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French President Emmanuel Macron wants to press ahead with implementing the pact to fight climate change after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark deal reached in the French capital in 2015. Hulot presented an array of measures under six themes and 23 policy proposals, but most were short of specific details on how exactly the objectives would be achieved. "One of the symbolic acts of the plan is that France, which previously had made the promise to divide its greenhouse gas emissions by four by 2050, has decided to become carbon neutral by 2050 following the US decision," Hulot said. "The carbon neutral objective will force us to make the necessary investments," he added. He said the proposals such as the decision to end the sale of fossil fuel powered vehicles was a tall order and would constitute something of a 'revolution', but solutions were available and French carmakers would be up to the task. Diesel and gasoline vehicles represented about 95.2 percent of French new car fleets in the first half of year, while electric vehicles hold 1.2 percent of the market. Hybrid cars make up about 3.5 percent. Hulot cited the example of Geely's Volvo that plans to go all electric with new models from 2019, and noted India was also targeting an all-electric vehicles fleet by 2030. Hulot said that even if France lagged countries such as Sweden and Costa Rica on this front, it would nevertheless embrace that 'spirit' and look to end the sale of diesel and petrol cars by 2040. End fossil fuels Hulot said ending the use of fossil fuels was also central in the French objective to cut carbon emissions and become carbon neutral by 2050. Among the key policy proposals is the plan to end the delivery of hydrocarbon licences in France, with legislation to that effect due later this year. France will end coal-generated electricity production by 2022 and the government maintained its objective of cutting the share of nuclear power generation in the French electricity make-up to 50 percent by 2025, from over 75 percent at present. "The 2025 date is the objective, I hope we will keep to it," said Hulot. France will also take measures to restrict the use of palm oil in the production of biofuels with the aim of reducing indirect deforestation. Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said that although the French government had carried out the right analysis of the situation, the proposals were short of concrete measures to deal with the urgent challenges posed by climate change. "We are left wanting, on how these objectives will be achieved," Greenpeace campaigner Cyrille Cormier said in a statement.

CANBERRA, Tue Jul 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Australia's government is considering doubling compensation for coal miners under its carbon trade scheme, media reports said on Tuesday, as a new poll found Australians want carbon laws delayed to next year. Australia is the world's top coal exporter but the coal industry has complained the planned emissions trading system (ETS), due to start in July 2011, would force mines to close and lead to thousands of job losses. The Australian newspaper said the government was considering lifting compensation under the ETS for the coal industry to A$1.5 billion ($1.24 billion) to protect jobs and help build political support for its scheme. A spokesman for Junior Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, who is leading talks with the coal industry on the ETS, said the minister had no comment on the media speculation. Australia's carbon trade scheme will cover 1,000 of Australia's biggest companies and will put a price on carbon pollution, giving business a financial incentive to curb emissions over time. The government had previously offered the coal industry A$750 million in compensation for the ETS, but the Australian Coal Association said without changes, the scheme would cost the industry about A$14.5 billion over 10 years. Coal miners want the government to treat coal the same as the aluminium, cement and liquefied natural gas industries, which will receive 60 to 90 percent of their carbon permits free in the initial years of carbon trading. But government officials have said exempting coal from the costs of the ETS would see a hole of about A$500 million a year in expected revenue from the sale of carbon permits. Under existing plans, only 23 big polluting coal mines, out of Australia's 121 coal mines, would receive compensation for the impact of the ETS. Other mines would not be included in the ETS as their emissions are below the ETS threshold. COPENHAGEN DEADLINE Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants laws to set up carbon trading, and lock in an emissions reduction target of up to 25 percent by 2020, passed by parliament ahead of global climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December. The laws remain locked in parliament's upper house Senate, where the government needs an extra seven votes to pass its legislation, and are set to be defeated when a vote is taken on Aug. 13. Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has said he would be willing to pass the laws later in the year if the government agrees to a series of amendments, including more protection for the coal and coal-fired electricity sectors. If the laws are rejected twice, Rudd, who remains well ahead in opinion polls, could have the option of calling a snap election in early 2010, rather than waiting for the next scheduled election in late 2010 or early 2011. A Newspoll in the Australian newspaper on Tuesday found Rudd had extended his lead over the opposition and would easily win an election held now, with 57 percent support compared to 43 percent for the opposition. The Newspoll also said 53 percent of those polled believed Australia should either wait until after the Copenhagen talks before it passes its ETS laws, or should not introduce carbon trading at all. Australia produces about 1.5 percent of the world's carbon emissions, but is one of the leading per-capita polluters due to its reliance on coal fired power for about 80 percent of the nation's electricity.

After a lightning visit to Iraq where he hinted at possible US troop cuts, President George W Bush arrived in Australia on Tuesday for an Asia-Pacific leaders' meeting amid heavy security and anti-war protests. Trade and climate change will top the agenda at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, and Bush wants the forum's 21 economies to agree to a strongly worded pledge to reinvigorate the Doha round of world trade talks. But the subject of Iraq will loom over Bush's visit to Australia, whose troop contribution there is featuring prominently in Prime Minister John Howard's re-election bid. Howard is a staunch Bush ally. Stopping over at a desert air base in Iraq en route to APEC, Bush hailed progress in the war and raised the prospect of troop cuts after meeting top commanders. Bush is likely to return to that theme on Wednesday morning at a joint news conference with Howard, whose support for Bush and the war has contributed to his weakness in the polls against opposition leader Kevin Rudd. Australia has about 1,500 troops in and around Iraq. Rudd has vowed to pull non-essential troops from Iraq if he wins. Bush will spend much of Wednesday with Howard, taking part in a lunch with troops and a dinner at Kirribilli House, the prime minister's residence on Sydney Harbour. Bush plans to meet Rudd on Thursday and has made clear he would try to persuade the Labor Party leader to back down on his opposition to the Iraq war. Rudd has said he would not do so. An opinion poll released on Tuesday, commissioned by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, found 52 percent of Australians believed Bush was the worst president in US history. Just 32 percent said he was not. Highlighting the strong opposition to the war in Australia, several protests were planned for the APEC meetings, culminating in a major march by the "Stop Bush Coalition" on Saturday, when the leaders meet at the Sydney Opera House. On Tuesday, antiwar protesters rallied in front of the city's main railway station hours before Bush arrived amid the nation's biggest ever security operation. "We are here today on the eve of APEC to tell George Bush that he is not welcome, wherever he and his architects of death may travel," said U.S. Iraq veteran Matt Howard in Sydney. Authorities have erected a 5-km (3-mile) security fence across the central business district to isolate the leaders in the Opera House and nearby hotels. A total of 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the city centre. Protesters also plan to demonstrate against global warming, human rights abuses in China and nuclear proliferation. Members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement staged a candle-lit protest when Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in the mining state of Western Australia on Monday. "We'll be following him during his stay in Australia," Lucy Zhao, a Falun Gong campaign organiser, said at a small rally. Although he has made climate change a major issue at APEC, Howard has said there will be no binding greenhouse gas emission targets. Green groups have said APEC will be a failure if the leaders fail to set such targets. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the APEC hosts were looking for a broad-based approach to the issue. "We will be pressing for a commitment by all APEC economies to the key elements of a genuinely global response to climate change," Downer said in a speech to foreign correspondents. But some developing countries in the Pacific Rim grouping are uncomfortable that APEC is moving further away from its original mission of focusing on trade and investment. The United States is pushing for a strong statement from APEC leaders in support of a world trade pact. A draft of the leaders' statement obtained by Reuters said they would pledge to ensure that the Doha round of global trade talks "enter their final phase this year".

Eilish also said, "You don't need me to tell you things are a mess. Donald Trump is destroying our country and everything that we care about." She urged viewers to vote against him, and for Joe Biden. Night three of the convention has US Senator Kamala Harris making history when she accepts the Democratic nomination for vice president, saying the country is at an inflection point and “we can do better” than four more years of Trump. “We need leaders who will solve problems like climate change and COVID, not deny them. Leaders who will fight against systemic racism and inequality. And that starts by voting for someone who understands how much is at stake. Someone who's building a team that shares our values. It starts with voting against Donald Trump, and for Joe Biden. Silence is not an option. And we cannot sit this one out.” ‘Silence is not an option’: Pop sensation Billie Eilish urges Americans to vote against Donald Trump. More #DNC2020 coverage: https://t.co/QIyeu5KEk5 pic.twitter.com/5O9waUVEB2— Reuters (@Reuters) August 20, 2020   ‘Silence is not an option’: Pop sensation Billie Eilish urges Americans to vote against Donald Trump. More #DNC2020 coverage: https://t.co/QIyeu5KEk5 pic.twitter.com/5O9waUVEB2

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

UNITED NATIONS,April 08 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Dozens of world leaders gather in Washington next week for an unprecedented meeting on nuclear security, with USPresident Barack Obama hoping they can agree on how to keep atomic bombs out of terrorists' hands. Although the gathering of 47 countries will not focus on individual nations, the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea -- and possible new UN sanctions against Tehran -- are expected to come up in Obama's bilateral meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders, as well as in the speeches of Israeli and other participants. Hu's decision to attend the summit, Western diplomats said, was a major victory for Obama, since it indicates that Beijing does not want bilateral tensions over Taiwan and other issues to cripple Sino-US relations and cooperation on other key security and foreign policy topics. A draft communique circulated to countries attending the summit, the contents of which were described to Reuters, includes a US proposal to "secure all vulnerable nuclear material in four years." The draft text will likely be revised before it is adopted at the end of the April 12-13 meeting. Analysts and Western diplomats say the significance of the summit meeting -- one of the biggest of its kind in Washington since World War Two -- goes far beyond its official agenda. "Too many people see nuclear security as a narrow technical issue of concern only to those most fearful of nuclear terrorism," Ian Kearns of British American Security Information Council said in a report. "If leaders at the summit get it right, they could render nuclear power safer to use in the fight against climate change, strengthen the non-proliferation regime, and build further international confidence in ... nuclear disarmament," said Kearns, who is an adviser to Britain's parliamentary committee on national security. In addition to China's Hu, attendees include Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Also represented will be India and Pakistan, which never signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but have atomic arsenals, and Israel, another NPT holdout that is presumed to have atomic weapons but has never confirmed it. NO INVITATIONS FOR IRAN, NORTH KOREA The inclusion of Pakistan, diplomats say, is important since it is one of the countries that has pledged to improve its internal safeguards. Disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was the kingpin of an illicit atomic network that provided atomic technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Two nations excluded from the meeting are Iran, which the United States and its Western allies accuse of pursuing nuclear weapons, and North Korea, which withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and has twice detonated nuclear devices despite its promise to abandon its atomic programs. Both are under UN sanctions. Joe Cirincione, a professor at Georgetown University and head of the Ploughshares Fund anti-nuclear arms group, said the plan to secure nuclear materials worldwide within four years could substantially boost global security. "If they follow through, this strategy could effectively prevent nuclear terrorism by stopping radicals from getting the one part of the bomb they cannot make themselves," he said. But Cirincione wants to see if the final communique is "more than a 2-page press release, if the action plan has real targets and real deadlines, if key nations pledge to secure their weapons material within four years, and if the states agree to meet again in two years to assess progress." On the agenda are plans to join together a disparate group of countries with nuclear programs to gather up dangerous atomic material from vulnerable nuclear, defense and medical sites worldwide, something Russia and the United States have been doing with the aid of the UN atomic watchdog for years. If successful, the summit can send a strong signal to the world that the international community is united in boosting nuclear security and that Washington is taking a leading role. The White House on Tuesday unveiled a new policy that restricts US use of nuclear weapons, while sending a stern warning to Iran and North Korea that they remain potential targets. Reversing the position of the former US administration, the so-called Nuclear Posture Review also said Washington would not develop any new atomic weapons. Analysts said the combination of the US nuclear policy, the success of Obama and Medvedev in agreeing a new treaty committing them to reducing their atomic arsenals, and a productive nuclear summit could help set the stage for a successful gathering of NPT signatories in New York next month to find ways to overhaul the 40-year-old arms pact. Analysts say the NPT has been battered by North Korea's withdrawal, Iran's insistence on pursing nuclear technology that could help it make bombs and developing nations' charges that big nuclear powers are ignoring disarmament commitments. Possible new UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program will be the focus of a Thursday meeting of envoys from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in New York. UN diplomats said their leaders were ready to discuss Iran on the sidelines of the summit if Obama wants to.

Biden joined leaders from over 100 countries in Glasgow for the start of the COP26 climate conference, which kicked off on the heels of the G20 summit in Rome that concluded with a statement that urged "meaningful and effective" action on climate change but left huge work for negotiators to ensure an ambitious outcome. Biden, who succeeded former president Donald Trump in January, acknowledged that the United States had not always led by example on climate change. "That's why my administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words," Biden said. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord; Biden returned it when he took office. National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said Biden was committed to delivering on the US emissions reduction pledge in large part through a key budget bill that would unleash $555 billion in climate spending. That bill awaits a vote in Congress after months of fraught domestic negotiations. "Here in Glasgow, he's renewing the United States’ commitment to take swift and decisive action, including through his Build Back Better framework," McCarthy told reporters. "It's the largest investment to combat the climate crisis in American history. And it's going to let us reduce emissions well over a gigaton - that's 1 billion metric tons - in 2030." Biden said on Sunday that his Build Back Better climate and social spending bill will be voted on sometime this week, "God willing." Biden announced a long-term strategy laying out how the United States would achieve a longer-term goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. In his COP26 remarks, Biden said the world needed to help developing nations in the climate fight. "Right now we're still falling short," he said. Biden plans to work with the US Congress to launch a $3 billion program in 2024 aimed at helping developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change through locally led measures. In a conference call with reporters, McCarthy also addressed concerns around a Supreme Court announcement late on Friday that it would review the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, potentially undermining US climate goals. "We're confident that the Supreme Court will confirm what those have before them, which is EPA has not just the right but the authority and responsibility to keep our families and communities safe from pollution," McCarthy said.

The mine provided coal that powered the country. The warehouse stores tracksuits. The mine meant a job for life. The warehouse offers mostly temporary work for the lowest legal wage. You work here, one worker told me in the drizzly parking lot last month, and you get treated like a monkey. Shirebrook was the third stop of a 900-mile journey I made through Britain last month. I was trying to make sense of a splintered country in the run-up to the Dec. 12 general election. The outside world typically sees Britain through the affluence and cosmopolitanism of London, but other than one quick stop there, I went elsewhere, looking for people beyond the capital’s glare. Everywhere I went, it felt as if the country were coming unbound. For all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. At times, I was reminded that electoral politics are far removed from many people’s priorities, which range from simply making a living to fighting global warming. “There’s no Brexit on a dead planet,” said Lauren McDonald, a Glasgow student who recently quit college to mobilise against climate change. A river-side road in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 27, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) Again and again, though, people came back to the politics of nationalism, austerity and economic alienation. And in Shirebrook and beyond, the frustrations were rooted in Brexit. A river-side road in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 27, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) Since the surrounding constituency was formed in 1950, its mostly working-class residents have always elected a Labour lawmaker. Then came the 2016 Brexit referendum, in which seven in 10 local voters supported Britain’s departure from the European Union. Many are now furious that the country still hasn’t left. “Every time you turn the television on, it’s all Brexit,” said Kevin Cann, a Shirebrook resident and former miner who voted to leave. “By now it should have been done, dusted.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a pro-Brexit Conservative, hopes to turn his minority government into a majority by capitalising on that frustration. For the first time ever, that could tip Shirebrook’s seat to the Conservatives, a party once detested in mining constituencies like this one. “Miners now are like, ‘Oh, Boris, Boris,’” said Alan Gascoyne, who once headed the mine’s union branch and now runs a former miners’ club. “Crazy,” he added. Ceri Davies stands by a pond he created on his uplands sheep farm near Llanddeusant, Wales, Nov. 18, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. If Brexit alters subsidies or tariffs in ways that make raising sheep unsustainable, Davies and his wife plan to turn a meadow and barn into a luxury campsite, or "glampsite." (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) The local warehouse is at the heart of this extraordinary shift, both in Shirebrook and across post-industrial England. Ceri Davies stands by a pond he created on his uplands sheep farm near Llanddeusant, Wales, Nov. 18, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. If Brexit alters subsidies or tariffs in ways that make raising sheep unsustainable, Davies and his wife plan to turn a meadow and barn into a luxury campsite, or "glampsite." (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) It was built in 2005 on the site of the town’s former coal pit. For years, the mine was the pride of Shirebrook — the reason the town was built in 1896. The work there was dangerous but it provided secure jobs, fair salaries and pensions, as well as a sense of purpose and community. The pit was “like the mother,” Gascoyne said. “The mother sort of looked after everybody.” But the mine closed in 1993, amid a wider process of deindustrialisation and privatisation carried out by the same Conservative Party that Johnson now leads. Twelve grim years later, it was physically replaced by the warehouse, but the emotional void remained. The warehouse provides more jobs than the mine did, but it is mostly low-paid work in humiliating conditions. A worker gave birth in the warehouse and left the baby in a bathroom. Others were penalised for taking short breaks to drink water. A parliamentary inquiry found that the owners, Sports Direct, treated its workers “without dignity or respect.” Most residents refused to work in such a degrading environment, so the jobs are largely taken by people from poorer parts of the European Union. In the local consciousness, the concept of regional decline then became fused with that of European immigration, instead of neoliberal economics. “I looked at what was around me, and I looked at the dilution of wages — because Europeans are coming in,” said Franco Passarelli, the son of Italian immigrants, explaining why he voted to leave the European Union. “We’re only a small island, and if people keep coming in, basically the country is starting to implode.” In a Brexit-less world, this town might still vote en masse for Labour. The party’s manifesto promises to raise the minimum wage and scrap the kinds of employment contracts used at the warehouse. But all of this has been trumped by Brexit. Before joining the European Union, Britain was “quite a wealthy country,” said Cann, the former miner. “Why can’t we be that again?” A resident walks her dog past homes originally built for the families of miners — the local coal mine closed in 1993 — in Shirebrook, England, Nov. 17, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) Chewing at the Ties That Bind A resident walks her dog past homes originally built for the families of miners — the local coal mine closed in 1993 — in Shirebrook, England, Nov. 17, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) In Shirebrook, as in much of Britain, I sensed that following through with Brexit was seen as something that could restore the social fabric. But elsewhere, it was chewing at the ties that bind. For some wealthy Londoners, who typically vote Conservative but also like Europe, Brexit has undermined their support for Johnson’s party. For some ethnic and religious minorities, it is even menacing. To illustrate this point, Maxie Hayles, a veteran campaigner for racial equality, took me to a hotel in the puddled centre of Birmingham, Britain’s second city. The hotel had long been refurbished, its floor plan altered, even its name changed. But finally, Hayles found a particular room. This was the place where in 1968 Enoch Powell, then a Conservative government minister, made a notoriously racist speech claiming immigration would ruin Britain. To this day, that speech remains synonymous for some Britons with prejudice and division. Hayles, who was then a 25-year-old Jamaican immigrant, still remembers the fear it gave his community. Britain has since changed. A black-owned business now occupies Powell’s office. The hotel room has been divided in two, repanelled and recarpeted. But Brexit risks tearing up the metaphorical carpet again, Hayles warned. Racist attacks increased around the time of the referendum campaign, by about a fifth. The prime minister has compared hijab-wearers to mailboxes. And Powell has a modern-day cheerleader in Nigel Farage, Brexit’s biggest proponent. “We’re not into good times, in terms of Brexit and what it means for black minorities in Britain,” Hayles said. “It’s serious days ahead.” In London, at a rabbinical school in a 300-year-old manor house, I had lunch with Laura Janner-Klausner, the most senior rabbi in British Reform Judaism. Commuters endure a dreary day on London Bridge, near where a terrorism-related attack took place last month, in London, Dec. 6, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) She is no Brexit supporter but she also fears prejudice from another quarter: Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s leadership has been slow to address instances of anti-Semitism. Commuters endure a dreary day on London Bridge, near where a terrorism-related attack took place last month, in London, Dec. 6, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) Addressing poverty is a moral issue for Jews, Janner-Klausner said. “Which is why, in the past, the natural place for Jews in this country was the Labour party.” So while she and many Jewish voters have traditionally voted Labour — her father was a Labour lawmaker, as was his father before him — she will not in this election. She is not alone. Several Labour lawmakers have quit in horror, including Luciana Berger, who is running in Janner-Klausner’s constituency for the Liberal Democrats, a rival centrist party. And last month, the spiritual head of Britain’s Orthodox Jews said Corbyn’s leadership put at stake “the very soul of our nation.” Janner-Klausner did not go as far. She said that the biggest threat to British minorities remained the far right. “But here,” she said, “I will vote for Luciana.” Sheep graze an uplands pasture near Llanddeusant, Wales, Nov. 18, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. If Brexit alters subsidies or tariffs in ways that make raising sheep unsustainable, a local farmer and his wife plan to turn a meadow and barn into a luxury campsite, or "glampsite." (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) From Lambing to ‘Glamping’ Sheep graze an uplands pasture near Llanddeusant, Wales, Nov. 18, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people felt alienated and unmoored. If Brexit alters subsidies or tariffs in ways that make raising sheep unsustainable, a local farmer and his wife plan to turn a meadow and barn into a luxury campsite, or "glampsite." (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) We turned left at the pink pub, through the mist, then up into the Welsh mountains. Down a track to the right stood the Davies’ farm. Ceri Davies was in the barn behind the house, checking the renovations. Wales does not loom large in British political discourse. Its independence movement is smaller than Scotland’s. But even in these remote uplands, something is nevertheless stirring, partly thanks to Brexit. Davies has lived all of his life in this single valley, barring three months in a nearby town. He speaks Welsh with friends and didn’t know a word of English until school. His father was a sheep farmer, and so is Davies. His 750 sheep grazed on the slopes above us. Brexit threatens that — hence the barn. Like many British farms, Davies’ business breaks even only because of a subsidy from the European Union. Worse still, Europe beyond Britain’s borders buys about a third of Welsh lamb. The Conservatives have promised to replace the subsidies with new payments. But if European officials place tariffs on British meat after Brexit, it might ruin farms like Davies’. “It is pretty scary,” he said. So the barn, along with the lush meadow behind it, is his insurance. Davies and his wife, Rebecca Ingleby-Davies, plan to turn the meadow into a luxury campsite, or “glampsite.” The barn will house the showers. There is an irony to it: Idealised as a return to British traditions and heritage, Brexit might instead finish some of them off. “This area is really built around farming,” Ingleby-Davies said. “If you take that away, then you’re going to lose a massive amount of culture and community.” Not to mention the Welsh language, which is spoken more often in rural areas. Davies is sanguine — he gets on with everybody, even the people whose Brexit votes might wreck his business. But Ingleby-Davies finds it harder to forget. There are people she now avoids, certain gatherings she boycotts. That frustration has swelled into something more profound. She wants Wales to stay in the European Union — as an independent country. That is still a minority view. But polling suggests that up to a third of Welsh voters are warming to the idea as Brexit rumbles on and the spectre of English nationalism rises. “I wouldn’t consider myself a nationalistic person,” Ingleby-Davies said. But she thought that an independent Wales, protected by the European Union, would be “stronger than just being, you know, an afterthought in London.” Children at play by a mural honouring loyalist paramilitaries, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Nov. 21, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) ‘A Big, Big Betrayal’ Children at play by a mural honouring loyalist paramilitaries, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Nov. 21, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) The ferry slid from the Liverpool docks, past the red cranes and into the Irish Sea. Outside, the waves were gentle. In the canteen, passengers were seething. Alan Kinney set aside his tuna salad to make his point. “It would be a big, big betrayal,” he said. The cause of his anger was the sea itself: This stretch of water between two parts of the United Kingdom — Britain and Northern Ireland — has become the latest obstacle to Brexit. During the last decades of the 20th century, nationalists in Northern Ireland unsuccessfully fought to reunite the territory, which remains under British control, with the Republic of Ireland, which won independence in 1922. Most paramilitaries put down their arms in 1998, after a peace deal opened the land border between northern and southern Ireland. To avoid enforcing post-Brexit customs checks on that land border, Johnson has effectively agreed to treat the entire island of Ireland as a single customs area. Customs checks will instead be enforced on goods crossing between Britain and Northern Ireland, in sea ferries like this one. That might placate many Irish nationalists. But it has enraged the territory’s loyalists — Northern Irish residents, mainly from Protestant backgrounds, who want to remain within the UK They feel the customs checks would create a reunified Ireland in all but name. Kinney, a member of the Orange Order, a hard-line loyalist group, pulled a magazine from his bag. “No to a sea border,” the centrefold read. “No to an economic united Ireland! No surrender!” The next article was about Catholic paedophiles. Schoolchildren in the border town of Newry, Northern Ireland, Nov. 20, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) Three tables away, Tim McKee fortunately had not heard our conversation. A nationalist, McKee certainly did not want a land border. But a sea border was no good either: It might set off a violent backlash from loyalist paramilitaries. He feared a repeat of the 1970s, when he was nearly blown up by loyalist bomb. Schoolchildren in the border town of Newry, Northern Ireland, Nov. 20, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where, for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of people — Leavers and Remainers; blue- and white-collar; Jews and Muslims; English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh — felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) “Johnson’s actions,” he whispered, “are going to kill my friends.” Dotted throughout the cabins, several loyalists echoed Kinney and several nationalists agreed with McKee. But Susan and Jack Price bucked the trend. The Prices were Protestants by birth. But forced to choose, they would prefer a sea border within the UK to a land border with Ireland. Perhaps more surprisingly, both said Brexit had made them more supportive of Irish reunification. Though loyalist by background, they ultimately felt more attachment to Europe than Britain. “I just feel,” said Jack Price, a teacher, “that being a European is more important.” Tommy Brennan, a former steelworker, shows a framed photo of the long-shuttered Ravenscraig plant, once one of Europe’s biggest steelworks, in Motherwell, Scotland, Nov. 25, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons, felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) A Forgotten Steelworks Tommy Brennan, a former steelworker, shows a framed photo of the long-shuttered Ravenscraig plant, once one of Europe’s biggest steelworks, in Motherwell, Scotland, Nov. 25, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons, felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) In a wasteland on the edge of the Scottish town of Motherwell, our final stop, Tommy Brennan pointed out things that were no longer there. There had stood the factory gates, he said, there the cooling towers. This was once one of Europe’s biggest steelworks, where Brennan first worked in 1943. But now there was nothing but yellowing grass. Once bigger than Central Park, the Ravenscraig steelworks was shut and dismantled in 1992, after being privatised by London’s Conservative government. That put an estimated 10,000 residents out of work, including Brennan. In Shirebrook, I saw how deindustrialisation eventually contributed to Brexit. But in Motherwell it helped heighten resentment of the British state rather than of Europe: In 2016, this area voted to stay in the European Union, but in a Scottish independence referendum in 2014 it favoured leaving the United Kingdom. Brennan was among those voters — he had concluded that London would never prioritise Scottish interests. “If we’d been an independent nation when Ravenscraig closed,” he said, “it would never have closed.” Yet alienation takes many forms, even in the same town. After talking with Brennan, I crossed Motherwell to meet a woman born the year after the steelworks closed. George McArthur, who cares full-time and unpaid for his disabled brother-in-law, and depends on government benefits to make ends meet, at home with his wife and grandchild in Clydebank, Scotland, Nov. 26, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons, felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) With little permanent work in a post-steel Motherwell, Ashleigh Melia had spent her adult life in temporary jobs on minimum wage. Now, in her work as a cleaner, employers sometimes send her away as soon as she arrives — there’s no work that day and therefore no pay. George McArthur, who cares full-time and unpaid for his disabled brother-in-law, and depends on government benefits to make ends meet, at home with his wife and grandchild in Clydebank, Scotland, Nov. 26, 2019. As Britain heads for an election, a reporter's two-week tour across Britain found a country where all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons, felt alienated and unmoored. (Laetitia Vancon/The New York Times) The Conservatives’ decision to shrink the British state in recent years, cutting welfare payments by about $40 billion, has also squeezed her family. Her 4-year-old daughter, half-blind and half-deaf, has been denied disability allowances worth up to $460 a month. Fired from her latest job in October, Melia now struggles to pay bills, her four children joining the 600,000 British minors who have fallen into poverty under the Conservatives. To cut electricity costs, she encourages them to play in the dark. But unlike with Brennan, all of this has not led to political engagement. Rushing from job interviews to hospital appointments and with no internet at home, she had no time to think about politics. She couldn’t name most political parties. She had no opinion on Scottish independence. It was a reminder of another reality — one in which many find it hard enough to live, without worrying how to vote. The steelworks? Melia had never heard of it.   ©2019 The New York Times Company

A grouping of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters on Sunday backed UN-led efforts to forge a global pact to fight climate change but disagreed on a sectoral approach to curb emissions from industry. G20 nations ranging from top carbon emitters the United States and China to big developing economies Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa held three days of talks near Tokyo to discuss ways to tackle rapidly rising emissions. "It's not so much these two groups are at loggerheads with each other, they are also thinking of how they can cooperate collectively," Halldor Thorgeirsson of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat told Reuters. The developing world is demanding rich states do more to curb their own emissions and help poorer countries pay for clean technology. Both sides managed to bridge differences in Bali last December to launch two years of talks on a pact that binds all nations to emissions curbs to replace the Kyoto Protocol. "The whole debate on climate change is moving away from just being an issue of targets to being an issue of how to reduce emissions," said Thorgeirsson, who was pleased with the G20 talks that were billed as a dialogue, not a negotiation. "This is a very good sign that the good spirit of Bali will prevail in Bangkok as well," he said, referring to the March 31-April 4 meeting in the Thai capital, the first U.N.-led climate meeting of nations that backed the "Bali roadmap". But some G20 members and delegates voiced concern over Japan's proposal for sectoral caps for polluting industries. Japan wants top greenhouse gas emitting nations to assign near-term emissions targets for each industrial sector which, added up, would then form a national target. But it was unclear if this target was mandatory or voluntary and developing nations said the scheme needed to take into account their individual circumstances. "It is clear that developed and developing countries are still far apart on sectoral approaches," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters. DIFFERENCES Ailun Yang of Greenpeace China said developing countries objected to the Japanese idea of abandoning binding targets for rich nations by just setting their own targets based on sectors. "There was very clear opposition to this. Not just China and Brazil, but also South Africa, not just developing countries, even countries like Germany, Spain and Korea." Indonesia called for more funding and the transfer of clean energy technology. Otherwise a sectoral approach would not work. "The goal is the same for developed and developing countries, but there are big differences in thinking," said Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari. "It was good that we had frank discussions on what each wanted the other to do," he added. The talks in Chiba, near Tokyo, also sparked a row over big developing nations being labelled "major emitters", a term U.S. officials used at the gathering. South Africa, Indonesia, India and Brazil told the meeting they objected to the label since on a per-capita basis, their carbon emissions were a fraction of the roughly 24 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent produced by the average American. Developing nations also called for more clarity on the funding and management of schemes to pay for clean energy technology projects in their countries. Van Schalkwyk said on Saturday it was crucial developing nations had greater involvement in the management of clean technology funds, particularly recently announced funds to be managed by the World Bank with money from Japan, the United States and Britain. About 190 nations agreed in Bali to try to find a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009. Under the Bali roadmap, all nations would be obligated to curb carbon emissions under Kyoto's successor from 2013. Kyoto first phase ends in 2012 and binds only rich nations to emissions curbs. But rapidly rising emissions from developing nations means the pact is no longer effective in trying to limit dangerous climate change that scientists say will cause rising sea levels and greater extremes of droughts and floods.

Concerns about the US economy and banking sector woes gnawed at investor confidence on Wednesday despite a better-than-expected German business sentiment report, keeping stocks and the dollar under pressure. But a weakening greenback helped fuel interest in a range of commodities including oil, gold and industrial metals that had sold off recently. A Deutsche Bank warning that credit market aftershocks could hit its 2008 profits and data on Tuesday showing U.S. consumer confidence dropping to a five-year low in March conspired to keep investors cautious. Adding to the gloom, fresh US data on Wednesday showed new orders for long-lasting US manufactured goods unexpectedly fell 1.7 percent in February, reinforcing worries about the world's biggest economy. Wall Street looked set to open lower with major stock index futures all trading in the red. "There definitely is still nervousness in the banking sector and the announcement from Deutsche bank served as a reminder that JPMorgan raising its bid for Bear Stearns doesn't necessarily solve all the problems for the financial sector," said Sean Maloney, fixed-income strategist at Nomura in London. News early this week that JPMorgan had boosted its takeover offer for Bear Stearns by about fivefold had sparked a rally in financial stocks globally and eased worries about a sector constrained by a credit crunch. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares slid 0.9 percent, while Germany's DAX fell 0.7 percent with Deutsche Bank about 2 percent lower. London's FTSE 100 index shed 0.7 percent, weighed by a near 7 percent fall for Swiss miner Xtrata after takeover talks with the world's largest iron ore miner Vale broke down. Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei ended down 0.3 percent, but MSCI's measure of other Asian stock markets climbed 0.7 percent. MSCI's main world equity index nudged 0.2 percent higher. DOLLAR DOWN, COMMODITIES UP The dollar slipped against a basket of major currencies, with the dollar index falling 0.8 percent amid ongoing concerns about the health of the US economy. In contrast, upbeat data showing the German business climate index, based on a poll of around 7,000 firms, rose to a better-than-expected 104.8 from 104.1 in February helped drive the euro higher. The euro rose about 0.7 percent on the day to $1.5736, further boosted by comments from European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet, which markets interpreted as suggesting no interest rate cuts were imminent. Testifying before an economic committee of the European Parliament, Trichet said the ECB believed the current monetary policy stance will contribute to achieving price stability in the medium term. Among commodities, US light crude for May delivery climbed $1.25 to $102.47, while gold rose to $947.70 an ounce from around $934.60 an ounce late in New York on Tuesday. Copper for three-month delivery on the London Metal Exchange last traded at $8,155/tonne, up 0.8 percent. Global demand for many commodities is seen remaining intact thanks to booming economies such as China despite a gloomy US outlook. "The dollar's fall has prompted buying but traders are reluctant to take large positions ahead of the end of the quarter," said Shuji Sugata, a manager at Mitsubishi Corp Futures and Securities Ltd in Tokyo. Underlying concerns about the US economy underpinned demand for safe-haven U.S. Treasuries with the benchmark 10-year yield slipping about 5 basis points to 3.457 percent. But German 10-year bonds underperformed their US counterparts, weighed by Trichet's comments as well as fresh bond supply. The 10-year yield was little changed at 3.887 percent.

Biden, 78, will become the oldest US president in history at a scaled-back ceremony in Washington that has been largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due both to the coronavirus as well as security concerns following the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters. Trump left the White House for the final time just after 8 a.m. (1300 GMT) by helicopter on his way to a sendoff event at Joint Air Force Base Andrews, although top Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, were not expected to see him off. The president's refusal to greet his successor before attending the inauguration represents a break with more than a century and a half of political tradition, seen as a way to affirm the peaceful transfer of power. With only a small number of attendees present, Biden will take the oath of office before US Chief Justice John Roberts just after noon (1700 GMT), placing his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in the Biden family for more than a century. His running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, will become the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president after she is sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's first Latina member. Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and family members attend the departure ceremony of US President Donald Trump at the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters The ceremony will unfold in front of a heavily fortified US Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November's election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and family members attend the departure ceremony of US President Donald Trump at the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters The violence prompted the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time. Thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city after the siege, which left five people dead and briefly forced lawmakers into hiding. Instead of a throng of supporters, the National Mall will be covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light meant to represent people from US states and territories. Biden, who has vowed to "restore the soul of America," will call for American unity at a time of crisis in his inaugural address, according to advisers. He will waste little time trying to turn the page on the Trump era, advisers said, signing a raft of 15 executive actions on his first day in office on issues ranging from the pandemic to the economy to climate change. The orders will include mandating masks on federal property, rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending Trump's travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries. In an early sign of his plan to reach across the political aisle, Biden has invited top congressional leaders, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, to join him at church on Wednesday morning. US President Donald Trump speaks next to first lady Melania Trump as he departs from the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters Pence, former US Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and both McCarthy and McConnell are all expected to attend Biden's inauguration ceremony. US President Donald Trump speaks next to first lady Melania Trump as he departs from the Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters Trump, who has grown increasingly isolated in the waning days of his tenure, has still not formally conceded the Nov. 3 election. He issued more than 140 pardons and commutations in his final hours in office, including a pardon for his former political adviser, Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he swindled Trump supporters as part of an effort to raise private funds for a Mexico border wall. But Trump did not issue preemptive pardons for himself or members of his family, after speculation that he might do so. GRIM MILESTONES For Biden, who long harbored presidential ambitions, the inauguration is the zenith of a five-decade career in public service that included more than three decades in the US Senate and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama. But he will confront a set of overlapping crises that would challenge even someone of his political experience. The coronavirus pandemic in the United States reached a pair of grim milestones on Trump's final full day in office on Tuesday, reaching 400,000 US deaths and 24 million infections - the highest of any country. Millions of Americans are out of work because of pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions. US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart the White House to board Marine One ahead of the inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden, in Washington, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters Biden has vowed to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear on the crisis, including a more robust testing and tracing program and a massive vaccination drive. His top priority is a $1.9 trillion plan that would enhance jobless benefits and provide direct cash payments to households. It will require approval from a deeply divided Congress, where Democrats will hold slim advantages in both the House and Senate. US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart the White House to board Marine One ahead of the inauguration of president-elect Joe Biden, in Washington, US, January 20, 2021. Reuters Wednesday's executive actions, by contrast, are intended to advance Biden's priorities without the need for legislation. The president will establish a new White House office coordinating the coronavirus response, revoke the permit granted to the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline and end Trump's emergency declaration that helped fund a Mexico border wall, among other orders. Jen Psaki, the incoming White House press secretary, said Biden plans additional executive orders in the coming weeks, including eliminating Trump's restrictions on transgender troops and reversing a policy blocking US funds for overseas programs linked to abortion. Although Biden has laid out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days, including delivering 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations, the Senate could be consumed by Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, which will move ahead even though he has left office. The trial could serve as an early test of Biden's promise to foster a renewed sense of bipartisanship in Washington. In his closing remarks as President, Donald Trump promised to "always fight" and wished the incoming administration "great luck" https://t.co/S7uATyOLEw pic.twitter.com/zS06jXaseJ— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 20, 2021   In his closing remarks as President, Donald Trump promised to "always fight" and wished the incoming administration "great luck" https://t.co/S7uATyOLEw pic.twitter.com/zS06jXaseJ

Shrinking ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reflecting ever less sunshine back into space in a previously underestimated mechanism that could add to global warming, a study showed. Satellite data indicated that Arctic sea ice, glaciers, winter snow and Greenland's ice were bouncing less energy back to space from 1979 to 2008. The dwindling white sunshade exposes ground or water, both of which are darker and absorb more heat. The study estimated that ice and snow in the Northern Hemisphere were now reflecting on average 3.3 watts per square meter of solar energy back to the upper atmosphere, a reduction of 0.45 watt per square meter since the late 1970s. "The cooling effect is reduced and this is increasing the amount of solar energy that the planet absorbs," Mark Flanner, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study, told Reuters. "This reduction in reflected solar energy through warming is greater than simulated by the current crop of climate models," he said of the findings by a team of US-based researchers and published in the journal Nature Geoscience Sunday. "The conclusion is that the cryosphere (areas of ice and snow) is both responding more sensitively to, and also driving, stronger climate change than thought," he said. As ever more ground and water is exposed to sunlight, the absorbed heat in turn speeds the melting of snow and ice nearby. Arctic sea ice, for instance, has shrunk in recent decades in a trend that the United Nations panel of climate scientists blames mainly on greenhouse gases from mankind's burning of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars. Many studies project that Arctic sea ice could vanish in summers later this century in a trend that would undermine the hunting cultures of indigenous peoples and threaten polar bears and other animals, as well as adding to global climate change. ICE SHRINKS But Flanner said that it was impossible to draw conclusions from the study about the rate of future melting, for instance of Arctic sea ice, since it was based on only 30 years of data. "There are a lot of other things that determine climate ... this is just one of them," he said. Other factors include whether there will be more clouds in a warmer world -- whose white tops also reflect sunlight. Or there could be more water vapor that traps heat in the atmosphere. The study estimated that each degree Celsius (1.8 degree Fahrenheit) rise in temperatures would mean a decline in solar energy reflected out to space of between 0.3 and 1.1 watts per square meter from the Northern Hemisphere's snow and ice. Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere have risen by about 0.75 degree Celsius in the past three decades. The study did not look at the Southern Hemisphere, where Antarctica has far more ice but is much colder and shows fewer signs of warming. "On a global scale, the planet absorbs solar energy at a rate of about 240 watts per square meter averaged over a year. The planet would be darker and absorb an additional 3.3 watts without the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere," Flanner said.

