, although China's "firewall" of Internet filters blocks many users from opening up the results. "The general tendency over the past year has been to accuse foreigners of having a Cold War mentality and being anti-China," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on the Chinese Internet at the Open Society Institute. "How exactly they are going to react to this, I cannot anticipate, but it's likely that it will not be pretty."

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

The message was writt by Facebook’s own employees. Facebook’s position on political advertising is “a threat to what FB stands for,” the employees wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. “We strongly object to this policy as it stands.” For the last two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on Facebook Workplace, a software programme that the Silicon Valley company uses to communicate internally. More than 250 employees have signed the message, according to three people who have seen it and who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook’s 35,000-plus workforce, it was one sign of the resistance that the company is now facing internally over how it treats political ads. Many employees have been discussing Zuckerberg’s decision to let politicians post anything they want in Facebook ads because those ads can go viral and spread misinformation widely. The worker dissatisfaction has spilled out across winding, heated threads on Facebook Workplace, the people said. For weeks, Facebook has been under attack by presidential candidates, lawmakers and civil rights groups over its position on political ads. But the employee actions — which are a rare moment of internal strife for the company — show that even some of its own workers are not convinced the political ads policy is sound. The dissent is adding to Facebook’s woes as it heads into the 2020 presidential election season. “Facebook’s culture is built on openness, so we appreciate our employees voicing their thoughts on this important topic,” Bertie Thomson, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We remain committed to not censoring political speech and will continue exploring additional steps we can take to bring increased transparency to political ads.” Facebook has been struggling to respond to misinformation on its site since the 2016 presidential election, when Russians used the social network to spread inflammatory and divisive messages to influence the US electorate. Zuckerberg has since appointed tens of thousands of people to work on platform security and to deter coordinated disinformation efforts. But figuring out what is and isn’t allowed on the social network is slippery. And last month, Facebook announced that politicians and their campaigns would have nearly free rein over content they post there. Previously, the company had prohibited the use of paid political ads that “include claims debunked by third-party fact checkers.” This month, President Donald Trump’s campaign began circulating an ad on Facebook that made false claims about former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for president. When Biden’s campaign asked Facebook to remove the ad, the company refused, saying ads from politicians were newsworthy and important for discourse. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is also running for president, soon took Facebook to task. She bought a political ad on Facebook that falsely claimed Zuckerberg and his company supported Trump for president. Neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook have endorsed a political candidate. Warren said she wanted to see how far she could take it on the site. Zuckerberg had turned his company into a “disinformation-for-profit machine,” she said. But Zuckerberg doubled down. In a 5,000-word speech to students at Georgetown University in Washington this month, the chief executive defended his treatment of political ads by citing freedom of expression. He said Facebook’s policies would be seen positively in the long run, especially when compared with policies in countries like China, where the government suppresses online speech. “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a fifth estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Zuckerberg said at the time. Zuckerberg also said Facebook’s policies were largely in line with what other social networks — like YouTube and Twitter — and most television broadcasters had decided to run on their networks. Federal law mandates that broadcast networks cannot censor political ads from candidates running for office. Inside Facebook, Zuckerberg’s decision to be hands off on political ads has supporters. But dissenters said Facebook was not doing enough to check the lies from spreading across the platform. While internal debate is not uncommon at the social network, it historically has seen less internal turmoil than other tech companies because of a strong sense of mission among its rank-and-file workers. That has set it apart from Google and Amazon, which for the last few years have grappled with several employee uprisings. Most notably, 20,000 Google workers walked off the job in 2018 to protest the company’s massive payouts to executives accused of sexual harassment. Last week, Google employees again challenged management over new software that some staff said was a surveillance tool to keep tabs on workplace dissent. At an employee meeting Thursday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said he was working on ways to improve trust with employees, while acknowledging it was challenging to maintain transparency as the company grows. A video of Pichai’s comments was leaked to The Washington Post. Amazon has faced employee pressure for nearly a year to do more to address the company’s effect on climate change. Some employees worked on a shareholder resolution to push the company on the matter, and more than 7,500 Amazon workers publicly signed a letter to support the proposal. In September, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the company was accelerating its climate goals, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2040. In the Facebook employee letter to Zuckerberg and other executives, the workers said the policy change on political advertising “doesn’t protect voices, but instead allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy.” It added, “We want to work with our leadership to develop better solutions that both protect our business and the people who use our products.” The letter then laid out product changes and other actions that Facebook could take to reduce the harm from false claims in advertising from politicians. Among the proposals: changing the visual design treatment for political ads, restricting some of the options for targeting users with those ads and instituting spending caps for individual politicians. “This is still our company,” the letter concluded. c.2019 The New York Times Company

Well, kind of. They were living in an “aspiring utopia,” as Kapur describes it in his new book, “Better to Have Gone,” which Scribner publishes Tuesday. The community was called Auroville, located on the eastern edge of India’s southern tip, and it had been founded in the late ’60s by Mirra Alfassa, an elderly Frenchwoman known to everyone there as the Mother. Inspired by the philosophy and yoga of a sage named Sri Aurobindo, the Mother intended for Auroville to be a place where people could live freely and “money would no longer be the sovereign lord” — the same kind of philosophy undergirding the peace-and-love hippie movements that were blossoming around the world in that era. People who were unmoored were drawn to the community’s ideals of anti-consumerism, equality and unity, and they were undeterred by the lack of clean water and other modern comforts. They were powered by hope and determination. The community began to come apart after the Mother died in 1973, but it was the 1986 deaths of two of its first inhabitants — Diane Maes, a woman from a small town in Belgium, and John Walker, a wealthy Manhattanite — that are central, along with Auroville’s unusual history, to Kapur’s book. Maes and Walker were also Graft’s mother and stepfather (her biological father left Auroville early in her life to earn a living), leaving her alone when she was just 14. Although Kapur, 46, wrote “Better to Have Gone,” the research was a collaboration with his wife. They discussed interviews in advance and went through them together afterward, excavating stories Graft was too young to remember and piecing together the mystery of her mother and stepfather. “The process has been very healing,” said Graft, 49. “There are a lot of dark corners in my story,” she added, “and this process has shone a light into those corners.” The book comes almost a decade after Kapur’s first, “India Becoming,” which took a broad look at the pain and promise of the subcontinent’s modernization. In “Better to Have Gone,” he turns his gaze inward, reexamining everything he and his wife thought they knew about the place where Graft was born and Kapur lived since before he was a year old. Although the book is nonfiction, it has the pace and feel of a novel, said William Dalrymple, author of several books on India, most recently “The Anarchy,” a 2019 history of the East India Company. “You forget at times that you’re dealing with real characters, and the story itself is so crazy,” he said. “It reminded me in some ways of ‘The Beach’ — that sense of hopefulness — and a bit of ‘Lord of the Flies.’” One of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s beliefs was that human beings could evolve to have a heightened consciousness, enabling them to transcend physical constraints. There were whispers that the Mother, who had been working on her yoga for years, might achieve immortality. That kind of thinking persisted after her death, with other members of the community, including Walker and Maes, developing an aversion to Western medicine in favor of yoga, Ayurvedic medicine and focus. Walker died of an illness that was never diagnosed, but those around him suspect it was a kidney infection or intestinal worms, both easily curable. Maes died from poison that she ingested, refusing treatment. “One of the core questions of the book is: At what point does faith tip over the edge into darkness?” Kapur said. “Utopia and dystopia are very linked.” After Graft’s mother and stepfather died, Walker’s sister brought her to New York, where she experienced the perks of modern civilization for the first time: running hot water, washing machines, refrigerators and cars. She also faced culture shock, since the lack of a formal, Western education in Auroville left her ill-prepared for New York’s school system. She remembers being mystified by a test question involving a touch-tone phone. “It was a question that would be very obvious to many people, but I hadn’t grown up with a telephone,” Graft said. She adapted, eventually attending the University of Southern California and then graduate school at Columbia University. Kapur’s parents — his Indian father attended classes at Sri Aurobindo’s ashram as a child and his American mother grew up on a farm in Minnesota — held more moderate beliefs. At one point in Auroville’s history, the community went through its own version of an anti-establishment revolution in which zealousness was prized, books were burned and schools were closed. So Kapur’s parents moved to nearby Pondicherry to ensure that his education was never disrupted, he said, and at 16, he transferred to boarding school in the United States, then went to Harvard. All this time, Kapur and Graft remained friends. It would be somewhat awkward for them to date other people in America who could never understand their background — “What could we talk about? Our favorite sports team?” Kapur said — and it is their overlapping journeys that eventually brought them together. “How many people are there in the world who’ve lived in a place like Auroville? And then who ended up in some version of the East Coast establishment?” Kapur said. But Kapur and Graft’s story — and by extension the story of Auroville — isn’t one of escape, of unshackling themselves from the clutches of a toxic cult for the safety of the real world. “Growing up, a lot of people asked us, ‘Do you come from a cult?’” Kapur said, but he said that is a misinterpretation. Its founder died early on in the town’s history, and there isn’t a single leader ruling over the community, prescribing how people should live and what they can or can’t do. “There are no rules, to a fault, almost,” he said. Kapur and Graft moved back to Auroville in 2004, partly from homesickness but also to understand what exactly happened to Graft’s parents. Now they’ve planted roots there, raising their two sons amid the lush forest that has sprung up where there was once only parched earth. Early Aurovillians, out of necessity, learned to grow and create new life on eroded, unfertile soil, laying the groundwork to turn the town into one on a shrinking list of places in India today where the air isn’t choked with smog. “Not to sound cheesy, but I do feel like I grew up with a forest,” Graft said. “I recognize many of the trees.” She now works as a consultant on climate change policies in India and around the world. Auroville continues to attract people searching for a simpler life, fleeing the grind of capitalism or, for women, conservative or traditional cultures with rigid gender roles. The Mother’s idealistic dream of creating a cashless society bumped into reality and has since evolved into a kind of “hybrid economy,” Kapur said. Auroville’s roughly 2,800 residents receive a monthly food stipend. No one can own private property, although the houses now have running water and are built from brick and cement, not mud as they once were. Taxes are voluntary for those who can afford to pay. And, unlike when Graft and Kapur were growing up, there are now high-quality schools providing free education. “We have a small, beaten-down car, and my kids are ashamed if we drop them off at school, not because our car is beaten down, but because we have, like, one of the only cars there,” Kapur said. “So the values of the community are still relatively anti-materialistic and anti-consumerist,” he added. “It’s noble and beautiful.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Kuala Lumpur,Sep 08 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Malaysia's ruling coalition took 41 of its lawmakers to Taiwan for a study tour on Monday, at a time when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been trying to entice MPs to defect in his campaign to unseat the government. Top opposition leaders were meeting on Monday to plot their campaign to oust the government by Anwar's self-imposed deadline of September 16. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has called for a meeting of his Barisan Nasional coalition on Tuesday to try to deter any defections that could spell the end of its 50-year reign. Anwar's attempt to overturn a political order that has persisted since independence from Britain in 1957 has sharply raised Malaysia's political risks and rattled foreign investors. A ballooning fiscal deficit -- partly a result of spending measures to boost the government's popularity after a general election debacle last March -- has also hit the ringgit currency, the stock market and bond prices. Adding to the climate of uncertainty, Anwar is due in court on Wednesday to face a fresh sodomy charge that he says the government has trumped up to foil his political ambitions. The judge is expected to transfer the case to a higher court. "PSY-WAR GAME" Barisan MPs told reporters before flying off to Taiwan for an eight-day "study mission" that their trip had nothing to do with the Anwar plan. "We are going to Taiwan to study about agriculture," Bung Mokhtar Radin, an MP from the eastern state of Sabah, said at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. "There's nothing political about this trip." He and 40 other MPs left on Monday. Another eight will follow on Tuesday. Barisan has 140 MPs against 82 for the opposition. Lim Kit Siang, a veteran opposition leader, said government MPs were forced to flee Malaysia to ensure that they didn't take part in September 16 "political changes". "The birds have flown," he said, adding that the MPs could be subjected to 24-hour surveillance while in Taiwan with their mobile phones confiscated. A political analyst said the Taiwan trip could provide a handy excuse for Anwar, if he failed to meet his September 16 deadline. "Barisan is playing right into Anwar's psy-war game," columnist Suhaini Aznam wrote in the Star newspaper on Monday. Anwar met leaders of the opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance on Monday to discuss the takeover plan, his aides said. Anwar was due to issue a statement afterward. Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, was sacked in 1998 during the Asian financial crisis and later jailed for six years on sodomy and corruption charges. He won a by-election last month that allowed him to re-enter parliament, putting him in position to become prime minister if the opposition alliance wins power.

About 175 nations agreed a plan on Sunday to salvage climate talks after the Copenhagen summit but the U.N.'s top climate official predicted a full new treaty was out of reach for 2010. Delegates at the April 9-11 talks, marred by late-night wrangling between rich and poor nations on how to slow global warming, agreed to hold two extra meetings in the second half of 2010 after the December summit fell short of a binding deal. The extra sessions, of at least a week long each, and a linked plan to prepare new draft U.N. climate texts would help pave the way to the next annual meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, Nov. 29-Dec. 10. "We had an outcome that was pretty positive. That is a good augury for what comes next," said Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation. He said it was "a pain in the neck" that it took so long but noted UN climate talks were often sluggish. "We have made substantial progress in the resuscitation of a positive spirit," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. The disputes showed that "multilateralism is very slow and complicated". Earlier, the UN's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said governments should focus on practical steps in 2010, such as aid to poor nations to cope with the impacts of climate change, protection of tropical forests or new clean technologies. "I don't think Cancun will provide the final outcome," de Boer told Reuters on the sidelines of the talks, the first since Copenhagen and intended to rebuild trust after the summit. MANY MORE MEETINGS "I think that Cancun can agree an operational architecture but turning that into a treaty, if that is the decision, will take more time beyond Mexico," he said, predicting "many more rounds" of talks to reach an ultimate solution. Elliot Diringer, of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, said that a climate treaty should remain the ultimate objective but might be years off. "We shouldn't fool ourselves about getting there this year or next," he said. Delegates asked the chair of the talks, Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe, to come up with a draft text by May 17 on ways to combat global warming to help push ahead with negotiations at a meeting scheduled for Bonn May 31-June 11. Two extra meetings are also planned but no venues have been fixed. All countries could send her input over the next two weeks. At the heart of the dispute between rich and poor was the role of the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, worked out at the summit and backed by about 120 nations led by the United States. Mukahanana-Sangarwe said she reckoned she could draw on elements of the Accord in her work, even though it was not adopted by all in Copenhagen and faces bitter opposition from nations such as Sudan, Bolivia and Saudi Arabia. The Accord aims to limit a rise in average world temperatures to below two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) from pre-industrial times. But it does not spell out how and some poor nations say it is too weak to avert dangerous impacts. The Accord also pledges $30 billion from 2010-2012 to help developing nations cope with climate change, such as floods, droughts, mudslides and rising seas. Aid is meant to rise to $100 billion a year from 2020. But almost all delegates say that the current pledges from developed nations for cutting greenhouse gases by 2020 will mean a temperature rise of more than 3 Celsius. "We don't have a debate happening (about tougher goals) and that's not acceptable," said Kathrin Gutmann of the WWF conservation group.

Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change immediately after taking office Jan 20, reviving US participation in a signature UN-led collaboration to fight global warming that President Donald Trump abandoned. The president-elect has vowed to reverse Trump’s widely criticized decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization, the UN’s public health arm, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. He has pledged to restore the funding that Trump ended to the U.N. Population Fund, a leading provider of family planning and women’s reproductive services, a cut that was part of a conservative-led policy to penalize groups that offer abortion counselling. Biden’s choice for UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran American diplomat with vast experience in Africa — and his plan to restore that position to Cabinet rank, another reversal of Trump administration policy — have also sent powerful signals about the president-elect’s views toward the United Nations. “The big picture is enormously encouraging and a huge relief for a lot of UN members,” said Richard Gowan, a former UN consultant who directs the U.N. advocacy work of the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that promotes peaceful resolutions to conflicts. “People were quite exhausted at the prospect of another four years of Trump,” Gowan said. “Biden faces a very difficult world but a very easy pathway to gaining some political goodwill at the United Nations. Biden and his UN ambassador just need to be human, and they will be treated as conquering heroes.” Even diplomats from American rivals like China have privately expressed hope that Thomas-Greenfield, if confirmed, will speak and negotiate with an authoritative voice. Trump’s unpredictability, some said, hurt the effectiveness of his UN envoys, Nikki Haley and her successor, Kelly Craft, neither of whom had extensive prior diplomatic experience. Thomas-Greenfield, by contrast, spent decades in the State Department’s foreign service and was its top African affairs official during the 2014-16 Ebola crisis. She was threatened with death while travelling in Rwanda before the 1994 genocide and talked her way out of it, she once explained in a TED Talk. She was the ambassador to Liberia from 2008 to 2012 and was named its first honorary citizen by Liberia’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Biden’s choice of Thomas-Greenfield, announced Nov 24, was acclaimed by American diplomatic veterans. Madeleine K Albright, the first female secretary of state and chairwoman of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm that had hired Thomas-Greenfield, said on Twitter that she was “a valued colleague and veteran diplomat who will restore US leadership and cooperation.” President-elect Joe Biden watches Linda Thomas-Greenfield, his nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, approach a lectern to speak at The Queen theatre in Wilmington, Del, Tuesday, Nov 24, 2020. The choice of Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador was widely seen as a sign of Biden’s respect for career diplomats. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) Thomas-Greenfield is among the highest-ranking Black members of Biden’s team, with a seat on the National Security Council. Her nomination was widely seen as a sign of Biden’s respect for career diplomats and his commitment to picking a racially diverse leadership team. President-elect Joe Biden watches Linda Thomas-Greenfield, his nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, approach a lectern to speak at The Queen theatre in Wilmington, Del, Tuesday, Nov 24, 2020. The choice of Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador was widely seen as a sign of Biden’s respect for career diplomats. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) Still, it may not be easy for Biden or Thomas-Greenfield to quickly undo the isolation that the United States has faced in the Trump era. Biden’s plan to reverse Trump’s repudiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, an accord endorsed in a UN Security Council resolution, could prove impossible. Prospects for any improvement in US-Iran relations may have been poisoned last Friday when Iran’s top nuclear scientist was assassinated in what Iran has called an Israeli operation abetted by the United States. Biden’s goals remain unclear concerning some other UN agencies and agreements renounced during the Trump years — the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the Palestinian refugee agency, and accords on global migration and arms trade. Biden also has not specified how he intends to deal with the International Criminal Court, created through UN diplomacy two decades ago to prosecute egregious crimes like genocide. The United States is not a member of the court but cooperated with it until the Trump administration sanctioned its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and other court officials for efforts to investigate possible American crimes in the Afghanistan War and possible crimes by Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories. Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said the sanctions order had cast a chilling effect on the court, with penalties usually reserved for “drug kingpins and terrorists.” Biden, he said, must repeal the order “as part of rejoining the community of nations that support the rule of law.” Others are hopeful that Biden’s stated positions on human rights and international cooperation will have far-reaching effects. “Under Joe Biden, the international human rights community and beyond will breathe a sigh of relief,” said Agnès Callamard, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s special investigator on extrajudicial killings. Callamard expressed hope that the Biden administration would seek to regain the seat at the Human Rights Council abandoned by Trump in 2018 because of what Haley, then UN ambassador, called its heavy bias against Israel. “The absence of the US there in some of the council’s difficult debates and issues has led to a weakening of those espousing positions supportive of human rights protection,” Callamard said. With other countries failing to step up, she said, the council’s discussions are now “largely taken by countries whose primary interest is to weaken international scrutiny over their human rights records.” Some diplomats have privately criticized Secretary-General António Guterres for what they described as his reluctance to confront Trump, partly because the United States, for all of Trump’s disregard for international cooperation, remains the biggest single donor to the UN budget. Gowan, for one, rejected that view. “Now he has a chance to work with a far more sympathetic Biden team, and there are signs that Guterres will be pushing much more ambitious plans to fight inequality and climate change than he was able to risk before,” Gowan said. “Guterres has faced accusations of being too cautious around Trump, but he can say that Biden’s win vindicates his strategy.” Guterres sought to maintain the appearance of impartiality through the 2020 presidential campaign and aftermath, although he was among the international figures to congratulate Biden in the days immediately after major news organizations declared him the winner. Asked recently if Guterres was “doing cartwheels in his office” over Biden’s choice of Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador, the secretary-general’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, delivered a diplomatic answer. “I have never known nor can I ever imagine the secretary-general doing cartwheels in his office or anywhere else,” he said. “What I can tell you is that the secretary-general has always worked very closely with every US permanent representative that has been sent by Washington and will do so in the future.”   © 2020 The New York Times Company

