Datasets:

AriyanH22

/

data_2

like 0

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

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promised a review of security for UN operations around the world on Wednesday after car bombs claimed by al Qaeda killed at least 11 UN employees in Algeria. The UN staff were among dozens killed in Tuesday's twin car bombs at UN buildings and a government building. Al Qaeda's North African wing claimed responsibility for the bombs targeting what it called "the slaves of America and France." Ban addressed the U.N. General Assembly by videolink from Bali, in Indonesia, where he is attending a conference on climate change. He said the bombs were "a despicable strike against individuals serving humanity's highest ideals under the UN banner," and "an attack on all of us." Ban said he had sent Kemal Dervis, the head of the United Nations Development Program which lost a number of staff, to Algeria to oversee support for victims and their families. "The security and welfare of UN staff is paramount," Ban said. "We will take every measure to ensure their safety, in Algeria and elsewhere, beginning with an immediate review of our security precautions and policies." Ban said the world body had enhanced security since a bomb that destroyed the U.N. office in Baghdad in 2003 and killed 22 people, including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello. "Our brave men and women continue their difficult and dangerous work," he said. "The Baghdad attack will not deter us. Neither will this most recent attack," he said, addressing the General Assembly after it stood for a minute's silence for the victims. The U.N. staff union called on Tuesday for a full investigation "to determine if adequate security measures were in place to prevent such a horrifying act." Authorities were still searching for survivors on Wednesday. Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told Europe 1 television the official death toll was 30, while a Health Ministry source on Tuesday said 67 people were killed.

But what if I told you that no matter where you live or how high your socioeconomic status, climate change can endanger your health, both physical and mental, now and in the future? Not only your health, but also the health of your children and grandchildren? Might you consider making changes to help mitigate the threat? Relatively few Americans associate climate change with possible harms to their health, and most have given little thought to this possibility. Even though I read widely about medical issues, like most Americans, I too was unaware of how many health hazards can accompany climate change. Studies in the United States and Britain have shown that “people have a strong tendency to see climate change as less threatening to their health and to their family’s health than to other people’s health,” according to Julia Hathaway and Edward W Maibach at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Two recently published reports set me straight. One, by two public health experts, called for the creation within the National Institutes of Health of a “National Institute of Climate Change and Health” to better inform the medical community, public officials and ordinary citizens about ways to stanch looming threats to human health from further increases in global warming. The experts, Dr Howard Frumkin and Dr. Richard J. Jackson, both former directors of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that recent climate-related disasters, including devastating wildfires and a record-breaking hurricane season, demonstrate that our failure to take climate change seriously is resulting in needless suffering and death. The second report appeared just as I began investigating the evidence supporting their proposal: a full-page article in The New York Times on Nov 29 with the headline “Wildfire Smoke in California Is Poisoning Children.” It described lung damage along with lifelong threats to the health of youngsters forced to breathe smoke-laden air from wildfires that began raging in August and fouled the air throughout the fall. Children are not the only ones endangered. Anyone with asthma can experience life-threatening attacks when pollution levels soar. The risks of heart disease and stroke rise. And a recent study in JAMA Neurology of more than 18,000 Americans with cognitive impairment found a strong link between high levels of air pollution and an increased risk of developing dementia. “While anyone’s health can be harmed by climate change, some people are at greatly increased risk, including young children, pregnant women, older adults, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, outdoor workers, and people with fewer resources,” Hathaway and Maibach wrote in Current Environmental Health Reports. Alas, said Jackson, emeritus professor at UCLA, “Human beings respond only to what is a threat to them at the moment. Californians are now much more aware — the fires got people’s attention.” The wildfire season is now starting much earlier and ending later as a result of a warming climate, an international research team reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in November. Frumkin, emeritus professor at the University of Washington, told me, “Lots of people who don’t consider climate change a major problem relative to themselves do take it seriously when they realise it’s a health concern. Heat waves, for example, not only kill people, they also diminish work capacity, sleep quality and academic performance in children.” “Our changing climate will have much more of an impact on people’s health over time,” Jackson said. People of all ages will develop respiratory allergies, and those who already have allergies can expect them to get worse, as plants and trees respond to a warmer climate and release their allergens in more places and for longer periods. Infectious diseases carried by ticks, mosquitoes and other vectors also rise with a warming climate. Even small increases in temperature in temperate zones raise the potential for epidemics of Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, encephalitis and other tick-borne infections, as well as mosquito-borne West Nile disease, dengue fever and even malaria. Climate change endangers the safety of foods and water supplies by fostering organisms that cause food poisoning and microbial contamination of drinking water. Extreme flooding and hurricanes can spawn epidemics of leptospirosis; just walking through floodwaters can increase the risk of this bacterial blood infection 15-fold. These are just a smattering of the health risks linked to global warming. They are extensive and require both societal and individual efforts to minimise. Yes, society is changing, albeit slowly. The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement. General Motors, the nation’s largest car manufacturer, announced it would dedicate itself to electric vehicles and other green energy initiatives, and Ford, Volkswagen and others are doing the same. Lest you feel you can’t make a difference, let me suggest some steps many of us can take to help assure a healthier future for everyone. I assume you’ve already changed your light bulbs to more efficient LEDs. But have you checked the source of your electricity to see that it relies primarily on nonpolluting renewable energy sources? Can you install solar panels where you live? If you can afford to, replace old energy-guzzling appliances with new efficient ones. And don’t waste electricity or water. Now tackle transportation. Drive less and use people power more. Wherever possible, commute and run errands by cycling, walking or scootering, which can also directly enhance your health. Or take public transportation. If you must drive, consider getting an electric car, which can save fuel costs as well as protect the environment. How about a dietary inventory, one that can enhance your health both directly and indirectly? Cutting back on or cutting out red meat to reduce greenhouse gases, relying instead on plant-based foods, is the perfect start to a healthier planet and its human inhabitants. Reduce waste. Currently, Jackson said, 30 percent of our food is wasted. Buy only what you need and use it before it spoils. Support organisations like City Harvest, which distributes unsold food from stores and unused food from restaurants to those in need. Reuse or recycle materials instead of throwing out everything you no longer want nor need.   © 2021 The New York Times Company