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

POZNAN, Poland, Dec 13(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Developing nations accused the rich of meanness on Saturday at the end of UN climate talks that launched only a tiny fund to help poor countries cope with droughts, floods and rising seas. They said the size of the Adaptation Fund -- worth just $80 million -- was a bad omen at the halfway mark of two years of negotiations on a new treaty to fight global warming designed to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. "We are so sad and so disappointed," Colombian Environment Minister Juan Lozano said of the Dec. 1-12 talks, which went on into the early hours of Saturday and have been overshadowed by worries that global economic woes are drying up donor cash. "The human side of climate change is the suffering of our orphans and our victims and that was not considered here. It's a bad signal on the road to Copenhagen," said Lozano. "I must say that this is one of the saddest moments I have witnessed in all these years," Indian representative Prodipto Ghosh told delegates at the 189-nation talks, adding he had attended U.N. climate meetings for 12 years. Several other nations including Brazil, Costa Rica and Maldives made similar remarks. Many delegates expressed hopes that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama would adopt more aggressive climate policies. Environment ministers at the talks in Poland set rules for the Adaptation Fund, which is meant to help poor nations build flood defences, develop drought-resistant crops, or produce storm warnings. Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, the host, said the launch of the fund was the biggest achievement of Poznan. The fund, which can start paying out cash in 2009, has just $80 million but could rise to $300 million a year by 2012. BILLIONS NEEDED U.N. projections are that poor nations will need tens of billions of dollars a year by 2030 to cope with climate change. Poland spent 24 million euros ($31.84 million) just to host the Dec. 1-12 conference. Developing nations accused the rich of blocking agreement in Poznan on a wider funding mechanism that could raise about $2 billion a year. The issue was delayed until 2009. Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said the talks achieved all they had set out to do but acknowledged there was "some bitterness". "Half the work (for Copenhagen) hasn't been done," he said. Still, he said Poznan had achieved a main task of reviewing progress towards a sweeping new global climate treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists disagreed. "We are desperately disappointed with the progress here," said Stephanie Tunmore of the Greenpeace environmental group. "The stocktaking bit wasn't difficult: 'What did we do in 2008? Not much'." Environmentalists accused Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand of blocking progress and failing to set ambitious new goals to cut emissions. By contrast, countries including Mexico, China and South Africa laid out ideas to curb rising emissions. European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said talks were on track. "Everyone said the fight against climate change is consistent with tackling the economic crisis," he said. European Union ministers in Poznan expressed relief after EU leaders in Brussels agreed a pact on Friday to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- after making costly concessions to east European countries. Under the Adaptation Fund, cash is raised by a 2 percent levy on a U.N. system of projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions in poor nations. The levy has raised 60 million euros ($80 million) so far.

US President Barack Obama has invited UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the White House next week, the first meeting between the two since Obama took office, Washington's UN envoy said on Friday. Subjects the two would discuss on Tuesday include Sudan, which has expelled 13 aid agencies after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was charged with war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court, Ambassador Susan Rice said. They would also talk about efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, the global economic crisis, UN reform, climate change and UN peacekeeping operations, Rice said in a statement. Obama and Ban have said they hope for better relations between Washington and the world body than during the previous administration of President George W Bush, which was angered by UN failure to support the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Obama opposed the invasion. Ban is particularly hoping for close cooperation in UN-led efforts to negotiate a new world climate change pact at talks in Copenhagen in December. Obama, who took office in January, has signaled a new urgency in tackling climate change. Bush refused to ratify the existing Kyoto Protocol, saying it would put the United States at an economic disadvantage. The United States is the biggest funder of the United Nations.

The British government will set out a route map on Wednesday showing how it plans to meet its 2020 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent compared to 1990 levels, a minister said on Sunday. The government will publish "The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan" and a Renewable Energy Strategy setting out how Britain plans to meet a European Union target of getting 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. "What we're trying to set out on Wednesday ... is a route map, ...a sense of how do we go from here to 2020 and beyond," Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC. News reports said the government would say its proposals could create up to 400,000 jobs in industries such as offshore wind and nuclear power. But they said the measures could also drive up household fuel bills. The plans will include "feed-in" tariffs that will allow people to sell energy from domestic solar panels and wind turbines to the national grid. "We are introducing feed-in tariffs from April 2010 in the UK so that individuals and communities can both play their part in the kind of clean energy revolution that we need," Miliband told BBC News 24. The Sunday Times said the plans are expected to include additional incentives for building offshore wind farms. The renewables obligation scheme, which requires power firms to buy certain amounts of renewable energy, is likely to be extended for 10 years past its 2027 expiry date, the newspaper said. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, writing in The Observer newspaper, said the proposals would involve loans to families to make energy efficiency improvements that would be repaid through savings on fuel bills. Brown said the government will also unveil a low-carbon industrial strategy this week and the final shortlist of sites for building new environmentally friendly "eco-towns." The plans will lead to changes in transport, Miliband said. "I think we need to help people make the transition in terms of electric cars, for example, and we've announced incentives for electric cars and for charging points that will be around the country," he said. "I think the price of flying will go up over time," he said. Asked if people would have to pay more for energy, Miliband said: "I think there are upward pressures on energy prices whatever route we go down." The opposition Conservatives accused the government of taking most of its ideas from them. Britain is the first country to bind itself to a framework for emissions reductions which calls for an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050.

Hollande, 59, who just broke up with his longtime partner after an alleged affair with a much younger actress, arrives solo on Monday to begin two days of pomp and ceremony including a high-profile visit to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate.It will be the first state visit hosted by US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama in nearly 2-1/2 years, since South Korea's president visited in October 2011.Hollande's split with journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who was considered the French first lady, prompted some anxiety initially at the White House since both Hollande and Trierweiler were named on the official statement announcing the visit.But as with most things involving the "no-drama" Obama White House, officials quickly adjusted and are preparing to fete a solo Hollande at a state dinner on Tuesday night.Officials looking for a previous experience like this need only look back to 2007 when then-President George W Bush played host to his French counterpart at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, at an official dinner. Sarkozy had just split from his wife, Cecilia."It shouldn't change anything and it won't," Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush, said of Hollande's visit. "He's asked the people of France to respect his privacy, and I assume he means that for Americans to respect that too."At a time when American relations with Europe have been tested by revelations of National Security Agency eavesdropping and, more recently, a US diplomat's secretly recorded expletive to dismiss the European Union, US-French relations have been productive.This doesn't mean Hollande is happy about the eavesdropping.Hollande told Time magazine that this is a "a difficult moment, not just between France and the United States but also between Europe and the United States" because of spying practices that "should never have existed."'A SOLID ALLY'The United States and France, an alliance that dates back to the very founding of America in the late 18th century, are working together on Iran, Syria, restive North Africa and other global hot spots.The collaboration is a far cry from a decade ago when the US-led war on Iraq led to strains and French refusal to participate prompted some Americans to rename the classic fried-potato dish "freedom fries" instead of french fries."France is a solid ally of the United States but always retains its independence," Hollande told Time.Obama has shied away from having frequent state visits during his five years in office but is said to have been the driving force behind inviting the French leader to Washington. Officials say Obama and Hollande have a solid working relationship.The two leaders start the visit with a pilgrimage to Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia, on Monday. Jefferson was US ambassador to France from 1785-1789, developing a taste for fine French wines.The Monticello stop is intended to showcase the enduring alliance between the two countries. Jefferson, the third US president, was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence. Without French assistance, the fledgling American army might not have defeated the British.On Tuesday, after a colorful arrival ceremony on the White House South Lawn, Obama and Hollande hold talks, then a joint news conference. Hollande will have lunch at the State Department with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry."During the visit, they will discuss opportunities to further strengthen our shared security, grow our economic and commercial partnership, and partner on the environment, climate change, and development," the White House said.Both leaders could use the glow from a successful visit to boost their images at home. Hollande, struggling to reduce chronic unemployment in France, has a 24 percent job approval rating, according to Ipsos.Obama, after the rocky rollout of his signature healthcare law, saw his approval rating drop to about 40 percent, but it has rebounded slightly in recent weeks.

But here’s the bad news: When talking recently to Oscar voters, I hear too many of them complain, “Are there even 10 great films to vote for this year?” Greatness is in the eye of the beholder, but this year’s pack of Oscar contenders is at least gratifyingly varied, featuring big-studio blockbusters, intimate international dramas and an end-of-the-world comedy with a tramp-stamped Meryl Streep as the president. If voters feel the field is too sparse to fill out 10 slots, it’s only because they’re not looking hard enough. I’ve now screened all of this year’s major Oscar players aside from Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” (which will finally begin showing just after this column goes to press), and though some consensus has begun to form about the major contenders, there is still an exciting array of movies that could fill out the rest of this year’s lineup. Here are my projections for the six movies that have the strongest best-picture chances, as well as a clutch of other worthy films that ought to give voters plenty to pick from. ‘West Side Story’ Could Steven Spielberg’s new musical pull off the same feat as the 1961 big-screen version and win best picture at the Oscars? After the film showed this week to standing ovations, I’ve moved “West Side Story” to pole position. Spielberg’s savvy re-imagining of the source material marries old-school sweep with contemporary concerns, putting the movie right in Oscar voters’ sweet spot. And after last year’s smaller-scaled Academy Awards, a mammoth Steven Spielberg musical debuting only in theatres is exactly the sort of thing that the movie industry — and the Oscars themselves — will want to rally behind. ‘Belfast’ As a movie, “Belfast” has an appealing modesty: It’s only 97 minutes, it never overreaches, and it ends on exactly the moment it should. But could that same modesty keep it from Oscar’s top spot? Many in the academy will adore Kenneth Branagh’s story of an Irish family navigating the Troubles, but “West Side Story” offers more pomp and circumstance and “Belfast” has so far racked up a fine but hardly eye-popping limited gross of about $5 million. The older art-house crowd that could have made the film a sleeper hit has not yet returned to theatres, so awards momentum will have to come from pure love of the movie itself. ‘The Power of the Dog’ Jane Campion’s western is anchored by two very buzzy performances — Benedict Cumberbatch as a sadistic rancher and Kirsten Dunst as his tormented sister-in-law — and played at all the top fall film festivals, just as last year’s ultimate winner, “Nomadland,” did. Much has changed since 1994, when Campion became only the second woman ever nominated for best director, and the chance to canonise her could put Campion in contention for a major Oscar. But I think the film has a better shot at winning the director race than triumphing in best picture. ‘King Richard’ This inspirational drama about Richard Williams, father to tennis phenoms Venus and Serena, boasts this year’s presumed best-actor front-runner in Will Smith. That alone should secure it a best-picture berth, since the last 10 best-actor winners all hailed from films also nominated in Oscar’s top category. (That’s true of only six of the last 10 best-actress winners, another sign of how this voting body needs to take female-fronted films more seriously.) Still, a flurry of headlines about the film’s weak opening-weekend box office got “King Richard” off on the wrong foot. ‘Being the Ricardos’ The trailer for this Aaron Sorkin-directed dramedy played a very unwise game of “Hide the Lucy,” treating Nicole Kidman’s performance as TV comedian Lucille Ball as an impending disaster that had to be judiciously cut around. But after the film began to screen for cheering guild audiences, Kidman’s smoky-throated transformation proved a surprise, vaulting her closer to a second Oscar. Add to all that a strong supporting cast — including Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz, along with J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda — and “Being the Ricardos” (opening later this month) ought to be a significant awards player. ‘Don’t Look Up’ The academy has gone gaga for Adam McKay’s last two issue-based comedies, “The Big Short” and “Vice,” and his new satire, “Don’t Look Up” (due later this month), has higher stakes and even more star wattage. Oscar favourites Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Mark Rylance and Jonah Hill all star in this ensemble comedy about a comet threatening the end of the world — a just-veiled-enough metaphor for the climate crisis, granted even more real-world resonance during the worldwide pandemic — and amid a sea of period-piece contenders, “Don’t Look Up” and its screwed-future fatalism feels even more of the moment. Those are six sure things. So which other films are left contending for the last four spots? Like I said earlier, it helps to have a strong best-actor candidate fronting your movie. Expect a major push, then, for the musical “Cyrano,” with a never-better Peter Dinklage, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” featuring Andrew Garfield as the musical-theatre composer Jonathan Larson, and Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” with a galvanising Denzel Washington in the title role. And since “C’mon C’mon” is the first film Joaquin Phoenix has starred in since “Joker,” it shouldn’t be discounted, even though I suspect this tender little drama about child-raising from the director Mike Mills could go the way of Mills’ last masterpiece, “20th Century Women,” and fly over academy heads. Let’s hope that when voters mark their best-actress choices, they realise that some of the most wonderful films of the year are contending in that category and deserve a best-picture berth, too. That group includes Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza,” which features the film acting debut of the musician Alana Haim, as well as Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers,” which won its star Penélope Cruz the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival. At Cannes, Renate Reinsve took best-actress honours and her romantic dramedy “The Worst Person in the World” deserves a lot more awards attention, while at the recent Gotham Awards, the Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed “The Lost Daughter” won several big trophies, including one for Olivia Colman’s lead performance. Many pundits think Kristen Stewart could win the Oscar for playing Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer,” though we’ll see if the film itself can manage something Larraín’s more generally acclaimed “Jackie” couldn’t and crack best picture. The academy has welcomed a big chunk of international members in the recent push to diversify its voting base, which could be good news for Asghar Farhadi: The Iranian director’s movies have twice taken what’s now known as the international-feature Oscar, but his new moral drama “A Hero” may go one step further and snag a best-picture nomination. The Oscar-vetted Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino will attempt the same leap with his coming-of-age film “The Hand of God,” which could also land him in the best-director race. I’m curious about “CODA,” the dramedy about the hearing daughter of a deaf family. It started 2021 off with a huge Sundance sale before landing on Apple TV+ over the summer to considerably less attention. The film is a conventional crowd-pleaser that crowds simply haven’t found, though two wins at the recent Gotham Awards may finally put some wind in its sails. And then there’s the sci-fi epic “Dune,” which will be a major player in all the tech categories. The reception to “West Side Story'' may relieve the pressure to give “Dune” a best-picture nod just to have something blockbuster-shaped in the final 10, but I still think the film has a good shot at the list: It’s beautifully made, and voters respect the director Denis Villeneuve for fighting a corporate mandate that shuffled his film off to HBO Max without warning. (And let’s face it: This year’s best-picture montage will look a lot cooler if it features giant sandworms.) © 2021 The New York Times Company

Darkness was setting in, the temperature had fallen below zero, and the 120 men and women who had gathered as part of a major combat training exercise in subarctic Alaska had not yet erected tents. The supply line for fuel, essential to keep warm through the long night ahead, was lagging behind. “Everything is a challenge, from water, fuel, food, moving people, keeping them comfortable,” said Iannone, the 27-year-old company commander, as his soldiers shovelled deeper into the snow in search of a solid foundation to put up their sleeping quarters. “This is inherent training — understanding how far we can push physically and mentally.” The first-of-its-kind exercise this month, involving some 8,000 troops outside of Fairbanks, was planned long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but was driven in part by Russia’s aggressive moves in recent years to militarise the Arctic — a part of the world where the United States and Russia share a lengthy maritime boundary. Tensions have been growing in the region for years, as nations stake claims to shipping routes and energy reserves that are opening up as a result of climate change. Now, with the geopolitical order shifting after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the competition over sovereignty and resources in the Arctic could intensify. On the west coast of Alaska, the federal government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the port at Nome, which could transform into a deepwater hub servicing Coast Guard and Navy vessels navigating into the Arctic Circle. The Coast Guard expects to deploy three new icebreakers — although Russia already has more than 50 in operation. And while the United States has denounced Russia’s aggressive military expansion in the Arctic, the Pentagon has its own plans to increase its presence and capabilities, working to rebuild cold-weather skills neglected during two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force has transferred dozens of F-35 fighter jets to Alaska, announcing that the state will host “more advanced fighters than any other location in the world.” The Army last year released its first strategic plan for “Regaining Arctic Dominance.” The Navy, which this month conducted exercises above and below the sea ice inside the Arctic Circle, also has developed a plan for protecting US interests in the region, warning that weakness there would mean that “peace and prosperity will be increasingly challenged by Russia and China, whose interests and values differ dramatically from ours.” The preparations are costly in both resources and personnel. While Iannone’s company was able to finish setting up tents before midnight and survived the night without incident, other companies did not fare so well: Eight soldiers suffered cold-weather injuries, and four soldiers were taken to a hospital after a fire inside a personnel carrier. Meanwhile, at another recent cold-weather exercise, in Norway, four US Marines died when their aircraft crashed. Russia, whose eastern mainland lies just 55 miles across the Bering Strait from the coast of Alaska, for years has prioritized an expanded Arctic presence by refurbishing airfields, adding bases, training troops and developing a network of military defence systems on the northern frontier. With a warming climate shrinking sea ice in the region, valuable fish stocks are moving northward, while rare minerals and the Arctic’s substantial reserves of fossil fuels are becoming a growing target for exploration. Boat traffic is poised to increase from both trade and tourism. Two years ago, Moscow brought its own war games barrelling through the Bering Sea, with Russian commanders testing weapons and demanding that American fishing boats operating in US fishing waters get out of the way — an order the US Coast Guard advised them to comply with. Russia has repeatedly sent military aircraft to the edge of US airspace, leading US jets to scramble to intercept them and warn them away. This month, in response to escalating international sanctions against Russia, a member of the Russian parliament demanded that Alaska, purchased by the United States from Russia in 1867, be returned to Russian control — a possibly rhetorical gesture that nonetheless reflected the deteriorating relationship between the two world powers. For centuries, the vast waters of the offshore Arctic were largely a no man’s land locked in by ice whose exact territorial boundaries — claimed by the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark and Iceland — remained unsettled. But as melting sea ice has opened new shipping pathways and as nations have eyed the vast hydrocarbon and mineral reserves below the Arctic sea floor, the complicated treaties, claims and boundary zones that govern the region have been opened to fresh disputes. Canada and the United States have never reached agreement on the status of the Northwest Passage between the North Atlantic and the Beaufort Sea. China, too, has been working to establish a foothold, declaring itself a “near-Arctic state” and partnering with Russia to promote “sustainable” development and expanded use of Arctic trade routes. Russia has made it clear it intends to control the Northern Sea Route off its northern shore, a route that significantly shortens the shipping distance between China and northern Europe. US officials have complained that Russia is illegally demanding that other nations seek permission to pass and threatening to use military force to sink vessels that do not comply.  “We are stuck with a pretty tense situation there,” said Troy Bouffard, director of the Centre of Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Either we acquiesce to Russia, to their extreme control of surface waters, or we elevate or escalate the issue.” The focus in recent years had been to expand diplomatic channels, collaborating on a range of regional challenges through the Arctic Council. That work was put on pause, however, after Russia invaded Ukraine. In Nome, which hopes to position itself as a maritime gateway to the Far North, there has long been evidence that a new era for the Arctic was arriving. Mayor John Handeland said winter sea ice that once persisted until mid-June may now be gone by early May and does not reappear before Thanksgiving. A record 12 cruise ships docked in Nome’s existing port in 2019. That number was poised to double this year, although some cruises that had expected to sail along Russia’s northern coast have cancelled plans. For Handeland, the time is right to strengthen US capabilities. “As things escalate, I think the need for expansion of our military is now,” Handeland said. “I think we kind of had a period of time where we thought everything was cool, that we can let our guard down, so to speak. And now we’re seeing that that maybe was not a wise idea.” But there are multiple local constituencies to navigate as development moves farther into the Arctic. Alaska Natives are wary about effects to the region’s fragile environment, on which many depend for hunting and fishing, said Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives. “I think that our people realise that our military needs to protect our country and our military does need to invest in a presence in the Arctic,” Kitka said. “But it has got to be done smart.” Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s junior Republican U.S. senator, said that while there may be little threat of a Russian invasion of Alaska, there is concern about Russia’s military buildup in the region. “Ukraine just demonstrates even more, what matters to these guys is presence and power,” Sullivan said. “And when you start to build ports, when you start to bring up icebreakers, when you start to bring up Navy shipping, when you have over 100 fifth-gen fighters in the Arctic in Alaska, we’re starting to now talk Putin’s language.” Alaska is already one of the nation’s most militarized states, with more than 20,000 active-duty personnel assigned to places such as Eielson Air Force Base and Fort Wainwright in the Fairbanks area, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, and Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak. The Army’s large training exercise — the first Combat Training Center rotation to be held in Alaska — took place around Fort Greely, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Alaska is also home to critical parts of the nation’s missile-defence system. Bouffard said the fracture in relations caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could open the door to a variety of future problems that can only be guessed at right now. While there is no imminent conflict in the Arctic, there could well be friction over how Russia manages offshore waters or disputes over undersea exploration. The United States also needs to be prepared to aid northern European allies that share an uncertain future with Russia in Arctic waterways, he said. That will mean being prepared for a range of potential problems. In a separate Alaska military exercise in recent weeks, teams from the Marines and Army practiced cold-weather strategies for containing chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear contamination. At the large Army war games exercise near Fort Greely, the soldiers rehearsed a scenario in which paratroopers seized control of an airfield and established operations to hold the new territory. An opposing force then mobilised to try to reclaim the area. Portable heating elements were used to keep engines running, along with lubricants that work in subzero temperatures. Some soldiers used skis and snowshoes to get around, as well as snowmobiles and small-unit support vehicles light enough to traverse deep snow. For many of the soldiers under Iannone’s command, defending the airfield meant establishing positions in remote areas with more rudimentary means. One heavy weapons group chopped down trees by hand and used a sled to pull a bulky Improved Target Acquisition System to a vantage point from which the soldiers could scan miles of landscape below. They erected a tent with a small stove heater, shielded with a wall of snow on all sides. They rotated in hourly shifts outside the tents — every half-hour at night — in order to keep warm. Even then, 21-year-old Spc. Owen Prescott said he had struggled with the bite of nighttime cold and was figuring out the appropriate layers to wear to stay warm as temperatures neared minus 20. As he spooned some steaming food from a freeze-dried Army ration, he said he and his colleagues were focusing much of their attention on making sure they did not become a cold-weather casualty before engaging on their hypothetical combat mission. “It’s just dealing with the cold, sustaining in the cold,” said Prescott, who is from Southern California. “I’m used to wearing shorts and flip-flops my entire life.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged more funds on Monday to tackle some of Britain's worst flooding for nearly 60 years as rising waters made thousands homeless and plunged entire towns under water. "Our first priority is the safety and protection of our citizens," he told a press briefing at 10 Downing Street, his London residence. Brown said money was being made available to help people caught out by rising floodwaters in the south of the country, the result of days of unusually heavy rain. "We are also doing what we can to make sure the defences against further flooding are in place," he said, adding that Britain would have to look at improving its infrastructure to respond to such emergencies. "Like every advanced industrial country we are coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change." The government said it would raise the flood defence budget to 800 million pounds a year by 2011 from 600 million now. Brown rejected criticism that his government and its agencies had failed to anticipate the latest floods, which came just weeks after heavy rains in northern England killed a number of people and flooded several towns. "I think the emergency services have done a great job," he said. "I am satisfied people are doing everything they can." Brown earlier flew over the county of Gloucestershire, where 70,000 homes have had water supplies cut and up to 140,000 may be affected in the coming days. More than 40,000 homes in the area had their electricity supplies cut early on Monday after a nearby power station was shut down. Insurers estimate claims for flood damage could top 2 billion pounds, on top of an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of claims after the floods in June in central and northern England. Nine severe flood warnings remained in force, large parts of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire in southern England were under water and authorities said river levels were still rising. In some towns cars and trucks were abandoned after streets turned into waterways. Emergency crews in small boats have been handing out drinking water and evacuating the elderly and young. More than 2,000 people spent Sunday night in emergency shelters and the Royal Air Force and coastguard helicopters were called in over the weekend to airlift hundreds to safety in one of Britain's largest peacetime rescue operations. "I'm afraid to say that I don't think we have seen the peak yet," John Harman, of the Environment Agency, told BBC radio. "All this water that we have seen ... is now into the river system. Even though the rain has eased off a bit ... it's the water in the rivers now that constitutes a threat."

While the South Asian nation has made significant strides in its battle to eradicate hunger, it stands among 40 countries where hunger remains at ‘serious’ levels with a score of 20.4, down from 25.8 last year, according to the 2020 report. A high GHI score can be evidence of a lack of food, a poor-quality diet, inadequate child care-giving practices, an unhealthy environment, or all of these factors. The GHI ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (which means no hunger) and 100 the worst. Jointly published by Concern Worldwide and its partner Welthungerhilfe, the 2020 Global Hunger Index was launched through an online event on Friday. The report categorises countries into moderate, serious, or alarming hunger level, using the most recently published official data from a range of specific sources including FAO, UNICEF and WHO.  As a result, the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic is not reflected in the Index. The world faces an “immense mountain” if it is to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development goal of ‘Zero Hunger’ by 2030, according to the report. GHI scores show that hunger and undernutrition have worsened in the countries with hunger level. In many countries, the situation is progressing too slowly or even worsening, the report states. GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators: undernourishment (share of the population with insufficient caloric intake), child wasting (share of children under-five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition), child stunting (share of children under-five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition), and child mortality. According to the index, Bangladesh has made significant inroads in curbing child stunting, with the rate dropping by 12.8 percentage points between 2012 and 2020. But undernourishment remains an issue, with 13 percent of the population suffering from nutritional deficiencies. It marks a marginal improvement on the rate of 13.8 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, the under-five mortality rate in the country is 3 percent in 2020, down from 4.3 percent in 2012. “In Bangladesh, we are now looking at a possible doubling of the country’s poverty rate this year for the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to a worsening of food and nutrition insecurity caused by the overlapping Health, Economic, and Environmental crises of 2020” said Hasina Rahman, Assistant Country Director, Concern Worldwide. “At this crucial moment, we must act together to reshape our food systems as fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly in order to address the current crises, prevent other health and food crises from occurring, and chart a path to Zero Hunger by 2030.” she added. Sri Lanka (64th) and Nepal (73rd) are the only countries in the region to fare better than Bangladesh on the index, both with 'moderate' levels of hunger. Meanwhile, India (94th) is lagging behind Pakistan (88th) in the rankings with Afghanistan (99th) the only other country to feature in the index. The official data used in calculating the 2020 rankings does not yet reflect the damaging impact which COVID-19 has had on countries.  That said, it clearly points to where underlying vulnerabilities to food insecurity already exist. “Even before COVID-19, the world was already off track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. That negative trajectory has been forcefully exacerbated by the events of this year and the economic downturn is affecting every corner of the world,” Concern Worldwide Chief Executive Dominic MacSorley said. “The phenomenal impact of these multiple crises – combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and conflict - is rapidly escalating food and nutrition insecurity for millions, especially for those who were already most vulnerable. COVID-19 has exposed the woeful inadequacies of the world’s food system and its inability to deal with overlapping global and regional crises.” Experts argue that only by taking both an integrated and holistic approach to global and environmental health will it be possible to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030.

New Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a fluent Mandarin speaker, should use his close knowledge of China to take a stronger line with Beijing on human rights, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. The international watchdog has written to Rudd asking him to raise human rights concerns with China's leadership, including freedom of speech and religion restrictions, media and internet censorship, and forced evictions for next year's Olympics. "As a fluent Mandarin speaker with a longstanding interest in human rights in China, you surely understand the severity of the current situation there," HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said his letter to Rudd, a former diplomat to Beijing. Roth said the previous conservative government headed by John Howard had put the booming trade relationship with China, which is Australia's biggest export market, ahead of human rights and Rudd's centre-left Labor government could reverse that. "Under your leadership, we expect Australia to play a major role in raising human rights concerns with China's senior leadership in Beijing," Roth said. Political analysts have predicted Rudd, 50, may play a bridging role between China and other countries as the only Western leader in the world to speak Mandarin. While opposition leader, Rudd demonstrated his skills during an official welcome for Chinese President Hu Jintao in Sydney in September, telling him of family ties to China. Rudd's daughter is married to a Chinese Australian, and his eldest son studied at a university in China. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this month phoned Rudd to congratulate him on his decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and make climate change a top government priority. But Rudd has promised to be hard-headed on Chinese relations and in April described human rights as of "critical importance", along with a commitment by Beijing to "maintenance of a regional and global rules-based order". HRW said Rudd should also re-think Australia's military links with Indonesia's feared Kopassus special forces under a security pact signed last year, given the unit's notorious history of human rights abuses in East Timor, ruled by Indonesia for decades before voting for independence in in 1999. "The new government is flexing its muscles on the environment and it should do the same on human rights, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region where Australia plays a crucial role," said Elaine Pearson, deputy director of HRW's Asia Division.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall were swarmed by delighted tourists and school groups when they arrived to visit the white-columned Lincoln Memorial and worked the crowd with handshakes and hellos. The 66-year-old heir to the British throne and the duchess spent about 10 minutes inside the memorial as a guide explained aspects of Lincoln's statue and how schoolchildren memorize the addresses carved on the walls. After photos at the top of the steps overlooking the National Mall, the couple descended the stairs to cheers from onlookers. Charles and Camilla, who was wearing a Bruce Oldfield embroidered gray-and-black dress and coat against a 39 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) chill and stiff breeze, then visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Accompanied by civil rights figures the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. and U.S. Representative John Lewis, the party paused briefly at one engraved quote from King that said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. 1963". Harry Johnson, the president and chief executive officer of the foundation that built the memorial, said he had given the couple a stone from the memorial's granite. Prince Charles greeted onlookers and shook hands with students and teachers from North Stafford High School in Stafford, Virginia. The students squealed and laughed when he stopped. "We didn't know this was going to happen," said Delaney Peterson, 16. The visit by the prince and duchess is aimed at boosting Britain's partnership with the United States in such areas as climate change and encouraging corporate social responsibility. The couple were scheduled to tour more monuments and historic sites on Wednesday and Thursday, with a trip set for Mount Vernon, the Virginia home of the first U.S. president, George Washington. The royal couple will visit the White House on Thursday, the first such visit by Charles since May 2011. Charles receives a leadership award on Thursday from the International Conservation Caucus Foundation. The couple travel on Friday to Louisville, Kentucky, where the prince attends a health symposium, and the duchess will visit a food education project.

To do so, they had to bow to US and Chinese demands to drop some of the pledges that have become hallmarks of the Group of 20 industrialised nations, which represents two-thirds of the global population. But they left with a communique committing for the first time to reform the dysfunctional World Trade Organisation (WTO), the body supposed to regulate global trade disputes. "A number of words that we used to have always in G7 and G20 summit communiques became kind of taboos," a European official said on Saturday in the midst of the negotiations. "We have American taboos and Chinese taboos." First among those taboos is "protectionism". The US administration has become sensitive to criticisms after President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs not only on $250 billion of Chinese goods but also on steel and aluminum imports that hit several of his G20 partners. As a result, for the first time since G20 leaders held their inaugural meeting in Washington in 2008, their communique did not contain a pledge to fight protectionism. China, meanwhile, steadfastly opposed the inclusion of the usual calls for "fair trade practices," delegates said. Beijing rejects criticisms from the United States, Europe and Japan for dumping, industrial subsidies, abuse of intellectual property rights and technology transfers, amongst other practices. Even the word "multilateralism" itself has fallen out of favour in a group designed to foster international cooperation. Central to getting the United States to sign up to a phrase recognizing the importance of "multilateral trading system" was acknowledging that the system was falling short of its objectives, delegates said. The United States is unhappy with what it says is the WTO's failure to hold Beijing to account for not opening up its economy as envisioned when China joined the body in 2001. To force reform at the WTO, Trump's team has blocked new appointments to the world's top trade court, which is rapidly running out of judges, meaning it will be unable to issue binding rulings in trade disputes. He has even threatened to withdraw the United States from the global body. "There was an attempt from a lot of the other countries ... to get the United States to commit to certain language with regard to the multilateral system," said one senior US official. "We commit to multilateralism where it works ... Is it achieving its intended objectives? In a lot of areas it's falling short," said the US official, who asked not to be identified because of the confidential nature of the talks. The final statement said the group supports the "necessary reform of the WTO to improve its functioning", allowing US officials to claim a victory. While there were no details of the proposed reform, many delegates hailed a breakthrough in committing Washington to global solutions. "For the first time China and the United States agreed to engage on the WTO," said one delegate closely involved in drafting the communique. "Given Trump's earlier threats, to end up with the G20 saying it would work together on WTO reform is interesting." CHINA WAS KEY European Union officials said that a key step in clinching a deal was getting China and major emerging economies to commit to language on trade early this week. "The idea was to bring the Chinese into the discussion almost immediately," said a second European official. "After APEC, we knew it would be important for the Chinese to feel there was no ganging up on them." At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in mid-November, leaders failed to agree on a joint communique for the first time in the group's 30-year history. After APEC, Washington and Beijing traded accusations of blame but, with global markets increasingly roiled by trade tensions, both sides appeared more ready for compromise in Buenos Aires. After the G20 talks ended, Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed over dinner on Saturday to a ceasefire in their trade conflict, calling off higher US tariffs that were to go into effect on Jan 1. "The spirit wasn't adversarial," said the delegate closely involved in the G20 drafting, adding that perhaps because of the fallout after APEC, officials at least tried to work things out. Delegates worked until 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the final day of the summit, watering down language on migration and refugees in the face of resistance from the United States and others, European and Argentine officials said. And they still had not tackled one of the thorniest issues: climate change. "That was what they discussed (Saturday) morning till noon," an Argentine government spokeswoman said, just hours before the communique was made public. In the end, members agreed to disagree. The United States reaffirmed its commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord - as it had at the previous G20 summit in Germany last year - while other members said they would fully implement it. Veteran negotiators were phlegmatic about the difficulties in agreeing on a text. "There is always at least one overnighter in sessions like these," said the delegate closely involved in the drafting, adding "sometimes it was tough to find the right word to stick to the middle ground."

Only a small minority of bodies consulted over proposals to allow police to detain terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge support the government's proposal, Britain's Home Secretary said on Tuesday. The admission to a cross-party parliamentary committee came as Jacqui Smith defended the controversial plans, which would increase the time suspects could be held from 28 days. In her evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Smith said that of 71 unnamed organisations which had given their opinion, just six had voiced "unequivocal" support. While Smith refused to name any of the organisations or people, both the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, and the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, have given evidence to the committee saying no change was necessary. Smith told the hearing that she had not met MacDonald to discuss the proposals despite needing his support. Media reports at the weekend also said that the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, privately told MPs that he would not back the new laws. However senior police officers, including London Commissioner Ian Blair, have backed the extension. Smith argued the proposals were necessary to give police extra time to question suspects in highly-complex terrorism cases. She said the laws would include "safeguards" with any application to extend the time needing support from both parliament and a judge. Under questioning from opposition and government members, Smith denied the 42 day-limit had been formulated with political interests in mind but to "ensure successful prosecutions". "It is likely there is a point in the future that with only 28 days we risk a situation that somebody would be released before the evidence was developed against them," she told the hearing. She had previously agreed with her critics that there was no need to extend the time, but she said her opinion had changed in the current climate of sustained terrorism threats. "If I am wrong, if senior police are wrong about holding somebody longer than 28 days, then the pre-trial extension would never be used," she said. Smith unveiled the plans in a surprise announcement last week prompting heavy criticism from opposition parties, human rights groups and some Muslim organisations. The level of opposition -- including from some government MPs -- indicates that Smith and Prime Minister Gordon Brown will face a tough battle to get the laws through parliament. That would mirror the problems of former Prime Minister Tony Blair who suffered his first Commons defeat in 2005 when he tried to increase the detention time to 90 days.