India and the United States this week hold their first strategic dialogue, testing a pledge from the Obama administration that it really does consider New Delhi a global partner. New Delhi is keen for the June 2-3 talks to go beyond mere symbolism and tackle tricky issues such as the tighter US relationship with Islamabad, due to strategic concerns over the conflict in Afghanistan and the potential for instability in Pakistan. Washington, in turn, will look for assurances that India is on track to open its vast market in power plants to US firms, narrowing differences over trade and climate change, as well as getting New Delhi's cooperation to sanction Iran over its nuclear programme. "The Indian complaint is that the Obama administration has done all the right things at the level of symbols, but at the level of substance the proof is still wanting," said Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. India is widely seen as a key geopolitical player for stability in South Asia, as well as playing a bigger role on global issues such as climate change and trade. President Barack Obama has called India an indispensable partner. But the ties have lacked a central theme, such as the civilian nuclear pact that defined the relationship during the presidency of George W. Bush. The talks led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterpart S.M. Krishna will focus on five areas -- strategic cooperation, energy, climate change, education/ development, trade and agriculture -- and also include deeper cooperation on security and intelligence. "There is a commitment there, but we have yet to see the kind of dedicated focus and the motivation within the bureaucracy to really get down to the nuts and bolts of fleshing out the strategic dialogue," said Lisa Curtis, a South Asia analyst at the Heritage Foundation. NETTLESOME ISSUES President Bill Clinton started US efforts to build ties with modern India when the Cold War ended nearly two decades ago and India began to liberalise its economy in the 1990s. His successor George Bush elevated relations with a 2008 civilian nuclear deal that ended an embargo imposed in 1974 after New Delhi tested a nuclear bomb. Bilateral trade shot up from $5.6 billion in 1990 to $43 billion in 2008. But New Delhi is concerned about the US strategy for Afghanistan, in which it has allied with Pakistan, seeing it as giving Islamabad more influence in Afghanistan at the expense of India. "A fundamental disconnect has emerged between US and Indian interests in Af-Pak," said Harsh Pant of King's College, London. Among other nettlesome issues, Washington will be keen to get India to back its move on sanctions against Iran, something that New Delhi has so far refused to endorse. The United States has clashed with Brazil and Turkey, which oppose sanctions against Tehran. As a major G20 member India's view would be crucial for Washington. The dialogue will also focus on India expediting a bill giving accident liability protection to American firms, opening up retail trade, and cooperating on climate change positions. "The idea is to put the relationship on a new comfort level," said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of the Hindu newspaper in India. "They will work on a set of short-term deliverables ahead of Obama's visit (to India in November)."

India is likely to suffer more than most countries as a result of climate change, with poor agricultural output, more natural disasters and increased deaths due to higher occurance of diseases, the author of an acclaimed report on global warning said on Wednesday. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern's report on the economic impact of climate change said unchecked greenhouse gas emissions would see global temperatures rise by 2-3 degrees centrigrade in the next 50 years. Speaking to Indian businessmen, Stern said the annual June-September monsoon rains, which India is heavily dependent on for its crop production, would impact the economy. "There could be more variable starting dates (for the monsoon). There could be periods of much greater intensity and there could be quite extended periods of no rain. But it is likely to be disrupted," he said. "It's clear India will suffer like the rest of the world, perhaps more that the rest of the world." Experts estimate a temperature rise of between 2 and 3.5 degrees centigrade, would cost India a loss of between nine and 25 percent of total agricultural revenue. Agriculture makes up around 22 percent of India's gross domestic product. Stern said temperature rises would also mean vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever spreading to higher altitude regions known for being free of mosquitoes. As a result, there was a likelihood of more deaths that would result in lower productivity, he said. The head of Britain's Economic Service said the melting of Himalayan glaciers would mean neighbouring Bangladesh could experience serious floods as a result of rising sea levels, sparking mass migration across the border into India. He said the flow of water from the glaciers would be curtailed during India's dry season and would have "serious consequences". Experts say melting glaciers will affect one-sixth of the world's population residing mainly in the Indian subcontinent. India's Ganga river receives 70 percent of its summer water flow from the Himalayan glaciers and sustains over 500 million people. Stern said India was making progress in adapting to the challenges faced in curbing emissions and investing in clean development mechanisms. But climate change was an inequitable process in which rich nations had to take the burden of responsibility, he said. "This is a doubly inequitable process as it's the rich countries who are responsible for 75 percent of the greenhouse gases that are up there and it's the poor countries that will be hit earliest and hardest," he said. "All countries must be involved, but equity demands that the rich countries bear the big majority of the cost."

British NGO Oxfam has stressed on speedy results at the UN climate talks that kick off on Monday at Cancún, México. In a pre-talks statement on Sunday, Oxfam pointed out that the hike in the frequency of weather related disasters, record temperatures, flooding and rising sea levels in 2010 are signs for negotiators to reach a resolution. The statement quoted an Oxfam report on the urgency of a resolution to the climate talks said that around 21,000 people died due to weather-related disasters in the first nine months of 2010, which is more than twice the casualties in 2009. "This is likely to get worse as climate change tightens its grip. The human impacts of climate change in 2010 send a powerful reminder why progress in Cancun is more urgent than ever," said the report's author Tim Gore. The statement also said that Oxfam is calling for a fair Climate Fund which will ensure that the neediest parties get the money. The organisation is also highlighting the vital role of women in helping communities to adapt to climate change, and urged prioritising them during fund disbursement. It urged the countries to discover new methods of raising the funds and suggested taxing unregulated international aviation and shipping emissions and agreeing on a tax on financial transactions at banks. The organisation also pointed out that speedier resolution will lower the cost of tackling climate change and said estimates reveal that every dollar spent on adaptation could prevent destruction worth $60. Gore pointed out, "Cancun will not deliver everything that a global response to climate change should be. But it can deliver outcomes that will benefit poor people. One of the most important achievements would be a fair climate fund because this would also help to re-build trust and put the talks back on track."

Washington, Nov 19 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)— All nations will suffer the effects of a warmer world, but it is the world's poorest countries that will be hit hardest by food shortages, rising sea levels, cyclones and drought, the World Bank said in a report on climate change. Under new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the global development lender has launched a more aggressive stance to integrate climate change into development. "We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today," Kim told reporters on a conference call on Friday. The report, called "Turn Down the Heat," highlights the devastating impact of a world hotter by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a likely scenario under current policies, according to the report. Climate change is already having an effect: Arctic sea ice reached a record minimum in September, and extreme heat waves and drought in the last decade have hit places like the United States and Russia more often than would be expected from historical records, the report said. Such extreme weather is likely to become the "new normal" if the temperature rises by 4 degrees, according to the World Bank report. This is likely to happen if not all countries comply with pledges they have made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Even assuming full compliance, the world will warm by more than 3 degrees by 2100. In this hotter climate, the level of the sea would rise by up to 3 feet, flooding cities in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh. Water scarcity and falling crop yields would exacerbate hunger and poverty. Extreme heat waves would devastate broad swaths of the earth's land, from the Middle East to the United States, the report says. The warmest July in the Mediterranean could be 9 degrees hotter than it is today -- akin to temperatures seen in the Libyan desert. The combined effect of all these changes could be even worse, with unpredictable effects that people may not be able to adapt to, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which along with Climate Analytics prepared the report for the World Bank. "If you look at all these things together, like organs cooperating in a human body, you can think about acceleration of this dilemma," said Schellnhuber, who studied chaos theory as a physicist. "The picture reads that this is not where we want the world to go." SHOCKED INTO ACTION As the first scientist to head the World Bank, Kim has pointed to "unequivocal" scientific evidence for man-made climate change to urge countries to do more. Kim said 97 percent of scientists agree on the reality of climate change. "It is my hope that this report shocks us into action," Kim, writes in the report. Scientists are convinced that global warming in the past century is caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These findings by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations in a joint statement in 2010. Kim said the World Bank plans to further meld climate change with development in its programs. Last year, the Bank doubled its funding for countries seeking to adapt to climate change, and now operates $7.2 billion in climate investment funds in 48 countries. The World Bank study comes as almost 200 nations will meet in Doha, Qatar, from November 26 to December 7 to try to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the existing plan for curbing greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations that runs to the end of the year. They have been trying off and on since Kyoto was agreed in 1997 to widen limits on emissions but have been unable to find a formula acceptable to both rich and poor nations. Emerging countries like China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, have said the main responsibility to cut emissions lies with developed nations, which had a headstart in sparking global warming. Combating climate change also poses a challenge for the poverty-fighting World Bank: how to balance global warming with immediate energy needs in poor countries. In 2010, the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion loan to develop a coal-fired power plant in South Africa despite lack of support from the United States, Netherlands and Britain due to environmental concerns. "There really is no alternative to urgent action given the devastating consequences of climate change," global development group Oxfam said in a statement. "Now the question for the World Bank is how it will ensure that all of its investments respond to the imperatives of the report." Kim said the World Bank tries to avoid investing in coal unless there are no other options. "But at the same time, we are the group of last resort in finding needed energy in countries that are desperately in search of it," he said.

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

Drug-resistant infections already claim 700,000 lives a year, including 230,000 deaths from drug-resistant tuberculosis, the report said. The rampant overuse of antibiotics and antifungal medicines in humans, livestock and agriculture is accelerating a crisis that is poorly understood by the public and largely ignored by world leaders. Without concerted action, a UN panel said, resistant infections could kill 10 million people annually by 2050 and trigger an economic slowdown to rival the global financial crisis of 2008. The problem threatens people around the world. During the next 30 years, UN experts said, 2.4 million people in Europe, North America and Australia could die from drug-resistant infections, making routine hospital procedures like knee-replacement surgery and child birth far riskier than they are today. “This is a silent tsunami,” said Dr Haileyesus Getahun, director of the UN Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, which spent two years working on the report. “We are not seeing the political momentum we’ve seen in other public health emergencies, but if we don’t act now, antimicrobial resistance will have a disastrous impact within a generation.” The group, a collaboration of public health experts, government ministers and industry officials, called for the creation of an independent body with the stature and funding of the UN’s panel on climate change. The report’s dire predictions seek to raise public awareness and shake political leaders into action. It proposes a series of measures that health officials say could help stem the rise of drug-resistant pathogens. The recommendations include a worldwide ban on the use of medically important antibiotics for promoting growth in farm animals; financial incentives for drug companies to develop new antimicrobial compounds; and more stringent rules to limit the sale of antibiotics in countries where drugs can often be bought at convenience stores without a prescription. The report also highlights underappreciated factors in the spread of drug-resistant germs: the lack of clean water and inadequate sewage systems that sicken millions of people in the developing world. Many of them are too poor to see a doctor and instead buy cheap antibiotics from street vendors with little medical expertise. Sometimes they unknowingly purchase counterfeit drugs, a problem that leads to millions of deaths, most of them in Africa. To reduce outbreaks of infectious disease, the report says, wealthier nations should help poor countries pay for improvements to public hygiene, and ensure greater access to vaccines and properly manufactured antibiotics. Health officials are struggling to understand the scope of the problem because many countries are ill-equipped to monitor drug-resistant infections. In a survey the United Nations conducted for the report, 39 of 146 nations were unable to provide data on the use of antimicrobials in animals, which experts say is a major driver of resistance in humans as resistant bacteria get transferred to people through contaminated food and water. “We are flying pretty blind and working hard to get some clear vision,” said Sally Davies, the chief medical officer of England and a leader of the UN panel. As a first step, the report calls on member states of the United Nations to create national stewardship plans to reduce the unnecessary use of antimicrobials. A key element of the report is a call for new incentives to encourage the development of antimicrobial medicines. Between 2010 and 2014, six new antimicrobial drugs were approved, most of them additions to existing drug classes, according to the World Health Organization. By contrast, 19 new antimicrobial drugs were approved between 1980 and 1984. The dearth of new drugs is tied to the perverse economics of antimicrobial resistance and the free market. It can cost a half-billion dollars to develop a new compound, but doctors are discouraged from using the drugs to reduce the possibility that the targeted pathogens will become resistant. Even when doctors prescribe the drugs, most patients take them for a week or two, limiting a drug company’s ability to earn back its initial investment. “Everyone agrees that there is an absolute need for new antibiotics, but there is no sustainable market,” said Thomas Cueni, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations. Incentives to develop new drugs could include generous government financing for research, or regulatory changes that would increase reimbursements for newly approved antibiotics considered medically important. According to the World Bank, such investments would quickly pay for themselves; it notes that containing antimicrobial resistance costs $9 billion annually. “I applaud the UN for at least putting incentives on the map, but there needs to be more than talk,” said Cueni, who also chairs the AMR Industry Alliance, a trade group working to address the problem of antimicrobial resistance. “What’s needed is money.” Still, many public health advocates said the report was an important step in elevating a crisis that has failed to garner the attention of other global problems like climate change and AIDS. Lance Price, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Centre at George Washington University, said he worried the report might not gain much traction with the Trump administration, which has been averse to multilateral cooperation. Fear, he said, was the key to changing the status quo. “Even if you don’t care about the suffering of people who drink unclean water and get resistant infections, you still have to recognize that these bacteria don’t recognize international borders,” he said. “They will come here, and they will kill us. We have to let people know that the problem is closer than they think.”   ©2019 New York Times News Service

ISTANBUL, Tue Mar 17,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global financial crisis could set back development in water utilities by a decade or more as investment falters and people become increasingly unable to afford water bills, the World Bank warned Tuesday. As funding dries up a vicious circle could reemerge of poor services, low willingness to pay and low investment, said Jamal Saghir, Director of Energy, Water and Transport at the World Bank. Speaking in Istanbul at the World Water Forum he said water utilities worldwide would have to boost efficiency to convince cash-strapped governments they were a sound investment. In the meantime, new ventures were likely to be canceled and existing water infrastructure projects come under cost pressure, he said. More than 20,000 environmentalists, scientists, aid and utilities experts are discussing issues surrounding water, climate change and development with government ministers from around 120 countries at the forum. The conference has come under fire from some action groups for not stressing enough the basic human right to clean water. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals pledged at the start of this decade to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking water. Almost 1 billion people have no access to safe water and 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation. Angel Gurria, Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), told the conference national governments must revise how they fund water services -- typically a mix of tarifs paid by users, tax revenues and in some countries aid transfers. If the financial crisis makes it harder for developing countries to borrow they must find ways of gradually moving to more tariff-based systems which also protect those least able to pay, he said. In a report unveiled at the forum, the OECD said the financial crisis represented an opportunity to make water infrastructure more efficient thereby attracting new investment.

Finland's centrist prime minister held talks on Monday with the opposition conservatives, who staked a claim to a place in a new coalition with a strong showing in Sunday elections. Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen met centre-right leader Jyrki Katainen to discuss the vote, in which the ruling Centre Party won just one more parliamentary seat than their National Coalition rivals. Katainen, 35, said his party should be invited into a coalition -- with the post of prime minister or finance minister. "For us it is (clear) ... that we have to be in there," he told reporters after meeting Vanhanen. "I don't know how on earth we would be put aside." Such a combination would not make for very dramatic shifts in economic policy or on the political agenda from that of the current coalition between the Centre Party and left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SDP), analysts say. But Katainen said the centre-right had its own ideas on economic growth, employment, and dealing with climate change. "People wanted to have changes and they showed it by voting for us," he said. The Centre Party lost ground in Sunday's vote, but their SDP cabinet partners were hardest hit, losing eight seats in the 200-member national assembly to retain 45. Forming a cabinet which represents a clear majority of seats in parliament is expected to take several weeks and Vanhanen said he expected tough talks. "It seems very clear that every party wants to cooperate," Vanhanen told reporters, adding that negotiations would start in earnest in the middle of next week. In addition to a big partner, he was likely to pick one or two junior groups to thrash out a programme. He met the SDP, the current coalition's junior partners in the Swedish People's Party, and the Greens, who won nearly 9 percent of the vote. "I don't think there are major issues that would prevent the National Coalition from joining up with the Centre Party," said political researcher Sami Borg, from Tampere University. "But of course there might be some disagreement on what kind of role they would have in the forthcoming government programme, and the Social Democrats will really fight to retain their position." Risto Penttila, a former politician and now director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), was certain Finland would end up with a centre-right government. "It is notable that not only Finland has turned to the centre-right, but that it is part of a wider trend," he said. The Finns' conservative swing follows six months after neighbouring Sweden voted out the Social Democrats and elected a centre-right coalition. The first test for a new government will be nationwide pay talks set for the next few months, which could be difficult after a boom year fuelled workers' demands for more pay. It will also have to steer a debate on the role of the president, whose post is largely ceremonial but includes a say in foreign affairs. And the next four-year term will see a parliamentary debate on the future of the non-aligned country's security and defence policy. Parties in the outgoing cabinet have 106 seats in the new parliament, and Vanhanen said he would aim for new ministers to represent a clear majority -- between 115 and 120 seats. The new parliamentarians enter the 200-member chamber next week and the current cabinet will stay on in a caretaker capacity until Vanhanen strikes a new deal.