The Empire State Building has long been a signature feature of Manhattan's skyline. But owners of the iconic edifice, planning a $1 billion initial public offering, hope to convince investors and tenants that it's what's on the inside that really counts. The 81-year-old New York tower has undergone a massive, 3-year makeover designed to cut energy use, modernize office suites, and attract tenants willing to shoulder higher rents. Building owners and key suppliers on Monday will detail the energy savings they've achieved so far. While the new One World Trade Center has claimed the title of New York's tallest from the Empire State, the 102-floor Art Deco building towers over many others when it comes to the world of building retrofits. The Empire State is the highest-profile project in a growing collection of renovations that are becoming big business for industrial conglomerates and electrical service firms. As America's towers show their age, especially in the Big Apple, where nearly half of office space was built before 1945, companies like Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc, Siemens AG and United Technologies Corp are eyeing a retrofit market predicted to generate $16 billion in annual revenue by 2020, up from about $5 billion last year. Johnson Controls, a building efficiency systems supplier based in Milwaukee whose contract for the Empire State is worth about $20 million, estimates six jobs are created for every million dollars spent. By that measure, the retrofit industry will provide almost 100,000 jobs, a meaningful number for a U.S. construction industry in which unemployment remains high after the housing bust and financial crisis. To be sure, not everyone can afford the tens of millions of dollars needed for a sizable retrofit. Financing is scarce and investments can take years to pay off. But for those who can pull off the upfront payment, a renovation can boost rents, lead to longer leases, lower vacancy rates and attract larger, higher quality tenants. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated the return on investment of the Empire State Building's renovations at 4 percent, but other less famous buildings have returns in the triple digits. HIGHER RENTS, LOWER COSTS Seeds for the Empire State project date back to the 2006 launch of the Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative. Anthony Malkin, president of the Malkin Group that controls the Empire State Building, was at a cocktail party at the just-completed "green" Hearst Tower when he offered another building he owned at 35th Street and Broadway as a retrofit test case. But the Clinton Foundation was keen for something more iconic and pushed for the Empire State Building. In 2008, Malkin's team started the project in secret, initially unsure whether a retrofit could deliver double-digit energy savings. More than 60 possible fixes were considered before the team settled on eight with the best payoff. They weighed factors like carbon dioxide emissions, expected pay-back and whether the scheme could be marketed to tenants. In fixing the building, there were two things that could not change: the landmark's Art Deco exterior and the 86th-floor observation deck, a cash cow for the business. The deck and the building's tenants were not disrupted, which forced much of the work to be done at night. The retrofit was launched the following year as part of a more than $550 million capital investment plan. The upgrade promises a steady pay-back, as building owners expect to shave $4.4 million a year off energy costs. Johnson Controls expects the redo to deliver the promised 38 percent energy savings by next year. And tenants are already paying more, especially as the 2.85 million-square-foot, 1,454-foot-tall building has replaced small renters with large organizations such as LF USA, part of Li & Fung Ltd, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and French cosmetics company Coty Inc. "I get a competitive advantage when big tenants come in here," Malkin said, adding that average office rents in August 2006 were $26.50 per square foot, compared to the high $40s to high $50s nowadays. While the building is still leasing below comparable properties in Midtown, the gap has narrowed such that the Empire State's average rent is now a third under market, compared with two-thirds below in 2006, according to data supplied by Studley, a real estate services firm representing tenants. WINDOW FACTORY The way Americans work has changed and this forces offices to evolve. Many jobs that involved coming in and sitting at a desk in an enclosed space for eight hours can now be done from home. There is less need for hat racks, but more for open floor plans and collaborative spaces for talking face-to-face. And mobile workers need electrical power, servers and high-speed networks - which means equipment to cool all the equipment. A high-tech tenant, or anyone concerned about image, is willing to pay a premium for space assigned a government Energy Star rating or the related, third-party LEED rating. The updated Empire State Building ranks in the top 10 of all buildings in terms of efficiency and won a Gold LEED rating. It mixed quick-pay back measures, such as new lighting and new ventilation systems, with a host of longer-term fixes, such as replacing or modernizing boilers and chillers. A retrofit of the basement chiller plant was initially budgeted at $22 million but ended up costing far less once the team realized the giant chillers, resembling submersibles, could be rebuilt rather than replaced. Engineers took over one floor for a factory to upgrade the building's 6,500 windows. These were remanufactured with suspended coated film and gas fill to boost insulation, then reinstalled. The windows and radiative barriers account for a hefty chunk of expected energy savings. On many floors, engineers removed dropped ceilings that had been installed in various stages over the years, which blocked out part of the light. "It felt stuffy," said Johnson Controls project engineer Paul Rode. He is currently overseeing 10 retrofits, up from the one or two in a typical year. Tenants can go online to access information on their energy use thanks to 25,000 sensors that dot the walls and feed data into a central management system. Like an eco-friendly big brother, the system knows when someone is in the room and when to adjust the temperature. "PROGENITOR" FOR JOBS The Empire State Building is hardly alone in the world of Manhattan retrofits. Google Inc's recent takeover of a sprawling art deco Port Authority facility in Chelsea is another. Near Central Park, Sir Norman Foster's celebrated Hearst Tower rose atop a 1928 Art Deco building, whose insides were gutted. JP Morgan renovated its 1960s Park Avenue tower with such amenities as an 11th floor herb garden. "For the next 50 years, the majority of architects' work will be on projects that are already built," said Bill Worthen, who directs sustainability efforts at The American Institute of Architects. Johnson Controls estimates the current market for retrofits of public sector buildings, such as schools and courthouses, alone is around $5 billion to $6 billion a year. "The opportunity on the commercial side is probably double that," said Dave Myers, head of the company's building efficiency segment, who noted that the Empire State Building's experience is now discussed on every project. Nevertheless, hurdles remain to wider adoption of retrofits. Financing is difficult as few lenders have ventured into loans for capital-intensive commercial projects. And even if capital can be raised, building owners are often skeptical about a pay-back that can take years. Malkin plans to publish an unfiltered diary of costs and savings for others to emulate, saying he wants to be a "progenitor" for jobs created by the energy efficiency movement. Other buildings may take ideas from the project's performance contracting, in which a service provider guarantees certain energy savings, as by Johnson Controls did for the Empire State. This method has been mainly visible in the municipal, university, schools and hospitals, or "MUSH", market. Some owners are put off by a long planning process, or by the split incentive between building owners, who bear the cost of investment, and tenants, who benefit from lower operating costs. Johnson Controls' engineer Rode is frustrated when he sees retrofit projects stall for no good reason, but he subscribes to the notion of a tipping point in the industry. "If we figure it out here, we can do it anywhere," Rode said, chuckling at his own riff on Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," a song as iconic as the Empire State Building.

Healthcare A pledge to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy, was among Trump's central 2016 election campaign promises. It is also one of the biggest failures of his first 100 days. A bill in the House of Representatives was withdrawn in late March when Republicans could not muster enough votes for passage even though they control the chamber. A reworked plan this week has drawn support from the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative bloc that helped sink the original bill. That improves the chances of a deal in the House though it is unclear if it can win enough support from moderate Republicans, and it would face tougher challenges in the Senate. Tax cuts Trump repeatedly promised the biggest tax reform since the 1980s. This week he proposed legislation to slash the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, cut the top personal income tax rate to 35 percent, repeal the inheritance tax, and temporarily slash the rate on overseas profits repatriated to the United States. The plan, however, is vague and even senior Republican lawmakers described it as offering only "guideposts" for legislative changes. Foreign policy Trump's foreign policy has been marked by major shifts. Russia: Trump spoke admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the campaign and indicated he wanted a rapprochement with Moscow. But the administration has not been able to fend off a controversy that has led to a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including possible links between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Trump has cooled considerably toward Putin. Putin condemned Trump's decision in early April to launch cruise missile strikes on Syria in punishment for a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government, and Trump said the relationship with Russia "may be at an all-time low." North Korea: A growing nuclear and missile threat from North Korea is perhaps Trump's most serious security challenge. He has vowed to prevent North Korea from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile, a capability experts say Pyongyang could have some time after 2020. Trump's administration aims to push North Korea into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs through tougher international sanctions and diplomatic pressure. He has pressed China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner, to do more to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear program. NATO: Trump alarmed US allies during the election campaign by calling NATO "obsolete." In mid-April he lavished praise on NATO and said it is not obsolete. Syria: Trump had vowed to avoid entanglements in Middle East conflicts and, in his first days in office, said he did not want the United States dragged deeper into the Syrian conflict. But he responded to the chemical weapons attack, which killed dozens of people, by ordering strikes on a Syrian air base. That won praise from allies in Europe and from US lawmakers. Immigration and a wall Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigrants entering the United States and the deportation of illegal immigrants living in the country, especially those with criminal records. He also pledged to build a wall along the border and to get Mexico to pay for it. The approach and strong rhetoric have had an effect with the number of migrants caught trying to enter the country illegally hitting a 17-year low in March. The number of children traveling with a guardian and apprehended at the southern US border plunged by more than 90 percent in March from December. Trump insists he will build the border wall, but in order to lift the threat of a government shutdown, he gave way on his demand this week that Congress include full funding for it in a spending bill. Trump campaigned on a promise to bar the entry of Muslims into the United States, casting it as part of the fight against the Islamic State militant group. On Jan 27, he ordered a temporary ban on the entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Syria. He also indefinitely banned refugees from Syria and temporarily banned refugees from all other countries. A federal judge temporarily halted the ban, and a federal appeals court upheld that ruling. Trump issued a revised travel ban in early March, only to see it again blocked in federal court. Similarly, a federal judge this week blocked his order to withhold federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, which offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants. Supreme Court This is one of Trump's clearest wins. His promise to select a like-minded successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died early last year, was kept with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. The Senate confirmed Gorsuch despite Democratic opposition, restoring a conservative majority on the court. Trade Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal just days after his inauguration, keeping a campaign promise. Trump had both threatened to withdraw from or renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), blaming it for an exodus of US jobs to Mexico. The threats of withdrawal had jolted financial markets at various times. On Thursday, Trump extended an olive branch, saying he would not terminate NAFTA after the leaders of Mexico and Canada asked him to work on a new trade deal.  Trump also ordered a review of the causes of US trade deficits, such as dumping of products below cost; unfair subsidies; "misaligned" currencies; and "non-reciprocal" trade practices. Trump had vowed to name China a currency manipulator, meaning the United States could then impose tariffs on Chinese goods. But in mid-April he changed course and said that China was not a currency manipulator. Regulation Trump has acted aggressively on his promise to eliminate regulations that he said were hurting the US economy. He issued a permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. He also rescinded Obama-era climate change regulations, including the Clean Power Plan; a ban on coal leasing on federal lands; and rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production. As part of a push to open up more federal lands to drilling, mining and other development, Trump ordered a review to identify national monuments that can be rescinded or resized. Legal challenges are expected. His administration has approved a dozen measures rolling back regulations passed in the final months of the Obama administration on the environment, energy, education and financial services. But American, hire American Trump has pledged to keep US companies from shipping jobs overseas. Before taking office, Trump used the muscle of his election victory to threaten companies about moving jobs abroad. He claimed victories with the Carrier unit of United Technologies Corp and with Ford Motor Co, though Carrier still cut hundreds of jobs in Indiana and Ford said it scrapped plans for a Mexican factory because of declining demand for small cars in North America. The jury is still out on how successful he can be in keeping jobs from going overseas. Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa program, which brings highly skilled foreign workers into the United States. He says he wants to modify or replace the current lottery system with a merit-based system for highly skilled workers. 'Drain the swamp' This was one of Trump's rallying cries during the campaign, saying he would change Washington by cracking down on the influence of special interests and political elites. He criticised Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for her paid speeches to Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs but has named several former Goldman executives to his inner circle. He did ban appointees of any executive agency from lobbying for five years after leaving government employment and permanently banned future former appointees from activity on behalf of any government or political party abroad.

TOKYO, Wed Nov 12,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Japan's greenhouse gas emissions rose to a record high in the year to March, putting the world's fifth-largest carbon dioxide producer at risk of an embarrassing failure to achieve its Kyoto target over the next four years. The increase of 2.3 percent last year, largely due to the closure of Japan's biggest nuclear power plant after an earthquake, will ratchet up the pressure for it to give up its efforts to control emissions through voluntary measures and adopt tougher limits on industry like the European Union and Australia. With developing countries already questioning Tokyo's political will to rein in emissions and top CO2 polluters China, the United States and India free from Kyoto's 2008-2012 targets, Japan's actions will be seen as a milestone as governments struggle to agree on a successor to the protocol next year. Emissions rose to 1.371 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent in the Japanese fiscal year through March, after a 1.3 percent decline the previous year, Ministry of the Environment data showed on Wednesday. Analysts said immediate action was called for if Japan was to cut emissions by the estimated 13.5 percent needed to hit its 2008-2012 target under Kyoto of just under 1.2 billion tons, down 6 percent from 1990 levels. "We immediately need a set of effective policies to drive a change towards a more climate-friendly society," Tetsunari Iida, executive director of Tokyo's Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP), an environment policy NGO. Unlike the European Union, Japan has been reluctant to set a mandatory cap or a carbon tax on companies' emissions. Steelmakers and other manufacturers resist such caps, saying they would hurt their products' worldwide competitiveness. The task of cutting emissions may grow even harder with the world tilting toward what may be its worst recession in decades, one that may divert governments' focus away from climate change and the trillions of investment dollars required to stem it. Although Japan is set to review next year its current measures, based on voluntary pledges on emission cuts across major industries, that could be too late, analysts said. For a graphic of Japan's CO2 emissions, click on: here EXTRA CREDITS A rise was widely expected after the world's biggest nuclear plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), had to suspend operations following a July 2007 earthquake, forcing utilities to meet demand by burning more coal, oil and natural gas, all of which emit far more greenhouse gases. The plant is expected to remain shut until beyond next March. While Japan's utilities have stepped up their buying of U.N. carbon offsets, Wednesday's data suggests they may have to buy more if Japan is to meet its global pledge, potentially driving up global carbon credit prices. While Tokyo has worked hard to drive utilities toward cleaner forms of energy, it has also struggled to convince power companies facing tough times to hasten investments in new nuclear power stations with low emissions. The government also faces public distrust about Japan's scandal-plagued nuclear industry, including safety fears over the numerous earthquakes the country suffers each year. On Tuesday, J-Power said it had delayed the start of a major new nuclear unit by two years, the latest in a string of delays to new projects. Yet long term strategies are key to resolving the problem, analysts say. "There will be no reduction in carbon emissions until there are viable ways of replacing energy supply and energy growth with large-scale renewables," said climate change expert Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide in Australia. "That is where the focus of international action should now be." Iida said the fact that two new coal plants were being built in Japan underscored the need for sterner government action. The world's efforts to carve out a pact to follow Kyoto should intensify ahead of a key meeting in Copenhagen next December that negotiators have set as a deadline for establishing a post-2012 framework. But the debate comes at a difficult time, with developed nations heading into recession, which may help curb emissions by reducing power demand, but also risks distracting from the longer-term task and fostering a return to cheaper carbon energy. The world needs to invest $26 trillion in energy infrastructure by 2030 just to maintain fossil-based energy supply, the International Energy Agency said last week. OUTLOOK UNCERTAIN Tokyo has set companies and households a private-sector emissions target, to be met by voluntary steps, of 1.254 billion metric tons, which will be offset by a further 68 million tons a year by government spending on domestic forest conservation and credits from investing in clean technology in poorer countries. The key to Japan's voluntary program is the electric power industry, which has pledged to cut CO2 emissions to an average of 0.34 kg per kilowatt hour a year through to 2012. But in the year to March that figure stood at 0.453 kg due to the closure of TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Even if the power industry met its voluntary target last year, Japan's emissions would still have exceeded its target, the environment ministry said.

Several women prevented Philip Hammond from speaking for a few minutes by using loudspeakers to shout slogans during an annual banquet in London's landmark Mansion House building on Thursday evening. Footage posted online by broadcaster ITV showed foreign office minister Mark Field grappling with one of the women and holding her by the back of her neck as he marched her out of the room. He subsequently apologised but a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday Field had been suspended from his responsibilities whilst an investigation takes place. "The prime minister has seen the footage and she found it very concerning," she added. Field told ITV his response was due to fears over security. "In the current climate, I felt the need to act decisively to close down the threat to the safety of those present," he said in a statement. His office did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Watch as Tory MP for Cities of London & Westminster @MarkFieldUK grabs a Greenpeace protester who interrupted a Philip Hammond speech in London tonight https://t.co/wZTzEC8lKF pic.twitter.com/tJuwCZ1P0X— ITV News (@itvnews) June 20, 2019   Watch as Tory MP for Cities of London & Westminster @MarkFieldUK grabs a Greenpeace protester who interrupted a Philip Hammond speech in London tonight https://t.co/wZTzEC8lKF pic.twitter.com/tJuwCZ1P0X The main opposition Labour Party's spokeswoman for women and equalities Dawn Butler said Field should be immediately suspended or sacked. "This is horrific," she wrote on Twitter. Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it had organised the protest in the heart of the capital's banking district, accusing the finance industry of funding climate change and the finance ministry of trying to water down government action to mitigate it. It criticised Field's response to the demonstrator. "I don't see any justification for the kind of violent behaviour that we saw from him last night. It's an extremely shocking and concerning state of affairs," said Rebecca Newsom, Head of Politics at Greenpeace UK. The City of London Corporation is looking again at its procedures after Thursday night's incident. “We are investigating last night’s breach of security at Mansion House and will be reviewing arrangements for future events," said a spokesman.

Six New Zealand firefighters were injured on Saturday while battling bushfires burning across southeastern Australia, but mild weather reduced the threat of dozens of fires. The cooler conditions helped more than 4,000 firefighters working in rugged mountains and bushland put control lines in place in a bid to slow blazes which have scorched more than 550,000 ha (2,100 square miles) of land. Police say more than 30 homes have so far been razed. The six New Zealanders, part of a group of volunteers who specialise in remote area firefighting, were trapped when a blaze unexpectedly overwhelmed their position near Mansfield, 180 km (110 miles) northeast of Melbourne. They were airlifted to hospital suffering burns and smoke inhalation. One was in critical condition, Victoria Rural Ambulance spokesman John Mullen told journalists. Australia faces extreme fire danger this summer due to a drought. Bushfires are a regular feature of the summer and over the past 40 years, more than 250 people have been killed in bushfires. Scientists fear climate change will bring more frequent higher temperatures and less rainfall.

Guatemala will create a tourist park at the ruins of an ancient Maya city that is home to one of the world's largest pyramids, the country's president said on Monday. The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate palaces in Central America and southern Mexico before mysteriously abandoning their cities around 900 A.D. Recently elected Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said the park would give tourists access to the Mirador archeological site, which contains hundreds of buildings that have been reclaimed by the Peten jungle in the north of the country. "Among the structures is the world's most massive pyramid and I think it even beats the Egyptians by around a meter," Colom said. The Mirador site is currently accessible only by helicopter or a two-day hike through the jungle. Colom said the site was about three times the size of the country's famous Tikal ruins, which are a major draw for foreign tourists. Colom, who announced the plans for the park in his inauguration speech, said the park would promote development in the region overrun by poachers and drug smugglers. The collapse of the Maya, who dominated the region for some 2,000 years as accomplished scientists and urban builders, is one of the great mysteries of archeology. Scholars have blamed the demise of Maya on everything from disease to over-farming, incessant warfare or climate change that led to prolonged drought.

Not this year, though. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry froze the funding used to pay personnel at the research station and to maintain instruments that measure how quickly climate change is thawing Arctic permafrost and how much methane - a potent planet-warming gas - is being released. The funding freeze will probably lead to an interruption of the continuous measurements at the station dating back to 2013, compromising scientists' understanding of the warming trend, said Peter Hergersberg, a spokesperson for the Max Planck Society, which is funded by the German state. "(Russian) colleagues at the Northeast Science Station try to keep the station running," Hergersberg said. He declined to say how much funding was withheld. Reuters spoke with more than two dozen scientists about the impact of the Ukraine conflict on Russian science. Many expressed concern about its future after tens of millions of dollars in Western funding for Russian science has been suspended in the wake of European sanctions on Moscow. Hundreds of partnerships between Russian and Western institutions have been paused if not cancelled altogether, the scientists said, as the invasion has unravelled years spent building international cooperation following the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse. Many communication channels are closed and research trips have been postponed indefinitely. The projects affected by the suspension of Western assistance include the construction of high-tech research facilities in Russia, such as an ion collider and a neutron reactor for which Europe had pledged 25 million euros ($27.4 million). Such technology would unlock a generation of research that could contribute to everything from fundamental physics to the development of new materials, fuels and pharmaceuticals, scientists said. Another 15 million-euro ($16.7 million) contribution toward designing low-carbon materials and battery technologies needed in the energy transition to combat climate change has also been frozen, after the European Union halted all cooperation with Russian entities last month. "Emotionally, I can understand this suspension," said Dmitry Shchepashchenko, a Russian environmental scientist who studies global forest cover and has been affiliated with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria since 2007. But for science overall, he said: "This is a lose-lose solution. Global issues like climate change and biodiversity ... can hardly be solved without Russian territory [and] the expertise of Russian scientists." FROZEN FINANCES When the Soviet Union broke apart, Russian spending on science plummeted, and thousands of scientists moved abroad or abandoned their fields altogether. "We felt as scientists that our work was not appreciated," said permafrost scientist Vladimir Romanovksy, who moved his work to Fairbanks, Alaska, in the 1990s. "There was practically no funding, especially for field work." Russian funding has since improved, but remains far below that of the West. In 2019, Russia spent 1% of its GDP on research and development — or about $39 billion, adjusted for currency and price variation — according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Most of that money has been spent in physical science fields, such as space technology and nuclear energy. By comparison, Germany, Japan and the United States each spend around 3% of their respective GDPs. For the United States, that amounted to $612 billion in 2019. Russian science got a boost, though, from partnerships on projects with scientists abroad. Russia and the United States, for example, led the international consortium that launched the International Space Station in 1998. The head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said this month it would suspend its participation in the space station until sanctions tied to the Ukraine invasion are lifted. Russian scientists also helped build the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, known as CERN. In 2012, the collider made the breakthrough discovery of the elusive Higgs boson, which until then had only been theorized. Scientific camaraderie with Europe continued uninterrupted after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. But CERN's governing council announced last month it was suspending any new collaboration with Russia. Germany alone has given some 110 million euros ($122 million) toward more than 300 German-Russian projects over the last three years. A further 12.6 million euros ($14 million) in EU funding was awarded to Russian organisations for another 18 projects focusing on everything from Arctic climate monitoring to infectious animal diseases. Chemist Pavel Troshin recently won Russian state funding for his part in a Russian-German effort to develop next-generation solar cells to power communication satellites. But, with the German side now suspended, the project is up in the air. Joint projects "are supposed to be done for the benefit of all the world, and cutting out Russian scientists ... is really counter-productive," said Troshin, who works at Russia's Institute for Problems of Chemical Physics. "I would never expect something like this. It's shocking to me. I'm upset very much." ARCTIC BLACKOUT Among the more urgent research efforts on hold are projects to study climate change in the Russian Arctic. "Two-thirds of the permafrost region is in Russia, so data from there is critical,” said Northern Arizona University ecologist Ted Schuur of the Permafrost Carbon Network. "If you cut off your view of changing permafrost in Russia, you're really cutting off our understanding of global changes to permafrost." That's alarming for scientists as global warming thaws the long-frozen ground that holds an estimated 1.5 trillion metric tons of organic carbon – twice the amount already in the atmosphere today. As permafrost thaws, organic material locked within the ice decays and releases more planet-warming gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists fear that such emissions could cause climate change to spiral out of control. Scientists can use satellites to monitor landscape changes due to thaw, but can't pick up what's happening below ground, which requires on-site research, Schuur said. Russian scientists have collected and shared permafrost field data for years, but Western researchers aren't sure if those communication channels will remain open. Those datasets were also patchy, due to limited funding to cover the vast region. Arctic ecologist Sue Natali, at U.S. Woodwell Climate Research Center, said her project's plans for boosting Russian monitoring capability is on hold. "Instrumentation that was supposed to go out this year has been halted," she said, as her colleagues' travel plans have been cancelled. The U.S. government has issued no clear directive on interacting with Russian institutions, contrary to the European stance. A State Department spokesperson told Reuters: "We do not hold the people of Russia responsible [for the conflict], and believe that continued direct engagement with the Russian people is essential – including in science and technology fields." SCIENCE AS COLLATERAL DAMAGE Projects under the Russian Science Foundation's state-funded 2021 budget of 22.9 billion rubles ($213 million) had relied on partnerships with India, China, Japan, France, Austria, and Germany, among others. A spokesperson did not answer Reuters questions about how the halt in European collaboration would affect its work, saying only that the foundation would "continue to support leading teams of researchers and their research projects." European scientists had been helping to build Russian research sites including the neutron reactor and the ion collider near St. Petersburg, said Martin Sandhop, a coordinator on this EU-funded effort called CremlinPlus. The facilities would help to drive research in fields like high-energy physics, biochemistry and materials science. But plans for a 25-million-euro project extension are now suspended and Sandhop's team is redirecting experts and equipment toward European institutions. Kremlin's neutron detectors needed for the planned reactor, for example, are now going to a facility in Lund, Sweden. Even if Russia manages to complete the expansion works, it's unclear how valuable the work will be without the suite of tools at Western institutions to analyse the data. Physicist Efim Khazanov at the Institute of Applied Physics in Nizhny Novgorod, near Moscow, said not having access to European equipment would hurt his work using a high-energy laser to study topics such as the structure of spacetime in a vacuum, which could expand our understanding of the universe. Khazanov was among thousands of Russian scientists who signed an open letter, posted on the independent online science publication Troitskiy Variant, saying Russia had "doomed itself to international isolation" with its invasion of Ukraine. Many Russian scientists also fled the country, said Alexander Sergeev, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences, according to Interfax state news agency. The protest letter was temporarily removed from the site after Russia passed a law March 4 criminalising "fake news" on the Ukraine campaign. That day, a letter was published on the state Russian Rectors' Union website in support of Russia's invasion and signed by more than 300 leading scientists, who have since been suspended from European University Association membership. While foreign funding represents just a small part of Russia's scientific spending, its scientists relied on that money to keep projects and careers afloat. "Those joint research grants were helping a lot of Russians," lamented Russian geographer Dmitry Streletskiy, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "I'm just surprised the EU is targeting scientists, which is not the right crowd to target."

The researchers studied the fossil of the sand tiger sharks' teeth found on Banks Island of the Canadian Arctic archipelago.The teeth date back to the Eocene epoch 38 to 53 million years ago, when the region had a temperate climate and its water had a lower salinity. "That period is a "deep-time analogue for what is going to happen if we do not curb CO2 emissions today, and potentially what a runaway greenhouse effect looks like," marine scientist Sora Kim of University of Chicago was quoted as saying.For the study, researchers analysed the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the teeth - a measure that tends to reflect ocean temperature and salinity and found that the numbers indicated the water had such low salinity that it practically looked like freshwater.However, the sand tiger sharks, which prefer high salinity, had managed to live in the region.Sharks may be able to cope with rising temperatures and decreasing salinity, the researchers concluded.Their findings assume significance as a 2013 study showed that warming elsewhere in the oceans is pushing sharks and other marine species increasingly northward, Discovery News reported.The study appeared in the journal Geology.

In the commencement address at the US Military Academy in West Point, Obama laid out his approach to foreign affairs for the rest of his presidency built on a commitment to act in concert with other nations, and he shifted the fight against terrorism from Afghanistan to more diffuse threats globally.Obama, stung by unrelenting criticism that he has been passive and indecisive as a world leader, spent a large section of his address countering Republicans in Congress and foreign policy experts in Washington who argue for a more aggressive approach to crises from Ukraine to Syria.He cast himself as striking a middle ground between war mongers and isolationists."Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans," he said. America must lead on the world stage but “US military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” he said.The vision he set out reflected a president determined to avoid a repeat of what he considers a mistaken war in Iraq and to end the conflict in Afghanistan, where the United States sent troops following the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked-plane attacks. But he likely did little to silence critics who feel he is setting aside a global role traditionally filled by robust American policies.Republican Senator John McCain, whom Obama defeated in the 2008 election, accused the president of "posturing as the voice of reason between extremes," and suggesting that to oppose his policies is to support the unilateral use of military force everywhere. "Literally no one is proposing that, and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest so," he said.Obama announced a $5 billion proposal to serve as a “partnership fund” to help countries fight terrorism on their soil. The White House said Obama would work with Congress to find the money for the program in the tight federal budget.The funds would train and equip other countries to fight "violent extremism and terrorist ideology."Obama’s refusal to use military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for use of chemical weapons last year, after he had threatened to do, hurt his image among allies such as Saudi Arabia.Obama, however, says his threats paid off with an international deal to secure and eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.He said he will work with Congress to "ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators," but he offered no specifics.Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq will also get additional resources to help house Syrian refugees. That money will come from the new fund, a senior administration official said."As frustrating as it is, there are no easy answers, no military solution that can eliminate the terrible suffering anytime soon," Obama said about Syria.The Syrian Opposition Coalition welcomed Obama's promise. "The Syrian people and the opposition forces stand committed to work with their friends and to expand strategic cooperation in countering the terrorism enabled by the Assad regime in Syria," it said in a statement.LEADERSHIP AND CAVEATSObama pointed to progress toward persuading Iran to give up nuclear weapons as a solid dividend of his multilateral diplomacy. And he said the firm stance by the United States and its European allies has been pivotal in persuading Russia to halt its advances on Ukraine after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.“This is American leadership. This is American strength. In each case, we built coalitions to respond to a specific challenge,” he said.But here too there are caveats. On Iran, Obama acknowledged odds for success are still long and it is yet to be seen how Russian President Vladimir Putin will react to Ukraine’s latest crackdown on pro-Russian separatists in the east."We don’t know how the situation will play out and there will remain grave challenges ahead, but standing with our allies on behalf of international order working with international institutions, has given a chance for the Ukrainian people to choose their future," he said.The president also pledged that the United States would be a leader in forming an international agreement next year on measures to combat global warming and condemned Republicans who question whether climate change is real.Obama critics were unmoved. "Across the spectrum, there is concern that under Barack Obama, America is in withdrawal mode," said Representative Mac Thornberry, a senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.“Even a president with rhetorical gifts cannot finesse his way out of military weakness or the loss of credibility in the world,” Thornberry said in a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.Some in Obama's audience at West Point were also non-plussed. "He was too wishy-washy," said John Dodson, a 1968 West Point graduate. "When you’re not perceived to be strong and vigorous all your enemies are more willing to take chances."

Without coordinated policies on both issues, the world "risks more contestation and conflict without any mechanism for addressing that at the international level," said Erin Sikorsky, deputy director of the Washington-based Center for Climate and Security. So-called "solar geoengineering" techniques, in which particles could be sprayed into the planet's stratosphere to deflect more sunlight away from a heating Earth, are of particular concern, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "When we ask security professionals what they're worried about, this issue is coming up more and more," she said by phone. "The concern is the science is moving ahead of the rules of the road." In a report released on Monday, experts from the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), called for swifter action to curb planet-heating emissions and greater efforts to deal with the consequences of climate change. "The increasing pace and intensity of climate hazards will strain military and security services around the world as they are called on to respond to climate-driven crises," they warned. Military forces' own infrastructure is increasingly at risk from climate impacts such as rising sea levels and worsening storms, they said. From a record drought in the US West to harsher hurricanes and cyclones around the world and surging Central American migration linked to storms and failed crops, climate impacts are already presenting security risks, they said. "Climate change is no longer a 'future' risk that will strike decades from now. Warming temperatures and climate impacts are already actively shaping the security landscape for all countries," said Kate Guy, deputy director of the IMCCS. 'URGENTLY NEEDED' The experts said military forces around the world now agree climate change is a security risk, but that steps to address the issue through changes to development strategy, diplomacy and international defence accords were only starting to emerge. "The actual number of implemented measures is small," said Sherri Goodman, former US deputy under-secretary of defense and the IMCCS's secretary-general, in a statement. "The transition from concepts of climate security to implementation is critical and urgently needed," she added. Analysts said they hoped that NATO countries meeting on June 14 might agree for the first time to push ahead with a climate action plan aimed at addressing some of the issues. With US President Joe Biden pushing for climate action, "it's time to seize the initiative and not miss this moment", Sikorsky said. She said climate risks are starting to be integrated into peacebuilding efforts, with a climate adviser appointed to a peacekeeping mission in Somalia and language about climate change in peace agreements in West Africa. "But there's way more to be done. Practices are still one-off and not happening everywhere," she said. Francois Bausch, Luxembourg's defence minister and deputy prime minister, said too much military attention is still focused on traditional threats. "In the 21st Century, an understanding of security needs to include non-traditional risks," he said during the report's online launch, adding that threats including climate change required assessment, preparation and mitigation measures. David van Weel, NATO's assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges, said the possible implications of geoengineering technologies had so far been "insufficiently looked at". Sikorsky noted that when it comes to preparing for more climate migration and possible geoengineering deployment, "we need to get the international community talking and coming to agreement ... and we need to start now".

Simmering in makeshift camps housing tens of thousands of farmers since last year, the movement has seen a dramatic growth in recent weeks, getting backing from environmental activists, opposition parties and even A-list Western celebrities. At its heart are three new farm laws passed by the government last September, thanks to the majority Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) enjoys in the lower house of parliament. "To frame this narrowly as agricultural frustration wouldn't explain the scale of what we are seeing," said Neelanjan Sircar, a political science professor at Ashoka University. "This is about some larger frustration with how the government conducts business." Since taking office in 2014, Modi's government has faced increased criticism for suppressing dissent, curbing consultation on major decisions and using its majority to drive legislation through parliament. Led by farmers from India's northern Punjab state, the movement has spread to the country's northern and western farm belts and is now nearing its 100-day mark. Sugarcane farmers from the politically important Uttar Pradesh state, who are suffering lengthy delays in crop payments, are joining forces with rice paddy and wheat growers from other states in opposing the new farm laws. "Our protest will only get bigger in the weeks and months to come as more and more farmers are joining our movement from other parts of the country," said Joginder Singh Ugrahan, a farm leader from Punjab. Western Uttar Pradesh's sizeable Muslim population, whose opposition to the Modi government's citizenship law in 2019 was quietened by heavy-handed policing, has allied with Hindu farm leaders to join the ongoing protests. India's wider civil society, which has seen its ambit steadily narrow during Modi's term, has also thrown its weight behind the farmers' movement alongside academics and students. GLOBAL SUPPORT Senior government officials said they didn't expect this level of pushback against laws intended to attract investment into India's vast agriculture sector. The new farm laws allow private retailers to buy farm goods directly from growers, circumventing India's government-controlled wholesale markets. For over 60 years, Indian farmers have been selling grain to the government at state-guaranteed prices through these wholesale markets, and they say the new laws leave them at the mercy of large private retailers. "The truth is that the laws were introduced to help Indian agriculture by revamping our dated and mothball post-harvest food supply chain," said a government official, who has been involved in talks with farmers, on condition of anonymity. "But perhaps there was an issue with communicating that message to farmers," he added. More recently, a wave of global support for the protests has complicated matters further for the Modi government. Pop superstar Rihanna, Swedish climate change crusader Greta Thunberg and US activist Meena Harris, the niece of US Vice-President Kamala Harris, all tweeted in support of the farmers this month, drawing a rebuke from India's foreign ministry. The subsequent arrest of Disha Ravi, a 22-year-old environmental activist linked to Thunberg, on sedition charges for creating and sharing an online document about the protests has only galvanized international support, advocacy groups say. A Delhi court later granted her bail, citing a lack of evidence. South Asian advocacy groups in the United States and Britain say they are lobbying those respective governments to pressure India to stop coming down hard on farmers and their supporters. "We are pushing for more action from the US government -particularly Congress - especially in the weeks ahead," said Satjeet Kaur, executive director of The Sikh Coalition in New York. The Sikh Federation in Britain said more than 100,000 people had signed a petition urging lawmakers to discuss the way the Indian government was "harassing" farmers, said Jas Singh, an advisor to the London-based group.

Bangladesh has been elected a titular member to the governing body of the International Labour Organisation for the period of 2008-11, said a statement of Bangladesh mission in Geneva Monday. Bangladesh would represent the Asia Pacific Group of countries in the ILO. The elections for 18 new titular members were held Monday at the international labour conference in Geneva. The ILO governing body has 56 regular members. "To reflect the unique tripartite structure of ILO, the GB comprises of members from governments, employers and workers," the statement said. "The election reflects the international community's support to the country's adherence to various ILO conventions," acting labour and employment secretary Mahfuzul Haque, now in Geneva, told bdnews24.com. "Being a member of ILO GB, Bangladesh would be able to play an important role in protecting the rights of the working people at home and abroad," he said. "Presently, with ILO, Bangladesh is implementing a number of projects concerning elimination of child labour, withdrawing children from hazardous work, developing guidelines for ship-breaking industry, protecting workers from impending climate change related disaster," Haque said. It is believed, Haque said, the country will be able to undertake more projects with ILO assistance in promoting causes of the labour community following Bangladesh's elections.

Bangladesh needs to adopt cleaner technology to harness power from coal so as not to aggravate the climate change situation in the country, according to a visiting UK official. Speaking in an interview with few journalists, John Ashton, special representative for the UK foreign secretary, said that while power is needed for development and it would be wrong to exclude coal, but at the same time one must take pollution into consideration. "There are two ways. One is stop using coal or apply technology to reduce pollution," he elaborated. The government can ask its development partners to finance the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the coal-fired power plants, he suggested. Bangladesh, a gas-starved country, is looking for alternative options, including coal, to produce power. "Agencies like the World Bank or DFID can help pay the additional expenses for the CCS technology," Ashton said. Political consensus The British diplomat stressed that political consensus is needed to combat climate change. "The climate change will affect everybody and in this issue all the political parties should work together to formulate policies," he said. Carbon trading Ashton said the British government is willing to help a country like Bangladesh with carbon trading. "We need to have buyers in the carbon market and for that contracts should be legally binding so that low emission countries can sell carbon emissions quotas to others," he explained. "The UK government really has an appetite to work with Bangladesh In this area," he said. Bangladesh is one the most climate change vulnerable countries in the world. It is feared that a vast part of the country will be inundated by the end of this century due to climate change.

In a study, they said peat bogs, wetlands that contain large amounts of carbon in the form of decaying vegetation that has built up over centuries, could help the world achieve climate goals like the limit of 2 degrees Celsius of postindustrial warming that is part of the 2015 Paris agreement. But without protection and restoration efforts, some targets for greenhouse gas emissions “would be very difficult or nearly impossible to achieve,” said Alexander Popp, an author of the study, which was published in Environmental Research Letters. Popp is a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, where he leads a group studying land-use issues. Peatlands exist around the world, in tropical as well as colder regions. They make up only about 3% of global land area, but their deep layers of peat are practically treasure chests of carbon, overall containing roughly twice as much as the world’s forests. In pristine bogs, that carbon remains soggy and intact. But when a bog is dried out, for agriculture or other reasons, the carbon starts to oxidize and is released to the atmosphere as planet-warming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That process potentially can continue for centuries. Current estimates are that drained peatlands worldwide emit as much carbon dioxide annually as global air travel. But dry peat is also a fire risk, and peat fires have the potential to release a lot of carbon very quickly. In September and October 2015, peat fires in Indonesia, where bogs have long been drained for palm oil plantations and other purposes, released more carbon dioxide per day than all the fossil fuels burned in the European Union. Dried peatlands could be restored by allowing them to become wet again, which would saturate the decaying vegetation and prevent further release of carbon dioxide, and also eliminate the fire hazard. “Rewetting them is really the core for reaching mitigation targets,” Popp said. Most pathways for countering climate change predict that by the end of this century, land use, which includes forests and agriculture, would be a net carbon sink, meaning it would store more carbon than the amount being released to the atmosphere. That would slow the process of global warming. But most of those pathways do not take emissions from degraded peatland into account, the researchers said. When they plugged peatland data into their own land-use model, they found that land use would be a net carbon source, releasing more carbon dioxide than was stored. The researchers then calculated that protecting pristine wetlands and rewetting about 60% of the degraded ones would reverse that, making land use a net sink again. Mike Waddington, a peat researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who was not involved in the work, said the study “makes a very compelling case” in favour of restoring peatlands. “Despite covering a small area, they really pack a carbon punch when it comes to carbon storage in ecosystems,” Waddington said. “They are really important in global climate regulation.” He said the study made an important point: In current pathways for changing land use to aid the climate, through planting more trees or other measures, peatlands are often considered expendable. “When we think about storing carbon in ecosystems, it’s almost always about planting trees,” Waddington said. There’s often tremendous pressure to plant trees in drained peatlands, he said, but that’s the wrong choice given the carbon-storing ability of an intact bog. Peat bogs are usually dried by digging ditches through them, which allows the water to drain away. In addition to conversion to croplands, tree plantations or forests, some peatlands are drained so the peat can be extracted for use in horticulture or even, in some parts of the world, for fuel. “You only have to drain 10 to 15% of a peatland and start extracting peat to turn that entire system into a source,” Waddington said. Restoring them could be accomplished by blocking the ditches or building berms to keep the peat saturated, he said. In the study, the researchers found that there was considerable uncertainty in estimates of the costs of protecting and restoring peatlands. But even if the costs were at the high end, the basic finding of the research was unchanged, they said. “In a way it’s the low-hanging fruit,” Waddington said. © 2020 The New York Times Company

BRUSSELS, Fri Jun 5, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Poor countries will need to be given about 100 billion euros ($142 billion) a year by 2020 to help them cut emissions in the fight against climate change, a draft report for European Union finance ministers shows. The report, obtained by Reuters, comes after the EU laid out plans to hold competitive tenders for the funding from richer countries, during which poor nations would present their most cost-effective projects for cutting carbon emissions. Both documents reveal an EU vision taking shape in the run-up to global climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Finance ministers will fine-tune the bloc's position at a meeting next Tuesday. The key issue in Copenhagen will be finding the finance needed to persuade developing nations to cut emissions, and further funding to help them adapt to a problem they say has been caused by rich, industrialised nations. Between half and two-thirds of the cheapest options for cutting greenhouse gases up to 2020 or 2030 are in developing countries, the EU's Economic Policy Committee and the Economic and Financial Committee say in the document on funding needs. Environmentalists see the document as proof that Europe's economic experts recognise the need to support poor nations in the fight against climate change. "The question is now whether the finance ministers will ignore their own experts, or will endorse this clear recognition of the needs in developing countries," said Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken. DEFORESTATION Emissions cuts by poor nations would partly pay for themselves because cleaning up power generation and industry also reduces their consumption of expensive fossil fuels, but an extra 100 billion euros a year of investments would still be needed by 2020. This would include 71 billion euros to clean up industry and energy sectors, 18 billion to halt the destruction of rainforests and 5 billion to curb emissions from agriculture. Although the numbers look huge, they are less daunting when compared to the $300 billion of subsidies for fossil fuels in the developing world each year or the $250 billion of agricultural subsidies among OECD states, the report said. On top of the cost of cutting their own emissions, poor nations will also need help with the costs of adapting to climate change. Such funding could help develop drought-resistant crops, build levees against rising sea levels or find new sources of fresh water as rising temperatures deplete the glaciers on which millions depend for summer meltwater. "The precise cost of adaptation in developing countries is very difficult to estimate, due to uncertainty about the precise scope of global warming, its specific regional and local impact..." said the report. But it delivered a rough estimate that adaptation costs in all developing countries could be 23-54 billion euros per year in 2030.

The Foreign Service Academy organised the training for the first time bringing 15 young diplomats of neighbouring countries and Bangladesh.Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque distributed certificates among them at the closing on Thursday.The foreign ministry said ambassadors and high commissioners of Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar attended the closing ceremony, among others.Basics of international relations ranging from diplomacy and foreign policy to emerging issues like human rights, international trade, energy security, and climate change dominated the short-course. Subcontinent’s history, culture, democratic values, traditions and development priorities have also been taught in the course.The participants were also taken to art galleries, museums, chambers, manufacturing plants as well as centers of excellence and institutions that play important role in the socio economic development of Bangladesh.Founded in 1996, the Foreign Service Academy provides specialised training to Bangladesh diplomats.The foreign ministry said this is for the first time they arranged an international training programme for foreign diplomats.A foreign ministry official earlier said, based on the success of the first course, they would consider institutionalising the endeavour.

WASHINGTON, Fri Aug 15, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A Stone Age graveyard on the shores of an ancient, dried-up lake in the Sahara is brimming with the skeletons of people, fish and crocodiles who thrived when the African desert was briefly green, researchers reported on Thursday. The 10,000-year-old site in Niger, called Gobero after the Tuareg name for the area, was discovered in 2000 but the group has only now gathered enough information to make a full report, said University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. The team stumbled onto the assortment of human and animal bones and artifacts while looking for dinosaur fossils. "I realized we were in the green Sahara," Sereno, who discovered the site while working for National Geographic, said in a statement. The site contains at least 200 graves that appear to have been left by two separate settlements 1,000 years apart. Perhaps the most dramatic is a woman and two children, their arms entwined, laid to rest on a bed of flowers around 5,000 years ago. The older group were tall, robust hunter-gathers known as Kiffians who apparently abandoned the area during a long drought that dried up the lake around 8,000 years ago, Sereno's team reports in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE. A second group settled in the area between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago, they said. These were Tenerians, smaller, shorter people who hunted, herded and fished. Both left many artifacts, including tool kits, fishhooks, ceramics and jewelry, the researchers said. "At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place," said Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University who has been working on the site. The Sahara is the world's largest desert and has been for tens of thousands of years, but changes in the Earth's orbit 12,000 years ago brought monsoons further north for a while. The team sampled tooth enamel from the skeletons, pollen, bones and examined soil and tools to date the site, artifacts and remains. "The data from Gobero, when combined with existing sites in North Africa, indicate we are just beginning to understand the complex history of biosocial evolution in the face of severe climate fluctuation in the Sahara," the researchers wrote in their report.

The biggest climate meeting in history, with 15,000 participants from 192 nations, begins in Copenhagen on Monday seeking to agree curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid and clean technology. Campaigners say politicians have 2 weeks to save the planet from catastrophic climate change in the talks, which end with a summit of 105 world leaders -- including US President Barack Obama, on Dec. 18. The summit will have to overcome deep distrust between rich and poor nations about sharing the cost of emissions cuts. The attendance of the leaders and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters -- led by China, the United States, Russia and India -- have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years. "Copenhagen is already a turning point in the international response to climate change," said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat. South Africa added new impetus, saying on Sunday it would cut its carbon emissions to 34 percent below expected levels by 2020, if rich countries furnished financial and technological help. World leaders did not attend when environment ministers agreed the existing UN climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, in 1997. This time, in a Copenhagen conference hall with wind turbines outside generating clean energy, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's panel of climate experts, will be among speakers at Monday's opening session. Plans by world leaders to attend have brightened hopes since Rasmussen said last month that time had run out to agree a full legal treaty in 2009. The aim for Copenhagen is a politically binding deal and a new deadline in 2010 for legal details. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian newspaper on Monday, said: "The British government is absolutely clear about what we must achieve. Our aim is a comprehensive and global agreement that is then converted to an internationally legally binding treaty in no more than six months." He added: "If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive." Some 56 newspapers from 45 countries including The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Toronto Star on Monday published a joint editorial urging world leaders to take decisive action. "Humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet," it said. "The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not avert it." A PINPRICK IN RISING TEMPERATURES The Kyoto pact binds industrialised nations to cut emissions until 2012 and even its supporters admit it is only a pinprick in rising world temperatures, especially since Washington did not join its allies in ratifying the pact. This time, the idea is to get action from all major emitters including China and India to help avert more droughts, desertification, wildfires, species extinctions and rising seas. The meeting will test how far developing nations will stick to entrenched positions, for example that rich nations must cut their greenhouse gases by at least 40 percent by 2020 -- far deeper than targets on offer. De Boer wants developed nations to agree deep cuts in greenhouse emissions by 2020 and come up with immediate, $10 billion a year in new funds to help the poor cope. He wants developing nations to start slowing their rising emissions. "It needs to be new money, real and significant," he said. De Boer said Pachauri on Monday would address a scandal about leaked e-mails from a British university that sceptics say show that some researchers exaggerated evidence for warming. But he said the UN process of reviewing climate science was well insulated against manipulation.

Dhaka, Sep 19 (bdnews24.com)—Prime minister Sheikh Hasina will seek to unite countries worse-affected by climate change to press for climate funds during the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Summit next week, an official said on Saturday. Hasina will address climate change issues and participate in talks with leaders of countries contributing UN peacekeeping troops around the world, among other subjects, foreign secretary Mohamed Mizarul Quayes told reporters Saturday at the Secretariat. She will fly out on Sept 21 and land in the US on Sep 22, being scheduled to stay for a week, before returning on Sep 29, said Quayes, who will join the prime minister's delegation to the UN assembly. Hasina will attend a meeting of 25 heads of state and government on climate change, convened by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, on Sept 22, where she will seek to unite the worse-affected countries and resolve compensation claims for climate change, said Quayes. Bangladesh, chair of the LDC Group, will seek compensation for least developed countries. "However, everything depends on the stance of other countries who are also suffering the impact of global warming," said Quayes. Bangladesh stands on the front line of countries facing fallout of global warming, caused by manmade carbon emissions, and seeks financial and technological assistance for adaptation. Poor nations also point out they will be among the worst affected by climate change but are least responsible, and rich nations needed to accept their financial responsibilities in this regard. The UN and World Bank have also urged rich nations to shoulder "the moral responsibility". US president Barack Obama and Sheikh Hasina are also scheduled to attend a sideline meeting of nine countries contributing major UN peacekeeping forces around the world. Bangladesh is a leading contributor to the peacekeeping missions, with around 10,000 personnel from the country engaged in different missions around the world. The UN has nearly 115,000 troops, police and civilians deployed in 16 peacekeeping missions from Africa and the Mideast to Cyprus, Kosovo, Western Sahara and Haiti. The missions, however, are beset with problems ranging from a lack of personnel and equipment to shortages of helicopters and other key assets. Quayes said foreign minister Dipu Moni, who is currently in the US, will join a ministerial meeting ahead of the general assembly. On Saturday, Moni met with World Bank vice president for the South Asia Region, Isabel Guerrero, in Washington DC to discuss regional plans of the bank. Earlier, on Sep 17, Dipu Moni met with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Dipu Moni is scheduled to return to Bangladesh in the first week October.

A few nights before, they were hurling Molotov cocktails on the front lines of the anti-government protests that have roiled Hong Kong for months. But after police arrested two of their friends, they feared they would be next. Desperate, they sent a cry for assistance to a private online group known for helping people escape to Taiwan. Within hours, they were on a plane to Taipei, the capital. “We are fleeing the law,” said one of the protesters, her eyes darting across the food court. “We didn’t have much time to figure out what is happening.” Leaving the airport, the group hopped into a black van and sped away — headed for an uncertain future. They are among the more than 200 young protesters who have fled to Taiwan since the start of this year’s Hong Kong democracy movement, according to lawyers, pastors and other supporters who have helped them leave. Lawyers said dozens of protesters had arrived in recent weeks after escaping university campuses besieged by police. Their flight is being fuelled by fears of arrest and violence as the street clashes between demonstrators and authorities have grown more pitched. Demonstrators regularly face tear gas, batons and water cannons at the hands of police. Embittered that the movement’s peaceful tactics didn’t work, some protesters have turned more aggressive, vandalising buildings and throwing bricks at police. Since the protests started in June, more than 5,000 people have been arrested, and hundreds have been charged and may face harsh sentences. While many vow to fight indefinitely, a mounting climate of mistrust is prompting some demonstrators to leave Hong Kong. They worry they won’t be treated fairly in court. Or they fear abuse in detention, citing allegations of sexual assault and rumours of torture. Others are seeking medical treatment in Taiwan after learning of arrests taking place in Hong Kong’s hospitals. Protesters and organisers aiding the escapes stressed that certain details and identities must be kept secret so as not to endanger the operation. “They know that throwing a brick can land them up to 10 years in prison,” said Chris Ng, a lawyer who has been defending arrested protesters. “They have lost faith in the judicial system of Hong Kong.” Ng said he had been in court hearings where protesters didn’t show and probably had fled Hong Kong. “Even if they are willing to accept the legal consequences, they do not trust, and with good reason, that they will be dealt with in a fair system or receive a punishment proportionate to their crime,” Ng said. Along the pipeline from Hong Kong to Taiwan, a clandestine network of sympathisers has sprung into action, quietly operating safe houses and orchestrating exits for protesters. Wealthy donors and aid groups are paying for airplane tickets. Volunteers are ferrying protesters to and from airports. Fishermen are selling boat rides for the 440-mile journey for as much as $10,000 per person. Pastors are fixing smuggling routes for arrested protesters whose passports have been taken away. “I am getting used to unexpected congregations,” joked Chun Sen Huang, an energetic 54-year-old pastor of the Chi Nan Presbyterian Church in Taipei who has emerged as a prominent player in the network. The pastor works as a liaison, coordinating travel plans with organisers in Hong Kong, arranging accommodation at properties owned by churches and connecting protesters with lawyers, doctors, aid groups and schools throughout Taiwan. These days, he said, he is constantly on his phone fielding requests, even during sermons and between prayers. Huang said he recently learned of a protester who said she had been raped by Hong Kong police and needed a boat to smuggle her to Taiwan so that she could receive an abortion. At least 10 students arrived by plane after escaping from the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where police and protesters were in a standoff for days. Huang connected them with a lawyer who helped them get temporary student visas through a Taiwan university. A mother called, looking for a new guardian for her 14-year-old son, who had thrown Molotov cocktails. Taiwan, a self-governing island, is a convenient and welcoming refuge. Like Hong Kong, it has a history of receiving dissidents from the mainland. While Beijing views Taiwan as part of China, Taiwanese leaders assert their sovereignty. Many Taiwanese have supported the protests, concerned about the Chinese government’s encroachment on Hong Kong and what it means for the future of their own democratic island. The protests were initially set off by outrage over an extradition bill, since withdrawn, that would have allowed Hong Kong’s leaders to send a fugitive to Taiwan to face murder charges, though the two entities have no extradition treaty. Protesters in Hong Kong said the legal change could have been used to send dissidents for trial in mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party. Even though Taiwan is welcoming protesters, the government is treading cautiously. It is wary of provoking Beijing by passing more permissive asylum laws. Many who arrive seeking refuge find themselves in a legal limbo with only temporary visas. During his 22 years as a pastor in Taiwan, Huang said, he has helped several dissidents flee persecution from the Chinese government but has never seen an operation of this scale. He said it was more reminiscent of “Operation Yellowbird,” a secret network that smuggled hundreds of dissidents out of China and into Hong Kong after the massacre in Beijing around Tiananmen Square in 1989. At the time, Hong Kong was still a British colony. “Darkness can never defeat light,” said Huang as he ushered five arrivals into the church. “I believe democracy and freedom will certainly defeat totalitarianism.” For protesters, the decision whether to flee isn’t easy. Ali, a senior at Hang Seng University, has been arrested twice on charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. The second time, she said, she was held in a parking lot for 48 hours with 70 other protesters. “There was no privacy,” Ali said. She recalled how male officers entered bathroom facilities unannounced and how she could overhear other protesters being interrogated. “They charged me with rioting without giving any explanation,” she added. While detained, she missed her first day of work as an associate teacher at a primary school and was fired. As she awaits trial, her dream of becoming a teacher is slipping away. “It’s like imagining a past life,” she said. “My future is ruined,” Ali said from her grandmother’s home, where she lives. “It makes me wonder what is left for me.” Since her passport has been confiscated, she would have to rely on smugglers to take her by boat to Taiwan. Even then, she worries about leaving behind her 80-year-old grandmother. “She cannot take care of herself,” she said. “And I don’t know if I would be able to ever return.” Groups of volunteers provide a financial lifeline for protesters looking to escape. One 48-year-old social worker said she had paid for 11 protesters to get to Taiwan. With no children of her own, she said she feels a responsibility to help the young people. “If I get arrested, at least I can be proud that I tried to help these youngsters against totalitarianism,” said the social worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of legal repercussions. She started raising money for fleeing protesters in July, after a group of them stormed the legislative building. She helped one 17-year-old whose parents had thrown him out of his home for joining the protests. She mostly accepts donations in cash and in person and hopes to avoid undercover police officers who sometimes pose as enthusiastic supporters. “The majority of Hong Kong people are unhappy,” she said. “It’s not a small group of radical youngsters controlled and manipulated by the USA,” she added, citing one of Beijing’s claims that the West is provoking the protests. “The support is coming from all walks of life.” When protesters arrive through regular channels, the government in Taiwan generally grants monthly visas, which are usually renewable. Daniel, a 22-year-old protester, has been living in Taiwan since July on an extended tourist visa. He described his role in the early days of the movement as “fairly radical.” After he stormed Hong Kong’s legislative building, his face was captured on surveillance footage. Two police officers stopped him on the sidewalk the next day and told him they recognised him. “At that moment I realised I could no longer deceive myself,” Daniel said. “I really had to leave home.” While he avoided arrest, he does not feel secure. He said he believes that his phone has been hacked and that he is being followed. His living costs are covered by a monthly stipend from an aid group in Hong Kong, but he fears the money won’t last. The stress has led him to see a psychologist, who diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. The hardest part, Daniel said, is the ache he feels for everything he left behind. Just before he fled, he said, he found himself in tears, standing at the bottom of the steps to his house. It’s a moment he replays in his head again and again. “I knew I might never come back to Hong Kong and see home or my mother again,” he said. c.2019 The New York Times Company

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday launched a "Global Humanitarian Forum" which he said would focus on coordinating international efforts to counter the effects of climate change. The forum, based in Geneva with financing and support from the Swiss authorities, includes in its governing board a range of other key U.N. figures past and present, ex-presidents, royalty, bankers and academics from rich and poorer countries. "We need to get the world public to focus on the fact that climate change is not something down the line but is happening now, and that we have to work together to combat it," Annan told a news conference just before the ceremonial launch. Annan, a Ghanaian who left the top UN job at the end of last year, said the forum aimed to convene top decision-makers from around the globe to its first annual meeting in Geneva in June 2008 to advance policy discussions on climate. "We must all understand that this is a global issue, and that we all need to come together ... that one cannot be saved at the expense of another," he said. Climate change "is going to be a constant in all human efforts," he added. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which last week shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said the forum would help to foster collaboration on the issue. "There are vulnerable communities across the world that will need help to adapt," said the Indian scientist, who is also on the board of Annan's forum. Former UN humanitarian relief coordinator Jan Egeland of Norway, another board member, said five times as many people were dying around the globe from natural disasters linked to climate change than from wars and other conflicts. Catherine Bertini, previously chief of the UN's World Food Programme, said the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region was largely rooted in drought and food shortages that came from changes in weather patterns.

The opinion polls have turned strongly against Australia's conservative Prime Minister John Howard as support shifts to his youthful new rival, but analysts say he can still recover to win a fifth term in office. With national elections due in the second half of 2007, Howard, 67, has suffered the worst slump in the polls in six years and has uncharacteristically stumbled in the opening weeks of parliament against new challenger Kevin Rudd. Rudd, 49, elected leader of the centre-left Labour opposition party in December, has lifted his party's hopes of victory on the back of his promise to pull Australian forces out of Iraq and to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change. Analysts say Howard, who won his fourth term in office in 2004 by promising to keep interest rates low, will claw back support when Australians focus on his strengths of the economy and national security. "The Reserve Bank holds the fate of the government in its hands," Monash University political analyst Nick Economou told Reuters. With record-low unemployment and inflationary pressures easing in Australia, Howard's supporters hope the central bank has stopped its cycle of interest rate hikes and may now look to a rate cut by the end of the year. Economou said an early rate cut would be devastating for Labour and could prompt Howard to run to the polls as early as possible from August. But it was more likely the government would use its May budget to re-focus the debate on the economy. "They may come up with big, big tax cuts, that will then re-focus the debate on the economy and back into an area of Howard's strength," Economou said. HOWARD STUMBLES The latest Reuters Poll Trend, which analyses the three main published opinion polls in Australia, found Howard's Liberal-National Party coalition trailed Labour by 13.4 points in February -- the worst result for the government since March 2001. The poll trend also found Howard has lost his commanding lead as preferred prime minister to Rudd -- the first time Howard has trailed as preferred prime minister since May 2001. The February polls appear to have rattled Howard, who made a rare mistake in parliament when he ruled out a link between greenhouse gases and global warming. He corrected himself hours later, saying he mis-heard the question, but not before the comments were broadcast on evening television news bulletins, further undermining his government's flagging support on environmental issues. In the past week, Howard prompted a heated debate about Australia's 1,400 troops in and around Iraq with unscripted criticism of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq in 2008. Howard found himself under fire at home and in the United States and was accused of meddling in US politics, putting Australia-US ties at risk because of his personal friendship and support for President George W Bush. "It has not been a good fortnight for the government," the Australian Financial Review's chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle, wrote on Friday. "They have now brought out the three bits of armoury -- economic management, national security, leadership -- which have stood them in good stead against all opposition leaders in the past, and they have not seemed all that effective." Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat who used to read transcripts of parliamentary debate as a child, has pushed his relative youth and family image, while Howard has countered by promoting his experience against Rudd's inexperience. Greg Craven, professor of government at Curtin University, said that while Rudd "must have seemed middle-aged as a child", he has highlighted Howard's age as a problem for the government. "Howard's greatest weakness is as obvious as it is embarrassing to state. He is growing old. Worse, he suddenly seems to be ageing more quickly," Craven wrote on Friday. Howard has twice clawed back from similar polls slumps, in 2001 and 2004, to win elections and notch up 11 years in power, and analysts and commentators warn it is too early to write his political obituary. "He's been down like this before," Economou said. "He's on much firmer territory on defence and foreign policy, and there's still the economic debate to unfold."

As the monsoon is bringing rains, rivers in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna basin are likely to swell and inundate the low lying areas in the nearby districts, the government’s Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said in a report on Thursday. Torrential rains in Bangladesh and the upstream basins are causing the rivers to overflow, said Md Arifuzzaman Bhuiyan, executive engineer of FFWC. It may continue for two weeks. “The water level on the rivers in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna basin may cross the danger point at the end of June or in July. Floods are likely to occur in the low-lying areas of Kurigram, Gaibandha Jamalpur, Bogura, Sirajganj, Tangail and Manikganj.” The report forecasts flash floods in the hilly areas, adding that the Teesta and Dharola rivers in the north may overflow in two weeks. A short spell of flooding may occur in the low-lying areas once the water crosses the danger level. Rivers in the Ganges-Padma basin are forecast to overflow but may not cross the danger level at present. On the other hand, rivers in the Meghna basin may swell in the coming week, while the rivers in the Surma-Kushiara basin may cross the danger level in June. The rivers, such as Halda, Sangu and Matamuhuri, are likely to overflow in the last week of June. Due to the torrential monsoon rain, floods may occur in the northern, north-eastern, southern and eastern parts of the country, Shamsuddin Ahmed, director of Bangladesh Meteorological Department, said in a forecast.

Global warming may have spawned a new type of El Nino in the central Pacific and this could worsen the droughts in Australia and India, a new study by researchers in South Korea and the United States has found. While the conventional El Nino is a warm body of water stretching across the tropical Eastern Pacific, this new El Nino is a horseshoe-shaped region of warm ocean in the central Pacific flanked by unusually cooler waters, they wrote in a paper published in the latest issue of Nature. "This new type of El Nino appeared in the recent decade and from our analysis, it may be due to global warming," lead researcher Sang-Wook Yeh of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute told Reuters by telephone. Yeh and his colleagues applied Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature data from the past 150 years to 11 global warming models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Eight of them showed global warming conditions will increase the incidence of the new El Nino. "The results described in this paper indicate that the global impacts of El Nino may significantly change as the climate warms," said Yeh. "This type of El Nino will bring more drought to India and Australia." Ben Kirtman, co-author of the study and professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami's Rosentstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said the new El Nino may overshadow the old El Nino, which helped shield the United States and Caribbean from severe hurricanes. This means the protective shield of the old El Nino may be on the wane. "Currently, we are in the middle of a developing eastern Pacific El Nino event, which is part of why we're experiencing such a mild hurricane season in the Atlantic," said Kirtman in a statement. Kirtman expects the current El Nino event to end next spring, which he expects may bode for a more intense Atlantic hurricane season in 2010.

Singapore took second place after Japan's capital while another Japanese metropolis, Osaka, came third - the same top three as the two previous Safe Cities Indexes of 2015 and 2017. This year the index of 60 cities aimed to capture the concept of "urban resilience", which is the ability of cities to absorb and bounce back from shocks, researchers said. This concept has increasingly steered urban safety planning during the last decade, as policymakers worry about the impacts of climate change, including heat stress and flooding. The index assessed four types of safety: digital, infrastructure, health and personal security. Asia-Pacific dominated the top 10, as in previous years, with six cities, including Australia's Sydney in fifth place, South Korea's Seoul in eighth and Australia's Melbourne in 10th. Two European and two North American cities made it into the top 10, with the Dutch capital Amsterdam in fourth place while Denmark's Copenhagen came eighth. Canada's Toronto came sixth, and the US capital, Washington DC, seventh. The safest cities scored highly on access to high-quality healthcare, dedicated cyber-security teams, community-based police patrols and good disaster planning, researchers said. "The research highlights how different types of safety are thoroughly intertwined," said Naka Kondo, the report's Tokyo-based editor. While European cities performed well in the area of health, they struggled with digital security, in terms of citizens' ability to freely use the internet and other digital channels without fear of privacy violations or identity theft. Top-ranking cities for digital security scored high on citizen awareness of digital threats and dedicated cyber-security teams, leading to low levels of infection by computer viruses and malware. "London is the only European city in the top 10 in this category," said Irene Mia, global editorial director of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Nigeria's Lagos, Venezuela's Caracas, Myanmar's Yangon, Pakistan's Karachi and Bangladesh's Dhaka were the world's five least safe cities, according to the index.

The equity investment fund will help strengthen the SMEs' capacity to tackle difficulties arising from climate change, IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, said in a statement on Tuesday. The fund is part of the Small Enterprise Assistance Fund Bangladesh Ventures Fund or SEAF BV with support from the Climate Investment Funds-Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience, which helps developing countries to scale up for climate resilience. SEAF BV, launched by IFC and the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds in 2010, is mandated to invest in SMEs. “IFC’s extended support over the years has been invaluable in the successful initiatives of the fund,” said Hubertus Jan (Bert) van der Vaart, CEO and co-founder of SEAF. "Its engagement will also help the fund begin investing in climate resilience activities for small businesses, helping SMEs to cope better with the adverse impacts of climate change." The IFC said it previously invested $12 million of equity into the fund to catalyse investment in high-growth SMEs.

PRAGUE, Sun Apr 5, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States is ready to take a leading role in tackling climate change, President Barack Obama said on Sunday, receiving a cautious welcome from European hosts at a summit in the Czech capital Prague. "Together, we must confront climate change by ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels, by tapping the power of new sources of energy like the wind and sun, and calling upon all nations to do their part," Obama said in a speech to the crowd outside the medieval Prague Castle. "I pledge to you that in this global effort, the United States is now ready to lead." Obama has taken a more assertive stance on global warming, which scientists say is caused by the release of gases such as carbon dioxide, than his predecessor George W. Bush. Last month, he invited 16 "major economies" including the European Union to take part in a forum on climate change to help ensure a UN pact on global warming is reached at a conference in Copenhagen in December. "The United States will be an active partner in the Copenhagen process and beyond," Obama told the 27 EU leaders at the EU-US summit. "We must not only reach an agreement among ourselves but also present a common approach that will bring other countries into the dialogue." Jose Manuel Barroso, the head of the EU's executive, the European Commission, said the United States and Europe had now come closer to agreeing on the subject. "We welcome the steps taken by the new American administration and the increasing convergence between the European and US position on that matter," he told reporters after the summit in Prague, but added there was further to go. The climate change talks in Copenhagen should lead to a new pact on fighting the global warming, replacing the UN's 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The investor, which manages in excess of $100 billion, plans to seek opinions from consultants on whether HSBC Asset Management should help manage its sustainability funds in the wake of the controversial comments, said the person with direct knowledge of the matter. Staff inside the bank 0005.HK have also sought reassurances about its policies amid concerns about how HSBC will be perceived by clients, two other sources said. The sources declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media. A spokesperson for HSBC declined to comment. Earlier this month, Stuart Kirk, who is the global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management, told a conference in London that "climate change is not a financial risk we need to worry about", comments that prompted the bank to suspend him and conduct an internal investigation. Kirk declined to comment when reached by Reuters. Kirk's presentation was met with criticism from campaigners who have been pressuring the bank and its peers in the financial services industry to play a bigger role in the fight against climate change. It also prompted The Pensions Regulator in the UK to warn that any pension scheme failing to consider the impacts of climate change was "ignoring a major risk to pension savings". HSBC is a leading provider of investment services to such schemes. HSBC Chief Executive Noel Quinn has said that Kirk's comments were "inconsistent with HSBC’s strategy and do not reflect the views of the senior leadership". Nicolas Moreau, who heads the asset management division, also distanced the bank from Kirk's remarks. HSBC Asset Management has received a number of inquiries from institutional clients about Kirk's comments, one of the sources said. Some of the institutions said they felt obligated to seek more clarity and understand HSBC's official stance, the source added. The possibility of HSBC Asset Management, a division that oversees some $640 billion, losing business comes as the company invests in the unit as part of a broader push to grow fee income. Over the last year, HSBC has bought businesses in Singapore and India as it seeks to expand in Asia in particular. The unease has also rippled through the bank’s internal meetings. Employees feeling concerned raised questions to senior management during a recent town hall, two of the sources said. Still, several industry experts have defended Kirk, saying that he had sparked a legitimate debate and that there should be room for dissenting voices in finance. The impact of climate risk on portfolios can indeed be exaggerated as Kirk claimed, Tariq Fancy, a former head of sustainable investing at BlackRock Inc., told Financial News in an interview on Monday.

But the hope soon turned to terror when the giant blot revealed itself as a swarm of fast-moving desert locusts, which have been cutting a path of devastation through Kenya since late December. The sheer size of the swarm stunned the villagers. “It was like an umbrella had covered the sky,” said Joseph Katone Leparole, who has lived in the hamlet, Wamba, for most of his 68 years. When the insects descended, the community quickly gathered to try to scare them off, using one arm to beat them with sticks or bang on metal pots, and the other to cover their faces and eyes as the bright, yellow insects teemed around them. The children in the local school were shouting with fear, and the animals that the hamlet depends on for their livelihood also were panicking. “The cows and camels couldn’t see where they were going,” Leparole said. “It really disturbed us.” Adding to the fear and confusion: There had been no warning the locusts were on their way. As the hamlet struggled to repel the surprise invasion, Leparole was reminded of the stories his parents had told him as a child of the ravenous swarms that once moved through this land. “What was once a story has become real,” he said on a recent morning, shooing away the locusts that still plagued Wamba, more than a week after they arrived. Joseph Katone Leparole, left, and his son Francis swat at swarming locusts, trying to stop them from laying eggs, in the West Gate Community Conservancy, near Wamba, Kenya, Feb 7, 2020. The New York Times Kenya is battling its worst desert locust outbreak in 70 years, and the infestation has spread through much of the eastern part of the continent and the Horn of Africa, razing pasture and croplands in Somalia and Ethiopia and sweeping into South Sudan, Djibouti, Uganda and Tanzania. Joseph Katone Leparole, left, and his son Francis swat at swarming locusts, trying to stop them from laying eggs, in the West Gate Community Conservancy, near Wamba, Kenya, Feb 7, 2020. The New York Times The highly mobile creatures can travel over 80 miles a day. Their swarms, which can contain as many as 80 million locust adults in each square kilometer, eat the same amount of food daily as about 35,000 people. Officials say the infestation poses a risk to food security, undermines economic growth and, if not controlled soon, exacerbate communal conflict over grazing land. In addition to the 12 million people already experiencing acute food shortages in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the locust crisis now poses a potential threat to the food security of over 20 million others, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a U.N. agency. “The magnitude of the problem is just so big,” said Cyril Ferrand, who leads the organization’s resilience team for eastern Africa. “The locusts are a moving target, and we are racing against time.” The locusts are particularly threatening to pastoral communities like Leparole’s, which rely on vegetation to feed their livestock. While the current availability of rangeland is better because of heavy rainfall late last year, Leparole is worried what could happen if the locust infestation persists. After serving 18 years in the military and a decade as a local councilor, Leparole started trading in livestock, selling the milk and meat in nearby markets. With three wives and 17 children, his dozens of cows, goats, sheep and camels constitute the family’s wealth and only means of survival. Since the arrival of the locusts, he said, his sons have had to shepherd the animals farther afield every morning so they could graze in peace. “They are all over the area,” Leparole said. “The animals just stop eating when they see them.” While Kenya started the aerial spraying of chemicals in January to combat the locust invasion, the vastness and inaccessibility of areas like Wamba mean that many of the eggs laid by locusts could evade eradication, said Celina Lepurcha, a local administrator in Wamba. Locusts swarm a tree in Laisamis, Kenya, Feb 8, 2020. The New York Times And despite the multiplying number of locusts around Wamba, the national government has stopped spraying in the area because of a depletion in the pesticide supply. Locusts swarm a tree in Laisamis, Kenya, Feb 8, 2020. The New York Times “If the chemicals don’t come on time, this vicious cycle will keep going,” Lepurcha said. Given how quickly locusts can denude an entire landscape, there’s also fear they pose a serious threat to large herbivores in Kenya. The national parks and conservancies where these herbivores roam, along with the predators hunting them, play a key role in Kenya’s tourism industry, a major part of the country’s economy. If the locusts “are to remain for months to come, then their impact on the plant eaters could start to reveal itself,” said Kieran Avery, director of natural resource management at the Northern Rangelands Trust, a community conservancy organization in northern Kenya. The UN says that if the locust numbers aren’t suppressed soon, they could grow 500 times by June, which would prove ominous not just for pastoral communities but also farmers. On an 8-acre farm in Maseki, a town in eastern Kenya, Mwikali Nzoka stood helpless while locusts devoured her fields of millet, cowpeas and tomatoes, among other crops. “They are up and down; they are everywhere,” she said, throwing her arms up in helplessness. “It was so green here. It might become a desert soon.” Paul Katee, assistant chief in Maseki, said new swarms continued to arrive even after authorities sprayed the insects in early February. The small-scale farmers in the area, he said, usually eat two-thirds of what they grow and sell the rest in the local markets. The locusts, he said, threaten the livelihood of up to 56 local households. “We have never seen anything like this before,” Katee said, shaking his head. “Everyone is worried.” While the spraying can be effective in controlling the pests, locals are worried the chemicals will taint the water supply used for both drinking and washing, as well as for watering crops. The current infestation in the Horn of Africa was exacerbated by the heavy rainfalls that pounded the region from October through December 2019 — helping create conditions conducive for the breeding and growth of desert locusts, whose bodies undergo dramatic changes in response to the environment. Locusts swarm a tree in Laisamis, Kenya, Feb 8, 2020. While sometimes solitary creatures, desert locusts can develop the wings they need to swarm across seas and continents with the help of warm temperatures and the right amount of rain to grow the plants they need for food. Locusts swarm a tree in Laisamis, Kenya, Feb 8, 2020. The abnormally heavy rains were caused by the Indian Ocean dipole, a phenomenon heightened by “the continuous warming of the western part of the Indian Ocean due to climate change,” says Abubakr Salih Babiker, a climate scientist with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an eight-country trade bloc in the Horn of Africa. Rising temperatures also mean locusts can mature more quickly and spread to higher elevation environments. Given that many locusts are adapted to arid regions, if climate change expands the geographic extent of these lands, locusts could expand their range as well. “Therefore, in general, locust outbreaks are expected to become more frequent and severe under climate change,” said Arianne Cease, director of the Global Locust Initiative at Arizona State University. The World Food Program’s executive director, David Beasley, warned last week that the region could face a “catastrophe” requiring more than $1 billion in assistance. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization made a $76 million appeal to member states for funding to control the locusts’ spread in the Horn of Africa. So far, the U.N. body said, only around $20 million has been received — threatening efforts to curtail a regional plague that could lead to more suffering, displacement and potential conflict. For Leparole, that threat has already arrived. On a recent morning, marching bands of juvenile, flightless black locusts mobbed the entrance of his home. “If we don’t find a way to get rid of these young ones,” he said, “we will have so much trouble soon.” © 2020 New York Times News Service

NICOSIA, Mon Jan 12, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Cyprus runs the risk of desertification by the end of this century as it feels the brunt of climate change and drought, an expert warned Friday. Studies project a rise in summer temperatures on the east Mediterranean island of between two and four degrees this century, compared to the 1960 to 1990 reference periods, Professor Manfred Lange, a geophysicist, said in an interview. "I think that there is a very definite potential for dramatically increasing desertification," said Lange, director of the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center at the non-profit Cyprus Institute. By the end of this century, Cyprus can expect an extra two months of days with temperatures exceeding 35 degrees centigrade (95 Fahrenheit) on top of the present summer months of June, July and August, Lange said. There is also likely to be less rainfall and increased evaporation because of higher temperatures. "Cyprus will in fact become more like Abu Dhabi or other states that we know because there is just not enough water," he said. Cyprus now uses energy-intensive desalination to meet some of its water requirements, while its population of around one million live with rationing and a permanent hosepipe ban. Lange said enforcement must be stringent. "People want water but if you want to avert desertification, we need to let nature have its share," he said, adding that while climate change could be slowed, it could not be reversed. The Cyprus Institute is examining the use of concentrated solar power to co-generate electricity and potable water through desalination, technology Lange said could be used elsewhere. "Cyprus could become somewhat of a showcase for this kind of technology and could develop an industry that would indeed then offer to market these devices to neighboring countries," he said.