TOKYO, April28 (bdnews24.com/AFP) – Japan and the European Union plan to step up joint efforts to help Afghanistan and combat piracy off Somalia and will start talks to improve their trade ties, their leaders said at a summit Wednesday. EU president Herman Van Rompuy said Asia's biggest economy and the 27-nation bloc needed to cooperate more closely to be "not only global economic actors, but also global political actors." "Japan and the union will work closer to achieve peace (in) crises and post-conflict management," he told a Tokyo press conference also attended by European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso. Japan's centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said after the annual meeting that "we have agreed to conduct concrete cooperation concerning peace building in Afghanistan and Somalia." He also said both sides will set up a "high-level group" of experts to discuss economic ties for a period of six to 12 months. Tokyo is eager to strike a free-trade pact of the kind the EU forged last year with Japan's high-tech export rival South Korea, but Brussels has complained of non-tariff trade barriers to Japan's market. Van Rompuy earlier also called for closer cooperation on fighting climate change, poverty and terrorism, and promoting global economic stability, nuclear non-proliferation and human rights. "To share the burden and to lead the way, we need to team up with each other," he said. "The EU and Japan, with their combined economic and political strengths, can help make a difference in an increasingly globalised world." He highlighted international network security and the threat of attacks on "the free flow of goods, people and information. The networks are vulnerable, cyber-attacks are no fantasy, they can happen and do harm everyday." "We must enhance our resilience against these. Both Japan and Europe are so deeply in global networks that we must do this together." Van Rompuy also spoke about economic ties at the earlier briefing at the Japan Press Club, saying that "of course, an obvious way to intensify the trade between our two blocs would be a free-trade agreement." But he said that "many of the so-called non-tariff barriers to trade remain in place, which hamper access to the Japanese market and cause hesitance from the EU side to go ahead." "We could perhaps take some more time to first identify the objectives both parties want to reach. We are open to discussions," he said. The EU has demanded Japan first do more to reduce non-tariff barriers, including in product safety and government procurement rules. Toshiro Tanaka -- a professor of European politics at Keio University -- said that "despite the EU's rhetoric that the Japanese market is closed with non-tariff barriers, the EU is reluctant to sign a free-trade deal with Japan, whereas Japan, backed by its business community, craves a deal with the EU." Tanaka said the free-trade deal signed between the EU and South Korea last October sparked Japanese interest in a similar agreement. "Currently, the EU imposes 10 percent tariff duties on imports of vehicles and 14 percent on electronics, but South Korean companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai Motor will be eventually exempt from those tariffs. "That's significantly disadvantageous for Japanese manufacturers in selling goods in the European market," Tanaka told AFP. The EU delegation next travels to China for a similar summit in Shanghai, where the World Expo kicks off on Saturday.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) that compiles the list is also stepping up monitoring of marine species such as coral and deep sea snails to see how they are impacted by climate change and threats such as deep sea mining. "Ocean species tend to be neglected as they are under the water and people don't really pay attention to what is happening to them," Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List unit, told Reuters. But as catch quotas and efforts to target illegal fishing showed signs of working, the outlook for tuna appears to be improving. Atlantic bluefin tuna, a huge warm-blooded migratory predator that is prized for sushi and can sell for thousands of dollars, jumped three categories from "endangered" to "least concern" on the list, although some regional stocks remained severely depleted. The southern bluefin also improved from "critically endangered" to "endangered" while albacore and yellowfin tuna were classified as "least concern". "Tuna is a good news story - it shows what can be done," Hilton-Taylor said as the IUCN on Saturday released its report on 138,374 species of plants, animals and fungi, of which more than a quarter are currently threatened with extinction. The Komodo dragon moved into the endangered category. The world's largest living lizard is well-protected on Indonesia's Komodo island but rising sea levels due to global warming are set to shrink its habitat, the IUCN said. "The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," Andrew Terry, conservation director at the Zoological Society of London, said, calling for action to protect nature at the Glasgow climate conference in November. The IUCN also expressed concern for sharks and rays, which are faring less well than tuna. "Now we have to take that example and try to apply it to the shark industry," Hilton-Taylor said. He said the trend was "going in the wrong direction" for sharks and rays of which 37 percent now face extinction compared with 33% of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 12 percent of birds. The IUCN said last year that a shark, only just formally discovered, might already be extinct. Its latest update was released at a conservation conference in Marseilles, France.

Under pressure from shareholders and regulators, companies are increasingly disclosing the specific financial effects they could face as the planet warms, such as extreme weather that could disrupt their supply chains or stricter climate regulations that could hurt the value of coal, oil and gas investments. Early estimates suggest that trillions of dollars may ultimately be at stake. Even so, analysts warn that many companies are still lagging in accounting for all of the plausible financial risks from global warming. “The numbers that we’re seeing are already huge, but it’s clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Bruno Sarda, the North America president for CDP, an international non-profit that wrote the new report and works with companies around the world to publicly disclose the risks and opportunities that climate change could create for their businesses. In 2018, more than 7,000 companies submitted such reports to CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. And, for the first time, CDP explicitly asked firms to try to calculate how a warming planet might affect them financially. After analysing submissions from 215 of the world’s 500 biggest corporations, CDP found that these companies potentially faced roughly $1 trillion in costs related to climate change in the decades ahead unless they took proactive steps to prepare. By the companies’ own estimates, a majority of those financial risks could start to materialise in the next five years or so. The disclosures show how business leaders expect climate change, and the policy responses to it, to ripple through every corner of the global economy. Many firms are bracing for direct impacts. Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese manufacturer, said that increased rainfall and flooding in Southeast Asia had the potential to knock out suppliers and that it was taking defensive measures as a result. Banco Santander Brasil, a large Brazilian bank, said increasingly severe droughts in the region might hurt the ability of borrowers to repay loans. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Inc., noted that rising temperatures could increase the cost of cooling its energy-hungry data centres. Others are keeping a close eye on the potential public reaction to climate change. Total, a French energy company, is grappling with the possibility that ambitious efforts by nations to limit global warming and restrict fossil fuel use could render some oil and gas reserves “unburnable.” BASF, a German chemical company, said it has a “significant corporate carbon footprint” that could scare off environmentally conscious shareholders unless it takes steps to act on climate change. In all, the world’s largest companies estimated that at least $250 billion of assets may need to be written off or retired early as the planet heats up. Those assets include buildings in high-risk flood zones, or power plants that may have to shut down in response to tighter pollution rules. The disclosures offer only a partial glimpse at the potential price tag of climate change. Only a fraction of companies worldwide currently report their climate risks, and many large firms, including energy giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron, did not submit a disclosure to CDP last year. The companies that do disclose often struggle to tease out precisely how rising temperatures might hurt or help them financially. For instance, Sarda said, it’s relatively straightforward for businesses to calculate the potential costs from an increase in taxes designed to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Indeed, this is one of the most common climate-related risks that companies now disclose. But it’s trickier to take scientific reports about rising temperatures and weather extremes and say what those broad trends might mean for specific companies in specific locations. Previous studies, based on computer climate modelling, have estimated that the risks of global warming, if left unmanaged, could cost the world’s financial sector between $1.7 trillion to $24.2 trillion in net present value terms. A recent analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change warned that companies are reporting on these risks only “sporadically and inconsistently” and often take a narrow view of the dangers that may lie ahead. Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest electric utility, offers a case study in how some corporate disclosures can be far from perfect. In its report to CDP last year, PG&E said that the rise in wildfire risk in the American West, partly driven by global warming, could create significant financial costs if the utility were held liable for the fires. PG&E estimated the “potential financial impact” from wildfires at around $2.5 billion, based on claims that the utility had paid out in 2017. However, that turned out to be overly optimistic: This past January, PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection and said it now faced up to $30 billion in fire liabilities shortly after its power lines sparked what became California’s deadliest wildfire last fall. On the flip side, the CDP report found, many companies also see moneymaking potential in climate change. Some 225 of the world’s largest corporations highlighted roughly $2.1 trillion of possible opportunities in a warming world, with the majority expected to materialise within the next five years. Eli Lilly, a drugmaker in the United States, cited research suggesting that rising temperatures could drive the spread of infectious diseases — a problem the company was well-positioned to help address. “This may then increase demand for certain medicines we produce,” the firm said. (At the same time, the company also warned that climate change could hurt financially if flooding and fiercer storms disrupted its manufacturing facilities in places like Puerto Rico, as happened after Hurricane Maria in 2017.) And any shift toward clean energy sources offers a chance to profit. ING Group, a Dutch financial services firm, estimated that the shift to a low-carbon economy could require $30 trillion in new investments toward clean energy and energy efficiency worldwide. As a result, ING aims to double its “climate finance portfolio” by 2022, the company said in its disclosure. The report comes as financial regulators have expressed growing concern that markets are not yet fully pricing in the potential financial consequences of climate change. Last month, the European Central Bank warned that a spate of severe weather that caused major losses for insurers, or an unexpectedly rapid shift by investors away from fossil fuels could hit the balance sheets of unprepared banks and potentially destabilise the financial system. “Climate change-related risks have the potential to become systemic for the euro area,” the bank said, “in particular if markets are not pricing the risks correctly.” In 2015, the Financial Stability Board — an influential panel made up of finance ministers, central bankers and regulators from the world’s largest economies — established a task force that aimed to coax banks and other businesses to be more transparent about their climate risks. But progress has been slow. The CDP report found that companies headquartered in the European Union are much more likely to detail the potential financial effects of global warming, in part because local regulations often require them to do so. By contrast, companies in the United States, China, Brazil and Mexico were far less likely to report significant financial risks. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission does not mandate that publicly traded companies account for potential climate effects, though the agency has offered guidance on how firms can do so. Some large institutional investors, such as the mutual fund company Vanguard Group and New York State’s pension fund, have started to urge companies to be more transparent about their climate exposure, a trend that has helped drive the recent uptick in disclosures. Sarda of CDP said that he expected companies to offer “more clarity” and “more sophistication” in their disclosures as the pressure to do so builds. But, he said, “it’s certainly a big process.”   c.2019 New York Times News Service

A top UN climate change official voiced doubt on Wednesday about a global tax on carbon, but said national taxes were possible and laws to cap global warming emissions were better for business. "I personally am skeptical on the notion of global carbon taxes," said Yvo de Boer, who heads the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. International agreement on such a tax would take a long time, de Boer said, and it might take even longer to get the tax proceeds to the United Nations to deal with global warming. Speaking at a news conference during the first full-scale UN meeting dedicated to climate change, de Boer said individual nations, including the Netherlands, have already put environmentally friendly taxes in place. However, he said national taxes don't offer predictable progress in curbing the human-generated greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, though they may offer predictable revenues. He favored so-called cap-and-trade laws, which limit carbon emissions and offer a way for those who emit more than the limit to buy carbon credits from those who emit less. "What the business community is calling for at the moment is long-term certainty, clear emissions caps imposed by governments so that they know what kind of investment decisions they have to make," de Boer said. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said climate-warming emissions must be reduced by 50 percent by 2050, but without investment to curb climate change, emissions could rise by 50 percent instead, de Boer said. De Boer said the world would probably invest $20 trillion over the next 20 to 25 years to meet the energy demand that goes with economic growth. To make these investments "green" would require an additional investment of perhaps $100 billion a year, he said. De Boer said he was encouraged by comments at this meeting from developing nations that recognize the need to combat climate change -- which hits the world's poorest countries disproportionately hard -- even as their economies grow. Typical were comments by Faisal Saleh Hayat, Pakistan's environment minister, who spoke on behalf of the Group of 77 developing nations and China. "Climate change poses serious risks and challenges particularly to developing countries and therefore demands urgent global action and response," Hayat said at Wednesday's meeting. "The Group of 77 and China see these discussions as an integral part of the wider sustainable development debate." This week's two-day meeting on climate change was a prelude to a high-level gathering on Sept. 24 on the same subject. This will be followed by an international meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December, meant to begin discussions on the future of the fight against climate change. De Boer, who is responsible for organizing the Bali talks, said one challenge was coming up with a plan that the United States would accept. The United States did not join the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change and rejects mandatory limits on greenhouse emissions, but President George W. Bush has agreed with other industrialized nations to negotiate a new climate pact to extend and broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Washington's UN envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, told Wednesday's gathering that the United States was committed to stabilizing greenhouse gases, and recognizes "the fundamental connections among the issues of energy security, climate change, and sustainable economic development."

A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases, a report said Monday. The study, by Britain's Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun's output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms. The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common. "This research shows that the most likely change in the sun's output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases," said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office. "It's important to note this study is based on a single climate model, rather than multiple models which would capture more of the uncertainties in the climate system," he added. During the 20th century, solar activity increased to a maximum level and recent studies have suggested this level of activity has reached, or is nearing, an end. The scientists used this maximum level as a starting point to project possible changes in the sun's activity over this century. The study also showed that if the sun's output went below a threshold reached between 1645 and 1715 - called the Maunder Minimum when solar activity was at its lowest observed level - global temperature would fall by 0.13 degrees Celsius. "The most likely scenario is that we'll see an overall reduction of the sun's activity compared to the 20th Century, such that solar outputs drop to the values of the Dalton Minimum (around 1820)," said Mike Lockwood, solar studies expert at the university of Reading. "The probability of activity dropping as low as the Maunder Minimum - or indeed returning to the high activity of the 20th Century - is about 8 percent."

China and India lashed out on Friday at the possibility of tariffs slapped on carbon-intensive exports, even though analysts said proposed U.S. measures were years away and would be hard to implement. Green protectionism is likely to cause unease at next week's G8 meeting in Italy and separate 17-member Major Economies Forum gathering. It is also a growing concern in U.N. talks that aim to seal a broader climate pact at the end of the year in Copenhagen. China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, said carbon tariffs would violate the rules of the World Trade Organization as well as the spirit of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. Carbon tariffs would "seriously hurt the interests of developing countries" and "disrupt the order of international trade," the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement posted on its website. While it did not directly refer to the United States, China's comments come a week after the lower house of the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill, which includes so-called "carbon equalization" provisions that could kick in from 2025. The measures are meant to give rich nations a way to protect their domestic industries that fear putting a price on carbon emissions will make their goods more expensive compared with exports from developing nations. Some industries also fear jobs and energy-intensive manufacturing could shift to poorer nations. "We are completely surprised and rather dismayed by the development. This is an attempt to bring trade and competitiveness into environmental negotiations," a top Indian climate negotiator said in reference to the U.S. legislation. The steps in the Waxman-Markey Bill would involve raising duties on imports from countries that are not making the same effort to cut emissions and would focus on goods such as cement and steel, which need a lot of energy to make. "This is the quid pro quo for cap-and-trade, but the international community can't be held down by the domestic political compulsions of President Obama," said the Indian official, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Obama said last week he was not in favor of climate-linked protectionism. "LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD" Concerned their efforts to curb greenhouse gases would put their industries at a competitive disadvantage, the United States, Canada and the European Commission have all put forward proposals to "level the playing field." Under the U.S. bill, which still needs to pass the Senate, a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme would start in 2012 and the most trade-sensitive sectors would be given emission allowance rebates to cover the costs of complying with the carbon trade scheme. Those rebates will last till about 2025. By mid-2022 the president must decide how to tackle competitive concerns after 2025 and would examine whether competitor nations have agreed to emissions reduction targets, energy intensity targets or steps such as sectoral caps or export tariffs that place a price on carbon. The idea is to give India and China and other major developing nations time to enact climate-friendly measures. "I think generally they're using this as a means to pressure developing countries to take stronger action on emissions," said Zhang Haibin, a professor of environmental politics at Peking University and an adviser to the Ministry of Commerce on trade and climate change policies. "But if the United States takes unilateral action without proper multilateral consultations and agreement that could spark big trade disputes, a trade war even," he said. That kind of clash comes at a sensitive time in the world's battle to slow climate change, with this December's meeting in Copenhagen seen as a pivotal moment. "This is completely unacceptable. It will completely derail the Copenhagen process, which is already at a complicated stage and completely gridlocked right now," said Sunita Narain, head of New Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment. COMPLEX PICTURE But some experts say the risk of such measures is small, given the logistical complexities involved. "If you look at real life, how is it going to be implemented? That's going to be a very complicated matter. I'm not sure people have thought clearly, technically how to make this happen," said Changhua Wu, Greater China Director of The Climate Group, an NGO that helps governments and companies trim carbon emissions. "In the meantime, there are other stakeholders in the U.S., big companies that operate in China and India. They have their opinions as well. So it's going to be a very complicated picture," she added. Ultimately, the measures could accelerate the development of domestic carbon exchanges in emerging countries, which have thus far sold most of their carbon abatement tariffs internationally. "If the Senate approved similar legislation before December, the likelihood of domestic carbon pricing being introduced in Asia potentially increases," said Simon Smiles, Asian thematic analyst for UBS in Hong Kong, who has studied the cost impact of domestic emissions trading and carbon tariffs on Asia firms. "I continue to see the political expediency of carbon-related import duties. But as the legislation currently stands, the near-term risk of border adjustments based on the amount of carbon in goods imported into the U.S. appears very low."

Speaking after days of meetings at the pre-COP26 climate event in Italy, Sharma said there was a consensus to do more to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius target within reach, adding more needed to be done collectively in terms of national climate plans. The COP26 conference in Glasgow aims to secure more ambitious climate action from the nearly 200 countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius - and to 1.5 degrees preferably - above pre-industrial levels.