The incoming Obama administration should forge a strong partnership with India to tackle common problems such as terrorism and the global financial crisis, an Asia Society task force said on Friday. "India matters to virtually every major foreign policy issue that will confront the United States in the years ahead," said the New York-based group, which promotes scholarship and exchanges with Asia. "A broad-based, close relationship with India will thus be necessary to solve complex global challenges, achieve security in the critical South Asian region, re-establish stability in the global economy, and overcome the threat of violent Islamic radicalism," it said. The report noted that in 1998 the United States had sanctioned India over its nuclear tests, but last year they consummated a civilian nuclear deal that will give India access to US nuclear technology. More recent events -- the bloody November militant attacks in Mumbai and the global financial meltdown -- underscored the need and the opportunity for the two large democracies to work together, the report said. "The new relationship rests on a convergence of US and Indian national interests, and never in our history have they been so closely aligned," it said. The task force, headed by former top diplomats and business leaders from the two countries, said the two countries could work together in areas such as expanding trade, environmental issues and climate change, nonproliferation and public health. President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, should boost governmental relations by helping secure Indian membership in multilateral institutions where global decisions are made, expanding counterterrorism cooperation and forging a bilateral investment treaty, the report said. US-Indian public-private projects should be formed to help meet India's vast secondary and higher education needs, to spread HIV/AIDS awareness and to help boost agricultural output through technology, the task force recommended.

Ending imports of fresh food from Africa under the pretext of combating climate change risks destroying entire communities that have become dependent on the trade, Ghana's High Commissioner to Britain said on Wednesday. So-called food miles -- the distance food travels from producer to consumer -- have become a highly divisive issue as environmentalists try to persuade people to reduce the amount of climate warming carbon gases their lifestyle emits. "We do understand, of course, that our friends here are anxious to make a difference. However, the figures simply do not add up," said Annan Cato, noting that less than 0.1 percent of Britain's carbon emissions relate to airfreighted food. "At what cost to global justice do we shut the door on the economic prospects of small farmers in Africa by refusing to buy their produce," he told a meeting of artists, musicians and scientists to discuss global warming's impact on Africa. Environmentalists recommend that as much food as possible should be produced and consumed locally, ending airfreighted imports of fruit and vegetables from around the world. But development specialists note that much of the produce comes from the poorer parts of Africa and that whole communities have become dependent on the lucrative lifeline. "There are many other ways for the British shopper to reduce their carbon footprint without damaging the livelihoods of thousands of poor African farming families," said Cato. Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon gas emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport. This will bring floods, famines and extreme weather putting millions of lives at risk, with Africa expected to bear the brunt despite the fact that per capita carbon emissions on the continent are among the lowest in the world. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions must be done in a fair, scientific and rational way -- making cuts at the expense of the world's poorest is not only unjust, it is a bad basis for building the international consensus needed for a global deal on climate change," Cato said. UN environment ministers meet next month on the Indonesian island of Bali amid growing international pressure for them to agree to open urgent talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions that expires in 2012. Europe is pushing for a deal by the end of 2009 at the latest -- a very tight deadline given the time it took to negotiate Kyoto in the first place let alone ratify it. But the world's biggest polluter, the United States which rejected Kyoto and is still dragging its heels despite a sharp change of public mood, and China which is building a coal-fired power station each week say they are not the cause of the crisis. "It is imperative that the post-Kyoto agreement must advance cogent proposals to promote adaptation to climate change with an acceptable regime for implementation," said Cato. "This is an issue not only of global justice but of survival." "The damage has been done by some of the world's most powerful countries but the worst affects are felt by many of the world's most vulnerable countries," he added.

“If you want freedom, hold on to your sovereignty, and if you want peace, love your nation,” he said. “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations.” He devoted much of his speech to disparaging China, Iran and Venezuela, and warned Chinese authorities in Beijing, “We are carefully monitoring the situation in Hong Kong,” where months of anti-Beijing protests have raised fears of a Chinese crackdown. Trump defended his decision to abandon the nuclear agreement with Iran and accused Iranian authorities of “a fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.” At the same time, he said, “America is ready to embrace friendship to those who genuinely accept it.” President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times) Leading off the day: four bombastic presidents, bookended by Brexit’s chief advocate. President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times) Trump was surrounded by like-minded company when the speeches began in the cavernous UN General Assembly hall on Manhattan’s East Side. He was preceded by President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, sometimes called the mini-Trump, a polarising figure at home who, like Trump, dismisses fears about climate change and disparages critics on Twitter. After Trump comes President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, the former general who has come to symbolise the repression of the Arab Spring revolutions — although his appearance was thrown into doubt last weekend as protests erupted at home. Then comes President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an autocrat who has bullied critics and whose government is a leading jailer of journalists. Twenty-one leaders are speaking Tuesday alone, and the final one scheduled is Boris Johnson, making his United Nations debut as Britain’s prime minister. His visit came as the country’s top court delivered a stinging rebuke to Johnson, ruling he had acted unconstitutionally in suspending Parliament, an action taken as he tries to take his country of the European Union by Oct 31. From left, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain meets with President Donald Trump during the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. The two leaders are facing gathering political clouds back home in their capitals. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) Trump and Johnson speak while facing scandals at home From left, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain meets with President Donald Trump during the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. The two leaders are facing gathering political clouds back home in their capitals. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain have always shared a certain affinity and style of politics, but as they shared the world stage at the UN Tuesday, each was also facing stark domestic troubles at home. Trump and Johnson were both speaking at the General Assembly and scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the session for their second in-person meeting since the British leader took office in July. In each case, though, at least one eye was focused on gathering political clouds back in their capitals. In Washington, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was convening a meeting with the entire House Democratic caucus amid rising momentum for impeachment, after revelations that Trump pressed Ukraine’s president for dirt on his leading Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, while blocking US aid to Kyiv. Trump has acknowledged raising Biden and corruption questions with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July 25 telephone call. He also personally ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine in the days before he pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Biden. The timing of the decision to block the aid and Trump’s personal involvement, which were first reported by The Washington Post, added new factors to the intense debate over the president’s effort to persuade Ukraine to examine unsubstantiated corruption accusations involving Biden and his son Hunter Biden. In London, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Johnson acted illegally when he suspended Parliament amid the roiling debate over Britain’s plans to withdraw from the European Union. The ruling was a striking rebuke of the prime minister that means lawmakers will return to session three weeks earlier than he had scheduled. Johnson has suffered an extraordinary series of legal political defeats since becoming prime minister, including losing his majority in the House of Commons. Britain faces an Oct 31 withdrawal deadline to leave the European Union. — Peter Baker Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro sits in a chair reserved for heads of state before his address to the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, September 24, 2019. Reuters Bolsonaro takes aim at Amazon critics and ‘ideology’ Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro sits in a chair reserved for heads of state before his address to the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, September 24, 2019. Reuters Bolsonaro devoted part of his speech to denounce critics who accuse him of allowing rampant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by people burning it to clear land for farming and other uses. “We all know that all countries have problems,” Bolsonaro said. “The sensationalist attacks we have suffered due to fire outbreaks have aroused our patriotic sentiment.” Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research agency identified 40,341 fires in the Amazon region in the first eight months of this year, about 35% higher than the average for the first eight months of each year since 2010. He said that Brazil has a “zero tolerance policy” toward crime, including environmental crimes, but added, “The Amazon is not being devastated, nor is it being consumed by fire as the media misleadingly says.” Bolsonaro also denounced “the politically correct,” which he said had “become a constant in public debate to expel common sense.” “Ideology has invaded the human soul itself to expel God and the dignity which he has endowed us,” he said, before alluding to an attack he suffered while campaigning for president in 2018. “I was cowardly stabbed because of a left-wing activist, and I only survived by a miracle,” he said. In the hallways, on guard for awkward encounters. While Trump will not be seeing the presidents of China, Russia and Venezuela, who are skipping the General Assembly this year, the potential is large for awkwardness between leaders who may inadvertently see each other in the halls and conference rooms. Diplomats who just a few weeks ago had foreseen a meeting between Trump and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran say that it is now unlikely, given the rising tensions between the two countries. Nor is a meeting predicted between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who are not known to even talk to each other. Other potential unpleasantness may loom should Bolsonaro of Brazil encounter President Emmanuel Macron of France, who exchanged mutual insults last month via social media over Bolsonaro’s handling of fires and deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Deteriorating relations between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea have lowered expectations for any warming at the United Nations, even if Trump seeks to bring them together. And the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, is still furious with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India over the Indian crackdown last month in the disputed territory of Kashmir. c.2019 The New York Times Company

A dramatic spike in ocean temperatures off Indonesia's Aceh province has killed large areas of coral and scientists fear the event could be much larger than first thought and one of the worst in the region's history. The coral bleaching -- whitening due to heat driving out the algae living within the coral tissues -- was first reported in May after a surge in temperatures across the Andaman Sea from the northern tip of Sumatra island to Thailand and Myanmar. An international team of scientists studying the bleaching event found that 80 percent of some species have died since the initial assessment in May. More coral colonies were expected to die within the next few months and that could spell disaster for local communities reliant on the reefs for food and money from tourism. "I would predict that what we're seeing in Aceh, which is extraordinary, that similar mortality rates are occurring right the way through the Andaman Sea," said Andrew Baird of James Cook University in Townsville, in the Australian state of Queensland. If so, that would make it the worst bleaching recorded in the region, said Baird. Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Syiah Kuala University in Aceh have also been assessing the damage. "This one of the most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever recorded," the U.S.-based WCS said in a statement. It also fits a pattern of climate extremes, from heatwaves to flooding, that have hit many areas of the globe this year. Between April and late May, sea surface temperatures in the Andaman Sea rose to 34 degrees Celsius or about 4 degrees C above the long-term average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coral Hotspots website. (See: here ) SLOW RECOVERY "Similar mass bleaching events in 2010 have now been recorded in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and many parts of Indonesia," the WCS statement said. Baird, of James Cook University's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, told Reuters that climate change could have played a role in the extreme ocean temperatures around Aceh. "There might be one of these cyclic climate phenomena driving it but it's much more severe than you would predict unless there was something else forcing it, which is almost certainly global warming," he told Reuters on Tuesday. The bleaching is a blow to local communities in Aceh still recovering from the 2004 tsunami. That disaster caused relatively little damage to reefs and Baird said some areas had showed a dramatic recovery. Baird said reefs in Indonesia would normally take 5 to 10 years to recover from localised bleaching. But if the event was spread across a much wider area, recovery would take longer. "I suspect the scale of this event is so large there is unlikely to be many healthy reefs in the rest of Aceh."

Fuelled by searing temperatures and high winds, more than 200 fires are now burning across the southeastern states of New South Wales and Victoria, threatening several towns. Long queues formed outside supermarkets and petrol stations near high-danger areas and shelves were emptied of staples like bread and milk, as residents and tourists sought supplies to either bunker down or escape. More than 50,000 people were without power and some towns had no access to drinking water, after catastrophic fires ripped through the region over the past few days, sending the sky blood red and destroying towns. Authorities urged a mass exodus from several towns on Australia's southeast coast, an area hugely popular in the current summer peak holiday season, warning that extreme heat forecast for the weekend will further stoke raging fires. "The priority today is fighting fires and evacuating, getting people to safety," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Sydney. "There are parts of both Victoria and New South Wales which have been completely devastated, with a loss of power and communications." -- Eight people have been killed by wildfires in the eastern states of New South Wales and Victoria since Monday, and 18 are still missing, officials said on Thursday. -- A naval ship arrived on Thursday at the southeastern coastal town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 residents and visitors have been stranded on the beach since Monday night. Up to 800 people are expected to be evacuated on the first trip, state Premier Daniel Andrews said. The HMAS Choules is expected to make two or three voyages over coming days, state authorities said. -- "It is hell on earth. It is the worst anybody's ever seen," said Michelle Roberts, owner of the Croajingolong Cafe in Mallacoota, told Reuters by telephone from her cafe in Mallacoota. Roberts hoped to get her 18-year-old daughter out on the ship to get away from the spot fires and thick smoke that continue to engulf the town. -- Five military helicopters were en-route to the south coast to back up firefighters and bring in supplies like water and diesel, the Australian Defence Force said on Thursday. The aircraft will also be used to evacuate injured, elderly and young people. -- Traffic on the main highway out of Batemans Bay on the NSW coast was bumper to bumper after authorities called for the town to be evacuated. Residents of the town reported was no fuel, power or phone service, while supermarket shelves were stripped bare of staples. "Everyone's just on edge," local resident Shane Flanagan told Reuters. -- The New South Wales state government declared a state of emergency, beginning on Friday, giving authorities the power to forcibly evacuate people and take control of services. The state's Kosciuszko National Park, home to the Snowy Mountains, was closed with visitors ordered to leave due to extreme fire danger. -- Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged those waiting for help and those stuck in traffic jams "to be patient ... help will arrive." -- Dairies in New South Wales that had lost power were being forced to dump milk. "That is the tragedy of what is occurring as a result of these disasters," Morrison said. -- Temperatures are forecast to soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) along the south coast on Saturday, bringing the prospect of renewed firefronts to add to the around 200 current blazes. "It is going to be a very dangerous day. It's going to be a very difficult day," NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said -- PM Morrison said the fires will burn for "many, many months ... unlike a flood, where the water will recede, in a fire like this, it goes on and it will continue to go on ... until we can get some decent rain." -- PM Morrison, forced to defend his government's limited action on climate change, blamed a three-year drought and lack of hazard reduction for the unprecedented extent and duration of this year's bushfires. -- Bushfires so far this season have razed more than 4 million hectares of bushland and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including 381 homes destroyed on the south coast just this week. 

In some parts of Europe, such losses could climb. A new study in the journal Nature found that stormy seas around Scotland and northern England have unleashed an increasing number of extreme storm surges in recent decades. “Floods affect nearly a third of the world population, more than any other peril,” said Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophe perils at Swiss Re, in a statement. In 2021, there were more than 50 severe flood events across the world, often triggered by extreme rainfall and coastal storm surges. Read full story Scientists long thought that more severe flooding along low-lying coastlines was driven only by the world’s rising sea levels, caused by climate change melting polar ice and warming ocean waters so they expand. But scientists found that, in northern areas of the United Kingdom, stronger and more frequent storms over the North Atlantic since 1960 led to more extreme storm surges, according to the Nature study released Wednesday. The increased storm activity was as much to blame for the increase in extreme storm flooding as was sea level rise. Around mainland Europe, however, calmer weather canceled out the storm surge impacts of sea level rise between 1960 and 2018. "Most countries assume that the likelihood of surge extremes will remain the same and only account for sea level rise," said lead author Francisco Calafat at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom. This may cause governments to underestimate future flooding, he said. If European countries do not adapt to increasing flood risks, they could face up to nearly 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) in yearly damages by 2100, according to a 2018 study in the journal Nature Climate Change. The United Kingdom would be hardest hit, experiencing about a fifth of those damages. Understanding storm dynamics "is essential for coastal planning and protecting near shore societies," said oceanographer Michalis Vousdoukas with the European Commission.

BRASILIA Sep 10 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said on Wednesday that US targets for greenhouse gas emissions are unacceptably weak and that Brazil will place new restrictions on its huge farm sector to cut deforestation. Brazil would also soon announce targets to substantially curb carbon emissions before a crucial global climate summit in Copenhagen in December, he said in an interview as part of the Reuters' Climate Change and Alternative Energy Summit. Criticizing the US administration's stated target of returning to its 1990 level of emissions by 2020, Minc said: "We don't accept that, it's very poor." "They have to come closer to something beyond a 20 percent reduction," he said. The South American nation is expected to play a key role in negotiations at the Copenhagen summit that will seek to frame a new international treaty on climate change. The United Nations climate talks aim to reach agreement on a post-Kyoto pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming. Minc said he was moderately optimistic but that a deal would not be easy. "People are keeping cards up their sleeves but this is not a poker game. We're discussing the (future) of the planet," he said, after meeting with the environment minister of Denmark, the summit host. Minc urged developing countries to announce aggressive targets and rich countries to boost their financing for the global fight against climate change. "Today, developing countries account for nearly half the emissions, so you can't only look at historic responsibility (of rich countries)," he said. In an about-face from years of opposing targets, Brazil last year presented a plan to slash Amazon deforestation in half over 10 years and thereby avoid the release of 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. To reinforce Brazil's ambitions as a leader on global environmental issues, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would attend the Copenhagen summit, Minc said. CRACK DOWN ON FARMING Brazil will announce on September 17 new restrictions on sugar cane planting and ban new cane mills in the Amazon rain forest and the Pantanal wetland area in the country's west, Minc said. "There won't be any new mills or ... expansion of production in native forests," Minc said. The farm lobby and the agriculture ministry had been pushing hard to allow cane production in the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland. The government on Thursday will also place new restrictions on agriculture in its vast central savannah region, where figures show farming and settlements destroyed a 120,000 square km (46,300 sq mile) area in the past six years, Minc said. "We'll impose the same restrictions we did in the Amazon," he said, referring to bans on selling farm products from illegally deforested areas. "They will in part force the agricultural businesses to change their behavior," said Minc, a co-founder of the Green Party in Brazil. The savannah area is rich in biodiversity and helps protect some of the country's largest fresh-water reserves. Since the 1970s it has been the main area of expansion for Brazil's agriculture sector, one of the world's largest.

Climate campaigners protesting against expansion plans at London's Heathrow airport on Tuesday rejected a report they would endanger passengers at the world's busiest international airline hub. The campaigners, who have set up a camp next to Heathrow, have threatened "direct action" but lodged a protest with the Press Complaints Commission about a newspaper report they planned to make hoax bomb calls to disrupt air traffic. "We cannot afford to alienate the public and we will not. Direct action will be safe and it won't be targeting passengers," said campaigner and Leeds University science lecturer Simon Lewis. He and about 250 other campaigners are camping on the path of a proposed third runway for the airport, which handles 200,000 passengers a day. The protest is being staged at the height of the summer holiday season. Just over six weeks ago a blazing jeep was used to attack Glasgow airport but caused no casualties in the building. Last year, police foiled what they said was a plan to bomb airliners flying out of Heathrow to the United States. Scientists say air transport contributes heavily to global warming. The campaigners plan a week of protests in a bid to force the government to halt expansion at the airport. They said protests could involve a mass picnic in Sipson, a town set for destruction if the runway is built, and targeting the offices of airport operator BAA, owned by Spain's Ferrovial company. BAA said it agreed there was a debate to be had about aviation and climate change. "But the 1.5 million passengers who will travel through the airport during the (week-long) camp have a right to go about their lawful travel plans without being harassed or intimidated," BAA said in a statement. Heathrow handles an average of about one flight a minute and a total of nearly 70 million passengers a year.

"All the local crises around the world are building up to a global crisis," Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, told a conference on the issue at London-based think-tank Chatham House. But easing the threat and ensuring more people have access to a stable, safe water supply will be hugely challenging because water access and distribution are tied up in politics, cultural views and entrenched systems, conference speakers said. In Jordan, the third most water-scarce country, raising water prices to reflect the shortage would make economic sense - but not when nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees, on top of 9 million citizens, depend on it, said Craig Davies of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). "It's potentially a powder keg," said Davies, who heads climate resilience investments for the bank. "From a political point of view, it's imperative to keep water tariffs very low." Uzbekistan, meanwhile, has built its economy on exports of thirsty cotton, something that might not make sense as water becomes more scarce. But "you can't adjust that very easily" without upsetting farmers and the economy, Davies added. In North Africa, newly available solar-powered water pumps are giving drought-hit farmers crucial access to irrigation - but also removing incentives to use water sparingly as farmers no longer have to buy fuel for diesel-powered irrigation pumps. "There is literally no control," said Annabelle Houdret, a senior researcher at the German Development Institute who works in the region. Aquifers there could be depleted, she warned. In many Islamic countries, water is seen as a human right and a gift from God, so asking governments to charge people for better water services can be complicated, Davies said. In most places the EBRD works, the price users pay for water is far below the actual cost of bringing it to them, he said, meaning there is often too little money to invest in treating and delivering water, and maintaining and expanding networks. "If you're not paying a rational price for the water, the incentive is to use the water irrationally," he added. JOBS AND FOOD Getting water use right in an increasingly parched world is crucial, said Olcay Unver, vice chair of UN-Water, a coordinating agency on water issues for the United Nations. Three out of every four jobs globally depend on water in some way, including small-scale farmers who produce 80% of the world's food, said Unver, who is also a water advisor for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). By 2050, FAO estimates food demand globally will rise by 50% but "we don't have 50% more water to allocate to agriculture", he noted, adding it is already the dominant water user. Demand for water is also surging in fast-growing cities, where more than half of people live now and over two-thirds are expected to live by 2050, Unver said. Getting enough water to everyone is particularly difficult as climate change brings more erratic rainfall, with many places hit by floods and droughts in turn, conference speakers said. But some countries are coming up with innovative ways to protect or expand supplies. In India's Gujarat state, for instance, much of the year's rain comes in monsoon season - and then rapidly evaporates, said Gareth Price, a Chatham House senior research fellow who works on South Asia. But some farmers have begun gathering leftover straw after harvest and piling it in low-lying spots in their fields to absorb and hold excess rain, allowing it to slowly filter into the groundwater, he said. The innovation - which also helps cut down on burning of field stubble, a major source of air pollution in the region - has won World Bank funding for its expansion, he said. In Brazil, meanwhile, farmers and ranchers who preserve and plant more forests along rivers to protect water supplies are paid by downstream users under a "water producers" programme, said Paulo Salles, director of a Brazilian water regulatory agency. Daanish Mustafa, a geography professor at King's College London, said growing water scarcity would unlikely drive a surge in wars, but instead lead to more "unjust cooperation" - cross-border sharing pacts where the stronger party gets the better deal. Water access is already hugely unequal, speakers said, with US residents using 700-900 litres a day, Europeans about 200 litres and many of the world's poorest just 10-15 litres. Reliable access to water is crucial to achieving many of the global sustainable development goals (SDGs) - from ending poverty and hunger, to reducing inequality - they added. Yet climate change threatens to put secure water access ever further out of reach. "With the SDGs, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel - but the problem is it's almost certainly a climate change train coming," said Christopher Hurst, director general of projects for the European Investment Bank.

Emissions from tourism, mostly by domestic travellers, were highest in the United States, China, Germany and India, according to a review of 160 nations led by the University of Sydney and published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Tourism, including flights, hotels, food and even the production of souvenirs, emitted the equivalent of 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2013, the most recent data available, or 8 percent of all man-made greenhouse gases, up from 3.9 billion in 2009, it said. That was far above many previous estimates, using narrower definitions, that tourism accounts for just 2.5 to 3.0 percent of world emissions, it said. And on current trends, the trillion-dollar tourism industry will emit 6.5 billion tonnes of carbon emissions by 2025, the review said, making it one of the fastest-growing source of the planet-warming gases that governments are trying to cut. Flights were the biggest single contributor, according to the study by scientists in Australia, Taiwan and Indonesia. "We recommend flying less and staying Earth-bound where possible, e.g. use public transport," co-author Arunima Malik of the University of Sydney told Reuters in an email. Lead author Manfred Lenzen said plane tickets would have to be far more expensive to reflect the harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning jet fuel. "If I flew from Melbourne to the UK return, I would pay at least an additional A$205 ($150) to offset my emissions; for a return trip between Sydney and Brisbane, about A$18 extra," he wrote in a news release. Almost 200 nations are meeting in Bonn this week to write a "rule book" for the 2015 Paris Agreement, which seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions to avert more heat waves, downpours, droughts and extinctions. Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat hosting the talks, said the tourism industry itself was making "good progress" to clean up. "A lot of what the industry is selling depends on the preservation and conservation and the protection of the environment," she told a news conference. The study added up all emissions from tourism but did not try to compare how a holiday compared with staying at home, where people also emit greenhouse gases, through everything from heating to commuting. ($1 = 1.3339 Australian dollars)

Maximum temperatures across the Asian continent from Europe to China could be 3°C to 5°C higher than previous estimates – because the forests and grasslands will respond in a different way. Australian scientists report in the journal Scientific Reports that they looked at the forecasts made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change under the notorious “business-as-usual” scenario, in which the world’s nations go on burning ever more fossil fuels, to release ever more greenhouse gases. The average global temperatures will rise steadily – but this rise will be accompanied by ever greater and more frequent extremes of heat. But then Jatin Kala of Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, and colleagues factored in the responses of the plants to rising temperatures. They looked at data from 314 species of plant from 54 research field sites. In particular, they investigated stomatas, tiny pores on the leaves through which plants absorb carbon dioxide and shed water to the atmosphere. Response crucial What matters is how vegetation responds to extremes of heat. Researchers have already established that plants respond, not always helpfully: extremes can alter the atmospheric chemistry unfavourably for plants, and certainly reduce crop yields. But other scientists have confirmed the so-called carbon dioxide fertilisation effect: as more carbon becomes available, plants use water more economically and so even though drylands may get drier the landscape can also get greener, and growth tends to begin ever earlier as winters get warmer, and spring arrives earlier. Dr Kala and his fellow researchers used their field observation data to model the response of species, and types of plants, to higher temperatures, and to make some estimates of the balance of carbon taken up by the stomata, and the water released. There has been an assumption that plants respond to temperature in roughly the same way. But there can be considerable variation. The scientists found, overall, that the response of the plants became increasingly important: over Eurasia – they decided not to model the pattern in North America because cloudiness introduced extra uncertainties – needleleaf forests, tundra and farmland would actually release lower levels of water into the atmosphere

Macron became the first French president since 2002 to win a second term, with 58.5 percent of the runoff vote, against 41.5 percent for the right-wing challenger, Marine Le Pen, according to final results from the Interior Ministry. It was a greater margin of victory than predicted by polls after the first round of voting two weeks ago. Congratulating Macron on Twitter, President Joe Biden called France “our oldest ally and a key partner in addressing global challenges.” “I look forward to our continued close cooperation — including on supporting Ukraine, defending democracy, and countering climate change,” Biden wrote. But Macron’s victory was also narrower than in 2017, when he first faced off against the anti-NATO, pro-Russia Le Pen. Fewer voters backed Macron this time around, as the highest abstention rate for a runoff presidential election in half a century — 28 percent — pointed to rising political disillusionment and economic grievance. Clément Beaune, Macron’s junior minister for European Affairs, acknowledged on CNN that France was “divided” and “worried,” especially about pocketbook issues such as the cost of living and energy prices. “Now we have to work on this,” Beaune said Monday. “Big victory, big challenges,” was Monday’s headline in Le Figaro, a right-leaning daily. The left-leaning Libération noted the widespread frustration with Macron and hailed the “political maturity of the French people who, sometimes while holding their noses, mobilized to refuse the chimeras of far-right populism.” In the city of Rennes and in Paris, small demonstrations against Macron’s reelection briefly turned violent Sunday night as protesters clashed with riot police officers, leading to a few arrests. France’s political forces now turn their attention to the elections for the lower house of Parliament in June, a crucial test for Macron, whose coalition holds a strong legislative majority. Results then will determine how far he can go in pursuing his domestic agenda. “Macron’s biggest challenge will be to create a sense of cohesion in an extremely fragmented country where the far right gets 41 percent of the vote,” said Tara Varma, head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The political reconfiguration that started five years ago will now be completed as new alliances are bound to emerge.” Macron’s first priority will most likely be to push through a new relief package for French consumers, including measures to increase pensions and some welfare benefits, extend energy subsidies and beef up a policy that allows companies to grant workers tax-free bonuses. In the fall, Macron is expected to tackle one of his most contentious plans: increasing the legal retirement age. Le Pen will seek to remain in Parliament, where she has occupied a seat since 2017, Louis Aliot, a top official in her National Rally party, told the radio station France Inter on Monday. Her party got only a handful of lawmakers elected that year and hopes to build on her presidential showing. “Now it is another election that is starting, and more important, it is 577 elections that are starting,” Aliot said, referring to the number of seats that will be up for grabs. Even some of Macron’s supporters were doubtful that he would obtain the same sweeping majority as he did in 2017, when many political newcomers rode the wave of enthusiasm he generated into office. At Macron’s victory celebration Sunday on the Champs de Mars in Paris, where people danced and waved French flags in the shadow of an Eiffel Tower sparkling with lights, the mood was relief more than jubilation. Dustin Bourgeois, 23, an air traffic controller, said Macron was the “most reasonable, most stable” leader for the country. But he added, “There are two camps today in France: the extremes and the center, not to mention those who abstained.” Of the legislative elections, he said: “I think it’s going to be different, and that worries me. It’s going to be hard.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

The rebound in economic activity from coronavirus restrictions has exposed alarmingly low supplies of natural gas leaving traders, industry executives and governments scrambling as the northern hemisphere heads into winter. The energy crisis, which has led to fuel shortages and blackouts in some countries, has highlighted the difficulty in cutting the global economy's dependency on fossil fuels as world leaders seek to revive efforts to tackle climate change at talks next month in Glasgow. In China, where coal production had been curtailed to meet climate goals, officials have ordered https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-top-coal-region-tells-mines-boost-output-immediately-sources-2021-10-08 more than 70 coal mines in Inner Mongolia to ramp up production by nearly 100 million tonnes or 10%, as the world's largest exporter battles its worst power shortages in years. Russia's Gazprom, a key supplier of gas to China, calmed fears that a fire at a major gas processing plant could worsen the situation, saying it was able to continue exporting gas to China as normal. India, the second largest coal consumer after China, is also suffering electricity outages https://www.reuters.com/world/india/exclusive-indian-states-suffer-power-cuts-coal-stocks-shrink-2021-10-08 because of a lack of coal with over half of its coal-fired power plants having less than three days worth of fuel stocks, data from the federal grid operator showed. Oil prices rose on Friday, on track for gains of nearly 5% this week, as industries switch fuel. "A lot of catalysts are out there to keep the oil market tight," said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at brokerage OANDA. Reflecting the gravity of the situation, the United States has not ruled out tapping into its strategic petroleum reserves, which it typically only does after major supply disruptions such as hurricanes, or pursuing a ban on oil exports to bring down the cost of crude oil, though there are doubts it is ready to take such action yet. "DOE is actively monitoring global energy market supply and will work with our agency partners to determine if and when actions are needed," a spokesperson for the Department of Energy said. STOKING TENSIONS Global fuel shortages are another blow to a world economy just getting back on its feet after the coronavirus pandemic and threaten an expensive winter for consumers. China is going to allow coal-fired power prices to fluctuate by up to 20% from base levels, instead of 10-15% previously, in order to prevent high energy consumption, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday, citing a meeting of the State Council, or cabinet. Bangladesh, meanwhile, bought two cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for delivery in October at record prices, two industry sources said on Friday, as low stocks in Europe boosts competition with Asia for supplies. "It is really tough to cope with such abnormal prices. At the moment, we have no other option but to buy to keep economic activities going," an official of state-run Petrobangla, which oversees LNG supplies, said. Bangladesh is reviewing leases of five oil-fired power plants which are nearing expiry, despite its plan to move from oil towards natural gas for power generation. Even before the current energy crisis erupted, the world was far behind on efforts to avert catastrophic climate change with a United Nations analysis estimating that global emissions would be 16% higher in 2030 than they were in 2010 based on countries' current pledges. Surging energy prices are stoking tensions in Europe over the green transition. Wealthier nations want to keep up the pressure to quit fossil fuels while poorer ones, worried about the cost to the consumer, are wary. Britain's energy regulator warned that energy bills, which have just been hiked, are likely to rise significantly in April due to high wholesale costs which have forced some suppliers out of business. Divisions within the European Union have deepened, with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban blaming European Union action to combat climate change for the current crisis and saying Poland and Hungary would present a united front at the next EU summit. Analysts have said rising gas prices are the main driver of European electricity costs, while the soaring cost of permits on the EU carbon market has contributed around a fifth of the power price increase.

While some companies are preparing to call back workers to their offices, the amount of office space available for lease in Manhattan has soared to the highest rate ever, according to reports released Thursday, underscoring how the sudden shift to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic is upending the city’s commercial real estate industry. Across Manhattan, home to the two largest business districts in the country, 18.7% of all office space is available for lease, a jump from more than 15% at the end of 2020 and more than double the rate from before the pandemic, according to Newmark, a real estate services company. Many New York employers are offering greater flexibility to their workforce, allowing at least some remote work even as the pandemic recedes and recalculating their space needs. As a result, companies continue to end their leases or seek tenants to take over their existing leases at a steady pace. Some neighbourhoods are faring worse, such as Downtown Manhattan, where 21% of offices have no tenants, Newmark said. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business organisation, said that New York City was facing its biggest crisis since the 1970s, when half of the city’s 125 Fortune 500 companies moved out. “This is as close as we’ve come to that type of scenario where there’s an exodus from the city, and the recovery took 30 years,” Wylde said. “The city has to attract people for reasons other than going to the office.” No other city in the United States must confront the changing workplace more so than New York, whose offices, before the pandemic, had attracted 1.6 million commuters every day and helped sustain a swath of the economy, from shops to restaurants to Broadway theatres. The pandemic has also placed enormous pressure on the commercial real estate sector, a pillar of the New York economy, as landlords rush to redesign offices and dangle incentives like lower rent to retain and attract companies. Property taxes are the largest source of revenue for New York City, with commercial property accounting for the largest share of that at 41%. Commercial districts across the country are struggling, but office towers in Manhattan continue to empty out even as other cities, including Atlanta and Los Angeles, show signs that they have moved beyond the worst of the pandemic. While New York’s vacancy rate was higher than the national rate of 16.2% at the end of March, many other cities are also struggling to fill their offices. In Los Angeles, 24.1% of its offices are without tenants, and in Chicago, the office vacancy rate is 21.9%. But both cities also entered the pandemic with much higher vacancy rates than New York: In Los Angeles the rate was 18.1%, while it was 15.5% in Chicago. There are signs that the situation in New York could get worse. A third of leases at large Manhattan buildings will expire over the next three years, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company, and companies have made clear they will need significantly less space. The overall availability rate in New York City is the highest since it started to be tracked in the mid-1970s, when the city was plunged into a financial crisis and the Manhattan skyline was being transformed by the rise of towering office buildings like the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre. Franklin Wallach, a senior managing director for research at the real estate firm Colliers, said that the amount of available office space in Manhattan would most likely continue to climb, as new construction is completed and large companies complete relocation plans that were announced before the pandemic. About 14 million square feet of office space is under construction in New York City, which is equal to about double the size of Orlando, Florida. Just as the broader economic recovery has been uneven with some industries faring better than others, so too will the office market rebound in different ways in Manhattan, Wallach said. Neighborhoods close to major transportation hubs, like Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal, could recover faster than other parts of Manhattan. “The long-term, overall market will recover,” Wallach said, “but the when, where and how — that will vary where you are standing.” One real estate firm, Savills, said the Manhattan office market would not likely rebound to pre-pandemic levels until “late 2022 or beyond.” At the end of May, just 12%of Manhattan’s office workers had returned to their desks, according to a survey of companies by the Partnership for New York City. More than 60% of workers are estimated to return in September, the group said, but many companies will allow their employees to work remotely at least several days a week. Throughout the pandemic, just one industry — the technology sector — has signed significant leases in New York. But those companies, such as Facebook and Google, are also perhaps best equipped to shift seamlessly to remote work. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in June he planned to work outside the office for half of next year. Wylde said that the growth of the tech sector increasingly appeared to be a short-lived success, as employees in those companies demand that they be allowed to work remotely or on a hybrid schedule on a permanent basis. They are telling their employers that they do not want to pay expensive apartment leases in New York to work in the office only a few days a week, she said. “The other cities have become more competitive as a result of the pandemic and the whole remote-work phenomenon,” she said. “It’s going to require a real shift in public policy toward focusing on quality of life, a positive business climate and affordability.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

But the presentation was scrapped under political pressure, with Energy Minister Segolene Royal later saying the agency needed to be "coherent" with government targets. The episode illustrated the tensions surrounding energy policy in a country steeped in nuclear power since the 1970s and which relies on it for three-quarters of its electricity - more than any other nation. Any suggestion of abandoning the atom is unthinkable for many in France, where scientists played a key role in discovering radioactivity, atomic energy is broadly accepted by all major political parties except the greens and the nuclear industry employs 220,000 people. Ahead of the U.N. climate change conference in Paris next week, the French position exposes the lack of any consistent European policy on how best to switch from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy and reduce carbon emissions. In Germany, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster led to an exit from nuclear and a massive switch to renewables, while many other countries also decided to phase out nuclear. But French lawmakers in July voted only to cap nuclear capacity at current levels and to reduce its share in the power mix to 50 percent by 2025 - without announcing any concrete steps towards that goal. They also backed a government target for renewables to generate 40 percent of power by 2030. The study by state energy and environment agency ADEME - tasked with leading France's energy transition - had found, by contrast, that France could switch to 100 percent renewable energy for power generation by 2050 at a cost similar to sticking with atomic energy for 50 percent of its power. "We show that a hypothesis that most stakeholders thought was unthinkable, is actually technically possible," ADEME head Bruno Lechevin wrote. The report was finally published in October - months after lawmakers had approved the government's energy transition law - and included a carefully worded introduction by Lechevin, saying it was "an exploratory scientific study, not a political scenario". Nuclear vs renewables France's heavy reliance on nuclear power means it is, in some respects, a model for low-carbon power generation, but that also makes it harder to consider a shift to renewable energy. The nuclear industry argues world leaders at the COP21 conference in Paris next week should not have to choose between nuclear and renewables but between low-carbon energy - including nuclear - and fossil fuels. "We were surprised to see that the draft COP21 documents do not mention nuclear energy at all as a solution to climate change," said Isabelle Jouette of French nuclear lobby SFEN. But critics like Greenpeace say nuclear power - whose share of world electricity production has been stable at around 11 percent for years - cannot be part of any climate solutions put forward at the UN conference because of the risks related to reactor accidents and waste storage. They also say building reactors is too expensive and slow. "If we are going to spend a lot of money to tackle climate change, we have to do it in the most economically efficient way, which is renewables, not nuclear," said Greenpeace energy campaigner Cyrille Cormier. Cost and timing have been the banes of the French nuclear industry in recent years. As costs for solar and wind energy have dropped dramatically in the past decade, the cost of nuclear has climbed as safety requirements have tightened. EDF's Areva-designed EPR reactor in Flamanville - the sole nuclear reactor under construction in France - has seen its cost balloon from an initial budget of 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to 10.5 billion euros, while the two EPR reactors EDF plans to build in Britain's Hinkley Point are estimated to cost 12 billion euros apiece. Once the great hope for a French global nuclear export drive, Areva has seen its equity wiped out by years of losses and its reactor division has been taken over by EDF. EDF itself has seen its stock fall 37 percent since January and 83 percent from its 2007 highs as investors worry where it will find the billions to upgrade its ageing French reactors, build new ones and turn around the Areva reactor unit. Changing course This is why the ADEME's 100 percent renewables study could be an existential threat to the company, which has lagged other European utilities in deploying solar and wind. If France were to switch to 100 percent renewable energies to produce power by 2050 - 63 percent wind, 17 percent solar, 13 percent hydro and 7 percent other renewables - the average cost would be 119 euros per megawatt-hour, according to the study That is nearly the same as the average 117 euros per MWh for a scenario with 55 percent nuclear and 40 percent renewables. France's former monopoly power provider EDF - the world's biggest operator of nuclear reactors - could not disagree more with the idea of phasing out nuclear in France. Its management has repeatedly said that any reduction in the share of nuclear in France's energy mix will not come from closing down reactors but from increased demand from new uses for power like electric vehicles. Despite stagnant power demand in recent years and government policies to boost energy efficiency, EDF boss Jean-Bernard Levy said last month that France's nuclear capacity of 63.2 gigawatt may be a minimum, not a maximum, and spoke of building more than 30 new reactors to replace EDF's ageing nuclear fleet. Lechevin - a former leader with the moderate CFDT union who started his career as an EDF warehouse clerk - said it was not surprising EDF still operated within a logic of equating economic growth with higher energy use. "EDF is a big tanker, it takes time to change course," he said, adding that the firm might need a shove to become a driving force of France's energy transition. Lechevin said his agency was neither for or against nuclear, but warned that EDF's strength in nuclear should not blind it to the opportunities in renewable energy and energy efficiency. "France's strong suit is nuclear, but this can also be its weakness," he said.