Dramatic improvements in air and water quality as coronavirus lockdowns have cut pollution have prompted calls for a low-carbon future, but the need to get millions back to work is clouding the environmental picture. With economies round the world shut down, wildlife has returned to city streets, with wolves, deer and kangaroos spotted on thoroughfares usually teeming with traffic. Fish have been seen in Venice canals no longer polluted by motor boats, while residents of some Indian cities have reported seeing the Himalayas for the first time in decades. Satellite imagery has shown significant air quality improvements across Europe and Asia, including China, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged. But residents in some of China's most smog-prone cities said they feared that blue skies would not last as the world's second biggest economy got back to work. "In the second half of the year, when the epidemic eases, the weather will slowly be worse after factories reopen," said Tang Zhiwei, 27, a resident of Shanghai. "Try your best to enjoy the blue sky now." TOGETHER Thunberg said action to tackle coronavirus did not mean the climate crisis had gone away. "Today is Earth Day and that reminds us that climate and the environmental emergency is still ongoing and we need to tackle both the corona pandemic ... at the same time as we tackle climate and environmental emergency, because we need to tackle two crises at once," she said. UN chief Antonio Guterres urged governments in an Earth Day message to use their economic responses to the pandemic to tackle the "even deeper emergency" of climate change. With global battle lines emerging between investors backing "green stimulus" measures and industry lobbyists aiming to weaken climate regulations, Guterres cautioned governments against bailing out heavily polluting industries. "On this Earth Day, all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic," Guterres said. "But there is another, even deeper emergency, the planet's unfolding environmental crisis." Peter Betts, a former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said there was now pressure for coronavirus economic stimulus packages to be "low-carbon, climate-smart". "A risk, clearly, is that for some governments around the world there will be a huge premium on getting the economy moving, getting people back into jobs," Betts, now with the Chatham House think-tank in London, told Reuters Television. That is a priority for US President Donald Trump, who wants to get America, and in particular its oil and gas industry, back to work. "We will never let the great US Oil & Gas Industry down," Trump tweeted, calling for "a plan which will make funds available so that these very important companies and jobs will be secured long into the future!" HOTTEST ON RECORD The environmental stakes were rising even before the pandemic's economic shutdown raised hopes in some quarters of a low-carbon future. Last year was the hottest on record in Europe, extending a run of exceptionally warm years driven by unprecedented levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a study released on Earth Day. Of Europe's 12 warmest years on record, 11 have occurred since 2000, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. "This warming trend is now unequivocal anywhere on the planet. And as a consequence of that, the frequency of these record breaking events is going up," C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters. The coronavirus pandemic is expected to drive carbon dioxide emissions down 6% this year, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, in what would be the biggest yearly drop since World War Two. But that will not stop climate change, the WMO said. "COVID-19 may result in a temporary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a substitute for sustained climate action," the WMO said in an Earth Day statement. With millions staying home, air quality has improved in China. Shanghai saw emissions fall by nearly 20% in the first quarter, while in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, monthly averages dropped more than a third. But experts worry the decline could give China leeway to turn a blind eye to pollution in order to stimulate the economy, which declined for the first time on record in the first quarter.

The scenarios are the result of complex calculations that depend on how quickly humans curb greenhouse gas emissions. But the calculations are also meant to capture socioeconomic changes in areas such as population, urban density, education, land use and wealth. For example, a rise in population is assumed to lead to higher demand for fossil fuels and water. Education can affect the rate of technology developments. Emissions increase when land is converted from forest to agricultural land. Each scenario is labelled to identify both the emissions level and the so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathway, or SSP, used in those calculations. Here’s how to understand each one: FIVE FUTURES - DECODED SSP1-1.9: The IPCC’s most optimistic scenario, this describes a world where global CO2 emissions are cut to net zero around 2050. Societies switch to more sustainable practices, with focus shifting from economic growth to overall well-being. Investments in education and health go up. Inequality falls. Extreme weather is more common, but the world has dodged the worst impacts of climate change. This first scenario is the only one that meets the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, with warming hitting 1.5C but then dipping back down and stabilizing around 1.4C by the end of the century. SSP1-2.6: In the next-best scenario, global CO2 emissions are cut severely, but not as fast, reaching net-zero after 2050. It imagines the same socioeconomic shifts towards sustainability as SSP1-1.9. But temperatures stabilize around 1.8C higher by the end of the century. SSP2-4.5: This is a “middle of the road” scenario. CO2 emissions hover around current levels before starting to fall mid-century, but do not reach net-zero by 2100. Socioeconomic factors follow their historic trends, with no notable shifts. Progress toward sustainability is slow, with development and income growing unevenly. In this scenario, temperatures rise 2.7C by the end of the century. SSP3-7.0: On this path, emissions and temperatures rise steadily and CO2 emissions roughly double from current levels by 2100. Countries become more competitive with one another, shifting toward national security and ensuring their own food supplies. By the end of the century, average temperatures have risen by 3.6C. SSP5-8.5: This is a future to avoid at all costs. Current CO2 emissions levels roughly double by 2050. The global economy grows quickly, but this growth is fuelled by exploiting fossil fuels and energy-intensive lifestyles. By 2100, the average global temperature is a scorching 4.4C higher. WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM THESE? The climate report cannot tell us which scenario is most likely -- that will be decided by factors including government policies. But it does show how choices today will affect the future. In every scenario, warming will continue for at least a few decades. Sea levels will continue rising for hundreds or thousands of years, and the Arctic will be practically free of sea ice in at least one summer in the next 30 years. But how quickly seas will rise and how dangerous the weather might get still depends on which path the world opts to take.

Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks has been nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian politician behind the proposal said on Wednesday, a day after the deadline for nominations expired. The Norwegian Nobel Committee accepts nominations for what many consider as the world's top accolade until February 1, although the five panel members have until the end of the month to make their own proposals. Norwegian parliamentarian Snorre Valen said WikiLeaks was "one of the most important contributors to freedom of speech and transparency" in the 21st century. "By disclosing information about corruption, human rights abuses and war crimes, WikiLeaks is a natural contender for the Nobel Peace Prize," Valen said. Members of all national parliaments, professors of law or political science and previous winners are among those allowed to make nominations. The committee declined to comment on the WikiLeaks proposal or any other nominations. Washington is furious at WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange for releasing tens of thousands of secret documents and diplomatic cables which it says have harmed US interests abroad, including peace efforts. Assange, An Australian, faces extradition to Sweden from Britain for questioning in a sex case which he and his supporters say is a smear campaign designed to close down WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization funded by the public and rights groups. Awarding WikiLeaks the prize would be likely to provoke criticism of the Nobel Committee, which has courted controversy with its two most recent choices, jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo and President Barack Obama a few months after his election. NOBEL DEFINITION STRETCHED The prize was endowed by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who said in his will it was to be awarded to whoever "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." In past decades the committee, appointed by the Norwegian parliament, has stretched Nobel's definition to include human rights, climate activism and even micro-financing, which have been a source of criticism from Nobel traditionalists. Nobel watchers say a prize for WikiLeaks would highlight the growing role of specialist Internet sites and broad access social media in bringing about world change. Sites such as Twitter and YouTube have played important roles in mobilizing people in countries with a tight grip on official media, such as Egypt where mass anti-government protests have been taking place. Kristian Berg Harpviken of the PRIO peace think tank in Oslo agreed that innovative use of "new tools for bringing about peace" could be a major theme in this year's Nobel, but he said he expected the prize to go to a woman after a series of male recipients. His strongest tip was the Russian human rights group Memorial and its leader, Svetlana Gannushkina.

The UN's climate chief said on Saturday she believes countries can snap the deadlock that has lasted for years and sign up to fresh and binding commitments to cut greenhouse gases, after a week of climate talks between nearly 200 countries. "Countries are now looking at how they might bring about a second commitment period and no longer if there is going to be a second commitment period," climate chief Christiana Figueres told Reuters in an interview. The major players on the global stage have laid out their positions since the talks opened on Monday, with China and the United States, the two biggest emitters, each waiting for the other to commit before agreeing to a binding deal. Canada, Russia and Japan have said they will not renew the 1997 Kyoto Protocol pledges that expire next year, while the European Union wants to broker a new, global pact. However, China, which like the United States and India is not bound by Kyoto's obligations, has helped revive the troubled Durban talks by saying it could join a legally binding deal to cut its emissions of the heat-trapping gases. But the head of Brazil's delegation, Andre Correa do Lago, cautioned the focus on a legally binding deal may distract from what could be achieved, if it means concrete action is delayed. "Legally binding may at the end be more an obstacle than an advantage," he told a media briefing. Three UN reports released in the last month showed time is running out to curb emissions of the heat-trapping gases that have led to rising sea-levels threatening to erase some island states, crop failures, amplifying droughts and intensifying storms. Not all envoys share Figueres's optimism, and some worry the Durban talks could produce a deal that puts off new, binding commitments until a later date, or avoids the contentious issue altogether. The EU has said it will sign up to a second round of targets under the Kyoto Protocol, but only if all big emitters agree legally binding cuts that will start by at least 2020. So far, China, India and the United States have refused to commit themselves to legal targets, raising the prospect that no country will have binding targets to cut emissions after 2012. "India and the US are the two key unknowns about whether we can get to a deal," said Alden Meyer, director for strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "If it was just everybody else, the prospects might be better, but it's not and those are the two major countries that have to be aboard for anything to fly," he said. MONEY MATTERS Delegates produced on Saturday their first major document of the session in Durban, which raised questions about financing an annual fund planned to reach $100 billion by 2020 to help the developing countries most affected by global warming. Taxes on financial transactions were left out of the draft negotiating document after being floated in previous discussions as a more stable way to fill coffers, rather than relying on mercurial governments whose aid policy could change. The draft left aviation and shipping taxes on the table as possible funding sources. "There is actually a real danger that the money is falling out of the text," said Tove Ryding, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace. The draft negotiating text, which applies to all parties in the UN talks, lists options on various points that will be used for discussions when more senior envoys and ministers arrive next week. The talks are slated to end on December 9. UN envoys called the text a "snapshot" of where the talks are after a week. "We have the most ambitious Durban outcomes and the poorest Durban outcomes in here," Ryding said. The meeting also saw its first mass protests as thousands demanding action be taken took to Durban's city centre and marched by the conference hall with signs reading "There Is No Planet B". South Africa deployed hundreds of armoured riot police to manage the peaceful rally.

Senior EU officials will descend on Turkmenistan this week to promote cooperation with Central Asia -- a vast energy-rich region key to Europe's ambitions to diversify energy supplies and reduce its dependence on Russia. EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and the French and Slovenian foreign ministers will meet their Central Asian counterparts in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat on April 9-10 for talks on issues ranging from fuel to democracy. Home to some of the world's biggest oil and gas reserves, the region is prone to authoritarian rule and most of its states have been criticised in the West over their records on democracy and human rights. The European Union sees it as a new source of untapped energy as it tries to ease dependence on Russia, which supplies the bloc with a quarter of its energy needs. "Implementation (of EU strategy) is well under way and the EU is working with partners in the region on joint priorities papers detailing future action," the EU said in a statement ahead of the talks, likely to be held behind closed doors. Some rights activists and opposition politicians have accused the West of putting energy above democracy in their Central Asia contacts, a charge Western governments have denied. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch urged the EU to make its main objective in regional policy the fulfilment of human rights standards by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. "Central Asia is home to some of the most repressive states of the former Soviet Union, and the EU should seize the opportunity to achieve improvements," it said. "Setting concrete benchmarks will give the strategy a clear direction." Kazakhstan, the region's biggest economy and with a stable investment climate, is the main focus of Western interest. It has attracted billions of dollars in investment but has never held an election judged free and fair by Western monitors. Reclusive Turkmenistan, slowly opening up after decades of isolation, has also signalled it wants closer ties with the West and more reform. But analysts question its new president's commitment to genuine change. Uzbekistan, dubbed by the United States one the world's "most systematic human rights violators" in 2007, won praise from the West this year after it pardoned six jailed activists and showed more willingness to discuss human rights issues. "Some developments in the region merit recognition and are welcomed," said Human Rights Watch. "But they should not eclipse the overall abysmal state of human rights in individual Central Asian countries and in the region as a whole."

While the bill stopped short of realising his full-scale ambitions for overhauling America’s transportation and energy systems, Biden pointed to it as evidence that lawmakers could work across party lines to solve problems in Washington and said it would better position the United States against China and other nations seeking to dominate the emerging industries of the 21st century economy. Hours before a virtual summit with President Xi Jinping of China, whose infrastructure initiatives have helped vault China to global leadership in advanced manufacturing and other areas, Biden said the bill showed democratic governments can deliver for their citizens. “My message for the American people is this: America’s moving again, and your life’s going to change for the better,” Biden said during remarks at the White House. But it will not address the nation’s entire backlog of needed infrastructure investments, and it is not as ambitious as Biden’s initial $2.3 trillion proposal. The compromises that were needed to win over a large group of Senate Republicans pared back the president’s ambitions for investing in “human infrastructure” like home health care and fortifying the nation’s physical infrastructure to fight and adapt to climate change. Still, administration officials and a wide range of outside economists and business groups largely agree that the measure is the most important step in a generation toward upgrading critical infrastructure — and that it could soon begin to pay dividends for a wide range of businesses and people, from electric vehicle manufacturers to rural web surfers. Some of the first bursts of spending will go toward areas that Biden prioritized in negotiations, like tens of billions of dollars to improve access to broadband internet and to replace hazardous lead drinking pipes nationwide. Spending has already been announced to help clear backlogs at the nation’s ports, which are contributing to shipping delays and price increases as the United States sees a pandemic surge in demand for consumer goods, many of which are imported. The infrastructure spending will not jolt the American economy like a traditional economic stimulus plan, nor is it meant to. Officials say the administration will focus as much on “shovel-worthy” projects — meaning those that make the most of federal dollars — as they will on “shovel-ready” ones that would dump money into the economy more quickly. The package was designed to deliver money over several years, in part to avoid fuelling more price increases across an economy that is experiencing its highest inflation rate in decades. Biden and his advisers say they expect the package to deliver a variety of benefits that will power economic growth over time, including leaner supply chains, faster and more equitably distributed internet access and improved educational outcomes for children who will no longer be exposed to water-based lead that stunts brain development. The challenge for Biden is to convince an increasingly uneasy American public that the bill will lead to improvements in their lives. Soaring prices for food, gas and household items have chipped away at the president’s approval ratings. “This is not designed to be stimulus,” Cecilia Rouse, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “It’s designed to be the most strategic, effective investments so that we can continue to compete against China and other countries that are making bigger investments in their infrastructure.” “We will see investments starting next year,” she added, “beginning with our ports, and beginning with other areas where we know we are far behind.” Other core components of the bill include money meant to build as many as 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and improve the nation’s electric grids, as part of an effort to speed the transition to energy and transportation systems that burn fewer of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. “With the combination of this investment and where we know the industry is going,” said Brian Deese, who heads Biden’s National Economic Council, “we believe this will be the beginning of a real transformation in our vehicle infrastructure.” It also features tens of billions each for rebuilding roads and bridges, upgrading freight and passenger rail systems and cleaning up environmental pollution. The legislation was the product of intense negotiations spanning much of the first year of Biden’s presidency, and of the backslapping, coalition-building politics the president has relished in a government career stretching back to the 1970s. Biden brokered agreements first with Senate Republicans, 18 of whom ultimately voted for the bill, and then with progressive Democrats in the House, who held up its final passage in order to raise pressure on centrists in Biden’s party to support a larger spending bill focused on climate change, early childhood and a wide range of social policy. About $550 billion of the bill represents an increase over current spending levels. Researchers at the nonpartisan Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution estimate that money will increase federal infrastructure spending as a share of the economy by half over the next five years, putting it nearly on par with the infrastructure provisions of the New Deal under President Franklin D Roosevelt. If Biden’s $1.85 trillion spending bill — including more spending on climate — also passes the House and Senate, they estimate, the increased infrastructure spending will eclipse the New Deal. That increase will challenge the government’s ability to spend money on time and effectively. On Sunday, Biden appointed Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, to oversee that effort. “Implementing a historic bill like this will test all of our management facilities,” said Adie Tomer, who leads the Metropolitan Policy Programme’s infrastructure work. The challenges, he said, include “hiring federal, state, and local officials to direct programming; finding enough skilled tradespeople to execute the work; and securing equipment and materials during a major supply chain crunch.” Liberal economists fault the package for not spending enough, particularly on climate. “Overall, the bill is a step in the right direction,” said Mark Paul, an economist at the New College of Florida. “But we need far, far more investment in infrastructure — from the care economy to the green economy — if we are to build a strong and resilient economy for the 21st century.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown will play down talk of a cooling of US-British relations in his first talks with President George W Bush next week -- but he will not want to be seen as "America's poodle." Speeches by two of Brown's ministers have been seized on by some commentators as evidence that the month-old Brown government plans a shift in foreign policy away from the United States -- although Brown firmly denies it. While Brown and Bush will stress London and Washington's "special relationship" is alive and well in talks at Camp David, the reserved Brown is unlikely to strike up the same close personal relationship with the U.S. president that his predecessor, Tony Blair, enjoyed. "They are going to say America is our best ally, it's crucial we have good relations. But expect a professional working relationship rather than ... a degree of personal chemistry," Strathclyde University politics professor John Curtice said. Issues on the agenda will include global trade liberalisation talks, climate change, as well as Darfur, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Russia and Iran, Brown's spokesman said. Brown has said Britain will abide by its United Nations' obligations in Iraq and there will be no immediate withdrawal of British troops, as some in the ruling Labour Party want. However, the head of the British military said on Thursday Britain should be in a position to hand over control of the southern Iraqi city of Basra to Iraqi forces by year-end. On Iran, Brown said this week he would not rule out military action but believed sanctions could still persuade Tehran to drop its disputed nuclear programme. Bush and Blair's strong personal bond was forged in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities and their decision to go to war in Iraq. But the relentless bloodshed in Iraq contributed to Blair's downfall, fuelling a backlash from voters and his own party that forced him to step down early as prime minister a month ago and hand over the reins to his long-serving finance minister Brown. The British press regularly mocked Blair as Bush's poodle, a label that did not go down well with the British public and Brown will be keen to distance himself from it. "Brown has no 'poodle' baggage, no one's ever thought of him as a poodle," said Reginald Dale, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Brown has reversed the ruling party's slump since taking office, opening a lead in the opinion polls that has fired speculation he could call an early election. Brown raised eyebrows by visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy before meeting Bush, but he has been cool towards the European Union in the past. Talk of a shift in British foreign policy began when Brown named as foreign secretary David Miliband, reported by British media to have been sceptical about the Iraq war. Brown also gave a junior post to Mark Malloch Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general who has been critical of Britain and the United States over the war. This month, Malloch Brown said it was unlikely Brown and Bush would be "joined together at the hip" as Blair and Bush had been and another minister told a Washington audience a country's strength depended on alliances rather than military might.

The government has marked ministry focal points in to deal with climate change. Mentioning that establishment of the climate cell was progressing smoothly, finance minister AMA Muhith said in parliament on Sunday, "One focal point has been identified in each ministry." Muhith said the Climate Change Trust Fund and the Climate Change Trust Fund Policy have already been formulated. Moreover, implementation of different programmes was in progress in line with the policy, the finance minister said. The government has allocated Tk 7 billion for the climate change fund.