That’s why a proposal, the first in decades, to dig a new coal mine in Whitehaven, a faded harbour town in northwest England, has excited so much interest — enthusiasm from some, repulsion from others. And it has put Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a bind. As he prepares to host the UN climate conference COP26 in the fall, the proposal forces him to choose between economic development for a region eager for new investment and burnishing his environmental credentials as climate change dominates political debate. The proposal by West Cumbria Mining calls for investing 160 million pounds, ($218 million) in a mine that would create more than 500 well-paying jobs, ranging up to 60,000 pounds a year. The coal would be used not in power plants, but instead in the making of steel, an industry still heavily reliant on coal. The mine would ease the reliance of British steel-makers on imported coal to run their mills. “If it is not mined here, it will be brought in from elsewhere,” said Mike Starkie, the mayor of the Whitehaven area, which was once a hub for coal mining. He became a backer of the project soon after winning election six years ago. Although using coal to make steel generates greenhouse gases, Starkie pointed out that steel was necessary for green energy — to make wind turbines, for example. “I don’t think anyone would argue that it is anything but very positive for the local economy,” he said. That sentiment is shared widely in Whitehaven, where residents remember the coal-mining jobs that once infused family incomes, supporting local businesses. Others see West Cumbria Mining’s proposal as an embarrassment for Britain, and a potential setback in its efforts to become carbon neutral. As Britain’s production of coal has dropped more than 90% over the past decade, the country has aggressively championed renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power. Johnson has said he wants to make Britain the “Saudi Arabia of wind.” A new mine in Whitehaven could undermine Johnson’s credibility as he tries to persuade countries like China and India to burn less coal, critics say. “If you are going to make the global phaseout of coal a priority, you can’t be having a coal mine,” said Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace UK, the environmental group. The Climate Change Committee, an influential watchdog created by Parliament, has warned that the mine would increase global emissions and “have an appreciable impact” on Britain’s legally binding carbon targets. But Johnson is under pressure to bolster the economies of northern constituencies, like Cumbria County and the Whitehaven area, that have turned Conservative after decades as Labour Party strongholds. Large local employers, including a chemical factory and a steel works, have shut down over the years. Along with Starkie, the local member of Parliament, Trudy Harrison, backs the project. Both are Conservatives, the party led by Johnson. A planning committee of the Cumbria County Council has approved the mine three times, but the threat of legal challenges held it up. In March, in an unusual move, Johnson’s government interceded and said it would decide the matter, arguing that the mine’s application raises “issues of more than local importance.” An agency is expected to begin a review in early September. It will make a recommendation, but Johnson’s government has the final say. West Cumbria Mining, which is backed by the Australian private equity firm EMR Capital, said in a statement at the time that it was “very disappointed” by the government’s action. The company has said it would use modern, safe mining machines capable of digging out nearly 30 metric tons of coal per minute. Its statement said that it had already spent 36 million pounds on preparations for the mine and that there was “a very real risk that the project will never be delivered.” The company declined requests for an interview. In a recent filing, it said there was a “reasonable expectation” the government would approve its plans, but in the meantime it had begun a “cost saving” effort by telling staff members that they would be terminated and by cutting all expenses except those related to the inquiry. The mine’s opponents are gearing up for a fight. The organisation Friends of the Earth recently held a meeting in Cockermouth, about a half-hour drive from Whitehaven, with a small group of volunteers to talk about how to discuss the issue with decision-makers and prepare a door-to-door campaign. “From the Cumbrian point of view, having a coal mine doesn’t make much sense,” said Ruth Balogh, a local representative of Friends of the Earth. In Whitehaven itself, many residents are supportive of the mine and dismayed at the souring of its prospects. “To me, it’s an opportunity to start creating an industry locally,” said Danny Doran, who works at a nuclear research institution. “Kids come up, and there is nothing available,” he added, speaking outside his home not far from the site of a former chemical plant where the mine’s processing plants would be built. Doran and others said they were resentful at what they considered outsiders trying to take away a golden opportunity. “I think there are too many do-gooders putting their nose in that don’t live in Whitehaven,” said Barry Patrickson, a trash hauler. He said that there used to be many places to work in Whitehaven, but that most had shut down. “It is a ghost town now.” Some so-called outsiders live in nearby communities on the edges of the scenic Lake District National Park, a magnet for tourists and people moving out of Britain’s cities. The town of Whitehaven, England on Aug 16, 2021. The New York Times At the same time, there is grumbling that the government has done little to make the West Cumbria coast attractive to new investors. The area remains isolated with poor transportation links. A train trip to London eats up a day. The town of Whitehaven, England on Aug 16, 2021. The New York Times “People feel geographically isolated and also quite culturally isolated,” said Suzanne Wilson, a research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, who has studied the community around the proposed mine. Decades of falling behind other parts of Britain have left towns like Whitehaven “vulnerable to exploitation,” said Simon Carr, a professor of geography at the University of Cumbria. Local politicians will, he said, “jump on anything to improve the economic and social well-being in these areas.” The mining company seems to be appealing to this yearning for the supposedly better times of old, even using a onetime mining museum as its headquarters. “People think this is what a good job is,” said Kate Willshaw, policy officer of Friends of the Lake District, a conservation group. Some locals, though, recall the dangers of mining. “It’s affected everybody; I don’t understand why anyone wants it,” said Margaret Telford, whose parents lost siblings in mining accidents. In 1947, 104 people died in a disaster at a Whitehaven mine called the William Pit when an explosion trapped workers underground. The mine was reputed to be one of the most dangerous in Britain, said Gerard Richardson, a local historian who runs a wine shop. One of Richardson’s grandfathers was among those who perished. Yet he supports the mine project. As long as the world needs coal for steel-making, he said, “why shouldn’t we have a piece of the pie?” Carr and some others doubt that the mine would do much more than make a profit for its backers. They say the new jobs would have a limited future as new, cleaner ways are developed to make steel. Whitehaven should emulate northeast England areas like Hull and Teesside, Carr said, by going for jobs in green energy like wind power. But Emma Louise Williamson, a Labour politician on the Cumbria County Council, said that although green jobs might be the future, her constituents needed work now. “When they take the mine away, which I am really nervous is going to happen, we are back to square one again,” she said.

Want the good life despite the dire economy? Head east, according to a survey showing some of the world's highest-paid expatriates live in Asia and the Middle East. A third of all expats in Russia -- the highest proportion in the world -- earn more than $250,000 a year, followed closely by expats in Japan and Qatar, according to the 2009 Expat Explorer survey, commissioned by HSBC Bank International, the offshore financial services arm of HSBC Holdings. Between a third and a quarter of foreigners working in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and India earned annual wages of more than $200,000, while countries such as Malaysia, China and India, were ranked among the cheapest for accommodation. "Asia is home to the highest paid expats in the world, with one in four expats earning more than $200,000 per year," said the survey (here). Russia was ranked the number one country overall for expats in terms of wealth. The rest of the top nine were all in Asia and the Middle East. Building a nest egg is one of the perks of expat life for many people, and the survey showed that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar, India and the United Arab Emirates were the top five countries where people have increased their savings. But the global economic crisis has taken a heavy toll on expats in Britain and the United States, where close to a quarter are considering returning home, compared to just 15 percent overall, due to the high cost of living, lack of savings and lower wages. Generous salaries are also relatively scarce in Australia and Belgium, the survey showed. More than 60 percent of expats in both countries earn under $100,000, making them the poorest expats wage-wise when compared to a global average of 35 percent. LARGEST SURVEY "We have seen some interesting trends in terms of how expats are reacting to the credit crunch, but what is also interesting to see is that they remain a wealthy group of individuals," Paul Say, head of marketing and communications for HSBC Bank International, said in a statement. "Over half the expats surveyed are actually earning $100,000 and over -- no mean feat particularly in the current climate." Expat Explorer, now in its second year, surveyed more than 3,100 expats from various nationalities living in 26 countries. HSBC said it was the largest survey of its kind. More than two-thirds of expatriates worldwide said the credit crisis had changed the way they spend their money, with luxuries and day-to-day spending the most affected. Nearly 40 percent said they were saving more for a rainy day. Over half of the expats in Japan -- the highest globally at 53 percent -- said they were cutting back on holidays and other perks, while almost one in two expats in Thailand and Hong Kong -- the second and third globally, were also scaling back. In contrast, two-thirds of expats living in Qatar said the global financial crisis would not change their spending attitudes at all, followed by more than half of those living in Bahrain, which HSBC said indicated that some oil-rich Gulf Arab states have not been hit as hard by the downturn. Expats in Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Russia were also the least likely to cut back on luxuries, the survey showed. Those polled in the survey were chosen by four main criteria: annual income in excess of $200,000; a monthly disposable income in excess of $3,000; an increase in saving while working abroad and having at least two luxury items in the country they live in. The survey was conducted between February and April 2009.

Developing countries in Asia could face an "unprecedented" water crisis within a decade due to mismanagement of water resources, the Asian Development Bank said in a report on Thursday. The effects of climate change, rapid industrialisation and population growth on water resources could lead to health and social issues that could cost billions of dollars annually, it said. "If the present unsatisfactory trends continue, in one or two decades, Asian developing countries are likely to face and cope with a crisis on water quality management that is unprecedented in human history," Ajit Biswas wrote in the report. The report, entitled "Asian Water Development Outlook", was submitted to the Asia-Pacific Water Forum in Singapore, which will discuss the issue at a summit in Japan next week. The report also comes before a U.N. meeting in Indonesia next week to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. "Water quality management has mostly been a neglected issue in Asian developing member countries. The annual economic cost is likely to be billions of dollars," Biswas wrote. The report said massive urbanisation will present new types of water-related challenges. In contrast to cities in developed countries such as Tokyo, developing countries have fallen behind in the collection, treatment, and safe disposal of wastewater, it said. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency of extreme events like droughts and floods and introduce high levels of risks and uncertainties that the water industry may not be able to handle with confidence, Biswas said. The report, written by a team of water specialists, covers 12 Asian countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Samoa, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The ADB report recommends major changes in water governance practices in most Asian developing countries, and to look to successful models such as in Singapore and Cambodia which had improved monitoring of water consumption. The report also called for countries to improve the accessibility of data on water quality.

Britain is expected to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations on Thursday, ending years of uncertainty over its energy plans and adding momentum to atomic energy's worldwide renaissance. The government called nuclear energy an unattractive option in 2003, but since then surging oil prices have made it more competitive and the focus on cutting carbon emissions to fight climate change has sharpened. Already, countries such as France and Finland are building new nuclear plants and, in the United States, companies have begun filing licence applications, reinforcing the view atomic energy is part of the solution to the world's energy problems. Nuclear operators say they could have new plants running in Britain by 2017, which would help the government meet its 2020 goals for cutting carbon emissions to fight climate change. "It is good news that decisions are finally being made. The UK needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while still ensuring that we have secure sources of electricity each day," said Peter Williams, vice president of the Royal Society, Britain's independent scientific academy. "To accomplish this we must rely on a diverse mix of technologies, including nuclear power. There remain key questions on safety and security," he said. FAST-TRACK The government green light is likely to be accompanied by publication of an Energy Bill to be fast-tracked through parliament with the Climate Change Bill and the Planning Bill. The trio of bills form the backbone of the government's new energy and climate policy for the next decades. The British public is divided on the issue, with 44 percent saying companies should have the option of investing in new nuclear power and 37 percent disagreeing. Business Secretary John Hutton, who will announce the government's decision to parliament, has stressed the importance of a wide range of energy sources, which many interpret as a vote for new nuclear projects. Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged last week to "take the difficult decisions on energy security". Edward de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, said the government had to make a compelling case for nuclear power to build public support, given the sensitivities over where plants should be built and how waste should be disposed of. Around 18 percent of Britain's electricity is generated by nuclear power, but the last of Britain's existing nuclear plants is scheduled to be closed by 2035. Analysts say renewable sources of energy would not be sufficient to replace them. For opponents, the toxic waste from nuclear power generation which will remain for thousands of years is one of the powerful reasons to say atomic energy is not worth the risk. Environmental group Greenpeace last February won a legal battle to force the government into a full public consultation. It then withdrew from those consultations in September saying they were biased and has said it might challenge again. "That is something we are looking at. Our lawyers will be examining the government's statement closely and we reserve the right to mount a new legal challenge," a spokesman said.

After weeks of closed-door negotiations, Biden strode to the cameras on the White House driveway on Thursday, flanked by an equal number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to proudly announce an overall infrastructure agreement totalling $1.2 trillion over eight years that could cement his legacy as a bipartisan dealmaker. Biden and his top aides had successfully struck a limited agreement with key centrist senators to rebuild roads and bridges while carefully signalling to liberals that he still intended to embrace a measure — likely to gain only Democratic support — to spend trillions more on climate, education, child care and other economic priorities. It was an “I told you so” moment for a president who is supremely confident in his ability to navigate legislative negotiations. But in a stray comment during a news conference an hour later, the president blurted out that he would not approve the compromise bill without the partisan one. “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he said, answering a question about the timing of his legislative agenda. “I’m not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest.” It may not seem like much, but it was enough to upend Biden’s proud bipartisan moment. On the one hand, he was saying out loud what liberals in his party wanted to hear. But to the centrist senators and Republicans, it made explicit a notion that had only been hinted at before — that Biden not only intended to sign a second, more ambitious package, but that he would also go so far as to veto their bipartisan plan if the larger bill did not materialise. “We never had an inkling that there would be any kind of linkage,” Sen Susan Collins, a key negotiator, said in an interview. “We always knew that there’d be another bill, but not that the success of the infrastructure package was going to be in any way dependent on the other bill.” For more than 24 hours, the White House engaged in damage control, with top advisers calling senators from both parties. On Friday, the president’s spokeswoman gently tried to distance the administration from his comments. It was not enough. And on Saturday, as lawmakers and aides continued to stew and the prospects of a legislative victory seemed to fade, Biden conceded that he had misspoken. The drama does not appear to have sunk the deal, but Biden admitted that his comments on Thursday left “the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to.” That was “certainly not my intent,” he added. TEMPERS, THEN A DEAL The agreement Biden heralded on Thursday initially looked like an unfettered triumph for a president who promised voters he could deliver legislation that was both boldly progressive and widely bipartisan. It was weeks in the making. By late May, Sens Rob Portman and Kyrsten Sinema had cobbled together eight other centrist colleagues to discuss the possibilities of a bipartisan framework that could replicate the success that led to the passage of a $900 billion coronavirus relief bill in December. “The easy stuff, I could just put a check mark on it and move on to the next one,” Sinema said in an interview. “The hard stuff is where you spend your time.” Looming over the talks was the likelihood that liberal Democrats would use a fast-track process known as reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Meetings grew ever more tense, and the senators invited Steve Ricchetti, a top adviser to Biden; Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council; and Louisa Terrell, director of the Office of Legislative Affairs. For days, they crisscrossed the Capitol — including Sinema, who broke her foot running a marathon, on a crutch — to haggle in back rooms, often ordering in pizza, salads and wine. Portman’s hideaway grew so cramped with the additional staff that an aide to Sen Mitt Romney, braved the Senate bureaucracy to secure a fan for the room. During one late-night session, Ricchetti took it upon himself to walk around the table and pour wine for each senator, according to two people familiar with the moment. Tempers flared, senators and aides acknowledged in interviews, as the senators clashed over how to finance the framework amid a Republican refusal to increase taxes and the White House’s objections to user fees for drivers. On Wednesday, many of the centrist senators joined Biden at a funeral for former Sen John Warner of Virginia, before returning to the Capitol for what would be a final round of meetings with his legacy of striking bipartisan accords on their minds. “What would John Warner do?” said Sen Mark Warner, who is of no relation, but who considered him a friend. “John Warner would have hung in. I think probably almost everybody in that room went through some level of that reflection.” Around 7 pm, the 10 senators began to emerge with a unified message: They had a framework and they would be going to the White House the next day. THE PLAN: GO IN TANDEM After weeks of closed-door negotiations, it appeared to be a moment of validation for a president certain in his ability to navigate difficult legislative negotiations, after months of talks that his own party had begun to worry were turning into a quagmire for his economic ambitions. Biden’s team believed that by winning a bipartisan agreement, they would secure the support of centrist Democratic senators for the larger bill to provide paid leave, fight poverty and climate change and address a host of other liberal priorities, funded by tax increases on corporations and the rich. Some Republicans, egged on by business leaders, hoped to stop the larger bill by arguing to moderate Democrats that the more limited infrastructure bill was all that was needed. Both lawmakers and Biden agreed it was also a significant moment to prove that the government could still function. (Sen Jon Tester, contended that failure would show “we’re really, really, really dysfunctional.”) “The message it sends to the American people, and also to our friends and adversaries around the world, is so important,” Warner said. “In a post-Jan 6 world, it shows that people who come from different political views can still come together on national priorities.” Progressive lawmakers had long sounded alarms, worried it was insufficient and would close off a larger bill. On Thursday morning — even as the president and the lawmakers prepared to make their deal public — Sen Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor to defuse their concerns by underscoring the plan that he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi had worked out with the president. “These two efforts are tied together. Let me make that clear,” Schumer said. “Speaker Pelosi agrees that we cannot do one without the other. All parties understand that we won’t get enough votes to pass either unless we have enough votes to pass both.” In his prepared remarks Thursday in the East Room, soon after celebrating with the senators in the White House driveway, Biden echoed that strategy. “I’m going to work closely with Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer to make sure that both move through the legislative process promptly and in tandem,” he said. “Let me emphasise that — and in tandem.” ADMITTING A MISTAKE Democrats had expected a statement of that sort. They did not expect what Biden did moments later. During the news conference in the East Room, a reporter sought clarification: “Mr President, you said you want both of these measures to come to you ‘in tandem.’ Did you receive any assurances that that would happen?” Biden said he expected that Congress would work on passage of both the bipartisan infrastructure measure and the bigger Democratic bill at the same time, echoing Schumer’s earlier comments. But then he went even further again. “But if only one comes to me, I’m not — and if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he said. “It’s in tandem.” With senators leaving Washington on Thursday afternoon for a two-week recess for Fourth of July, it was not until later in the evening that some in the group of negotiators saw Biden’s comments, which Republicans in particular interpreted as an implicit veto threat. Senators and their staff members began texting and calling one another and the White House. Liberal Democrats scoffed at the Republican frustration and accused their counterparts of looking for an excuse to oppose the deal, even though the Democrats’ pursuit of reconciliation had long been public. On Saturday, Biden finally acknowledged his mistake as lawmakers and aides signalled they would move forward with writing text and securing support. “The bottom line is this,” he said. “I gave my word to support the infrastructure plan, and that’s what I intend to do. I intend to pursue the passage of that plan, which Democrats and Republicans agreed to on Thursday, with vigour. It would be good for the economy, good for our country, good for our people. I fully stand behind it without reservation or hesitation.”   ©2021 The New York Times Company

In meetings in Brussels, Berlin and Beijing, senior Chinese officials, including Vice Premier Liu He and the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, have proposed an alliance between the two economic powers and offered to open more of the Chinese market in a gesture of goodwill. One proposal has been for China and the European Union to launch joint action against the United States at the World Trade Organisation. But the European Union, the world’s largest trading bloc, has rejected the idea of allying with Beijing against Washington, five EU officials and diplomats told Reuters, ahead of a Sino-European summit in Beijing on July 16-17. Instead, the summit is expected to produce a modest communiqué, which affirms the commitment of both sides to the multilateral trading system and promises to set up a working group on modernising the WTO, EU officials said. Vice Premier Liu He has said privately that China is ready to set out for the first time what sectors it can open to European investment at the annual summit, expected to be attended by President Xi Jinping, China’s Premier Li Keqiang and top EU officials. Chinese state media has promoted the message that the European Union is on China’s side, officials said, putting the bloc in a delicate position. The past two summits, in 2016 and 2017, ended without a statement due to disagreements over the South China Sea and trade. “China wants the European Union to stand with Beijing against Washington, to take sides,” said one European diplomat. “We won’t do it and we have told them that.” China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Beijing’s summit aims. In a commentary on Wednesday, China’s official Xinhua news agency said China and Europe “should resist trade protectionism hand in hand”. “China and European countries are natural partners,” it said. “They firmly believe that free trade is a powerful engine for global economic growth.” CHINA’S MOMENT? Despite Trump’s tariffs on European metals exports and threats to hit the EU’s automobile industry, Brussels shares Washington’s concern about China’s closed markets and what Western governments say is Beijing’s manipulation of trade to dominate global markets. “We agree with almost all the complaints the US has against China, it’s just we don’t agree with how the United States is handling it,” another diplomat said. Still, China’s stance is striking given Washington’s deep economic and security ties with European nations. It shows the depth of Chinese concern about a trade war with Washington, as Trump is set to impose tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports on July 6. It also underscores China’s new boldness in trying to seize leadership amid divisions between the United States and its European, Canadian and Japanese allies over issues including free trade, climate change and foreign policy. “Trump has split the West, and China is seeking to capitalise on that. It was never comfortable with the West being one bloc,” said a European official involved in EU-China diplomacy. “China now feels it can try to split off the European Union in so many areas, on trade, on human rights,” the official said. Another official described the dispute between Trump and Western allies at the Group of Seven summit last month as a gift to Beijing because it showed European leaders losing a long-time ally, at least in trade policy. European envoys say they already sensed a greater urgency from China in 2017 to find like-minded countries willing to stand up against Trump’s “America First” policies. NO “SYSTEMIC CHANGE” A report by New York-based Rhodium Group, a research consultancy, in April showed that Chinese restrictions on foreign investment are higher in every single sector save real estate, compared to the European Union, while many of the big Chinese takeovers in the bloc would not have been possible for EU companies in China. China has promised to open up. But EU officials expect any moves to be more symbolic than substantive. They say China’s decision in May to lower tariffs on imported cars will make little difference because imports make up such a small part of the market. China’s plans to move rapidly to electric vehicles mean that any new benefits it offers traditional European carmakers will be fleeting. “Whenever the train has left the station we are allowed to enter the platform,” a Beijing-based European executive said. However, China’s offer at the upcoming summit to open up reflects Beijing’s concern that it is set to face tighter EU controls, and regulators are also blocking Chinese takeover attempts in the United States. The European Union is seeking to pass legislation to allow greater scrutiny of foreign investments. “We don’t know if this offer to open up is genuine yet,” a third EU diplomat said. “It’s unlikely to mark a systemic change.”

“Air pollution is currently the most important environmental risk to human health,” the European Environment Agency (EEA), the EU’s health agency, said in the report. The report’s author, EEA air quality expert Alberto González Ortiz, said that while the level of dangerous particles in European cities was dropping, it was not dropping fast enough. “We have not yet reached the EU standards and of course we are far from reaching the WHO (World Health Organization) standards,” Ortiz said. EU law currently requires countries to assess the level, notably in urban areas, of a range of pollutants, including ozone and particulate matter, and take action if certain limits are hit. Particle pollution in cities has become the target of tougher restrictions after the EU’s top court ruled in June that cities needed to act if pollution levels were exceeded in a single black spot rather than based on an average across a region. In July, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, asked the EU’s Court of Justice to take action against Spain and Bulgaria over their poor air quality, warning the countries were failing to protect citizens against pollution. EU limits are set per pollutant and in 2017, 16 out of the EU’s 28 member states reported at least one case of levels of nitrogen dioxide, a poisonous gas in car exhaust, being higher than the legal EU annual mean concentration. This list includes France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Britain. Some stations in London, for example, reported levels of more than 50 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide per cubic meter of air, compared with the legal EU annual mean concentration of 40 micrograms. On Tuesday, the British government proposed a new environment bill that includes legally binding targets to reduce fine particles in the air and forcing vehicle manufacturers to recall cars that do not meet particle emission standards. Reducing the number of cars is an important factor in reducing air pollution in cities, especially of nitrogen dioxide, Ortiz said. “When we fight pollution, we also fight climate change as well as noise and promote more healthy behavior. It’s a win-win,” he added.

Australia came second in the Thomson Reuters Foundation's second global survey on the best countries for social entrepreneurs, seeing the biggest gain of 24 places from the inaugural poll in 2016, while France came third. Mexico came last, down 15 places from 2016, but the United States was the biggest loser, plunging to 32nd place from No. 1, with the poll of about 900 social enterprise experts pointing to difficulties with government policy and access to investment. Francois Bonnici, head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, said over the past three years there had been "some amazing gains and some ongoing challenges" for social entrepreneurs addressing issues from climate change to refugees. "Governments are recognising that to meet their own agendas this is a group of citizens and entrepreneurs that actually want to improve society and the environment," said Bonnici. "But it has a slightly different flavour in each country and that government role is important (as it) can legitimise the sector in their country by creating these policies." Business entrepreneurs globally are increasingly setting their sights on social problems with ventures that can be a commercial success while addressing problems like unemployment, homelessness, mental health, knife crime and even loneliness. For example in South Africa social enterprise Harambee has created a 'dating service' to match unemployed youth with employers, while in India Project Patradya is tackling the waste problem by employing Afghan refugee women to make edible bowls. But with little data on which nations were encouraging the sector, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, in partnership with Deutsche Bank, began a poll in 2016 which was repeated in 2019. Social entrepreneurs, academics, investors and support agencies in the world's 45 biggest economies, as ranked by the World Bank, were asked their views. Iran and Saudi Arabia were dropped in 2019 as it was impossible to get the right sample. LACK OF UNDERSTANDING The 2019 poll found most experts, 82%, said social entrepreneurship was gaining momentum in their countries - although this was down three percentage points from 2016. Canada, Indonesia and South Africa were named as the top countries where social entrepreneurship was gaining momentum, while Mexico, the United States and China saw the biggest falls. Despite this, more than half of respondents - 54% - said the public still did not understand what they did which was not helped by the lack of a global definition of social enterprise. Italians were most aware of their work and Poles the least. "People are becoming aware that the whole notion of social entrepreneurship is not just kumbaya," said former Bangladeshi-US investment banker Durreen Shahnaz, founder of the first social stock exchange, Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). "It really is about doing serious work and making sure that work is scalable ... There are signs the industry is maturing." The rising interest of young people - under the age of 25 - was a new finding, with three in four experts saying more young people were interested in working in social enterprises. Indonesian social entrepreneur Denica Flesch wanted a career where she had a direct impact in the fight against poverty so in 2016, aged 26, she founded SukkhaCitta, an online marketplace selling clothes made by female artisans in Indonesian villages. "Young people are really challenging the notion of work, and combining purpose and career in one place," said Flesch. "They're more idealistic and want to do something that's beyond just looking for money." Canada was named as the top country where young people were playing a leading role as social entrepreneurs, followed by Germany and France, as well as the top place for women leaders. WOMEN TAKING A LEAD "Culturally we are about diversity and inclusion at a national level. That's our brand, so that is helpful for the environment for social enterprise," said Marcia Nozick, founder and chief executive of Vancouver-based social enterprise EMBERS. She said policies that encouraged governments to buy the services of social impact ventures had been vital in helping the growth of EMBERS, which finds flexible jobs for people in a deprived part of Vancouver. Nozick said there were many female leaders because it was "about caring and relationships and that has always been at the forefront of what women have brought to the business sector". Women were also seen as playing a leading role as social entrepreneurs in Australia, Belgium, Sweden and Malaysia. The United States was named the worst place for female social entrepreneurs - the same as in 2016 - while Argentina and China slumped the most in questions regarding women in the poll conducted online and by telephone between May 7 and July 30. The biggest falls for the United States overall related to access to investment, selling to businesses and supportive government policy. Attracting investment continued to be a challenge, according to 56% of experts, down two percentage points from 2016. Bonnie Chiu, founder and chief executive of Lensational, a social enterprise that trains marginalised women as photographers, said there was more capital available to social entrepreneurs but they had to jump through hoops to get it. "So much time is spent chasing these opportunities," said Chiu, whose business is based in Britain and Hong Kong. "Traditional businesses just need to prove that they are financially sound, traditional charities just need to prove that they are generating social impact - but social enterprises need to do both." But regardless of the problems getting political support, financing or selling to businesses, experts said there would always be a need for social entrepreneurs to address the world's largest problems where markets or public policy had failed. "The more our political leaders might struggle to solve the world's most pressing problems, the more opportunity for social entrepreneurs to come up with solutions," said Jude O'Reilly, a senior director at US nonprofit the Skoll Foundation.

UNICEF called on almost 200 governments, which will meet in Morocco from Nov 7-18 for talks on global warming, to restrict use of fossil fuels to give twin benefits of improved health and slower climate change. About 300 million children, or almost one in seven worldwide, lived in areas where outdoor pollution was highest, defined by UNICEF as at least six times international guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO), it said. Of the total, 220 million lived in South Asia. It identified the regions with satellite imagery developed by NASA. UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said air pollution was a "major contributing factor in the deaths of around 600,000 children under five every year", causing illnesses such as pneumonia. "Pollutants don't only harm children's developing lungs - they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains - and, thus, their futures," he said in a statement. "Air pollution affects poor children the most," Nicholas Rees, a UNICEF specialist on climate and economic analysis who wrote the report, told Reuters. Worldwide, the WHO estimates that outdoor air pollution killed 3.7 million people in 2012, including 127,000 children aged under five. Factories, power plants and vehicles using fossil fuels, dust and burning of waste were among sources. Indoor air pollution, often caused by coal- or wood-burning cooking stoves used in homes in developing nations, killed even more people, 4.3 million, of whom 531,000 were aged under five, it said. UNICEF called on the UN-led meeting in Morocco to hasten a shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energies such as wind or solar power, to improve children's access to health care, limit children's exposure to pollution and to step up monitoring of the air.

Contrary to previous reports, a new study of people in rural Bangladesh found little increased risk of diarrhoea during or after a 2004 flood. Floods can disrupt sewage systems and contaminate freshwater supplies, increasing exposure to disease-carrying microorganisms. Previous research, including a thirty-year data set from the same region of Bangladesh, has linked seasonal monsoons to waterborne illnesses such as cholera. The findings show that it's important for researchers to take other factors into account, lead author Dr Masahiro Hashizume, of Nagasaki University in Japan, told Reuters Health by email. The team of researchers from Japan, England and Bangladesh examined data from more than 200,000 residents of Matlab, a rural delta region. The 2004 floods affected 36 million people across the country. Dr Hashizume and colleagues analysed cases of diarrhoea and respiratory infections recorded by the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, between 2001 and 2007. Their findings are published in the journal Epidemiology. Approximately 66,000 people included in the study lived in an area vulnerable to seasonal flooding, while about 144,000 people lived in an area that did not flood. During the study period, researchers identified roughly 4,200 cases of diarrhoea from non-flooded areas and more than 2,800 cases from flooded areas that flooded in 2004. Unlike some earlier studies, the authors accounted for pre-existing differences in the rate of disease between the flooded and non-flooded areas, as well as typical rates of diarrhoea and respiratory infection in each area during the wet season (June to September). Though there is usually a higher risk of diarrhoea in flooded areas during the monsoon season, Dr Hashizume and colleagues found no evidence for excess risk of diarrhoea or death due to the 2004 flood itself. Researchers analysed more than 23,100 respiratory infections in non-flooded areas and more than 11,300 cases of respiratory infection in the flooded area. For six months after the flood, children younger than five living in flooded areas also had a 25 percent higher risk of respiratory infections than those living in nearby non-flooded areas, after accounting for seasonal norms. Respiratory infections, including pneumonia and influenza are a major cause of illness in people displaced by natural disasters and are a leading cause of death worldwide in children younger than five, according to the World Health Organisation. WHAT'S DIFFERENT IN BANGLADESH Nongovernmental organisations in Bangladesh have implemented a number of public health interventions to reduce communicable and waterborne illness, including tube wells, education about good household hygiene, and early medical intervention for diarrhoea. These interventions make Bangladesh more the exception than the norm among developing countries, Dr Gerald Keusch, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University, told Reuters Health. Also, given that many other studies have shown a link between diarrhoea and flooding, it's difficult to generalise the results of the study, Shafiqul Islam, an environmental engineer and professor of water diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, told Reuters Health. He was not involved in the study. Worldwide, floods are the most common natural disaster. The frequency and intensity of flood events is expected to increase with climate change. "Not only do we need to find ways to mitigate flooding, we must also find ways to lessen the global health impact of flooding," said Dr Keusch, who was not involved in the study.

President Donald Trump is willing to work with partners in the Paris agreement if the United States could construct a set of terms that are fair and balanced for Americans, Tillerson said on the CBS' "Face The Nation." Asked if there was a chance the United States could stay in the accord, Tillerson responded, "I think under the right conditions." "The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue," Tillerson said. Trump's national security adviser, HR McMaster, struck a similar tone in television interviews on Sunday in which he said Trump had always been willing to consider changes on the climate pact. "He left the door open to re-entering at some later time if there can be a better deal for the United States," said McMaster said on ABC's "This Week" program. "If there's an agreement that benefits the American people, certainly." The accord, reached by nearly 200 countries in 2015, was meant to limit global warming to 2 degrees or less by 2100, mainly through pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The Republican president fulfilled his campaign promise to pull out of the 2015 accord in June, when he announced tersely "We're getting out." Trump maintained the pact would undermine the US economy and national sovereignty and his decision drew anger and condemnation from world leaders. It takes four years for a country to withdraw from the Paris agreement, so the United States will be a party to the agreement until two days after Trump’s first term ends. US officials attended a meeting on Saturday of ministers from more than 30 of the nations that signed the climate change agreement. The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Trump administration officials said the United States would not pull out of the agreement and had offered to re-engage in the deal. McMaster dismissed the report as inaccurate. "He's out of the Paris climate accord," he told the "Fox News Sunday" program. Tillerson said Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, was overseeing the issue. "So I think the plan is for director Cohn to consider other ways in which we can work with partners in the Paris Climate Accord. We want to be productive. We want to be helpful," said. Cohn has been part of the "stay-in" accord camp, which included Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Former chief strategist Steve Bannon was one of the main opponents of the accord before leaving the White House last month. Trump has said the Paris accord is soft on leading polluters like China and India, putting US industry at risk. But the Republican president has shown flexibility on some campaign promises, and US allies have been vocal on the importance of the climate accord. At a July news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Trump held open the door to a reversal of his decision, saying "Something could happen with respect to the Paris accords. Let's see what happens."

They calculate that although the world’s soils already hold 2.4 trillion tonnes of gases in the form of organic carbon, there’s room for more. Scientists from the US and Scotland report in Nature journal that with a few changes to agricultural practice, there would be room for another 8 billion tonnes. “In our fight to avoid dangerous climate change in the 21st century, we need heavyweight allies,” says Dave Reay, a geoscientist and specialist in carbon management at Edinburgh University. “One of the most powerful is right beneath our feet. Soils are already huge stores of carbon, and improved management can make them even bigger. Data availability “Too long they have been overlooked as a means to tackle climate change. Too often have problems of accurate measurement and reporting stymied progress towards climate-smart soil management. “With the surge in availability of big data on soils around the world, alongside rapid improvements in understanding and modelling, the time has come for this big-hitter to enter the ring.” In fact, researchers have been conscious for years that the soils have a powerful role to play. They have identified the agencies that control a soil’s capacity for carbon. They have tested climate models to check on emissions from soils. They have experimented with techniques for conserving soil carbon. And they have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the stores of organic carbon in the permafrost. In addition, they have established that man-made greenhouse gas releases coincide with the spread of global agriculture thousands of years ago. Land use, the scientists now calculate, accounts for perhaps a quarter of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and between 10% and 14% directly from agriculture. But, they reason, since soils hold three times as much organic carbon as exists in carbon dioxide form in the atmosphere, better management of the terrestrial planet could help reduce emissions too. So, the trick is: don’t degrade healthy ecosystems, because unmanaged forests and grasslands store carbon very efficiently. Wetlands drained for agriculture surrender their soil carbon, but restored wetlands soak the stuff up. Agricultural practices And there is a range of sustainable agricultural practices that can conserve carbon and, at the same time, continue to deliver food to the table. Farmers could grow crops with deeper root systems, use charcoal-based composts, and exploit a suite of more efficient practices tailored to their crops and terrain. Schemes such as ‘Cool Farm Tool’ could help farmers measure and manage emissions from their own land. There would not be one big answer, but a host of varied responses. These range from better crop rotation to low tillage as opposed to deep ploughing, and from land restoration to agroforestry. All of these added together − what the researchers call the “all-of-the-above” approach − could make a big difference. With help from science, government policymakers and new approaches, ultimately they could help soils retain the equivalent of four-fifths of the emissions released each year by the combustion of fossil fuels, the researchers say.

The bureau of the UN's IPCC agreed Tuesday to designate Vice-Chair Ismail El Gizouli as acting chair. This follows the decision by Pachauri to step down, a press release said Tuesday.Confirming the resignation, a spokesperson for Pachauri said in a statement: "Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri has informed the IPCC that he has resigned from his position effective today (Tuesday)."Pachauri, who is also the director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), is facing a complaint of alleged harassment by a woman research analyst who has also lodged a police case.Citing several texts, emails, and WhatsApp messages as evidence to prove the claim of sexual harassment, the complainant accused the scientist of harassing her soon after she joined the Delhi-based environment think-tank in September 2013.However, Pachauri's counsel refuted the accusations saying his client's computer and phone were "hacked".Pachauri's move to step down from the IPCC assumes great significance at a time when India is being looked up to for leading the global negotiations at UN climate change conference in Paris in December.Paris 2015 will serve as a global platform where world leaders would converge to hammer out a universal framework to roll back carbon emissions after 2020. The new framework would replace the current Kyoto protocol.Pachauri, as the IPCC chair, was expected to play a prominent role in all the key negotiations in the run up to Paris 2015.However, following the sexual harassment charges, he had already announced last week that he would skip one of the IPCC sessions in Nairobi due to "issues demanding his attention" in India.In 2007, the IPCC was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore for their part in galvanizing international action against climate change.Pachauri was elected to the first of two terms as chair of the IPCC in April 2002 and had been scheduled to complete his second term in October, said the IPCC statement.

Many octopuses evolved from a common ancestor that lived off Antarctica more than 30 million years ago, according to a "Census of Marine Life" that is seeking to map the oceans from microbes to whales. Researchers in 82 nations, whose 10-year study aims to help protect life in the seas, found a mysterious meeting place for white sharks in the eastern Pacific Ocean and algae thriving at -25 degrees Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) in the Arctic. "We are approaching a picture of the oceans ... from micrcobes to whales," said Ron O'Dor, co-senior scientist of the census of the 2007-08 findings by up to 2,000 scientists. The $650 million census is on track for completion in 2010, assessing about 230,000 known marine species, a statement said. It has identified 5,300 likely new species, of everything from fish or corals. So far, 110 have been confirmed as new. Among the findings, genetic evidence showed that the tentacles of the octopus family pointed to an Antarctic ancestor for many deep sea species. A modern octopus called adelieledone in Antarctica seemed the closest relative of the original. Octopuses apparently spread around the world after Antarctica became covered with a continent-wide ice sheet more than 30 million years ago, a shift that helped create oxygen-rich ocean currents flowing north, a report said. "Isolated in new habitat conditions, many different species evolved; some octopuses, for example, losing their defensive ink sacs -- pointless at perpetually dark depths," the census said. SHARK CAFE Other findings showed that white sharks traveled thousands of kilometers to spend six months at what researchers called the "White Shark Cafe" in the Pacific between Hawaii and California. "During this time, both males and females make frequent, repetitive dives to depths of 300 meters" it said. Researchers said the purpose was unknown but may be linked to food or reproduction. Mapping the oceans is helping researchers to work out how to protect marine life from threats including over-fishing, pollution and climate change. The census could identify areas needing conservation, or help define rules for seabed mining. At one extreme, scientists found algae thriving in Arctic waters of -25 Celsius, kept from freezing because salt concentrations were six times more than in normal sea water. And in the mid-Atlantic, researchers found anemones, worms and shrimp around the world's deepest known active hot volcanic vent, over 4,100 meters deep. Among other findings were a predatory comb jelly anchored to the seabed in waters 7,217 meters (23,680 ft) deep near Japan. "It was found at a depth thought incapable of supporting predators like this one," a statement said. The discovery of a wealth of new species was not a sign that the oceans were healthier than thought. "The things that we're discovering ... are not the kind of things you want to see on your plate very often," O'Dor said, adding that people had fished the big, attractive species. Even so, 95 percent of the ocean was unexplored. The census "will synthesize what humankind knows about the oceans, what we don't know, and what we many never know," Ian Poiner, chair of the census's steering committee, said in a statement.

President Barack Obama pledged to pursue greater US engagement in Asia, pragmatic cooperation with China and a push for deeper trade ties with the region in a major speech in the Japanese capital on Saturday. Following are key quotes by Obama in the speech: ************************************************************* U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE (The US-Japan alliance) has evolved as Japan has played a larger role on the world stage, and made important contributions to stability around the world from reconstruction in Iraq, to combating piracy off the Horn of Africa, to assistance for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan most recently through its remarkable leadership in providing additional commitments to international development efforts there. Above all, our alliance has endured because it reflects our common values, a belief in the democratic right of free people to choose their own leaders and realize their own dreams; a belief that made possible the election of both Prime Minister Hatoyama and myself on the promise of change. And together, we are committed to providing a new generation of leadership for our people, and our alliance. That is why, at this critical moment in history, the two of us have not only reaffirmed our alliance we have agreed to deepen it. We have agreed to move expeditiously through a joint working group to implement the agreement that our two governments reached on restructuring US forces in Okinawa. RELATIONSHIP WITH ASIA I want every one to know, and I want everybody in America to know, that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct affect on our lives at home. This is where we engage in much of our commerce and buy many of our goods. And this is where we can export more of our own products and create jobs back home in the process. This is a place where the risk of a nuclear arms race threatens the security of the wider world, and where extremists who defile a great religion plan attacks on both our continents. And there can be no solution to our energy security and our climate challenge without the rising powers and developing nations of the Asia Pacific. To meet these common challenges, the United States looks to strengthen old alliances and build new partnerships with the nations of this region. To do this, we look to America's treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines -- alliances that are not historical documents from a bygone era, but abiding commitments to each other that are fundamental to our shared security. We look to emerging nations that are poised to play a larger role both in the Asia Pacific region and the wider world. Places like Indonesia and Malaysia that have adopted democracy, developed their economies, and tapped the great potential of their own people. We look to rising powers with the view that in the 21st century, the national security and economic growth of one country need not come at the expense of another. RELATIONS WITH CHINA I know there are many who question how the United States perceives China's emergence. But as I have said, in an inter-connected world, power does not need to be a zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another. Cultivating spheres of cooperation -- not competing spheres of influence -- will lead to progress in the Asia Pacific. As with any nation, America will approach China with a focus on our interests. And it is precisely for this reason that it is important to pursue pragmatic cooperation with China on issues of mutual concern -- because no one nation can meet the challenges of the 21st century alone, and the United States and China will both be better off when we are able to meet them together. That is why we welcome China's efforts to play a greater role on the world stage -- a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility. China's partnership has proved critical in our effort to jumpstart economic recovery. China has promoted security and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it is now committed to the global nonproliferation regime, and supporting the pursuit of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. So the United States does not seek to contain China, nor does a deeper relationship with China mean a weakening of our bilateral alliances. On the contrary, the rise of a strong, and prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations. And so in Beijing and beyond, we will work to deepen our Strategic and Economic Dialogue, and improve communication between our militaries. Of course, we will not agree on every issue, and the United States will never waver in speaking up for the fundamental values that we hold dear -- and that includes respect for the religion and cultures of all people. Because support for human rights and human dignity is ingrained in America. But we can move these discussions forward in a spirit of partnership rather than rancor. APEC, ASEAN ENGAGEMENT In addition to our bilateral relations, we also believe that the growth of multilateral organizations can advance the security and prosperity of this region. I know that the United States has been disengaged from these organizations in recent years. So let me be clear: those days have passed. As an Asia Pacific nation, the United States expects to be involved in the discussions that shape the future of this region, and to participate fully in appropriate organizations as they are established and evolve. That is the work that I will begin on this trip. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will continue to promote regional commerce and prosperity, and I look forward to participating in that forum tomorrow. ASEAN will remain a catalyst for Southeast Asian dialogue, cooperation and security, and I look forward to becoming the first American President to meet with all ten ASEAN leaders. And the United States looks forward to engaging with the East Asia Summit more formally as it plays a role in addressing the challenges of our time. We seek this deeper and broader engagement because we know our collective future depends on it. ECONOMIC ISSUES The quick, unprecedented and coordinated action taken by Asia Pacific nations and others has averted economic catastrophe, and helped us begin to emerge from the worst recession in generations. And we have taken the historic step of reforming our international economic architecture, so that the G-20 is now the premier forum for international economic cooperation. This shift to the G-20 - along with the greater voice that is being given to Asian nations in international financial institutions -- clearly demonstrates the broader and more inclusive engagement that America seeks in the 21st century. And, as a key member of the G-8, Japan has and will continue to play a leading and vital role in shaping the future of the international financial architecture. Now that we are on the brink of economic recovery, we must also ensure that it can be sustained. We simply cannot return to the same cycles of boom and bust that led us into a global recession. We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth. One of the important lessons this recession has taught us is the limits of depending primarily on American consumers and Asian exports to drive growth. Because when Americans found themselves in debt or out of work, demand for Asian goods plummeted. When demand fell sharply, exports from this region fell sharply. Since the economies of this region are so dependent on exports, they stopped growing. And the global recession only deepened. So we have now reached one of those rare inflection points in history where we have the opportunity to take a different path. And that must begin with the G20 pledge that we made in Pittsburgh to pursue a new strategy for balanced economic growth. I'll be saying more about this in Singapore, but in the United States, this new strategy will mean saving more and spending less, reform our financial system, reduce our long-term deficit and borrowing. It will also mean a greater emphasis on exports that we can produce, and sell all over the world. For America, this is a jobs strategy. Right now, our exports support millions upon millions of well-paying American jobs. Increasing those exports by just a small amount has the potential to create millions more. These are jobs making everything from wind turbines and solar panels to the technology that you use every day. For Asia, striking this better balance will provide an opportunity for workers and consumers to enjoy higher standards of living that their remarkable increases in productivity have made possible. It will allow for greater investments in housing, and infrastructure, and the service sector. And a more balanced global economy will lead to prosperity that reaches further and deeper. For decades, the United States has had one of the most open markets in the world, and that openness has helped to fuel the success of so many countries in this region and others over the last century. DOHA TRADE TALKS In this new era, opening other markets around the globe will be critical not just to America's prosperity, but to the world's as well. An integral part of this new strategy is working toward an ambitious and balanced Doha agreement: not any agreement, but an agreement that will open up markets and increase exports around the world. We are ready to work with our Asian partners to see if we can achieve that objective in a timely fashion -- and we invite our regional trading partners to join us at the table. We also believe that continued integration of the economies of this region will benefit workers, consumers, and businesses in all of our nations. CLIMATE CHANGE We also need growth that is sustainable -- for our planet and the future generations that will live here. Already, the United States has taken more steps to combat climate change in ten months than we have in our recent history: by embracing the latest science, investing in new energy, raising efficiency standards, forging new partnerships, and engaging in international climate negotiations. In short, America knows there is more work to do -- but we are meeting our responsibility, and will continue to do so. That includes striving for success in Copenhagen. I have no illusions that this will be easy, but the contours of a way forward are clear. All nations must accept their responsibility. Those nations -- like my own -- who have been the leading emitters must have clear reduction targets. Developing countries will need to take substantial actions to curb their emissions, aided by finance and technology. And there must be transparency and accountability for domestic actions. Each of us must do what we can to grow our economies without endangering our planet -- and we must do it together. But the good news is that if we put the right rules and incentives in place, it will unleash the creative power of our best scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. It will lead to new jobs, new businesses, and entire new industries. NUCLEAR WEAPONS In Prague, I affirmed America's commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons, and laid out a comprehensive agenda to pursue this goal. I am pleased that Japan has joined us in this effort. No two nations on Earth know better what these weapons can do, and together we must seek a future without them. This is fundamental to our common security, and this is a great test of our common humanity. Our very future hangs in the balance. Now let me be clear: so long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a strong and effective nuclear deterrent that guarantees the defense of our allies including South Korea and Japan. But we must recognize that an escalating nuclear arms race in this region would undermine decades of growth and prosperity. So we are called upon to uphold the basic bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- that all nations have a right to peaceful nuclear energy; that nations with nuclear weapons have a responsibility to move toward nuclear disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them. Indeed, Japan serves as an example to the world that true peace and power can be achieved by taking this path. For decades, Japan has enjoyed the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy, while rejecting nuclear arms development and by any measure, this has increased Japan's security, and enhanced its position. We are pursuing a new agreement with Russia to reduce our nuclear stockpiles. We will work to ratify and bring into force the Test Ban Treaty. And next year at our Nuclear Security Summit, we will advance our goal of securing all of the world's vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. As I have said before, strengthening the global nonproliferation regime is not about singling out any individual nations. It is about all nations living up to their responsibilities. That includes the Islamic Republic of Iran. And it includes North Korea.

Her dream is a difficult one. But if she succeeds, she will be the first Bangladeshi to have climbed the seven summits of the world. That will total 113,102 feet of climbing, in seven continents, two in prohibitively cold climates devoid of natural human habitation. It has typically been men who attempted or finished the seven summits to be followed by women from the same country. That too, would put Wasfia Nazreen in the record books. Bangladesh on Seven Summits is a campaign supported by the Liberation War Museum, in celebration of 40 years of Bangladesh's Independence. The project is a tribute to those women and men, who overcame enormous challenges for the birth of the nation by dint of their resolve. When asked about funding, she told bdnews24.com that she had sold off all the jewellery her mother had left. Wasfia has also sold off the small property she inherited. "This gave me the initial seed-money for this campaign. Mutual Trust Bank & Renata Limited sponsored me for Elbrus." "Now we are calling upon all national companies to come forward and help me put Bangladesh's flag on top of every continent," she said. Wasfia said she had quit her job to make this happen within the next year or so. "I am fully determined to accomplish my goals, even if it takes me a decade," she said with enthusiasm. THE FIRST EFFORT Wasfia left the country on July 3 with the intention to conquer the first peak on her schedule — the highest point of Europe, Mount Elbrus, on the borders of Russia and Georgia. Since February, the south side of the mountain, which is the normal climbing route to the European summit, remained closed after multiple terrorist attacks. Therefore her team was forced to shift the climb to the North side — a more dangerous and unexplored terrain — home to more crevasses. On July 10, Wasfia and team tried for the first summit push but met with drastic weather changes — thunderstorms, strong winds and poor visibility. Then finally on July 12, the team reached within 300 meters of the summit. However, due to severe weather conditions and a deadline to descend by mid-day, everyone had to fall back. She will be going back to Elbrus to complete the last 300 meters when situation gets better. Wasfia was quoted as saying through a satellite message from almost atop Europe: "Remembering all the martyrs of 1971, we call upon the youth of our motherland to take the country forward in the best way each of us can serve. It is high time Bangladesh be recognised in the world podium for all the beauty she is…. Bangladesh aaro egiye choluk." THE SEVEN SUMMITS PLAN In September, Wasfia will set out for her next challenge — Kilimanjaro. Situated in north-eastern Tanzania, Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa at 19,341 feet. In December she plans to climb Aconcagua, the highest peak of South America at 22,841 feet, located in the Argentinian Andes. Denali or Mount McKinley in Alaska, United States is the highest peak in North America, at an altitude of 20,320 feet, is also on Wasfia's list and she plans take on this infamous peak around June-July 2012. "Summit rate in Denali is only 18 percent and a lot of climbers fall into accidents and death there, I would consider that one of the more tougher ones, even so than Everest,"," Wasfia told bdnews24.com. In April-May 2012, Wasfia will try to beat the highest point of the world. If she succeeds, she will be the third Bangladeshi to have conquered the Everest, Sagarmatha or Chomolungma as the Nepalese and Tibetans call it respectively. A mere 750 miles from the South Pole, in the harsh cold of Antarctica, Vinson Massif stands at 16,066 feet. In February 2012, Wasfia will brave the sub-zero temperatures to put a Bangladeshi flag on top of it. The last on her list will be Puncak Jaya, also called the Carstensz Pyramid, a mountain in the western central highlands of Indonesia. At 16,024 feet, Puncak Jaya is the highest mountain in Oceania and the highest island peak in the world. Wasfia will go there in Sep-Oct 2012. "This one is also dangerous, as just reaching the base-camp requires overcoming a lot of red-tapes, climbing its hard rock surface requires a lot of technical skills," she said. Wasfia said that while she does need sponsorship for climbing the mountains on all continents, she would prefer that the sponsors are Bangladeshi. "So that there is a national ownership in this achievement," she explained. "I would put big foreign companies as the last resort," she added.

Last month, as fighting raged in the northern Tigray region, DBL's compound was rocked by an explosion that blasted out the factory's windows, radically altering its business calculus. "All we could do was to pray out loud," said Adbul Waseq, an official at the company, which makes clothes mainly for Swedish fashion giant H&M and is one of at least three foreign garment makers to have suspended operations in Tigray. "We could have died," Waseq told Reuters. For over a decade, Ethiopia has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure such as hydro-electric dams, railways, roads as well as industrial parks in an ambitious bid to transform the poor, mainly agrarian nation into a manufacturing powerhouse. By 2017, it was the world's fastest growing economy. A year later, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office, pledging to loosen the state's grip on an economy with over 100 million people and liberalise sectors such as telecoms, fuelling something akin to glasnost-era headiness among investors. But for two years Ethiopia has been pummelled by challenges: ethnic clashes, floods, locust swarms and coronavirus lockdowns. Now, fighting which erupted on Nov. 4 between the army and forces loyal to Tigray's former ruling party, and fears it could signal a period of prolonged unrest, have served investors with a harsh reality check. Any hesitation by investors could spell trouble as the country's manufacturing export push isn't yet generating enough foreign currency either to pay for all the country's imports or keep pace with rising debt service costs. Even before the pandemic, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had warned that Ethiopia was at high risk of debt distress. Abiy's government said that, amid the crises it's facing, Ethiopia was pushing ahead with reforms that will build the foundations for a modern economy. "Despite the unprecedented shock from COVID and continued insecurity in different parts of the country, the Ethiopian economy showed remarkable resilience," Mamo Mihretu, senior policy adviser in the prime minister's office, told Reuters. PRODUCTION SUSPENDED Ethiopia is a relatively small textiles producer with exports in 2016 of just $94 million compared with $29 billion for Vietnam and $253 billion for China in the same year, World Bank trade data showed. Its top exports are agricultural, such as coffee, tea, spices, oil seeds, plants and flowers. But Ethiopia's push into the textile industry over the past 10 years has been emblematic of its manufacturing ambitions. As fighting neared Tigray's regional capital, Mekelle, textile companies began shutting down and pulling out staff. "It seemed that the conflict was getting closer to the city, and our worry was that we wouldn't be able to leave," Cristiano Frati, an electrician evacuated from a factory run by Italian hosiery chain Calzedonia, told an Italian newspaper. A general view shows Hawassa Industrial Park in Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples region, Ethiopia November 17, 2017. Reuters Calzedonia said on Nov. 13 it had suspended operations at the plant, which employs about 2,000 people, due to the conflict. It has declined to comment further. A general view shows Hawassa Industrial Park in Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples region, Ethiopia November 17, 2017. Reuters DBL, meanwhile, has flown its foreign staff out of Ethiopia. "Everything has become uncertain," its managing director M.A. Jabbar said. "When will the war end?" Another foreign company, Velocity Apparelz Companies - a supplier to H&M and Children's Place - has also temporarily shut down, a company official told Reuters. H&M said it was "very concerned" and was closely monitoring the situation. "We have three suppliers in Tigray, and the production there has come to a halt," the company told Reuters, emphasising that it would continue to source from Ethiopia where it has about 10 suppliers in total. Indochine Apparel, a Chinese firm that supplies Levi Strauss & Co, said its operations in the Hawassa industrial park in the south of the country were unaffected. Levi Strauss said it was monitoring the situation and confirmed there had been no impact on its supply chain so far. 'NOT A PRETTY PICTURE' Ethiopia's apparel sector was struggling even before the fighting in Tigray because of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some facilities did not survive the collapse in orders while others slashed wages or laid off staff. The malaise has not been limited to the garment sector. Even before the conflict, insurance companies underwriting political risk had stopped providing cover beyond Ethiopia's northern Amhara region and the federal capital Addis Ababa, a risk consultant who advises corporate clients said. "Ethiopia is not a pretty picture right now," he said. Like most sources contacted by Reuters, the consultant asked not to be named, fearing a backlash from government authorities. Abiy's efforts to ease a repressive political climate had already uncorked ethnic clashes before the war in Tigray. Violence in other parts of the country which intensified in 2019 had disrupted projects, notably in agriculture. Workers sew clothes inside the Indochine Apparel textile factory in Hawassa Industrial Park in Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples region, Ethiopia November 17, 2017. Reuters "The fighting started around the time we were going to start planting," said the head of an agri-industry project that was forced to delay its investment last year. Workers sew clothes inside the Indochine Apparel textile factory in Hawassa Industrial Park in Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples region, Ethiopia November 17, 2017. Reuters Swedish furniture giant IKEA opened a purchasing office in Ethiopia last year. However, it closed it down in September after shelving plans to source from the country due to the political and social situation, COVID-19 and changes to the cotton market in Africa, the company told Reuters. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, a bottling partner of the Coca-Cola Company, told Reuters that the fighting in Tigray, which accounts for about 20% of its sales volumes in Ethiopia, had halted business there. That comes on the heels of delays in the construction of two new bottling plants - part of a $300 million five-year investment plan announced last year - due to the pandemic and an excise tax increase. 'FEW WAYS OUT' With the fall of Mekelle at the end of last month, Abiy declared victory over Tigray's former ruling party (TPLF). "The swift, decisive, and determined completion of the active phase of the military operation means any lingering concerns about political uncertainty by the investment community will be effectively settled," Abiy's adviser Mamo said. The TPLF has vowed to fight on. For the government, there is little margin for error. Ethiopia's external debt has ballooned five-fold over the past decade as the government borrowed heavily - notably from China - to pay for infrastructure and industrial parks. Foreign direct investment inflows, meanwhile, have declined steadily since a 2016 peak of more than $4 billion, slipping to about $500 million for the first quarter of this fiscal year. Inflation is hovering around 20%. "There are very few ways out of this. They aren't going to get more money from the IMF. They can't go to the markets. Their best bet is a global economic recovery next year," said Menzi Ndhlovu, senior country and political risk analyst at Signal Risk, an Africa-focused business consultancy. Still, Ethiopia passed a landmark investment law earlier this year and implemented currency reforms. And the government is pushing ahead its plans to open up the telecommunications sector. It opened tendering for two new telecoms licences at the end of November and plans to sell off a minority stake in state-owned Ethio Telecom. Sources following the process, which should provide the beleaguered economy with a hefty injection of dollars, said interested companies were not deterred by the current unrest. But for now, Ethiopia's grand manufacturing dreams have been dealt a setback. "Who will go there in this situation?" asked DBL's Waseq, who has returned to Bangladesh. "No one."

Hundreds have been displaced, mainly in the port city of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province. Flooding also killed at least three people in Eastern Cape province, state broadcaster SABC said on Wednesday. Victor da Silva, a resident in the coastal town of Amanzimtoti, said his family managed to evacuate before the floods destroyed their home and cars. "On Monday, the water was just crazy. And yesterday morning I got here, everything was fine, my garage was still here, the other part of the house was still here, and it just couldn't stop raining," Da Silva said. "And then an hour and half later, everything poof (vanished) because the rain just hasn't stopped. Johan Fourie told eNCA television that he escaped his home in Amanzimtoti just before part of it collapsed. "I nearly lost my life, and my neighbour, I believe, is in hospital," Fourie said. The region had been hit by heavy rains for days, but authorities did not foresee the downpour late on Monday, said Lennox Mabaso, a spokesman for the provincial Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs department. "As a result, there was flooding and some structures were undermined and collapsed on people," Mabaso said. Some people were swept away by the water, he said. Multiple dwellings collapsed in the mudslides, said Robert McKenzie, a KwaZulu-Natal Emergency Medical Services spokesman. South African Weather Service forecaster Edward Engelbrecht said the heavy rainfall occurs "from time to time, especially during this time of the year." He said the rain should start to clear by Thursday. President Cyril Ramaphosa visited affected communities in KwaZulu-Natal and is scheduled to go to the Eastern Cape in the next few days. "This is partly what climate change is about, that it just hits when we least expect it," he said, adding that funds would be provided by the government to assist those hit by the floods. Last week, 13 people were killed during an Easter service in KwaZulu-Natal when a church wall collapsed after days of heavy rains and strong winds.

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

But in its long-awaited announcement, Aramco, the world's most profitable company, offered few specifics on the number of shares to be sold, pricing or the date for a launch. Bankers have told the Saudi government that investors will likely value the company at around $1.5 trillion, below the $2 trillion valuation touted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when he first floated the idea of an IPO nearly four years ago. Aramco also did not mention what measures it has taken to beef up security following unprecedented attacks on its oil plants in September. Sources have told Reuters the oil company could offer 1%-2% of its shares on the local bourse, raising as much as $20 billion-$40 billion. A deal over $25 billion would top the record-breaking one of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2014. "Today is the right opportunity for new investors to reap the benefits of Aramco's ability to achieve value, and boost it on the long-term," Aramco Chairman Yasir al-Rumayyan told a news conference at the company's headquarters in the eastern city of Dhahran. The company will spend the next 10 days talking to investors and sounding out their interest and the price range will follow, he said. The IPO is designed to turbocharge Prince Mohammed's ambitious economic reform agenda by raising billions to build non-energy industries and diversify revenue streams. Rumayyan said a decision on an international listing for Aramco shares will be made in the future, without giving a time frame or venue for the overseas listing. "Selling a small piece of Aramco in a captive market gives the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) more control to prop the value of Aramco up over its fair value," said Gary Ross, CEO at Black Gold Investors. Confirmation of the sale of shares in the oil giant, whose formal name is Saudi Arabian Oil Co, comes about seven weeks after the crippling attacks on its oil facilities, underlining Saudi Arabia's determination to push on with the listing regardless. Amin H Nasser, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, speaks during a news conference at the Plaza Conference Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia November 3, 2019. Reuters Aramco said it does not expect the Sept 14 attack, which targeted plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry and initially halved its production, would have a material impact on its business, operations and financial condition. Amin H Nasser, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, speaks during a news conference at the Plaza Conference Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia November 3, 2019. Reuters Aramco accounted for about one in every eight barrels of crude oil produced globally from 2016 to 2018, it said on Sunday. Its net income for the third quarter of 2019 amounted to $21.1 billion, according to Reuters calculations, dwarfing the income for the same period of oil giants like Exxon Mobil Corp , which was just over $3 billion. Rumayyan said the valuation should be determined after the investor roadshow. CEO Amin Nasser told the same news conference that Aramco plans to release the prospectus on Nov. 9. To help get the deal done, Saudi Arabia is relying on easy credit for retail investors and hefty contributions from rich locals. "Whatever this local round achieves, with domestic players being strong armed into investing, international investors are still going to value this well below the expectations of (Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman," said Rory Fyfe, managing director at Mena Advisors. LURING INVESTORS The Saudi stock market fell 2% on Sunday after the Aramco announcement. The benchmark index is down nearly a fifth since May as local institutions sold shares to prepare for the Aramco deal, fund managers and analysts say. Salah Shamma, head of investment, MENA, at Franklin Templeton Emerging Markets Equity, said some local investors could be selling other shares in order to shift investments to Aramco, but this could well be a case of "short-term pain for long-term gain." To comfort investors, Aramco said on Sunday the state will forgo its right to receive a portion of cash dividends on shares, giving priority to new shareholders. Aramco is also cutting royalties it pays to the state. Effective Jan. 1, 2020, it will adopt a progressive royalty scheme, with a marginal rate set at 15% up to $70 per barrel, 45% between $70 and $100, and 80% if the price rises higher. The firm said the Saudi market regulator, which approved the application to list on Sunday, issued an exemption for non-resident institutional foreign investors to subscribe. Saudi investors would be eligible to receive bonus shares - a maximum of 100 bonus shares for every 10 allotted shares. At a valuation of $1.5 trillion, Aramco would still be worth at least 50% more than the world's most valuable listed companies, Microsoft and Apple, which each have a market capitalisation of about $1 trillion. But a 1% sale would raise "only" around $15 billion for Saudi coffers, ranking Aramco as the 11th biggest IPO of all time, Refinitiv data show. "Some perspective on the Aramco IPO for the overall Saudi diversification story is needed: the likely Aramco IPO proceeds will be less than the Aramco dividends the government received in the first half of 2019 alone," said Hasnain Malik, head of equity strategy at Tellimer. THE 'RIGHT TIME' The promised listing has had Wall Street on tenterhooks since Prince Mohammed flagged it in 2016. Aramco mandated 27 banks to work on the deal including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. "I think this is the right time for us to take Aramco to be a public company...we wanna go IPO and we wanna go now," Rumayyan told reporters on Sunday when asked about the timing. Initial hopes for a blockbuster international listing of about 5% were dashed when the share sale was halted last year amid debate over where to list Aramco overseas. Aramco said the IPO timetable was delayed because it began a process to acquire a 70% stake in petrochemicals maker Saudi Basic Industries Corp. IPO preparations were revived this summer after Aramco attracted huge interest in its first international bond sale, seen as a pre-IPO relationship-building exercise with investors. But a listing announcement expected on Oct 20 was delayed after advisers said they needed more time to lock in cornerstone investors, three sources told Reuters. A growing movement to fight climate change and embrace new "green" technologies have put some fund managers, particularly in Europe and the United States, off the oil and gas sector. A bond sale in April forced the secretive company to reveal its finances for the first time, including net income of $111 billion -- over a third bigger than the combined net income of the five super oil majors. Those companies have been raising payouts to shareholders to counter rising pressure from climate activism. Aramco said on Sunday it intended to declare aggregate ordinary cash dividends of at least $75 billion in 2020. At a valuation of $1.5 trillion, this would mean a dividend yield of 5%, below that offered by rival Royal Dutch Shell . Shell's dividend yield is over 6%, according to Refinitiv data.

President Bush and Queen Elizabeth toasted the enduring Anglo-American friendship at a state dinner at the White House on Monday night honoring the British monarch near the end of six-day US visit. Only 132 guests were invited to dine with the queen and Prince Philip at the first white tie event hosted by Bush and his wife Laura. Arriving at the White House in a black Chevrolet Suburban four-wheel drive vehicle, the royal couple was met by the president and first lady, who wore an aqua gown. The queen wore a white gown with a blue sash and a sparkling crown. In toasts before dinner, Bush hailed the US-British alliance as a force for the "common good." "Together we are supporting young democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together we are confronting global challenges such as poverty and disease and terrorism," he said. "We're confident that Anglo-American friendship will endure for centuries to come." The queen said today's trans-Atlantic leaders can learn from 20th-century century figures like Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. "Whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, climate change or the eradication of poverty, the international community is grappling with problems certainly no less complex than those faced by our 20th century forebears," she said. "Together with our friends in Europe and beyond we can continue to learn from the inspiration and vision of those earlier statesmen in ensuring that we meet these threats and resolve these problems." Former first lady Nancy Reagan, golfer Arnold Palmer, Kentucky Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel winner and violinist Itzhak Perlman were among the guests at the dinner. The royal couple's visit to America has included ceremonies marking the 400th anniversary of the British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, and the Kentucky Derby. Earlier they were treated to a formal arrival ceremony on the White House South Lawn, complete with a marching fife-and-drum corps. Trumpets heralded the arrival of the dignitaries. The US Air Force Band played national anthems before 7,000 invited guests on a sunny spring day. Bush noted the queen's long history of dealing with successive American governments, just barely stopping himself before dating her to 1776, the year the 13 British colonies declared their independence from Britain. Elizabeth has occupied the British throne for 55 years and is 81. "The American people are proud to welcome your majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well. After all you've dined with 10 US presidents. You've helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- in 1976," Bush said. Bush looked at the queen sheepishly. She peered back at him from beneath her black and white hat. "She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child," Bush said as the crowd burst into laughter. Taking the podium, the queen applauded the closeness of US-British relations. "It is the moment to take stock of our present friendship, rightly taking pleasure from its strengths while never taking these for granted," she said. "And it is the time to look forward, jointly renewing our commitment to a more prosperous, safer and freer world."