China wants rich economies to back a fund to speed the spread of greenhouse gas-cutting technology in poor nations as it seeks to persuade delegates at global warming talks the focus of responsibility belongs on the West. At talks in Bali to start crafting an international agreement to fight climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, some rich countries have said a new pact must spell out greenhouse gas goals for all big emitters. China is emerging as the planet's biggest source of carbon dioxide from industry, vehicles and farms that is trapping more atmospheric heat and threatening disastrous climate change. Under Kyoto, it and other poor countries do not shoulder fixed goals to control such pollution. While Beijing fends off calls for targets, it will press its own demands, especially that rich nations back a big boost in funds to encourage the spread of clean technology, Chinese climate policy advisers told Reuters. "We want to see a substantial fund for technology transfers and development," said Zou Ji of the People's University of China in Beijing, a member of his country's delegation to Bali. "There's been a lot of talk about developing and spreading clean coal-power and other emissions-cutting technology, but the results have been puny, and we want the new negotiations to show that developed countries are now serious about it." That fund could come under a "new body to promote technology transfers," he said, adding that it would take some time for negotiations to settle on specifics. China's demand for clear vows on technology, as well as a big boost in funds for adaptation to droughts, floods and rising sea levels caused by global warming, is real enough. It also part of Beijing's effort to keep a united front with other developing countries and shine the spotlight back on rich nations, especially the United States, the world's biggest emitter, which has refused to ratify Kyoto. "The real obstacle is the United States," said Hu Tao of Beijing Normal University, who previously worked in a state environmental think tank. "China must surely be part of any solution. But the answer has to start what the developed countries do to cut their own emissions and help us cut ours." China says it is unfair to demand that it accept emissions limits when global warming has been caused by wealthy countries' long-accumulated pollution. CLEAN POWER TECHNOLOGY The United Nations recently issued data showing that Americans produced an average 20.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide each in 2004, versus 3.8 tonnes each for Chinese people. A senior Chinese climate change policy-maker, Gao Guangsheng, last week told Reuters that China's hopes to obtain clean power-generation equipment had been frustrated by foreign politicians' and companies' worries about intellectual property theft, foregone profits and sensitive technology. The adviser Zou said a technology transfer body could pair government support with private investors, easing worries about commercial returns and intellectual property safeguards. China has set itself ambitious domestic targets to increase energy efficiency and replace carbon-belching coal with renewable energy sources, but it failed to meet its efficiency target in 2006. An influx of funds could underwrite joint research projects and help developing countries create their own energy-saving devices, said Zhang Haibin, an expert on climate change negotiations at Peking University. "The point is that we don't just want to buy fish. We want to learn how to fish for ourselves," Zhang said. "But if you want to keep selling fish for high prices, you won't teach me."

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

The former employees, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, said in a statement that Amazon would be required to pay their back wages and “post a notice to all of its tech and warehouse workers nationwide that Amazon can’t fire workers for organising and exercising their rights.” They called the settlement “a win for protecting workers rights.” The pair have said they were fired last year because they publicly pushed the company to reduce its effect on climate change and address concerns about its warehouse workers. Amazon has maintained that the former employees repeatedly broke internal policies. An Amazon spokesperson, Jose Negrete, said Wednesday, “We have reached a mutual agreement that resolves the legal issues in this case and welcome the resolution of this matter.” The settlement was reached at a high-wire moment for Amazon, which has pledged to be “Earth’s best employer” and is looking, in a tight labour market, to hire 40,000 corporate and tech workers and 125,000 warehouse workers in the United States. In 2018, Costa and Cunningham, who worked as designers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, were part of a small group of employees who publicly pushed the company to do more to address its climate impact. They turned their efforts into an organisation, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, and helped get more than 8,700 Amazon colleagues to support its efforts. Over time, Cunningham and Costa broadened their protests. After Amazon told them that they had violated its external-communications policy by speaking publicly about the business, their group organised 400 employees to also speak out, purposely violating the policy to make a point. At the start of the pandemic, they announced an internal event for warehouse workers to speak to tech employees about their workplace safety conditions. Soon after, Amazon fired both women. Sen Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, wrote Amazon expressing concerns over potential retaliation, and Tim Bray, an internet pioneer and a former vice president at Amazon’s cloud computing group, resigned in protest. This spring, lawyers with the National Labour Relations Board said they had found merit in Costa and Cunningham’s accusations that they were fired in retaliation for their organising. The agency’s Seattle office then brought a case against Amazon, saying the company “enforced its facially neutral External Communications and Solicitation policies selectively and disparately in order to restrict employees from engaging in protected, concerted activities.” The hearing was scheduled to start Tuesday morning, but was delayed as the parties worked on a settlement. The case is one of many tangles the company has had with the labour board since the start of the pandemic. Most visibly, in August, a hearing officer of the NLRB recommended that the agency throw out a union election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, finding that Amazon’s “conduct interfered with the laboratory conditions necessary to conduct a fair election.” Amazon denies any interference and has vowed to appeal if the regional office of the labour board agrees with the recommendation and formally overturns the election, which rejected the union. © 2021 The New York Times Company

A trial into one of France's worst environmental disasters opened on Monday with oil giant Total facing charges over toxic fuel spills that washed ashore following the sinking of a tanker in 1999. Total is among 15 organisations and individuals charged over the spill that poured 20,000 tonnes of oil into the sea, polluted 400 km (250 miles) of coastline and caused damage valued at up to 1 billion euros ($1.30 billion). The Erika, a rusting, Maltese-registered tanker, broke in two and sank in heavy seas in the Bay of Biscay some 70 km off the French coast on Dec. 12, 1999. Its 26 crew were winched to safety by helicopter and its fuel cargo started to sweep ashore almost two weeks later, killing between 60,000-300,000 birds -- the most serious impact on sea birds ever recorded due to an oil spill. With the approach of France's presidential elections in April and May, the case has assumed political overtones amid an increased focus on environmental issues and climate change. Lawyers, witnesses and plaintiffs were besieged by scrums of reporters and television cameramen as they made their way into the chamber on Monday. Both the rightist French government and Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, head of the Poitou-Charentes coastal region in western France, are among 74 plaintiffs including local councils and environmental groups. "We are at an absolute turning point today," said Francois Patsouris, the vice-president of the regional council in Royal's region. "This case has to set a precedent. In the United States, there was the Exxon Valdez case. We have to have the same thing in Europe. Otherwise, maritime law will not advance." The Erika case revealed an opaque world of labyrinthine ship ownership and chartering arrangements that plaintiffs in the case say hindered effective safety regulation. Total, the world's fourth largest oil group, is accused of marine pollution, deliberately failing to take measures to prevent the pollution and complicity in endangering human lives. The company rejects the accusations. Total, which spent 200 million euros on the cleanup operation, faces penalties ranging from fines in the tens of thousands of euros to being ordered to pay damages that could run into many millions of euros. The trial itself, which cost some 600,000 euros, is expected to last until June and is the first on such a scale in which a multinational will face charges on maritime pollution in France, with some 90 lawyers sifting through 189 volumes of evidence. Besides Total and two of its subsidiaries, the ship's Indian captain, its management company, four French maritime officials and the Italian maritime certification company RINA, which classified the ship as safe, are also on trial. Some 69 witnesses and interpreters in Italian, English and Hindi will take part in the proceedings in the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. Total said it chartered the 25 year-old Erika in good faith, based on documentation certifying it as seaworthy and only found out that its internal structures were corroded following investigations of the vessel after it sank. Critics, including environmental group Friends of the Earth, which is one of the plaintiffs in the trial, say Total took cynical risks with the ship to meet a tight contract deadline. They say international maritime law still needs to be tightened to minimise risks to the environment.

SYDNEY, Fri Aug 8, (bdnew24.com/Reuters) - Farming kangaroos instead of sheep and cattle in Australia could cut by almost a quarter the greenhouse gases produced by grazing livestock, which account for 11 percent of the nation's annual emissions, said a new study. Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study. Methane from the foregut of cattle and sheep constitutes 11 percent of Australia's total greenhouse emissions, but kangaroos produce negligible amounts of methane, said the study. The study said methane was a principal concern in climate change because more than 500 million metric tonnes of the gas entered the atmosphere annually, which exceeds the amount that can be naturally removed. Methane's warming potential over a 100-year time frame is 21 times higher than that of carbon dioxide, but its chemical lifetime in the atmosphere is only 8 to 12 years compared with carbon dioxide's 100 years. "Therefore, reducing methane production is an attractive short-term target for mitigating global warming," said the study published in the latest edition of the international journal "Conservation Letters". However, the study said changing farming practices in Australia, which is one of the world's top wool and beef producers but sells by comparison only small amounts of kangaroo meat for human consumption, would not be easy. "The change will require large cultural and social adjustments and reinvestment. One of the impediments to change is protective legislation and the status of kangaroos as a national icon," it said. The kangaroo is on Australia's coat of arms, but farmers regard the country's 34 million kangaroos as pests that compete for grazing pastures with sheep and cattle. Australia is trying to develop a carbon emissions trading system by 2010, but the government has said agriculture would be excluded from the scheme. Australia's greenhouse emissions totals 576 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or about 1.5 percent of world emissions. But Australia emits 28.1 tonnes of carbon per person, the highest per capita in the developed world and five times more per person than China, due to use of coal for electricity. Transport and energy accounts for the largest amount of emissions, at 69.6 percent, with agriculture creating 15.6 percent. Sheep and cattle alone produce 10.9 percent of emissions. The study said farmers had few options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions other than changing feed stock, reducing livestock numbers or changing species. The study cited the growth of wildlife industries such as springbok farming in South Africa, red deer in Britain and bison in the United States. "Using kangaroos to produce low-emission meat is an option for the Australian rangelands...and could even have global application," said the study.

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

Partly inspired by activist Greta Thunberg, Walker, from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, has braved hills, rain and doubts along his 210-mile trek to the British parliament in Westminster, central London. Global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control and the world is already certain to face further climate disruptions for decades, if not centuries, to come, a United Nations climate panel said this month. While most political leaders and investors accept the science behind climate change, there are deep divisions over what must be done to stop it, how radical the response should be - and who should pay for it. Walker is clear that a carbon tax is a crucial step to slowing down humanity's current path to what he called a dystopian world. "We now know a lot more about climate change and I think a carbon tax would be definitely one of the most useful solutions to it," Walker told Reuters as he walked through Woburn Sands, a town about 50 miles (30 km) north of London. He wants people to sign a petition calling for a carbon tax. Currently just under 57,000 people have signed it. If it gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate by parliament. In a response to the petition, Britain said it was the first major economy to legislate for net zero emissions by 2050 and that it was committed to ensuring that polluters continue to pay for their emissions. "The effects of climate change are already being seen," Walker said. "We really need to make the changes now particularly if you want to avoid the devastating impacts later on." He is walking for 10 miles a day, accompanied on each day's walk with either members of his family or friends. He is due to finish the walk at St James's Park on Saturday. Ahead of the UN climate conference, known as COP26, in Scotland in November, Walker called for serious action to slow climate change. "It would be just a dystopian world unless this summit doesn't goes to plan," he said. "We can avoid catastrophe."

Scientists who advise the United Nations about climate change will issue a report in Paris on Friday, the first of four this year outlining the risks from global warming. Following is a calendar for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 by the United Nations to guide governments. It draws on work by about 2,500 specialists from more than 130 nations and last issued reports in 2001. PARIS, Feb 2 - The first report will give evidence linking human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, to a warming in the past 50 years. It will also project likely climate changes to 2100. A draft of the report, 'The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change', says there is at least a 90 percent chance that human activities are the main cause of global warming since 1950, scientific sources say. The previous report in 2001 said the link was 'likely', or at least a 66 percent chance. It will also project a 'best estimate' of a temperature rise of 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The 2001 report projected a rise of between 1.4 and 5.8 Celsius, without saying which end of the scale was most likely. BRUSSELS, April 6 - The second report will detail the likely impacts of climate change around the globe and ways to adapt to warming. Australian newspaper The Age said a draft of the report, entitled 'Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability', projects that between 200 and 700 million more people could face food shortages by 2080 and that 1.1 to 3.2 billion more people could suffer water shortages. BANGKOK, May 4 - The third report, 'Mitigation of Climate Change', will analyse ways to fight global warming, including options and costs for reining in emissions of greenhouse gases. VALENCIA, Spain, Nov 16 - A fourth 'Synthesis Report' will sum up the findings.

By Simon Shuster MOSCOW June 21 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Russia plans to release 30 percent more greenhouse gases by 2020 under an emissions target scheme announced on Friday by President Dmitry Medvedev. The plan would reduce emissions by 10-15 percent from Russia's emissions in 1990 when it was part of the Soviet Union and its emissions were far higher than they are today. This angered environmentalists, and the target also is likely to fall short of expectations from developing countries. "It's not enough, it's very low," said Alexey Kokorin, the Russia spokesman for environmental protection group WWF. Medvedev's announcement was interpreted as an opening shot in United Nations negotiations meant to seal a new climate treaty in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Under those talks, rich nations are meant to propose mid-term emissions targets. Russia is the last major country to do so. Green groups and developing countries want industrialized countries to trim their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels, referring to a range of cuts suggested by a U.N. panel of climate scientists. "Based on the current situation by 2020 we could cut emissions by about 10-15 percent," Medvedev told Russian state television, according to a copy of his comments supplied by the Kremlin. Arkady Dvorkovich, the Kremlin's chief economic adviser, later clarified to Interfax news agency that the reduction would be from 1990 levels, before the Soviet Union fell and Russia's heavy industry collapsed. Since then, its carbon emissions have returned to an upward curve along with its industrial revival, preserving Russia's place as the world's third largest polluter behind China and the United States. The target laid out on Friday meant cumulative cuts of 30 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from 1990 to 2020, Medvedev said. This implies Russia will emit about 3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas in 2020 compared with 2.2 billion tonnes in 2007. "We will not cut off our development potential," Medvedev said. Under Kyoto, Russia has to return its emissions to 1990 levels by 2008-12. Green groups and developing countries were disappointed last week by Japan's proposals for a 2020 target barely stiffer than its Kyoto Protocol goal, and were again downbeat on Friday after Russia's announcement. FIRST STEP IN NEGOTIATIONS Medvedev said Russia would take a responsible approach to greenhouse gas emissions but expected other countries to follow suit. "We expect our partners to take reciprocal steps. That is why I have said many times -- the problem of climate change has to be addressed by everyone or not at all," he said. Dvorkovich later added that Russia must find "the right balance" between addressing climate change and reaching Russia's goals for economic growth, Interfax reported. Experts saw the goal laid out on Friday as a first shot in six months of intense talks meant to culminate in a new climate pact in Copenhagen this year. "It's a good first step ... but I expect other countries will require bigger reductions from Russia and that will promote further negotiations," said Nina Korobova, head of the Russian operations of Global Carbon, a clean energy project developer. "I think Russia can easily go to 20 percent (by 2020) ... even in the most pessimistic situations," she added. During the previous presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russia's top Kyoto officials insisted they would not take on mandatory emissions cuts for fear of hindering the comfort of Russia's middle class and the development of its industries.

"Thank God, this year we have grass," the herder said on a livestock reserve in northern Senegal as plump cows munched the pasture behind him. Abundant rains soaked West Africa's Sahel region in recent months, causing catastrophic floods in some areas that raised concerns about the rising costs of extreme weather. But this year's downpours also created the thickest vegetation in years, satellite data show - a vital respite for Senegal's farmers and its 3 million-strong herding community after six years of drought. Since the early 1980s, the frequency of storms has tripled in the Sahel, according to a study here in the journal Nature, which said the trend was consistent with what scientists expect from human-driven climate change. Herders are not used to unexpected benefits in the Sahel, whose semi-arid prairies stretch eastwards from Senegal across some of the world's poorest countries. The successive droughts in Senegal and neighbouring Mauritania and a particularly long dry season before the latest rains have helped permanently weaken pastoral livelihoods across the whole region, according to aid agency Action Against Hunger. Meanwhile rising temperatures mean some areas could become as hot as the Sahara Desert within 80 years, according to a study in the online journal Climatic Change published in October. This year, though, things are looking up. RECORD VEGETATION Sow's long-horned white cows do not have to walk far to fill their bellies as they roam the sun-baked fields studded with acacia and baobab trees. Cattle and sheep on the reserve are at their fattest in recent memory. The heavy rain has encouraged zornia, a nutritious plant with slender leaves that herders feared was becoming scarce, said local vet Mawdo Ngom. "This time last year the grass was already dry," Sow said in late November. The rains have also boosted other sectors. Grains output is expected to jump over 30 percent this year, prompting Senegal to reverse its economic outlook for 2020 from contraction to growth. Vegetation levels have hit record highs this year in more central parts of the Sahel, including Niger and Chad, the satellite data from Action Against Hunger show. This should have proved a blessing for the two-thirds of the region's population dependent on farming or herding. But conflict across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has cut off access to farms and displaced communities. Partly as result of this, the region is facing its worst food crisis in a decade with potentially over 23 million people needing aid to survive the upcoming dry season, according to the Cadre Harmonise, a regional food security framework under the auspices of the United Nations. DRYING HEAT Dramatic climate swings year to year are normal for the Sahel, making it hard to assess the impact of climate change on current conditions or predict what Senegal should prepare for in the long term, climate scientist Sylwia Trzaska of Columbia University's Earth Institute said. "We are very uncertain about which way the rainfall is going to evolve, but temperatures are rising, especially during the dry season, that's a given," she said. Senegal has escaped the violence devastating its neighbours, but some herders doubt the sustainability of their way of life given their struggle to get through recent dry seasons. Sitting in his family's traditional home of woven branches, herder Dioubeyrou Ka, 67, said drought has made it hard to find the long-stalked plant needed to thatch his roof. "Often we went in our carts from morning till night, searching for water so our children could have a drink," he said, tossing back thimble-sized glasses of tea. If dry seasons keep getting hotter as projected under climate models, water resources will dry out quicker during these periods, putting additional pressure on herders and their livestock, Trzaska said. On the reserve, where some herders have settled, Ngom says it's quiet. Earlier in the year nomadic herders desperate for pasture came in droves, piling children, possessions and baby goats onto carts pulled by three donkeys abreast. He does not expect such numbers this season. "Herders - if nature smiles on them, they forget all their problems," said the vet, strolling past cows he deemed to be reassuringly stout.