The past year was awash in recorded music — not only the stuck-at-home recordings that musicians occupied themselves with when touring evaporated during the pandemic, but also many albums that had been made before the lockdowns but had been shelved in hopes of some return to normalcy. The albums that resonated most with me during 2021 were songs of reflection and revelation, often dealing with traumas and crises, transfigured through music. 1. Bomba Estéreo, ‘Deja’ The Colombian duo Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs tied to the ancient elements: water, air, fire, earth. Each new one broadened an album that entwines folklore and electronics, personal yearning and planetary concerns. With Liliana Saumet’s tartly endearing singing and rapping and Simón Mejía’s meticulously kinetic productions, the songs dance through their fears. 2. Allison Russell, ‘Outside Child’ Allison Russell, the longtime frontwoman of Birds of Chicago, transforms a horrific childhood — she was abused by her stepfather — into songs of joyful survival. “I’m still rising, stronger for my pain and suffering,” she sings. Drawing on soul, country, folk and deep blues, she connects her own story to myth and metaphor, remembering the trauma yet decisively rising above it. 3. Mon Laferte, ‘Seis’ Sometimes visitors can see what residents take for granted. Mon Laferte is from Chile, but she has been living for more than a decade in Mexico and has immersed herself in its music. On “Seis,” she wrote songs that draw deeply on regional Mexican traditions — mariachi, banda, ranchera, corrido, norteño — to sing, in a voice that can be teasing or furiously incendiary, about deep passions and equally deep betrayals. 4. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’ Tamara Lindeman, who writes songs and records as the Weather Station, surrounded herself with a jazzy, intuitive backup group for “Ignorance,” clearly aware of Joni Mitchell’s folk-jazz precedent. The rhythms are brisk and precise; winds, keyboards and guitars ricochet respectfully off her breathy vocal lines. She sings about impending disasters, romantic and environmental, and the widespread disregard for what’s clearly about to happen. 5. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’ Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist born in Niger. Like Tinariwen, his band plugs North African rhythms and modal vamps into rock amplifiers and drums. But “Afrique Victime” further expands the sonic possibilities for Tuareg rock, from ambient meditation to psychedelic onslaught. Six-beat rhythms and skeins of guitar lines carry Moctar’s voice in songs that can be modest and introspective or unstoppably frenetic. 6. Julien Baker, ‘Little Oblivions’ “Beat myself until I’m bloody/And I’ll give you a ringside seat,” Julien Baker sings in one of the brave, ruthlessly self-indicting songs that fill “Little Oblivions,” an album about the toll of one person’s addictions on everyone around her. She played all the instruments herself, scaling her sound up to arena size and chiming like U2, even as she refuses herself any excuses or forgiveness. 7. Black Midi, ‘Cavalcade’ The virtuosic British band Black Midi bristles in every direction: with jagged, skewed funk riffs; with pointed dissonances; with passages of Minimalistic, ominous suspense; with lyrics full of bitter disillusion. And then, just to keep things unsettled, come passages filled with tenderness and wonderment, only to plunge back into the fray. 8. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’ Olivia Rodrigo, now 18, fixates on a breakup with an adolescent’s obsessiveness on “Sour,” building on the audience she found as a cast member in Disney’s “High School Musical.” With Taylor Swift as a role model for craftsmanship, her songs are as neatly detailed as they are wounded, and the production whipsaws through styles — calm piano ballad, ethereal choir harmonies, fierce distorted guitars — to match every mood swing. 9. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’ “Songwrights Apothecary Lab” was bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s pandemic project; she consulted neuroscientists, music therapists and ethnomusicologists to devise music for healing, and an online user’s guide prescribes the purpose of each song. But the songs are equally effective off-label; they encompass meditations, serpentine jazz compositions, calm or turbulent improvisations, open-ended questions and sly bits of advice, the work of a graceful, perpetually questing mind. 10. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’ A life of luxury can’t mollify Tyler, the Creator. He’s no longer the trolling provocateur he was a decade ago when he emerged with Odd Future, but he’s still intransigent and high-concept. After singing through most of his 2019 album, “Igor,” he’s back to rapping, now simulating a mixtape with DJ Drama as hypeman. In his deep voice, he raps about all he owns and all he can’t control — mostly romance — over his own dense, detailed productions, at once lush and abrasive. The album peaks with an eight-minute love-triangle saga, “Wilshire”: a raw confession, cannily orchestrated. And here are another 15 deserving albums, alphabetically: Adele, “30” Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince” Khaira Arby, “New York Live” Billie Eilish, “Happier Than Ever” Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Promises” Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses” Rhiannon Giddens with Franceso Turrisi, “They’re Calling Me Home” Idles, “Crawler” Ka, “A Martyr’s Reward” Valerie June, “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers” L’Rain, “Fatigue” Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams” Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raise the Roof” Omar Sosa, “An East African Journey” Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales” JON CARAMANICA Processing Pain, Blurring Boundaries In the second year of global quasi-paralysis, what made the most sense were, once again, albums that felt like wombs and albums that felt like eruptions. When there was nowhere to go, literally or metaphorically, there were still places to retreat — to the gut, to history, to memory, to forgetting. 1. Mustafa, ‘When Smoke Rises’ Did you mourn this year? Were you broken in some way that was beyond words? Mustafa’s debut album was there with you, a startling, primal chronicle of relentless loss and the relentless grace required to navigate it. In moments when the ground buckled, this album was a cradle. 2. EST Gee, ‘Bigger Than Life or Death’ The latest in a string of excellent releases from the Louisville, Kentucky, rapper EST Gee, whose verses are refreshingly burly and brusque, and who tells stories sprinkled with surprisingly vivid left-field details. A bold back-to-basics statement, utterly free of filigree. 3. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’ The most important new pop star of the year delivered a debut album of poppy punk and punky pop that’s sometimes musically blistering and always emotionally blistered. A reminder that a failed relationship might leave you icy or bruised or drained, but in truth, it frees you to be emboldened. 4. Moneybagg Yo, ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’ Moneybagg Yo is a casually sassy rapper — a don of tsk-tsking, fluent in arched eyebrows, dispositionally blunt. This is his fourth major-label album, and it’s punchy and robustly musical. À la peak 2 Chainz, Moneybagg Yo boasts so long and so intently that he sounds fatigued, and in turn, uproarious. 5. PinkPantheress, ‘To Hell With It’ This is music about listening to music, about the secret places we burrow into in order to make sure our favorite songs can wash over us unimpeded. The singing is sweet and melancholic, and the production flirts with memory and time — stories of right now and back then, all told as one. 6. Summer Walker, ‘Still Over It’ The most emotionally direct vocalist working in R&B today, Summer Walker is a bracing listen. And this album, her third full-length release, is rawly vindictive and unconcerned with polish, the equivalent of a public-facing Instagram account that feels like a finsta. 7. Lana Del Rey, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’ Lana Del Rey albums have become pop music’s most compelling ongoing saga about American loneliness and sadness. This, the better of her two albums this year, is alluringly arid and dreamlike. 8. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’ In which the rapper who introduced himself a decade ago as the genre’s great anarchist reveals something that was long clear to close observers: He reveres tradition. Brick-hard rhyme structures. Ostentatious taunts. Mixtape grit. All of it. 9. Playboi Carti, ‘Whole Lotta Red’ Just an unyieldingly odd record. Notionally a cousin of mid-2010s SoundCloud rap, it also has echoes of 1980s industrial rock and also the glitchcore of the 2000s. It’s buoyant and psychedelic and totally destabilizing. 10. Kanye West, ‘Donda (Deluxe)’ “Donda” lives at the intersection of Kanye’s “Yeezus” era and his Jesus era. On the one hand, there’s scabrous, churning production that sets a chaotic mood. On the other, there are moments of intense searching, gasps for air amid the unrest. 11. Rauw Alejandro, ‘Vice Versa’ Rauw Alejandro, the most imaginative meta-reggaeton Latin pop star, dabbles in drum ’n’ bass and baile funk on his second major-label album. But the star is his hypertreated voice, which is synthetically sweet and appealingly lush, almost to the point of delightful suffocation. 12. Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’ Outlandish, eccentric, lustrous, mercenarily maximalist pop from the sing-rapper with the richest and keenest pop ear not named Drake. 13. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Blood Bunny’ Openhearted and effortlessly catchy indie punk-pop about lovelorn confusion and beginning to figure out you’re too cool for that. 14. Kidd G, ‘Down Home Boy’ Why yes, those are Juice WRLD cadences in the singing on the year’s best country debut album. 15. The Armed, ‘Ultrapop’ Shrieking sheets of nervy noise — a battering ram. 16. Carly Pearce, ’29: Written in Stone’ A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album. 17. Yeat, ‘4L’ If “Whole Lotta Red” is too coherent for you, try Yeat. 18. Conway the Machine, ‘La Maquina’ A cold, cold, cold growl of a classic-minded hip-hop album. 19. Farruko, ‘La 167’ “Pepas” is here, along with a confidently expansive range of reggaeton styles. 20. Mickey Guyton, ‘Remember Her Name’ A pop-country winner that feels both universal and singular. … and 20 more albums for a more well-rounded year. 42 Dugg, “Free Dem Boyz” Gracie Abrams, “This Is What It Feels Like” Aespa, “Savage” Jay Bahd, “Return of Okomfo Anokye” Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud, “The Plugs I Met 2” Ivan Cornejo, “Alma Vacía” Jhay Cortez, “Timelezz” Dave, “We’re All Alone in This Together” Drake, “Certified Lover Boy” Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” Cody Johnson, “Human the Double Album” NCT 127, “Sticker” RXK Nephew, “Crack Dreams” serpentwithfeet, “Deacon” Spirit of the Beehive, “Entertainment, Death” Don Toliver, “Life of a Don” Rod Wave, “SoulFly” Tion Wayne, “Green With Envy” Wiki, “Half God” Young Thug, “Punk” LINDSAY ZOLADZ Opening Up Hearts and Minds In an emotionally hung over year when so many people were trying to process loss — of loved ones, of charred or flooded homes, of the world as we once knew it — some of the best music offered an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with feelings we may have rushed right by before truly acknowledging. Sometimes we just needed a voice to capture and echo the absurdity all around us, but other times records gave us a way of experiencing nothing less than mass catharsis. 1. Adele, ‘30’ It takes a certain kind of record to make me want to quote Rumi, but Adele really killed this, so let me say: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” Adele has been our mass-cultural bard of heartbreak for the past decade, but in her music — save for the handful of instant-classic ballads scattered across her discography — I did not really get the sense that she was truly open in all the terror and glory that implies. Then she turned 30. “I’m so afraid but I’m open wide,” she sings on the divine “To Be Loved,” her imperial voice trembling but assured. Most breakup albums are full of anger, scorn, and blame, but this one is remarkably self-directed, a grown woman making a deeply considered choice to leap into the void and break her own heart wide apart. “I took some bad turns that I am owning,” she sings, audibly italicizing that last phrase, as if the preceding 10 tracks in all their startling honesty hadn’t already made that clear. On “19,” “21,” and “25,” Adele acted wise beyond her years: “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” she chided an ex on an album about being in her mid-20s, which also included a world-wearied number called “When We Were Young.” “30” refreshingly winds back the clock and finds her admitting that all along she was “just a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around” her. But now she sings like a mature woman who knows there’s still plenty of time to get wine-drunk on the everyday wonders of her own freedom, to break her heart open again and again in her newly omnivorous and sonically eclectic songs. This, at last, is Adele living up to her promise, pop majesty at the highest count. 2. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’ He’s still on the boat! Tyler has never sounded this breezy yet in control, but for all the luxurious braggadocio, there’s a darker undercurrent at work, too. “I remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions,” he raps at the beginning of the album; by the stunning penultimate track, the heart-tugging epic “Wilshire,” he’ll have to admit that’s impossible. Full of playful reflections on his past (“I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers”) and auspicious blessings for his future, “Call Me” finds Tyler dropping a stone into that murky blue and discovering unexplored new depths. 3. Snail Mail, ‘Valentine’ Lindsey Jordan begs, bargains and finally accepts the pain of heartache in this searing song cycle that further establishes her as one of indie rock’s brightest young stars. There’s a raw immediacy to these 10 songs that make them almost feel hot to the touch — the thrashing title track, the keening acoustic ballad “Light Blue,” even the slinky, synth-driven vamp “Ben Franklin.” Her nimble guitar work highlights a sharp ear for off-kilter melody, but at the core of “Valentine” is Jordan’s passionately hoarse voice, lungs filled to the brim with sound and fury. 4. Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Heaux Tales’ The chatty, candid interstitials woven through this wonderful album play out like an adult reunion of those young girls in the classroom from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” — now grown women swapping secrets, recollections and hard-earned wisdom. “Heaux Tales” is a prismatic, multiperspective snapshot of female desire in the 21st century, enlivened by the testimonies of friends like Ari Lennox and H.E.R. but made cohesive by the soulfully versatile voice of Jazmine Sullivan. She breathes life into a spectrum of emotions, from the sassy assertion of “Pick Up Your Feelings” to the naked yearning of “The Other Side,” proving that it would be too limiting to choose between being a hard rock or a gem. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? 5. Illuminati Hotties, ‘Let Me Do One More’ The indie producer turned surprisingly ebullient frontperson Sarah Tudzin is a personable and occasionally hilarious guide through the surreal ruins of late capitalism. “You think I wanna be a part of every self-appointed startup?” she seethes in a punky, cartoonish voice, but a few songs later she’s exhausted enough to sound resigned to inevitable compromise: “The corner store is selling spit, bottled up for profit,” she sighs, “can’t believe I’m buying it.” Still, Tudzin’s songs glow with the possibility of human intimacy amid all the rubble, and they show off her mastery of so many different genres that by the end of the record, it seems like there’s no ceiling to her talent as both a producer and a finger-on-the-pulse songwriter. 6. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’ Hell hath no fury like a young woman out to prove she’s no one-hit wonder. From the opening guitar-crunch of the Zoomer primal scream that is “Brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo proves there’s so much more to her than could be expressed even in a song as exquisitely expressive as her seismic smash “Drivers License.” Rodrigo fashions teen-girl sarcasm into a lethal weapon on the dream-pop “Deja Vu,” rails against the Instagram industrial complex on the barbed social critique “Jealousy, Jealousy” and transforms a sample of one of her idol Taylor Swift’s sweetest love songs into a tear-streaked heartbreaker on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” If it feels comparatively weak on the back end, that’s only because the first half of this album is probably the most impressive six-song run anybody put together this year. 7. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’ How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician who records as the Weather Station, came up with a winning solution on her stirring album “Ignorance,” which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet. The graceful melancholy of “Tried to Tell You” surveys the natural beauty we’ve been too numb to mourn, while the sparse, jazzy “Robber” is a kind of musical tone-poem about large-scale corporate destruction. With her nimble voice — sometimes high and fluttery, other times earthy and low — and evocative lyricism, the songs of “Ignorance” animate, as one of her bandmates puts it, “the emotional side of climate change,” employing music’s depth of feeling to ignite political consciousness. 8. Low, ‘Hey What’ If only every band could sound this adventurous 30 years into existence. As their eerily heartfelt harmonies cut through with rhythmic blurts of electronic noise, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk sound, quite literally, like ghosts in the machine, imbuing vast, steely soundscapes with a disarming beauty. Following the sonic reinvention of the stunning 2018 album “Double Negative,” the Duluth band have continued to frame human yearning amid a churning and apocalyptic backdrop, with career-best songs like “Disappearing” and “Days Like These” capturing both the difficulty and the necessity of finding light in a dark age. 9. Lucy Dacus, ‘Home Video’ Lucy Dacus’ wrenching third studio album is as much an achievement of memoir as it is of songwriting, a vividly conjured coming-of-age story so personal that she used her own teenage diaries for research. “In the summer of ’07, I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she sings on “VBS” (as in, Vacation Bible School), before a gradual and all-consuming doubt begins to creep in. By the final song, when a friend tells her she’s afraid that their desires have rendered them “cursed,” Dacus responds, “So what?” As thoughtfully crafted as a collection of short stories, “Home Video” achingly chronicles the tale of a young person who loses her religion but in the process gains autonomy, a sense of identity and the glorious strength to tell her own truths in song. 10. Dry Cleaning, ‘New Long Leg’ “Are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more?” the ever-droll Florence Shaw asks, one of many absurdist yet somehow relatable philosophical questions she poses on the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s singular debut album. The instrumentation around Shaw swells like a sudden squall, but her deadpan, spoken-word musings — a mixture of found text, overheard chitchat and offbeat poetry — are the eye of the storm, remaining steady and strangely unperturbed in all kinds of weather. 11. Billie Eilish, ‘Happier Than Ever’ No record grew on me more this year than Billie Eilish’s patient and personal sophomore effort, which shuns repeat-the-formula predictability and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. It’s somehow even quieter than her sumptuously ASMR-triggering debut, until those sudden moments when it isn’t — as on the corrosive conclusion to the Nine-Inch-Nails-like “NDA,” or the fireworks display of pent-up frustration that rips open the title track. Exquisitely sequenced, this is a rare pop album that doesn’t show all its cards right away, but instead saves its strongest material for the end, building toward a satisfying finale and a hint at the potential versatility of her future. 12. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’ The fluid and incandescent playing of the Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar transcends borders, seamlessly fusing Western psychedelia with North African desert blues. “Afrique Victime,” his strongest and most focused record to date, showcases not only his quicksilver fingerwork but his innate gift for melody and songcraft, proving in every one of these nine blazing tracks that shredding is a universal language. 13. Bitchin Bajas, ‘Switched on Ra’ This shouldn’t work, or at least not nearly as well as it does: A drone synth outfit tackling the otherworldly compositions and complex harmonies of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra? But Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas approach the task with equal parts reverence and playfulness, assembling an Arkestra of 19 different analog synths and in the process creating a prolonged musical meditation on time, space and the meaning of retrofuturism. The vibes are exquisite, and the whole thing sounds like the Muzak that would play in an intergalactic portal’s waiting room. 14. Remi Wolf, ‘Juno’ Here’s to anyone who takes a technically skilled voice and chooses to do something delectably weird with it. Palo Alto native Remi Wolf’s pipes are strong enough to have propelled her to Hollywood on the 2014 season of “American Idol,” but she’s since carved out a much less conventional path, making bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas, melodies and truly wild wordplay (“I love my family intrinsically, like Anthony Kiedis,” she sings, which — sure!). On “Juno,” one of the most promising debut albums of the year, Wolf throws everything she’s got at the wall — and a surprisingly high percentage of it actually sticks. Some runners-up worth mentioning: L’Rain, “Fatigue” Rostam, “Changephobia” Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses” Lana Del Rey, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”/“Blue Banisters” Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power” Palberta, “Palberta 5000”/Lily Konigsberg, “Lily We Need to Talk Now” c.2021 The New York Times Company

The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury. Southern Vietnam could all but disappear. More than 20 million people in Vietnam, almost one quarter of the population, live on land that will be inundated. Much of Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s economic centre, would disappear with it, according to the research, which was produced by Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, and published in the journal Nature Communications. The projections don’t account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion. Standard elevation measurements using satellites struggle to differentiate the true ground level from the tops of trees or buildings, said Scott A Kulp, a researcher at Climate Central and one of the paper’s authors. So he and Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief executive, used artificial intelligence to determine the error rate and correct for it. In Thailand, more than 10% of citizens now live on land that is likely to be inundated by 2050, compared with just 1% according to the earlier technique. The political and commercial capital, Bangkok, is particularly imperilled. Climate change will put pressure on cities in multiple ways, said Loretta Hieber Girardet, a Bangkok resident and United Nations disaster risk-reduction official. Even as global warming floods more places, it will also push poor farmers off the land to seek work in cities. “It is a dire formula,” she said. In Shanghai, one of Asia’s most important economic engines, water threatens to consume the heart of the city and many other cities around it. The findings don’t have to spell the end of those areas. The new data shows that 110 million people already live in places that are below the high-tide line, which Strauss attributes to protective measures like seawalls and other barriers. Cities must invest vastly greater sums in such defences, Strauss said, and they must do it quickly. But even if that investment happens, defensive measures can go only so far. Strauss offered the example of New Orleans, a city below sea level that was devastated in 2005 when its extensive levees and other protections failed during Hurricane Katrina. “How deep a bowl do we want to live in?” he asked. The new projections suggest that much of Mumbai, India’s financial capital and one of the largest cities in the world, is at risk of being wiped out. Built on what was once a series of islands, the city’s historic downtown core is particularly vulnerable. Overall, the research shows that countries should start preparing now for more citizens to relocate internally, according to Dina Ionesco of the International Organisation for Migration, an intergovernmental group that coordinates action on migrants and development. “We’ve been trying to ring the alarm bells,” Ionesco said. “We know that it’s coming.” There is little modern precedent for this scale of population movement, she added. The disappearance of cultural heritage could bring its own kind of devastation. Alexandria, Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great around 330 BC, could be lost to rising waters. In other places, the migration caused by rising seas could trigger or exacerbate regional conflicts. Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, could be mostly underwater by 2050. If that happens, the effects could be felt well beyond Iraq’s borders, according to John Castellaw, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general who was chief of staff for US Central Command during the Iraq War. Further loss of land to rising waters there “threatens to drive further social and political instability in the region, which could reignite armed conflict and increase the likelihood of terrorism,” said Castellaw, who is now on the advisory board of the Centre for Climate and Security, a research and advocacy group in Washington. “So this is far more than an environmental problem,” he said. “It’s a humanitarian, security and possibly military problem too.” c.2019 The New York Times Company

The chief executives of seven oil and gas companies -- BP, Eni, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total -- will announce details of the fund and other steps to reduce greenhouse gases in London on Friday. The sector faces mounting pressure to take an active role in the fight against global warming, and Friday's event will coincide with the formal entry into force of the 2015 Paris Agreement to phase out man-made greenhouse gases in the second half of the century. The group is part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), which was created with the backing of the United Nations in 2014 and includes 11 companies representing 20 percent of global oil and gas production. The company leaders are expected to detail plans to create an investment vehicle that will focus on developing technologies to lower emissions and increase car engine and fuel efficiency, according to the sources involved in the talks who declined to be named. The size and structure of the fund were unclear. The fund will also focus on ways to reduce costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions produced from fossil fuel burning plants and re-injecting them into underground caverns. OGCI, Shell, Total and BP declined to comment. The CEOs are also expected to announce the next phase of their plan to reduce the oil sector's emissions, primarily by reducing flaring of excess gas at fields, increasing the use of CCS and limiting the release of methane, a highly polluting gas often emitted through pipe leaks. OGCI leaders called on governments last year to set a price on carbon emissions to encourage the use of cleaner technologies, although some companies including Exxon Mobil have resisted the idea. They now hope to show they can play an active role. The drive to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century poses a threat to oil and gas companies as transport and power sectors gradually shift towards renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind. Oil majors including Norway's Statoil, France's Total and Italy's Eni, have increased their investments in renewable energy in recent years, although it is still dwarfed by the main fossil fuel business. Oil producers have also lobbied for the phasing out of coal in favor of the less pollutant natural gas in the power sector. Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne said last month that OGCI leaders will announce plans "to work collectively to develop technologies which will be needed to face climate change issues." Delegates from signatory nations meet in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh on Nov. 7-18 to start turning their many promises into action and draw up a "rule book" for the sometimes fuzzily worded Paris Agreement on climate change, reached last December.

HELSINKI, Wed May 27,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The impact of climate change is accelerating at an "alarming" pace and urgent action must be taken, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday. "What is frightening is that the scientists are now reviewing their predictions, recognising that climate change impact is accelerating at a much faster pace," Ban said, referring to the ongoing fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "This is very serious and alarming. That is why I have been urging that if we take any action, we must take action now regardless of where you are coming from. Rich and poor countries, we must address this issue together," Ban told a seminar. The call for urgency echoed similar comments by the UN chief at a business conference on climate policy last weekend in Denmark. Business leaders met in Copenhagen to discuss long-term climate policies, ahead of a UN conference in December meant to forge a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Near Gainsborough, a river town 150 miles north of the capital, one of Britain’s last coal-fired power plants still spews carbon dioxide and other gases into the air. Another 150 miles north, off the coast of the seaside port of Blyth, the slender blades of five turbines in an offshore wind farm turn lazily in the breeze. The two plants, both owned by French utility giant EDF, illustrate how far Britain has come. The coal station, restarted recently to cover a shortfall in electricity, is scheduled to be taken out of operation next year, while the company plans to install experimental floating turbines in the waters off Blyth. “We’re talking about a huge transition,” said Paul Spence, director of strategy and corporate affairs at EDF, referring to Britain’s goal of being a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. “A lot of things need to happen to keep the lights on.” Britain is not just the host of the climate meeting, known as COP26; it has a credible claim to being a global leader in climate policy. The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Britain became the first country to legally mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the Climate Change Act in 2008. Its high-tech windmills and superannuated smokestacks are only the most visible evidence of a three-decade campaign. Having built the world’s largest offshore wind industry, Britain has reduced emissions by 44% from 1990 levels. Its target to cut them by at least 68% by 2030 is one of the most ambitious of any major economy, according to the Climate Action Tracker, a scientific analysis of the policies of countries. If Britain achieves that target, which is far from clear, it would be one of a handful of countries doing enough to fulfill the key goal of the Paris Agreement: limiting the long-term rise in the planet’s temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To hit its headline number, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has set out a series of attention-grabbing goals: End the sale of all gasoline- and diesel-fuelled cars by 2030; end the use of all coal and gas-fired power plants by 2035; and end the sale of all fossil-fuelled home heating systems by 2035. “The UK was first out of the blocks with the climate act, and it inspired Sweden and then Germany,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “The UK has successfully been able to phase out coal, which is very symbolic because it first started in England.” The temporary restart of the coal plant near Gainsborough — made necessary by low winds on the North Sea that slowed the turbines — shows that this transition is not without hiccups. A lack of wind or sun can stymie renewable energy sources. Local resistance has constricted the development of the onshore wind industry. Fears about energy reserves have led Britain to consider allowing drilling in a vast new oil field off the Shetland Islands. There is even a proposal for a new coal field in Cumbria, in northwest England. Climate experts also fault Johnson for not laying out a realistic road map to achieve his ambitious emissions goals. Britain has failed to raise adequate funds to finance clean-energy projects. It has not shown farmers, key drivers in reducing emissions, how they can contribute by cultivating peat lands and other conservation techniques. Nor is Britain the diplomatic dynamo it once was. When Johnson convenes more than 100 countries in Glasgow, he will push some vaulting goals, including a global end to the use of coal. But he will do so as the leader of a country that divorced itself from the European Union and has so far been unable to galvanise the world’s biggest emitters: China, the United States and India. Still, for all the fears of backsliding, Britons evince genuine pride about being pioneers in the transition to a carbon-neutral future. After all, said Alice Bell, a London-based climate change campaigner, “We led the world into this problem.” The country that was synonymous with the belching factories of the Industrial Revolution, that once darkened its skies and fouled its rivers, that gave the world the phrase “coals to Newcastle,” now produces slightly more than half its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources, predominantly wind. While BP, Shell and other energy giants lobby the government to keep burning gas, there is no analogy in Britain to Sen Joe Manchin, D-W Va, who has financial ties to the coal industry and pressured the Biden administration to scrap core elements of its climate legislation. Unlike in the United States, where climate change is a partisan issue, green policies win broad support on the left and right. The Climate Change Act, which stipulated an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, passed Parliament by a vote of 463-5. Nearly a dozen countries and the EU now have similar laws on the books. In 2019, Johnson’s predecessor, Prime Minister Theresa May, went even further, making Britain the first major economy to commit to being net-zero by 2050, meaning it would remove as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as it produces. To some extent, Britain’s leadership is an accident of history, rooted in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s bitter showdown with striking coal miners in 1984. By crushing the union and slashing subsidies for the coal industry, Thatcher accelerated Britain’s search for alternative energy sources, namely natural gas. “She got rid of the coal miners for a combination of political and economic reasons,” said Tom Burke, chair of E3G, an environmental think tank, and a former government adviser. “But it gave the U.K. a degree of freedom of action that wasn’t available to other countries.” Though Thatcher later came to view climate activism as a left-wing preoccupation, she gave two speeches in 1989 that historians say were the first significant statements on climate change by a world leader. “What we are now doing to the world — by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate — all this is new in the experience of the Earth,” she said to the United Nations. Thatcher planted the seed for a bipartisan cause, as Conservative and Labour governments sought to burnish their green credentials. British diplomats played key roles in brokering climate deals in Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto, Japan. Britain installed climate attachés in its embassies around the world. In 2006, a British government adviser, Nicholas Stern, produced a seminal study of the economic effects of climate change, which framed the debate before the 2009 summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, and set the stage for the Climate Act, passed under a Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. When the Conservatives came to power in 2010, they viewed climate policy as a way to appeal to younger voters, many of whom viewed the Tories as a tightfisted party in thrall to business interests. Parliament created a climate change committee, which prodded the government to adopt policies that would help Britain meet its goals. Several of its policies were mimicked by fellow EU members. “We basically ran the EU on climate policy,” Burke said. Then came the Brexit vote, and “we lost our most important tool for influencing other countries, which was the EU,” he said. Johnson, who once scoffed that wind farms would “barely pull the skin off a rice pudding,” now speaks about climate change with the zeal of the converted. They say he has been convinced of the need for action by his third wife, Carrie Johnson, who campaigns against plastic pollution. But critics say Johnson’s bracing words are belied by his actions. The Climate Action Tracker, while praising Britain’s ambitions, criticised its financial commitment to achieving them, calling it “highly insufficient.” “It’s accurate to say that this is a betrayal of a national commitment by the current government,” Burke said. Johnson’s pro-Brexit government, he said, depends on support from the libertarian wing of the Tory party, which opposes far-reaching climate initiatives, while his anti-business messaging hinders partnerships with the private sector. For private companies, the government’s messaging has been muddled. EDF said it would like to build more onshore wind farms, but local resistance and lack of incentives has made it less attractive. And the government has struggled to line up financing for a new generation of nuclear plants. “We’re only a quarter of the way toward the decarbonised energy system that the prime minister set as a goal for 2035,” said Spence, of EDF. For all of Britain’s agenda-setting, there is also a sense among activists and experts that there is only so much a midsize country can do to solve a planetary problem. Its total emissions account for barely 1% of the world’s total. China accounts for nearly 30%, and the United States for 14%. “Imagine if these policies had been picked up in 1997 by the United States,” said David King, a former climate envoy and scientific adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “The world would be a very different place.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Classes were cancelled for Wednesday and Thursday for students across the Midwest, including Chicago, home of the nation's third-largest school system, and police warned of the heightened risk of accidents on icy highways. Michigan said all state offices would remain closed through Thursday. In a rare move, the US Postal Service appeared to set aside its credo that "neither snow nor rain ... nor gloom of night" would stop its work as it suspended deliveries from parts of the Dakotas through Ohio. At least a dozen deaths related to extreme cold weather have been reported since Saturday in Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, according to officials and media reports. Illinois State Police officers rescued 21 people who were stranded in a charter bus that broke down in sub-zero temperatures along Interstate 55 near Auburn after the vehicle's diesel fuel turned to gel in its engine, according to the agency. In Detroit, a 70-year-old man was found dead on Wednesday on a residential street, a Detroit police spokeswoman said. About 15 miles (24 km) south in the community of Ecorse, a former city councilman in his 70s and dressed only in sleepwear was also found dead on Wednesday, police there said. A University of Iowa student was found dead outside a building at the campus early on Wednesday, the school said in a statement. The death of Gerald Belz, a pre-med student, was believed to be weather-related. Streets in Chicago were nearly empty, with few people walking outside in the painfully cold air as temperatures hovered around 18 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 28 Celsius). "It's terrible!" Pasquale Cappellano, a 68-year-old waiter, said as he smoked a cigarette while waiting outside for a bus on Chicago's North Side. "I gotta pick up my medication at Walgreens or else I wouldn't be out the door." In Minneapolis, chilled to minus 14 F (minus 26 C), Brian Pierce ventured out to "embrace the elements" and found himself watching cars slipping on the roads. "The roads sound really weird, it seems there’s a lack of grip," he said. "And my teeth hurt." HEADING EAST Wind-chill temperatures in parts of the Northern Plains and Great Lakes plunged as low as minus 42 F (minus 41 C) in Park Rapids, Minnesota, and to 31 degrees below zero F (minus 35 C) in Fargo, North Dakota, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The frigid winds began to blow into the U.S. East Coast later on Wednesday, sending temperatures plunging there. More than a thousand flights, close to two-thirds of those scheduled, were cancelled on Wednesday into or out of Chicago O'Hare and Chicago Midway international airports, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. The Amtrak passenger rail service canceler all trains in and out of Chicago on Wednesday. At the Morning Joy Farm in Mercer, North Dakota, Annie Carlson said her horses and sheep were doing fine. "They can go into the barn if they wish," she said. "They're snuggled in, warm and toasty." Her chickens, ducks and guinea hens were enjoying the 70-degree F (21 C) climate inside their greenhouse-like hoop house, she said. Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the NWS, said some of the coldest wind chills were recorded in International Falls, Minnesota, at minus 55 F (minus 48 C). Even the South Pole in Antarctica was warmer, with an expected low of minus 24 F (minus 31 C) with wind chill. Temperatures in Chicago will drop again "quite precipitously" on Wednesday night, Orrison said, potentially breaking the record low of minus 27 F (minus 33 C) on Jan. 21, 1985, the day of Ronald Reagan's second presidential inauguration. Banks and stores closed for business. Waste Management Inc , a major trash collection company, said it cancelled pickups in counties across the Midwest on Wednesday and Thursday. WARMING CENTERS The bitter cold was caused by a displacement of the polar vortex, a stream of air that normally spins around the stratosphere over the North Pole but whose current was disrupted and was now pushing south. Officials opened warming centres across the Midwest, and in Chicago, police stations were open to anyone seeking refuge. Five city buses were also deployed to serve as mobile warming centres for homeless people, while city police handed out hats, jackets and blankets. The Chicago Police Department said it was urging people to get out of the cold. "But we will never force someone," police officer Michael Carroll said. US homes and businesses will likely use record amounts of natural gas for heating on Wednesday, according to energy analysts. Some residents just to the north and northwest of the Twin Cities in Minnesota were asked by Xcel Energy to dial down their thermostats to 60 F (16 C) because of the strains on its natural gas supply system. The Michigan Agency for Energy said the state's utility companies had agreed not to shut off gas or electric supplies to delinquent customers for the rest of the week.   c.2019 New York Times News Service   

When Harper Lee wrote "To Kill A Mockingbird" she could not have known it would be hailed as a classic, much less that it would shape the way her hometown viewed its past. Lee's novel has put Monroeville, Alabama, on the map and acted as a magnet for tourists. It has also stimulated debate in the town about the legacy of racial segregation that prevailed in the south until the 1960s. Mockingbird tells the story of two children growing up in a fictional southern town similar to Monroeville. Their father, an attorney, is selected to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Though the man is innocent, he is convicted by an all-white jury. Some of the book's most powerful moments come as the children realize their father was fighting a doomed cause. Published in 1960, it was an instant sensation. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has sold at least 30 million copies and a film of it starring Gregory Peck is hailed as a classic. But sales only tell part of the story. U.S. readers often cite it as their favorite novel. It ranked second only to the Bible in a reader survey of books that had affected them the most. Library Journal voted it the novel of the 20th century. Every spring, thousands of Mockingbird tourists flock to Monroeville to visit locations associated with Lee's life, the book and the courthouse used in the film. They also come to watch a stage adaptation of Mockingbird. Act One takes place in the grounds of the court but for Act Two the audience and players move indoors to the original oval-shaped courthouse where the book and film are set. That setting allows the drama to unfold with audience, judge, lawyers and defendant occupying the same positions as they would have held in a real trial. Black cast members are even confined to the gallery as they were under segregation. For the audience, part of the fascination is being witness to injustice. For the volunteer actors, the annual productions have also allowed them to reflect on the book's message. "It's taught me you don't judge people," said Robert Champion, a detective with the Monroeville police department who plays Boo Radley, a reclusive figure in the novel who turns out to be a hero. "One of the lessons is that we should be tolerant of other people but intolerant of injustice," said Champion, who prepared for the role by speaking with people who knew the real-life person on whom the character in the book is based. FALSELY ACCUSED Lee may have based her story on an actual rape trial that took place in Monroeville's old courtroom, according to Jane Ellen Clark of the Monroeville County Heritage Museum. In 1934 Walter Lett, a black man, was tried for the rape of a white woman. He was sentenced to death but according to records recently uncovered, white citizens wrote anonymously to Alabama's governor to say he had been falsely accused. Lett's sentence was commuted to life in prison and he died of tuberculosis in 1937 in a state prison, Clark said. George Thomas Jones, a former businessman who writes local history, went to school with Lee and remembers her as a tomboy similar to the character of Scout, the novel's narrator. Jones, 81, said he could understand why the all-white juries of the time would have returned a guilty verdict in such cases. "People were called 'nigger lovers.' Regardless of the circumstances they would have been branded and they would have been social and economic outcasts," he said. Jones said relations between blacks and whites were in some ways better at that time despite injustices against blacks, and the social climate had been misunderstood. "There was mutual respect and we didn't have racial problems back in the '20s and '30s," he said. "People that were good at heart on both sides had no problem in getting along." Some of the major struggles of the civil rights movement were played out in Alabama but Monroeville desegregated its public facilities quietly. The biggest change was school desegregation, according to residents. The lack of protest didn't mean blacks were not resentful over segregation, said Mary Tucker, who moved to the town in 1954 and taught in both black and integrated schools. "We were separate but not equal," she said of the difference between black and white schools. "In spite of our history of segregation and oppression there were always some good people who tried to be fair as Harper Lee portrayed in (the lawyer) Atticus. There were always a few good people who tried to do the right thing," she said. Lee, now 81, still lives in Monroeville part time, but is rarely seen in public. "Nelle (Lee's first name) is very unassuming, unpretentious. You may run into her in the grocery store in jeans ... She's a very shy person," said Tucker.

This week's Group of Eight summit in Germany must give clear direction on tackling global warming and pave the way for new world negotiations at a UN meeting in December, major investors said on Monday. Their call, in an open letter to the heads of the G8, came as the United States continued to reject attempts by G8 president Germany to reach agreement on tough targets and timetables for cutting climate-warming carbon emissions. "Climate change brings significant opportunities and risks for us as investors," said Roderick Munsters of APB Investments, one of the 17 signatories of the letter. "To finance the solutions and manage the risks we need a strong policy framework that tackles carbon emissions effectively while providing transparency and stability for investment decision-making. The G8 has a vital role to play in providing this." Diplomats hope the June 6-8 summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm will send a clear signal to start talks to extend the Kyoto protocol -- the only global deal on cutting carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels -- at a U.N. meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali in December. But in a widely-criticised declaration, US President George W. Bush said this week he wanted to convene a group of the worst 15 emitters to formulate voluntary goals by the end of 2008, in effect circumventing the G8 and the UN processes. Washington rejected Kyoto in 2001, arguing it would pose economic problems as it was not binding on booming emerging emitters like China and India, whose leaders will attend the summit along with those of Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. The letter from the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has 3 trillion euros of assets under management, said the meeting should agree key elements for a renewed Kyoto, whose first phase ends in 2012. This should give the signal to the Bali meeting to agree a negotiating mandate and set a deadline for a post-2012 deal by the end of 2009, it said. Other key elements of this deal should include agreement on a stabilisation target for temperature rises or greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and absolute emission reduction targets with sanctions for non-compliance. It must tie in developing nations, expand trading in carbon emission allowances, support energy efficiency programmes, raise the share of renewable energy, reduce deforrestation and tackle the effects of unavoidable climate change, the letter said. Scientists say global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions, causing floods, famines and violent weather, putting millions of lives at risk and causing political instability.

Durban, Dec 10 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)- Ministers fought to save UN climate talks from collapse on Saturday, searching to narrow differences between rich and poor nations over how quickly to fight global warming. Ministerial negotiations in the South African port city of Durban dragged into Saturday afternoon but with many delegates due to head home, there was a strong chance real decisions would be put off until next year. That would be a major setback for host South Africa and raise the prospect that the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts, could expire at the end of next year with no successor treaty in place. Behind the haggling over technical details, the talks boil down to a tussle between the United States, which wants all polluters to be held to the same legal standard on emissions cuts, and China and India which want to ensure their fast growing economies are not shackled. "We are just right now discussing how to increase ambition, not only in the long-term but also in the short term," said EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard. "I don't give up. We never give up until all the possibilities are exhausted. Some of them are moving. It would be such a pity if the world wasted this opportunity," she said. Negotiators were arguing over the wording of a range of highly technical sections that make up the broad agreement, which covers a range of topics from greenhouse gas emissions targets to forestry accounting rules, green tech transfers and cash to help poor countries adapt to climate change. Two weeks of talks between almost 200 states in the South African port of Durban were due to end on Friday. But island nations and developing states under threat from the rising sea-levels and extreme weather linked to global warming, demanded a more ambitious text. The European Union backed the group, having sought to build a consensus around its roadmap for push all major polluters to accept legally binding cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. "They're working. They're working hard. You have to give them time to work," said U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres. But Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists lobby group said the talks could not drag on forever. "We are getting to the point where they have to come up quickly with a deal and bring it to the plenary or suspend the discussions and have the secretariat say when they will resume again," he said. TICKETS HOME Many delegates from poor nations were packing their bags on Saturday, having booked flights home. That could leave the countries most vulnerable to climate change without a voice when the plenary session reconvenes. "Developing countries have very small delegations, two to three people... Many of us have already left," said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, chairman of the Africa Group. "Many ministers are also gone from our group, so that creates a bit of a problem." South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane has struggled to draft a document that can both advance the fight against climate change and secure a broad consensus. Changes put forward on Saturday disappointed developing states and the European Union, who complained they contained no reference to how the fight against climate change would be paid for and set no date by when cuts to emissions must be decided. The discussion document also deferred decisions on cutting emissions from international aviation and shipping to next year. FRUSTRATION The European Union has tried to rally support for its plan to set a date of 2015 at the latest for a new climate deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases. Any deal could then come into force up to five years later. Failure to reach a concrete accord in Durban would cast doubt over measures tentatively agreed by delegates. They include measures to protect forests and another to bring to life the Green Climate Fund, designed to help poor nations tackle global warming. UN reports released in the last month show time is running out to restrict global warming to safe limits, generally accepted as within a 2 degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures. A warming planet has already intensified droughts and floods, increased crop failures and sea levels could rise to levels that would submerge several small island nations. Many of their delegates wanted South Africa to do more to broker a deal that better protects the poor countries it pledged to help, and were disappointed the host did not show more leadership to push through a settlement. "They have let agreements slip through their fingers. If we do reach any outcome that advances the process, it will not be because of South Africa's leadership. It will be despite South Africa," said one envoy.