Japan's government Monday told the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to move quickly to stop radiation seeping into the ocean as desperate engineers resorted to bath salts to help trace a leak from one reactor. One official has warned it could take months before the nuclear crisis caused by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami is under control. "We need to stop the spread of (contaminated water) into the ocean as soon as possible. With that strong determination, we are asking Tokyo Electric Power Co to act quickly," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference. He warned that accumulating radiation from a leak that has defied desperate efforts to halt it "will have a huge impact on the ocean." In the face of Japan's biggest crisis since World War Two, one newspaper poll said that nearly two-thirds of voters want the government to form a coalition with the major opposition party and work together to recover from the massive damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Underlining the concern over the impact on the world's third largest economy, a central bank survey showed that big manufacturers expect business conditions to worsen significantly in the next three months, though they were not quite as pessimistic as some analysts had expected. An aide to embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Sunday that the government's priority now was to stop radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, and that the situation had "somewhat stabilised." "How long will it take to achieve (the goal of stopping the radiation leaks)? I think several months would be one target," said Goshi Hosono, a ruling party lawmaker and aide to Kan. BATH SALTS In their desperation, engineers at plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) have used anything to hand to try to stop the leaks. At the weekend, they mixed sawdust and newspapers with polymers and cement in a so far unsuccessful attempt to seal the crack in a concrete pit at reactor no.2, where radioactive water has been flowing into the sea. Monday, they resorted to powdered bath salts to produce a milky colour to help trace the source of the leak. TEPCO is planning to put some sort of curtain into the sea by the nuclear plant to try to prevent radioactive water spreading further into the ocean. It has not decided what material to use. The government has said three of the six Fukushima reactors were now generally stable. At least four will eventually be scrapped but that could take decades. en Japan's crisis has rocked the nuclear industry and the European Union said Sunday it will affect the fight against climate change as energy policies are reviewed. Germany and Switzerland have said they will shut older reactors or suspend approvals, China has suspended approvals for new plants, and Taiwan is studying cutting nuclear output. Japan may review its pledge to cut its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis, Japanese media quoted a senior environment ministry official as saying. "It is true that our reduction target will be affected significantly," Hideki Minamikawa, vice minister for global environmental affairs, was quoted by the Yomiuri newspaper as saying. PM UNDER PRESSURE The 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami left nearly 28,000 people dead or missing and Japan's northeast coast a splintered wreck. The world's costliest natural disaster has hit economic production and left a damages bill which may top $300 billion (185 billion pounds). Prime Minister Kan is under intense pressure to steer Japan through the crisis, but after three weeks many Japanese are angry the humanitarian disaster seems to have taken a back seat to the nuclear crisis. Though criticised for his crisis management, voter support for Kan's government rose to 31 percent in a Yomiuri newspaper poll, from 24 percent in a survey conducted before the quake. Almost 70 percent of respondents, however, believed Kan was not exercising leadership, 19 percent wanting him to step down soon. But in a signal that many ordinary Japanese were prepared to dip into their own pockets to help, 60 percent said they would accept a hike in taxes to help fund recovery from the triple disaster. There has been talk that Kan's ruling Democratic Party of Japan join forces with its main political opponent, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). But so far there has been no sign the two are close to any deal. Kan last month invited LDP head Sadakazu Tanigaki to join the cabinet as deputy premier for disaster relief, but he declined. MOVES TO STOP POWER BLACKOUTS More than 163,710 people are living in shelters, with more than 70,000 people evacuated from a 20 km (12 mile) no-go zone area the nuclear plant. Another 136,000 people living a further 10 km out have been told to leave or stay indoors. The government estimates damage from the earthquake and tsunami at 16 trillion to 25 trillion yen (117 billion to 184 billion pounds). The top estimate would make it the world's costliest natural disaster. Manufacturing has slumped to a two-year low as a result of power outages and quake damage hitting supply chains and production. The Bank of Japan's tankan business sentiment survey, although negative, was not as grim as analysts had expected, With some suggesting the results were not reliable. "I think many firms will have filled out the surveys before the quake and sent them after the quake, so this reading may be misleading to gauge the impact of the quake," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities Japan. General Electric, which helped build the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will help TEPCO supply electricity in the coming months when demand soars. Demand for power jumps in Japan in summer due to heavy use of air conditioners. More than 168,500 households in the north are still without electricity after the tsunami. The government has said it will restrict maximum power use by companies during the hotter months in an effort to avoid further blackouts. Japan's health ministry said Sunday it had detected radioactive substances higher than legal limits in mushrooms from Iwaki in Fukushima, said Kyodo. "Grown in Fukushima" has become a warning label for those nervous of radiation which has already been found in some vegetables close to the nuclear plant.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday for talks that were likely to focus on climate change and a decades-old dispute over a group of Pacific islands. A senior Japanese official said Fukuda will urge Russia to accelerate talks aimed at resolving the territorial row over the islands, a running sore in relations that has prevented the two states from signing a peace treaty ending World War Two. "Over the past two to three years we have been able to qualitatively change the character of our relations," Putin told Fukuda at the opening of talks at the Russian presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow. "We are continuing dialogue on the peace treaty and will create the necessary conditions for advancement along this path," Putin said. The Russian leader said bilateral trade had soared although "there still exist many unresolved problems". Fukuda will have talks later with Dmitry Medvedev, who will be sworn in as head of state on May 7. Putin, who is stepping down after eight years as president, will stay on as prime minister and leader of the biggest party. The main aims of Fukuda's visit are to "establish a personal relationship of trust with President Putin and president-elect Medvedev, and second, to prepare for the upcoming G8 summit", said a Japanese foreign ministry official. The islands, known in Russia as the Southern Kuriles and in Japan as the Northern Territories, were seized by Soviet troops in the last days of World War Two. They lie just north of the northern island of Hokkaido where Japan will host this year's Group of Eight summit. Japan has placed finding a more effective replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012, at the top of the summit agenda. Tokyo hopes the G8 summit will help draft a climate change agreement that would embrace the biggest polluters such as the United States, China and India. None of these has signed up to the Kyoto Protocol's limits on emissions. Russia, a G8 member, was one of the biggest emerging economies to sign up to Kyoto commitments. Japanese officials hope Moscow will support a successor agreement in Hokkaido. PERSONAL RELATIONS Fukuda will urge the Russian leaders to accelerate talks aimed at resolving the territorial row, a senior Japanese government official said. "Prime Minister Fukuda is expected to tell them that it is indispensable for the two countries to advance negotiations in a concrete fashion in order to elevate bilateral ties to a higher dimension," the official said. Russia has said it is ready to talk about the dispute, but has given no sign it is prepared to give up the islands. "There is no change in our position. We do not expect any breakthroughs (in the talks with Fukuda)," said a Kremlin official. Trade between Russia and Japan was worth $20 billion in 2007, fuelled by automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp which has set up a factory to tap into the booming Russian market. But trade is far smaller than the volumes between Russia and its biggest trading partner, the European Union. Japanese firms have taken stakes in vast oil and gas projects on Russia's Pacific Sakhalin island, and a pipeline is under construction that will eventually deliver oil from eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast.

TOKYO (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Finance leaders of the world's top industrialized nations put on a show of solidarity on Saturday in the face of an economic slowdown and conceded that things could get even worse because of the crumbling U.S. housing market. In a communique released after meetings in Tokyo, the Group of Seven said prospects for economic growth had worsened since they last met in October, although fundamentals remained solid and the U.S. economy was likely to escape a recession. "There was a climate of much greater pessimism and worry than in October," said Italian Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa. Finance ministers and central bankers from Japan, the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy and France said that growth in their countries was expected to slow by "varying degrees" in the short term. They pointed to serious risks from the U.S. property market slump and subsequent tightening of credit conditions, which has slowed the flow of money to the consumers and companies that drive the world's economy. Debt-laden banks have curbed lending as their losses, tied primarily to souring U.S. home loans, rise above $100 billion. That has raised the specter of a vicious cycle as consumer spending slows, prompting businesses to retrench and cut jobs. Glenn Maguire, Asia Pacific chief economist with Societe Generale in Hong Kong, noted that the G7 offered little in the way of detail on coordination action to support the economy. "This economic shock and the economic downturn is largely driven by domestic problems in the U.S. and it really can't be remedied by a globally coordinated action plan," he said. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said global markets may face a prolonged period of unrest. "The current financial turmoil is serious and persisting," Paulson said in prepared remarks issued after the meeting. "As the financial markets recover from this period of stress, as of course they will, we should expect continued volatility as risk is repriced." ALL TOGETHER NOW The G7 leaders urged banks to fully disclose their losses and shore up their balance sheets to help restore the normal functioning of markets. German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck said writeoffs could reach $400 billion. "Going forward, we will continue to watch developments closely and continue to take appropriate actions, individually and collectively, in order to secure stability and growth in our economies," the communique said. Pledges to work together to restore the financial system to health contrasted with divisions over fiscal and monetary policy ahead of the G7 gathering. Before Saturday's meetings, many in Europe had privately expressed alarm over the U.S. Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate-cutting stance after it slashed 1.25 percentage points off of the benchmark federal funds rate in less than 10 days in January. The monetary easing, along with a $152 billion U.S. fiscal stimulus package, threatened to open a rift between the United States and its allies over how to prevent the credit crisis from pushing the world into a downturn. But tensions eased after the European Central Bank stressed the risk to euro zone economic growth, alongside its long-held worry about inflation, signaling that the ECB may soon join the Fed, Bank of England and Bank of Canada in cutting rates. French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said she welcomed that change by the ECB, but wanted more: "It's like the overture of a symphony: you are always waiting for what comes next." European leaders were particularly concerned about the strength of the euro which hit a record high against the dollar after the Fed began its cutting rates in September. However, the currency retreated after the ECB's change of heart. CURRENCY ON BACK BURNER With more pressing economic matters to discuss, foreign exchange issues were relegated to the back burner at Saturday's meeting. The communique contained similar wording as in the October statement, with a focus on encouraging China to allow its yuan currency to appreciate more quickly. Many G7 leaders think the weak yuan gives China an unfair trade advantage, and have called on Beijing to step up domestic investment to help rebalance the world economy. The statement also urged oil exporters to step up production after oil prices briefly topped $100 per barrel last month. It has since retreated, though it spiked up 4 percent to $91.77 on Friday -- its biggest gain in nearly two months -- amid supply snags and a looming U.S. cold spell.

She met the new Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen for a courtesy call at his office on Sunday, said the foreign ministry. The UK will continue its support to achieve the goal of Bangladesh to be an Upper Middle Income Country by 2021 and SDGs by 2030, she was quoted as saying. High Commissioner Blake reiterated her government’s willingness to work together towards building stronger ties. Momen urged the UK to continue overall support for Bangladesh if a Brexit deal is passed to separate the UK from the European Union. Both sides agreed to work together on trade and investment, good governance, better economic partnership, the Rohingya crisis, migration and climate change. British investors are “very interested to do business in diverse sectors in Bangladesh, infrastructure in particular,” she said. Blake praised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government for playing an “amazing role” in the field of women empowerment, poverty reduction as well as in economic and social development. Momen thanked the UK for its support in the Rohingya crisis and urged it to do more so that the people forcible displaced by violence in Rakhine can safety return to their homes in the Myanmar province.  Blake praised Bangladesh for sheltering the largest number of forcibly-displaced Rohingya, historically persecuted in Myanmar, and assured that British government and people will support Bangladesh in resolving the crisis. The new foreign minister recalled for Blake the support provided by the British people and government during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.

President Barack Obama's budget this week will set out big goals: to rescue the economy from freefall, expand US health care coverage and move within a few years to slash huge deficits. The budget, due out on Thursday, will indicate Obama's timeline for achieving many of the domestic priorities he pushed during the campaign. Sources familiar with the administration's thinking have said the blueprint will reflect Obama's interest in moving forward on a pledge to expand health care coverage to the 46 million Americans who lack it. Health care will be an important theme all week, including in Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night in which he will sketch out his major domestic and foreign policy goals. Steps to tackle global climate change could also be incorporated in the budget for the 2010 fiscal year that begins on October 1. At the same time, it will show the impact on the budget deficit of the recently passed $787 billion economic recovery package, the largest fiscal stimulus in history. The stimulus is the centerpiece of initiatives Obama has put forth to jolt the economy out of a year-long recession. While acknowledging the stimulus added massively to the government's red ink, Obama will promise budgetary discipline in the future, a theme he will highlight at a bipartisan "Fiscal Responsibility Summit" at the White House on Monday. 'STICKER SHOCK' As he rolls out the budget, one of Obama's challenges will be to overcome skepticism about what he can achieve. Many doubt there is political will to tackle bold initiatives like health care reform while Washington grapples with the more immediate problems of the recession and the financial meltdown. "All of these goals are extremely challenging," said William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. "Universal health coverage and a major assault on climate change would have been a tough sell in best of times, but these are the worst of times." There is already "sticker shock" at the cost of the stimulus and the $700 billion financial bailout. Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland, said "members of Congress are going to be more reluctant than they would have been otherwise to go along with big-ticket spending items." An administration official said Obama's budget would show a reduction in the deficit to $533 billion by 2013. Private economists project that the deficit will swell to $1.5 trillion or higher in the 2009 fiscal year that ends September 30. That would be more than triple the $455 billion deficit recorded in 2008. Obama inherited a more than $1 trillion deficit from President George W. Bush but that number will increase as a result of the two-year stimulus package. Officials said that Obama would reduce the deficit in future years through increases in taxes on wealthier Americans and spending cuts. His budget projects that the drawdown of US troops from Iraq will yield savings, though it is unclear how much of that might be offset by a buildup of troops in Afghanistan. To lay the groundwork for the legislative efforts ahead, Obama, a Democrat, is continuing to try to reach out to opposition Republicans. Despite an effort to court Republican support for the stimulus package, it got the backing of just three Republican senators and no members of the House of Representatives from the opposing party. Obama has invited lawmakers of both parties, business people, union leaders and economists to Monday's fiscal summit to discuss long-term issues such as health care, entitlement programs and federal contracting in areas like defense. Prominent Republicans including House of Representatives Minority Leader John Boehner and Arizona Sen. John McCain, Obama's rival in last year's presidential campaign, have said through their aides that they will attend. Boehner and other Republicans have offered scathing criticisms of the stimulus bill, labeling the spending proposals wasteful and warning that it would bloat the debt. A Boehner aide said the Ohio Republican is attending to the fiscal summit to see how "the administration plans on tackling our skyrocketing debt." Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an adviser to McCain during last year's campaign, also will attend the summit. While critical of the stimulus, Holtz-Eakin said he is eager to hear what the administration says about health care reform, an area where he said there is some potential for common ground between Republicans and Democrats. "There's common ground on some of the reforms to the practice of medicine," he said. But Holtz-Eakin added, "There's a huge difference in what has been said on the approach to enhancing coverage, insurance reform and things like that."

They can all be made using carbon dioxide (CO2), locking up the planet-warming gas. And tech startups behind these transformations are grabbing investor attention. Some use bacteria. Some use proteins. Some use chemical processes to speed natural reactions. Most pull apart the carbon and the oxygen in CO2 to create another chemical that is used to make consumers goods. Companies in the area raised over $800 million so far this year, more than tripling from 2020, according to a Reuters review of data from PitchBook, Circular Carbon Network, Cleantech Group and Climate Tech VC. "I don't want to call it a green tax, but our consumers who really do care … have demonstrated that they're willing to pay a bit of a premium," said Ryan Shearman, chief executive of Aether Diamonds, which grows diamonds in the lab using captured CO2. On the opposite end of the glamour spectrum, the concrete industry, green also is good for marketing, said Robert Niven, CEO of CarbonCure Technologies, which makes technology that injects CO2 into fresh concrete, and strengthens it by locking in the carbon. "About 90 percent of our uptake has been from independent concrete producers large and small that are just looking for that competitive edge."The world needs to capture and store 10 billion tonnes of CO2 annually by midcentury to slow climate change, according to United Nations estimates, a scale the companies can only dream of, when current carbon capture pilots often are at scales of hundreds and thousands of tonnes. Humans produce greenhouse gases that are the equivalent of around 50 billion tonnes of CO2 each year, and governments will gather in Scotland in late October and November for a UN climate conference on cutting emissions. All fossil-based products that could use recycled CO2 instead account for some 6.8 billion tonnes of emissions, according to a Columbia University report in May, although lead author Amar Bhardwaj said trying to swap out all of that "would be a misuse of CO2 recycling," since there are cheaper ways to reduce carbon emissions. Nicholas Flanders, co-founder of Twelve, which uses chemical processes to reuse CO2, says recycling is better than storing captured CO2 underground. "We're developing a technology that can go toe to toe with fossil fuels" without additional financial incentives to remove carbon. That is because many consumers are attracted by "green" labels. lululemon athletica inc says it has created a polyester yarn from carbon emissions with LanzaTech that will be used for future products. LanzaTech, which has raised the most funds of companies in the space, according to Reuters' review, creates ethanol using bacteria. Ethanol is turned into ethylene which is used to make everything from plastic bottles to polyester. CEO Jennifer Holmgren said LanzaTech's ethanol is more expensive than corn-based ethanol, but customers looking to source greener products are buying.The biggest investment in the space this year, more than $350 million, was into Houston-based Solugen, which feeds CO2 and other ingredients to enzymes that make chemicals for stronger cement, water pipe coating and other products. Its products are already cheaper than those made from fossil fuels, said CEO Gaurab Chakrabarti. Still, it is not sourcing CO2 captured from factory emissions or from the air, which Chakrabarti described as “an option.” Capturing CO2 is a less enticing prospect for many investors, who think the government should fund such expensive, high-risk projects. However, Nicholas Moore Eisenberger, managing partner at Pure Energy Partners, has invested in direct air capture firm Global Thermostat and sees opportunity in necessity and believes once the projects scale up, they will be cheaper. "The science tells us that we have under a decade to start to bend the curve on climate, and that is now within the investment time frame of most venture and private equity investors," said Eisenberger.

A draft final statement at a European Union summit on Friday set a binding target of 20 percent of renewable sources in EU energy consumption by 2020 in an ambitious strategy to fight climate change. The compromise circulated by EU president Germany offered flexibility on how the 27 member states contribute to the common pan-European goal for renewables such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power. The wording appeared aimed to win over states reliant on nuclear energy, led by France, or coal, such as Poland, or small countries with few energy resources, such as Cyprus and Malta, by adding references to the national energy mix. "Differentiated national overall targets" for renewables should be set "with due regard to a fair and adequate allocation taking account of different national starting points," it said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was hoping to clinch a deal on a long-term strategy integrating energy and climate change to pressure the United States and other industrialised and emerging nations to follow the EU lead in combating global warming. On Thursday, the 27 leaders committed themselves to an ambitious target of reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for heating the planet, by 20 percent by 2020 and offered to go to 30 percent if other nations follow suit. The draft statement, seen by Reuters, also set a 10 percent minimum target for biofuels in transport to be introduced by 2020 in a cost-efficient way. In an attempt to balance pro- and anti-nuclear states, the draft added wording on the contribution of nuclear energy "in meeting growing concerns about safety of energy supply and CO2 emissions reductions while ensuring that nuclear safety and security are paramount in the decision-making process". Leaders came close to a deal on renewables on Thursday but several countries sought assurances that their special circumstances and financial limits would be taken into account when sharing the burden of meeting an EU-wide target. Merkel told a midnight news conference the strategy "will put us in a position to show the international community that Europe is playing a pioneering role". But she was cautious, saying that while she was hopeful of a compromise on Friday, further negotiations would be needed. Polish President Lech Kaczynski said: ""Poland is ready to accept binding targets as long as they are the European average and specific conditions of various countries are taken into account." French President Jacques Chirac accepted a binding target but told fellow leaders nuclear power must also play a role in Europe's drive to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Merkel said nuclear power was not a renewable energy form but could help to reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions. Several EU states are fundamentally opposed to using nuclear power or, like Germany, in the process of phasing it out. As this year's chairman of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations, Merkel wants the EU to set the agenda on the environment. Renewables currently account for less than 7 percent of the EU energy mix and the bloc is falling short of its targets both for low-carbon energy and to cut carbon dioxide emissions. The summit outcome will form the basis of the EU's position in international talks to find a replacement to the UN Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Environmentalists want the bloc to go further in its efforts to fight climate change but European business is concerned it will foot the bill by losing competitiveness to dirtier but cheaper foreign rivals. The European Commission has proposed that big utility groups be forced to sell or separate their generation businesses and distribution grids in a process known as "ownership unbundling", but Merkel said she did not expect such an agreement. The draft statement said the EU agreed on the need for "effective separation of supply and production activities from network operations" but made no reference to breaking up energy giants such as Germany's E.ON and RWE and Gaz de France and EdF.

Climate change is set to drive the spread of invasive plant and animals species, threatening forests, fisheries and crops, in a double blow to nature and livelihoods, a World Bank-funded report said on Friday. The study by Nairobi-based Global Invasive Species Programme says a warmer world, more extreme weather and higher levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide will give some species an edge, devasting ecosystems at sea and on land. "The estimated damage from invasive species worldwide totals more than $1.4 trillion annually -- 5 percent of the global economy," says the report issued on the sidelines of a major UN meeting in Japan aimed at combatting the destruction of nature. The United Nations says climate change, pollution, deforestation and over-hunting have led to a rapid rise in extinctions, threatening the richness of nature that underpins services such as clean air, water as well as food and health. "Individually, climate change and invasive species present two of the greatest threats to biodiversity and the provision of valuable ecosystem services," says the report for policymakers. It outlines myriad examples of invasive plants and animals that have proven much more adept at survival than other local species, leading to erosion, damage to crops, livestock and fisheries and lost income for tourism. In particular, climate change can lead to some local species becoming much less able to adapt to warmer temperatures or more extreme droughts and floods, making them vulnerable to other species that have much greater tolerance levels. In some cases, invasive species can also curb the amount of carbon dioxide that nature can soak up from the atmosphere. In North America, warmer winter temperatures have led to an explosion in the numbers of native mountain pine beetles, killing off large areas of forest. GREEN CRABS, LIONFISH In the Caribbean, the lionfish, which is native to coral reefs in the South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Red Sea, has quickly spread since first released in the mid-1980s. The fish is a voracious predator with venomous spines and has no natural enemies in the Caribbean, threatening local fish, shrimp and crab populations. Warming ocean temperatures in the region have helped it thrive. Along the west coast of the United States and Canada, the European green crab is threatening native clam, mussel and crab species and possibly arrived in ship ballast water. Weeds, pests and diseases were also a growing threat to agriculture, the study says, undermining food security. "Indirectly, climate change will impact agriculture by increasing the incidence and intensity of invasive species," says the report. Agriculture supports the livelihoods of more than a third of the world's population. The study also pointed to the likely spread of diseases such as bird flu, plague, Rift Valley fever, dengue, ebola and malaria. "Climate change combined with global trade and transport networks may significantly increase the threat of such pandemics," the authors say. The study urged policymakers to take steps to halt the spread of non-native species, develop early detection systems, restore and protect existing ecosystems to make them more resilient and eradicate or control species that limit nature's ability to soak up carbon.

British finance minister Gordon Brown called on Monday for international action to tackle global warming and argued the best way to change people's behaviour was through education and incentives, not taxation. Months before he is expected to take over from Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brown set out his thinking in a major speech on the environment -- an issue that is turning into a battleground for British elections expected in 2009. And with just over a week to go until his annual budget, Brown looks unlikely to sanction any big rises in so-called 'green' taxes. "It is our job, I believe, to help make it easier for people to make more sustainable choices, providing practical help with, wherever possible, incentives in preference to penalties," he told a meeting of environmental activists and business people. "Changes must be considered, costed, credible and consumer friendly not ill-conceived, short-termist, unworkable and unfair." Brown said individuals as much as businesses, institutions and governments had a duty to shoulder their responsibilities in tackling climate change. "Both at home and abroad we must build a partnership stronger, broader and deeper than ever before. Each of us can make a difference, and all of us together can make a difference," he said. The opposition Conservatives, well ahead of Brown's Labour party in opinion polls, proposed on Sunday a range of new duties on air travel such as charging value added tax (VAT) on domestic flights, or getting frequent fliers to pay a higher rate of tax. "Simply taxing aviation doesn't necessarily reduce emissions at all," said a spokesman for British Airways. "The object must be to reduce emissions, and emissions trading is a far more certain way of achieving that than taxation," he said. Opposition leader David Cameron accused Brown of giving green taxes a bad name because he had used those that existed to raise money, rather than change behaviour. "We want to use the tax system to encourage greener behaviour, not to bleed taxpayers dry," he said on Monday. "Any rises in green taxation will be compensated by reductions elsewhere -- for example in taxation on families." Brown doubled air passenger duty and raised the tax on fuel in his pre-budget report in December but environmental groups said that fell short of what was needed. The Treasury argues that many green taxes are regressive and hit the poor hardest. The Conservatives said air passenger duty was flawed as it was not linked to carbon emissions. They said their proposals instead target more polluting aircraft or people who fly more. "Our consultation shows how this can be done in a way that does not tax people out of their one foreign holiday a year but instead focuses on dirtier aircraft and more frequent fliers," Conservative shadow finance minister George Osborne said. Any tax rises will be balanced with tax cuts in other areas, the Conservatives said.

There’s also a risk that devoting our attention to these technological marvels may give us a pass from confronting a deeper question: How can we make our lives less dependent on cars? After decades of putting the automobile at the centre of the United States' transportation plans and policy, we’re now dealing with the downsides, like air pollution, traffic, road deaths, sprawl and the crowding out of alternative ways to move people and products. The solution to problems caused partly by cars may not only be using different kinds of cars but also remaking our world to rely on them less. I’ve been thinking about the risk and reward of faith in technology recently because of a new book by Peter Norton, an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. Norton detailed decades of unfulfilled promises by carmakers and tech companies that some invention was just around the corner to free us from the worst aspects of our car dependency. Radio waves, divided highway engineering, transistors and technology repurposed from targeted bombs were all pitched at points after World War II as ways of delivering an automobile utopia. Norton told me that the technologies were often half-baked but that the idea behind them was that “anyone can drive anywhere at any time and park for free and there would be no crashes.” These technologies never delivered, and Norton said he doubted that driverless cars would, either. “The whole boondoggle depends on us agreeing that high tech is better tech,” he said. “That just doesn’t stand up.” This is not only Norton’s view. Even most driverless-car optimists now say the technology won’t be ready to hit the roads in large numbers for many more years. Our health and that of the planet will significantly improve if we switch to electric cars. They are one focus of the global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. And taking error-prone drivers out of the equation could make our roads much safer. But making better cars isn’t a cure-all. Popularising electric vehicles comes with the risk of entrenching car dependency, as my New York Times Opinion colleague Farhad Manjoo wrote. Driverless cars may encourage more miles on the road, which could make traffic and sprawl worse. (Uber and similar services once also promised that they would reduce congestion and cut back on how many miles Americans drove. They did the opposite.) The future of transportation needs to include safer and more energy-efficient cars. But Norton also said that it would be useful to redirect money and attention to make walking, cycling and using shared transportation more affordable and appealing choices. What Norton is talking about might sound like a fantasy concocted by Greta Thunberg. The car is a life-changing convenience, and changing our reliance on it will be difficult, costly and contentious. Why should we try? Well, the transportation status quo is dangerous and environmentally unsustainable, and it gobbles up public space and government dollars. It took decades to build the U.S. around the car. It was a choice — at times a contested one — and we could now opt for a different path. Norton asked us to imagine what would happen if a fraction of the bonkers dollars being spent to develop driverless cars was invested in unflashy products and policy changes. He mentioned changing zoning codes to permit more homes to be built in the same places as stores, schools and workplaces so that Americans don’t have to drive everywhere. He also said that bicycles and electric railways that don’t require batteries are technology marvels that do more good than any driverless-car software ever could. Talking to Norton reminded me of the mixed blessing of innovation. We know that technology improves our lives. But we also know that belief in the promise of technology sometimes turns us away from confronting the root causes of our problems.   © 2021 The New York Times Company

“They don’t want to give anything of what we want. They want to block everything. But we will continue our efforts to make them pledge until the end,” the Bangladeshi scientist said in an interview with bdnews24.com from Glasgow in the final hours of negotiations at the COP26 summit on Friday. Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, has attended every one of the 26 COP meetings held since the first in Berlin, in 1995. Emissions cuts promised by the world's biggest climate polluters so far will add up to a dangerous 2.7-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures -- far above the more ambitious 1.5C goal of the Paris deal, backed by scientists. Wealthy countries that promised to deliver $100 billion a year in funding from 2020 to help poorer, vulnerable nations grow cleanly and adapt to climate threats - an urgent priority this decade - now say they will not meet that goal until 2023. As the talks in Glasgow hurtled toward the closing hours, a new draft agreement released Friday morning called for a doubling of money to help developing countries cope with climate impacts, and called on nations to strengthen their emissions-cutting targets by next year. But much of the text in the draft — intended to push negotiators toward a deal that all nations can agree on — remained contentious for many countries. Disputes remain over money, the speed of emissions cuts and indeed whether an agreement should even mention “fossil fuels” — the principal cause of climate change, but a term that has never before appeared in a global climate agreement. The differences, after nearly two weeks of negotiations, signalled that it would be difficult for negotiators to reach the sort of sweeping agreement that activists and scientists had urged before the start of the United Nations talks. Scientific consensus says that the world must slash greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly half by 2030 in order to stave off the most disastrous effects of global warming. But under countries’ current targets, emissions would continue to rise. Asked about possibilities of reaching an agreement on these issues, Prof Huq said, “We will try until the end. The war has not ended. We won’t give up now.” The United States and China unveiled a deal to ramp up cooperation tackling climate change, including by cutting methane emissions, phasing out coal consumption and protecting forests on Wednesday. A joint China-US declaration on climate change is a political reset to a time when the world's two biggest carbon emitters reached the brief meeting of minds that helped forge the 2015 Paris Agreement. But that still won't be enough to avert a deepening climate crisis, unless Washington and Beijing can match words with more action to curb fossil fuels and prod others at the COP26 talks in Glasgow to do the same. Prof Huq welcomed the latest deal, but said questions remained unanswered. “China and the US are big polluters. It’s good if they agree to work together. But the announcement does not have details. We don’t know what has happened actually.” He said the delegates and negotiators of Bangladeshi, one of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate impacts, presented their views at both private and public levels of the talks.   “The main thing is negotiation – what we can achieve from different governments. It’s not easy to take something as the rich nations do not want to give something easily. This is the war.”      [With details from Reuters and The New York Times]

President Barack Obama on Thursday assured Canada, his country's biggest trading partner, that he would not pursue protectionist policies, and the two neighbors agreed to cooperate on cleaner energy technology. Obama, on his first trip abroad as president, sought in talks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to allay Canadian concerns raised by a "Buy American" clause in a $787 billion U.S. economic recovery plan he signed this week. "Now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signals of protectionism," Obama told a joint news conference after several hours of talks with Harper on his one-day visit to Ottawa. "And as obviously one of the largest economies in the world, it's important for us to make sure that we are showing leadership in the belief that trade ultimately is beneficial to all countries," he said. He stressed the United States would meet its international trade obligations and told Harper he wanted to "grow trade not contract it." "I'm quite confident that the United States will respect those obligations and continue to be a leader on the need for globalized trade," Harper said afterward. Harper said he was willing to look at strengthening the environmental and labor provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, something Obama has said he wants. But the Canadian leader said he did not support renegotiating the agreement, which has boosted trade between the two countries. The two sides announced they would collaborate on environmentally friendly technologies that would help them develop an electricity grid fueled by clean, renewable energy and to tap their vast fossil fuel resources with less pollution. The technology is not cost-effective now. "How we produce and use energy is fundamental to our economic recovery, but also our security and our planet. And we know that we can't afford to tackle these issues in isolation," Obama said, adding there was "no silver bullet" solution. GOING FURTHER ON CLIMATE Environmentalists want Obama to go further and pressure Canada to clean up its oil sands in the western province of Alberta, from which oil is extracted in a process that spews out large amounts of greenhouse gases. "Tar sands create three times the global warming pollution as conventional oil and are not a viable alternative, no matter how the Canadian government and oil industry portray it," said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the International Program Natural Resources Defense Council. But with his country facing its worst economic crisis in decades, Obama stressed the importance of Canada as the United States' largest energy provider. Most of the output of the oil sands is destined for U.S. markets. Despite the agreement to stimulate the development of green energy, Harper said it was too early for the countries to talk about a shared strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Obama, who took office last month, campaigned on a pledge to reduce U.S. emissions by 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. In contrast to a passive approach by his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama is committed to tackling global warming, but he said climate change initiatives must be balanced against economic considerations in the midst of a worldwide recession. A White House official said the joint U.S.-Canadian green energy initiative would work on "elements like carbon capture and sequestration and the smart grid." Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for warming the Earth. Carbon sequestration, which is not yet commercially viable, involves capturing the gas and storing it underground before it enters the atmosphere. On Afghanistan, where Canada has 2,700 troops as part of a NATO-led force fighting a growing insurgency, Obama said he had not asked for more military help. Obama ordered 17,000 new U.S. troops there this week to battle the insurgency. Harper said Ottawa, which plans to withdraw its troops in 2011, would expand economic aid to Afghanistan, already Canada's biggest foreign recipient of aid.

Climate change could threaten China's growing prosperity, if it does not join global efforts to reign in output of carbon dioxide, Britain's foreign minister said on Monday after a visit to the world's number two emitter. "If we don't tackle the impact of climate change, the prosperity of China could be threatened, but then so is the prosperity of the whole world," said British foreign secretary Margaret Beckett during a visit to Hong Kong after a trip to China where she met top leaders. "China's made some substantial strides... in reducing the intensity of energy usage... but of course they want to and we all need them to make still more progress," she added. Temperatures across the country have risen faster than global averages over the past fifty years, and a government report warned it faces droughts in the north, increased flooding in the south and falling crop yields as the globe gets hotter. "We're talking about a potentially very, very serious impact," Beckett added, saying the world needed China to make a transition to a low-carbon energy efficient economy successfully. But Beijing has rejected caps on its emissions growth for the coming decades, and called for more technology transfer. Officials argue rich nations are responsible for most of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and should lead efforts to cut back emissions while allowing developing countries to industrialise. But China could overtake the United States to become the top emitter of global warming gasses as early as this year, the International Energy Agency has said, raising pressure on its government to act. Despite recent UN reports ringing alarm bells on global warming, pessimism has mounted over the prospects of launching formal talks to extend the Kyoto protocol on the reduction of carbon emissions beyond 2012 at a conference in Indonesia in December. The United States has refused to ratify Kyoto, while rapidly developing nations like China and India were not set targets. At a Group of Eight meeting next month, hosts Germany want member countries to agree to halve climate-warming carbon emissions by 2050 and promote carbon trading to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Beckett said the UK would be "pushing hard for consensus" at this meeting.

The consultation was held at Jhalakathi Deputy Commissioner Md Johor Ali’s office on Monday. Additional secretaries to the ministry of environment, forest and climate change Sanjay Kumar Bhowmik and Md Mizanul Haque Chowdhury were also present, according to a statement from the UNDP. In the keynote, Malik Fida A Khan, executive director of the CEGIS, stated the importance of NAP. He said that NAP was a participatory and country-driven process and would address the medium to long-term adaptation needs of Bangladesh and turn her into a climate-resilient country in the long run. He added that NAP would specifically address the climate vulnerability of the coastal regions, address the existing capacity gaps and establish a knowledge management system on climate change adaptation. The consultation discussed major climatic risks in different coastal districts, adaptation strategies of the farmers and determinants of the choice of those strategies. Jhalakathi and other coastal districts are vulnerable to increasing salinity of its groundwater as well as surface water resources, especially along the coast, due to increases in sea level as a direct impact of global warming. Participants agreed that the livelihood of smallholder farmers is affected by climatic risks such as cyclones, increasing soil and water salinity, storm surges and heavy rainfall, that can lead to flooding and waterlogging. They stressed a master plan to address these challenges. “UNDP will provide full support to Bangladesh in combatting climate change,” said AKM Azad Rahman, programme officer for climate change at the UNDP. “We're closely working with the government in designing sustainable projects in coastal regions.” Sanjay Bhowmik said, “NAP will be the guiding policy document for our adaptation efforts and will supplement all the national-level planning. Through the consultation, we're delegating its ownership to you”. “For successful implementation of NAP, we will need a partnership with both at the national and local level,” he maintained. Also the national project director of the NAP Formulation Project, Mizanul said: “NAP will be harmonised with the national planning process and supplement the Annual Development Programme, Five Year Plan, Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, etc.” He emphasised raising awareness to combat climate change, protect the environment and mainstream adaptation efforts. Johor Ali said rainwater harvesting can be an effective adaptation strategy for the coastal regions. The ministry, Economic Relations Division and the UNDP co-organised the event with support from the Green Climate Fund.

Although Le Pen came across as more polished and composed than in a TV duel for the presidency in 2017, Macron went on the offensive over her ties to Russian leadership, her plans for the economy and her policy for the European Union. With the deciding vote just four days away, some 59% of viewers found Macron to have been the most convincing in the debate, according to a snap poll for BFM TV. That suggested the almost three-hour showdown would not alter the course of the election, with Macron ahead in all previous polls. Voter surveys have shown a widening of Macron's lead over Le Pen to as much as 56%-44% since the first round on April 10, and analysts said the debate was unlikely to swing voting intentions in Le Pen's favour. "Yes, Emmanuel Macron won but his adversary has avoided a repeat of last time's disaster," Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador said on Twitter. "This debate doesn't disqualify her like the one in 2017, but it doesn't help her close the gap either." On the offensive for most of the debate, Macron's most piercing line of attack was on a loan to Le Pen's party for her 2017 campaign contracted through a Russian bank. "You talk about your banker when you talk about Russia, that's the problem," Macron told his opponent. "You depend on Russian power, you depend on Mr Putin." On the cost of living, rated the most important issue for the French in this election, Macron also appeared to put Le Pen on the defensive, asking her why she had voted against his plans to cap electricity prices if she wanted to help hard-up workers. 'ARROGANT VS SCARY' Still, during the debate Macron failed to dispel an image of haughtiness that has taken root during his presidency. He interrupted his rival repeatedly with lines like "Mrs Le Pen is much more disciplined than five years ago", and "Stop mixing everything up". "Mr Macron, stop lecturing me," Le Pen retorted. By contrast, she adopted a much more courteous and softer tone than in 2017, even going so far as to applaud Macron's diplomatic efforts to prevent war in Ukraine. An Elabe snap opinion poll on each candidate's personal characteristics showed 50% of the French thought Macron had come across as arrogant during the debate, while only 16% thought Le Pen had. Le Pen also appeared marginally more in tune with regular citizens, with 37% of viewers saying she sounded closer to people's concerns, while only 34% thought Macron did. She also delivered a memorable punchline, which may resonate with left-wing and younger voters who think Macron has not done enough to combat climate change, despite his early-mandate slogan "Make our planet great again". "I am not a climate sceptic, but you're a bit of a climate hypocrite," Le Pen quipped. But Macron's mastery of policy details made him look more "presidential", the same Elabe poll showed, while she failed to convince a majority of viewers she was fit to govern. "Each of them has a huge weakness," Bernard Sananes of pollster Elabe said. "Emmanuel Macron is considered arrogant by more than one in two viewers. And Marine Le Pen remains scary for half of them."

Despite record wildfires in the Amazon and President Jair Bolsonaro previously saying his government lacked the money to fight the blazes, it was not clear if Brazil would accept the G7 offer amid growing international concern. Personal relations between French President Emmanuel Macron and Bolsonaro, already strained by the crisis in the Amazon, deteriorated even further after Brazil's leader mocked Macron's wife on Facebook. Facing increased isolation abroad for his stance on the unfolding environmental crisis, Bolsonaro also found himself under mounting pressure at home, with a poll on Monday showing that his government's approval rating sank to 29.4% in August. "We will straightaway offer Amazonian countries that signal to us their needs, financial support," Macron said in the wealthy resort of Biarritz on France's Atlantic coast. Many of the fires sweeping through the Amazon are thought to have been started deliberately in Brazil, with environmentalists blaming speculators who burn vegetation to clear it in hopes of selling the land to farmers and ranchers. Global anger and concern has been steadily rising as the blazes have raged because of the rainforest's importance to the environment. The Amazon is often described as "the lungs of the world" due to its vast ability to absorb carbon dioxide. Within minutes of the G7 move, however, Bolsonaro said Brazil was being treated like "a colony or no man's land," and denounced the creation of an international alliance to save the Amazon as an attack on his nation's sovereignty. However, Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles struck a different note, calling the aid "welcome." Later on Monday, presidential spokesman said Bolsonaro might visit the Amazon region later this week, to check on the efforts to combat the fires. Calling the Amazon fires a global emergency, Macron pushed the disaster to the top of the G7 agenda and said the member states were ready to provide concrete help. "France will do so with military support in the coming hours," he said, without giving further details. Canada said it would send water bombers to Brazil to help contain the blaze and was also contributing C$15 million ($11.30 million) in aid. "One of the things we have seen over the past years as Canada has faced increasingly extreme wildfire events is there is a global network of support and friends that lean on each other," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the end of the summit. More international celebrities voiced their concern over the fires on Monday, with actor Leonardo DiCaprio telling Reuters that the crisis is "incredibly tragic" and that governments must do more to fight climate change. DiCaprio also pledged $5 million for the rainforest. TRUMP CRITICISES WINDMILLS Chilean President Sebastián Piñera was invited to join the wealthy-nation leaders in Biarritz, and said the G7 plan would be implemented in two stages. "Countries urgently need fire fighters and specialised water bombers. This will be the first step that will be implemented immediately. The second phase is to protect these forests, protect the biodiversity they contain and reforest this region of the world," he added. The Amazon is home to an estimated one million indigenous people from up to 500 tribes as well some three million species of plants and animals, including jaguars, sloths, giant otters, river dolphins, howler monkeys, toucans, reptiles, frogs and insects. Macron added that the G7, which comprises the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain and Canada, would draw up an initiative for the Amazon that will be launched at next month's UN General Assembly in New York. On Monday, Brazil's Foreign Ministry ordered its ambassadors in Europe and other G7 countries not to take vacations for the next two weeks in order to coordinate a diplomatic response to global concerns over the fires. US President Donald Trump was absent from the talks on climate change and biodiversity at a G7 session on Monday, and Macron said he had been busy holding bilateral meetings. "He wasn't in the room, but his team was," Macron said. "You shouldn't read anything into the American president's absence... The US are with us on biodiversity and on the Amazon initiative." However, in his closing news conference at the summit, Trump made clear he was not about to embrace the environmentalist cause. "We are now the No. 1 energy producer in the world," he said in response to a question about climate change. "I'm not going to lose that wealth, I'm not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren't working too well," he added.

As government and business leaders prepare to meet at the forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the world's nations are divided over who should pay for lowering emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for a growing number of extreme weather events.Recessions in Western economies since the global financial crisis have slowed carbon emission growth but also left governments with scarcer state funds to channel into green technologies.The Green Growth Action Alliance, which compiled the study on behalf of the WEF, said the extra spending was needed to promote other forms of energy generation and greater efficiency in sectors including building, industry and transport.The $700 billion, part of which would promote cleaner energies such as wind, solar or hydro-power, would be on top of about $5 trillion projected to be spent each year on infrastructure under a scenario of business as usual until 2020."Shaping a global economy fit for the 21st century is our greatest challenge," former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and chair of the Alliance wrote in the report.The Alliance is a public and private group tied to the WEF that was launched at a Group of 20 meeting in Mexico last year.The study said a $36 billion annual rise in global public spending to slow climate change - less than the estimated $50 billion cost of damage by Superstorm Sandy in the United States in October - could unlock far greater private investment.It suggested a $36 billion jump in state spending to $126 billion a year, from a current $90 billion, might trigger $570 billion from private investors if properly managed.It noted that the world population was set to rise to about 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion now."Greening the economy is the only way to accommodate 9 billion people by 2050," said Thomas Kerr, Director of Climate Change Initiatives at the WEF.COMBINED EFFORTGovernments and the private sector have often failed to work in tandem to mobilise funds to combat climate change."There is still private sector money going to climate destruction," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the National Resources Defense Council in Washington. "To deal with climate change, everyone has to be moving in the right direction.""And the key to all of this is how do you unlock big sources of private finance... Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds have a lot of capital. Mobilizing them would be the holy grail."The WEF-commissioned report pointed to some hopeful signs -- global investment in renewable energy in 2011 rose to a new record $257 billion, up 17 percent from 2010.But UN climate negotiations in Qatar in December ended with little progress on a global framework for emissions cuts.Instead, governments agreed to devise a new United Nations pact to limit climate change that would enter into force from 2020.A study published in the science journal Nature this month said it would be far cheaper to act now to keep global warming within an agreed UN limit of 2 degrees Celsius than to wait until 2020.

The world's top greenhouse gas emitters meet in Paris this week to work out ways to slow global warming with uncertainty about whether the US-backed talks will help or hinder plans for a new UN climate treaty. Washington says the April 17-18 meeting, with a workshop on sectoral industrial greenhouse targets on Wednesday, is a step towards agreement by the end of 2008 on curbs by countries that emit 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. But many nations are sceptical about President George W Bush's late conversion to a need for more climate action since the United States is isolated among rich nations in opposing caps on emissions under the UN's existing Kyoto Protocol. "I still think it's helpful," said Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, of the US track. Paris will be the third meeting since Bush sought talks in 2007 among major emitters such as China, India and the European Union. But there are risks of overlaps between the US-led talks and separate UN negotiations among all countries meant to end in 2009 with a new global warming treaty to avert ever more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. De Boer said he sensed that some nations were "a little concerned ... that this (US-led) process doesn't prejudge the outcome" of the wider UN negotiations. "At the same time there is a fairly strong common feeling that a strong statement from leaders (of major economies) will help" the U.N. talks, he told Reuters. "The challenge is: how do you do one without getting into difficulties for the other?" He also said it was important for countries to set goals such as 2020 for cuts in greenhouse gases rather than long-term 2050 goals that were too far off to affect current politicians. SUCCESSOR Bush has said the US track aims to get big economies lined up to support the U.N. process, even though a UN treaty will be agreed after he steps down in January 2009. Other nations are wary since Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have all promised tougher goals than Bush for capping emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. Bush has long favoured voluntary climate goals rather than Kyoto-style caps which he views as a threat to US jobs and unfair since developing nations have no commitments. The Paris meeting will group the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. The European Commission, current European Union president Slovenia and the United Nations will also attend. Some countries will send environment ministers, others deputy ministers or senior officials. The United States said that the Paris meeting is a step towards a declaration by leaders of major economies in coming months about climate change, perhaps on the sidelines of a Group of Eight summit in Japan, or later this year. Some experts say the world has become more less sceptical of the US talks as a complement to the UN negotiations launched in Bali, Indonesia, in December. "It's good to have it right now. We need these parallel discussions in order to stick to the timetable that was set in Bali which is next to impossible," said Susanne Droege of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Four nations led by China pledged on Sunday to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions and challenged rich countries to come up with funding to help fight global warming. Environment ministers and envoys from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in New Delhi in a show of unity by countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest rising in the world. The bloc was key to brokering a political agreement at the Copenhagen talks in December and its meeting in India was designed in part to put pressure on richer nations to make good on funding commitments. "We have sent a very powerful symbol to the world of our intentions," the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint press conference after seven hours of talks. The group discussed setting up a climate fund to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which it said would act as a wakeup call for wealthier countries to meet their pledges on financial assistance and give $10 billion in 2010. Rich countries have pledged $30 billion in climate change funding for the 2010-12 period and set a goal of $100 billion by 2020, far less than what developing countries had wanted. The group in New Delhi said releasing $10 billion this year would send a signal of the rich countries' commitment. The four said they were in talks to set up an independent fund for the same purpose, but gave no timeline or figure. "When we say we will be reinforcing technical support as well as funds to the most vulnerable countries, we are giving a slap in the face to the rich countries," Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said through a translator. The non-binding accord worked out at the Copenhagen climate summit was described by many as a failure because it fell short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heatwaves, droughts and crop failures. China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four. China was blamed by many countries at Copenhagen for obstructing a tougher deal and has refused to submit to outside scrutiny of its plans to brake greenhouse gas emissions. China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said the world needed to take immediate action to fight climate change. But in the wake of a controversial exaggeration by the UN climate panel on the threat of global warming to the Himalayan glaciers, he called for an "open attitude" to climate science. "(There is a) point of view that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of the nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research," he said through a translator. "We want our views to be more scientific and more consistent."

Leaders of 16 Asian countries, including top polluters China and Japan, agreed to a vague pact on climate change on Wednesday, trying to put aside discord over Myanmar's suppression of democracy protests. In the declaration signed in Singapore, leaders of the East Asia Summit (EAS) committed to stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the long run. But the pact, which contains no fixed targets on cutting emissions or even limiting their growth by a specific date, would serve as a basis for climate change negotiations at a major UN meeting next month in Bali. The EAS -- 10 Southeast Asian nations plus China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- -- also agreed that "all countries should play a role in addressing the common challenge of climate change, based on the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." Asked why the declaration did not include any numerical targets, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: "This is a declaration of intent, not a negotiated treaty of what we are going to do to restrict ourselves." Australia said the pact would make it easier to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations hopes the Bali meeting will kick off two years of talks to agree on a new global framework to fight climate change. "There has been a turning of the tide in China and India's position -- they're saying 'yes we need to do something to stabilise emissions'," Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said earlier. China, the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the United States, and India have steadfastly refused to agree to fixed targets and want rich nations to take the lead in cutting emissions and pay for cleaner energy technology. "It's not positive but what can we expect? We can't expect countries like China or India to be on the same line as Japan -- these emerging countries are not ready to move first," said Emmanuel Fages, carbon analyst at French bank Societe Generale. "There's nothing homogenous in Asia," he added. The only numerical target in the climate pact was on forest cover. The group agreed to "work to achieve an EAS-wide aspirational goal of increasing cumulative forest area in the region by at least 15 million hectares (37.5 million acres) of all types of forest by 2020". MAD ABOUT MYANMAR While the East Asian leaders tried to focus on climate change and trade, the issue of how to encourage wayward member Myanmar to embrace democracy soured ASEAN's 40th anniversary celebrations at which the grouping adopted a legal charter. The Philippines broke ranks with other Association of South East Asian Nations members and called for the immediate release of detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. "We particularly deplore the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi. She must be released. Now," Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement. Arroyo said on Monday the Philippine Congress might not ratify the charter if Myanmar did not commit to democracy and release Suu Kyi. The charter -- which gives ASEAN a legal identity and enshrines principles of democracy and human rights -- needs to be ratified within 12 months following the signatures on Tuesday. "All countries have to ratify it to bring it into effect," Singapore's Lee told reporters. He added the sanctions that Western countries had slapped on Myanmar were ineffective because the regime had chosen to isolate itself from the outside world. "You say I don't want to do business in Myanmar but it's water off a duck's back," Lee said.

"The deterioration of the oceans has never been so fast as in the last decades," Marco Lambertini, director general of the WWF International conservation group, told Reuters of the study entitled "Reviving the Ocean Economy". Ocean output, judged as a nation, would rank seventh behind the gross domestic product of Britain and just ahead of Brazil's on a list led by the United States and China, the study said. The report, by WWF, the Global Change Institute at Queensland University in Australia and the Boston Consulting Group, estimated that annual "gross marine product" (GMP) was currently worth $2.5 trillion. That included fisheries, coastal tourism, shipping lanes and the fact that the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air, helping to slow global warming. The study did not estimate the rate of decline in GMP. Lambertini said the report aimed to put pressure on governments to act by casting the environment in economic terms and was a shift for the WWF beyond stressing threats to creatures such as turtles or whales. "It's not just about wildlife, pretty animals. It is about us," he said. The report, for instance, values carbon dioxide absorbed from the air at $39 per tonne, drawing on estimates by the US Environmental Protection Agency to judge damage from warming such as more flooding or risks to human health. The study estimated that total ocean assets, such as coral reefs, mangroves, shipping lanes and carbon absorption, were worth a total of $24 trillion, about 10 times annual output. Governments have repeatedly promised, and failed, to prevent ocean degradation. A UN Earth Summit in South Africa in 2002, for instance, set 2015 as the goal for restoring depleted fish stocks. Lambertini said UN sustainable development goals for 2030, due to be set in September, could help the oceans recover if properly implemented, along with a UN deal to combat climate change due at a summit in Paris in December. He also urged governments to achieve a UN goal of creating protected areas to cover 10 percent of all ocean area by 2020, up from 3.4 percent now.

in 2030 the obesity rate would not exceed 60 percent in any state, in contrast to the 13 in the business-as-usual projection.

The International Monetary Fund's largest-ever distribution of monetary reserves will provide additional liquidity for the global economy, supplementing member countries’ foreign exchange reserves and reducing their reliance on more expensive domestic or external debt, Georgieva said in a statement. "The allocation is a significant shot in the arm for the world and, if used wisely, a unique opportunity to combat this unprecedented crisis," she said. Countries can use the SDR allocation to support their economies and step up their fight against the coronavirus crisis, but should not use the fiscal space to delay needed economic reforms or debt restructuring, the IMF said in separate guidance document. IMF member countries will receive SDRs -- the fund's unit of exchange backed by dollars, euros, yen, sterling and yuan -- in proportion with their existing quota shareholdings in the fund. Georgieva said about $275 billion of the allocation will go to emerging market and developing countries, with some $21 billion to flow to low-income countries. Georgieva said the IMF was encouraging rich countries that receive SDRs to channel them to poorer countries that need them more. One key option is for wealthier countries to contribute SDRs to the IMF's existing Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust for low-income countries, she said. The IMF was also continuing to work on a possible Resilience and Sustainability Trust that could use channeled SDRs to help the most vulnerable countries with structural transformation, including dealing with climate change, she said. Another possibility, she said, could be to channel SDRs to support lending by multilateral development banks. The IMF's last SDR distribution came in 2009 when member countries received $250 billion in SDR reserves to help ease the global financial crisis. To spend their SDRs, countries would first have to exchange them for underlying hard currencies, requiring them to find a willing exchange partner country.

The winners were Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University, Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and Giorgio Parisi of the Sapienza University of Rome. The work of all three is essential to understanding how the Earth’s climate is changing and how human behaviour is influencing those changes. “The discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations,” said Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. Complex systems, such as the climate, are often defined by their disorder. This year’s winners helped bring understanding to the seeming chaos, by describing those systems and predicting their long-term behaviour. Manabe demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures on the surface of the Earth. “In the 1960s, he led the development of physical models of the Earth’s climate and was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses,” the committee said. Hasselmann, a decade later, created a model that links weather and climate, “answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic,” the Nobel committee said in its statement. American scientists Julius and Patapoutian win 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine Parisi’s discoveries were described as “among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems.” He is credited with the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales. “They make it possible to understand and describe many different and apparently entirely random materials and phenomena, not only in physics but also in other, very different areas, such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning,” the committee said. Why is the work important? All three scientists have been working to understand the complex natural systems that have been driving climate change for decades, and their discoveries have provided the scaffolding on which predictions about climate are built. The importance of their work has only gained urgency as the forecast models reveal an increasingly dire outlook if the rise in global temperature is not arrested. The global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end even if all countries meet their promised emissions cuts, a rise that is likely to bring more extreme wildfires, droughts and floods, according to a United Nations report released in September. That level of warming, measured against preindustrial levels, is likely to increase the frequency of deadly heat waves and threaten coastal cities with rising sea levels, the country-by-country analysis concluded. “It’s clear that for the future generation, we have to act now in a very fast way,” Parisi said at a news conference after the prize was announced. Who are the winners? Manabe is a senior meteorologist and climatologist at Princeton University. Born in 1931 in Shingu, Japan, he earned his doctorate in 1957 from the University of Tokyo before joining the US Weather Bureau as a research meteorologist. In the 1960s, he led groundbreaking research into how increased levels of carbon dioxide lead to higher temperatures on the surface of the Earth. That work “laid the foundation for the development of current climate models,” according to the Nobel judges. Hasselmann is a German physicist and oceanographer who greatly advanced public understanding of climate change through the creation of a model that links climate and chaotic weather systems. He is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. He received his doctorate in 1957 from the University of Göttingen in Germany before founding the meteorology institute, which he was head of until 1999. He is also the founder of what is now known as the Global Climate Forum. In 2009, Hasselmann received the 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change.   Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist who was born in 1948 in Rome and whose research has focused on quantum field theory and complex systems. He received his doctorate from the Sapienza University of Rome in 1970. In 1980, he was responsible for discovering hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. He is a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome. Who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics? The physics prize went to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their discoveries that have improved the understanding of the universe, including work on black holes. Who else won a Nobel Prize in the sciences in 2021? — On Monday, the prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for work that has led to the development of nonopioid painkillers. Who else won Nobel Prizes in science in 2020? — Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice received the prize for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus. — The chemistry prize was jointly awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their work on the development of Crispr-Cas9, a method for genome editing. ©2021 The New York Times Company Hasselmann and Parisi win Nobel Prize in Physics