A potentially deadly strain of fungus is spreading among animals and people in the northwestern United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia, researchers reported on Thursday. The airborne fungus, called Cryptococcus gattii, usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said. "This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people," said Edmond Byrnes of Duke University in North Carolina, who led the study. "The findings presented here document that the outbreak of C. gattii in Western North America is continuing to expand throughout this temperate region," the researchers said in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens here "Our findings suggest further expansion into neighboring regions is likely to occur and aim to increase disease awareness in the region." The new strain appears to be unusually deadly, with a mortality rate of about 25 percent among the 21 U.S. cases analyzed, they said. "From 1999 through 2003, the cases were largely restricted to Vancouver Island," the report reads. "Between 2003 and 2006, the outbreak expanded into neighboring mainland British Columbia and then into Washington and Oregon from 2005 to 2009. Based on this historical trajectory of expansion, the outbreak may continue to expand into the neighboring region of Northern California, and possibly further." The spore-forming fungus can cause symptoms in people and animals two weeks or more after exposure. They include a cough that lasts for weeks, sharp chest pain, shortness of breath, headache, fever, nighttime sweats and weight loss. It has also turned up in cats, dogs, an alpaca and a sheep. bdnews24.com/lq/1604h.

The wearin' of the brown? Forty shades of beige? Climate change could turn Ireland's legendary emerald landscape a dusty tan, with profound effects on its society and culture, a new study released in time for St. Patrick's Day reported. Entitled "Changing Shades of Green," the report by the Irish American Climate Project twins science gleaned from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the musings of a poet, a fiddler, a fisherman, a farmer and others with deep connections to Ireland. "The lush greens could turn to brown and the soft rains that people talk about as a blessing -- 'May the rains fall soft upon your field' -- those soft rains could turn harsh," said Kevin Sweeney, an environmental consultant who directs the climate project. "It really is changing the look and feel of Ireland," Sweeney said in a telephone interview. The report is available online at http://irishclimate.org. While he acknowledged the impact of climate change on Ireland is less than that elsewhere, notably in Africa, Sweeney emphasized the difference this global change could make on a place that millions of people picture as lush and green. FEWER POTATOES, MORE BOG BURSTS Among other findings, the report said: -- Potatoes, the quintessential staple of Irish agriculture, might cease to be a commercial crop under the stress of prolonged summer droughts; -- Dried grasses in summer and autumn would change hillsides from green to brown; -- Pastures could be saturated until late spring, making it impossible for livestock to graze; instead, farmers would plant row crops to grow animal feed, a change in the look of Ireland; -- Reduced summer rains would hurt inland fisheries for salmon and sea trout; -- Bog bursts, caused when summer heat lifts peat bogs off the bedrock on hillsides and sends the bogs sliding down the slope, would be more frequent. But the most evident change could be the difference in rainfall. "The nickname Emerald Isle is a legacy of Ireland's steady rainfall," the report said. "By mid-century, winters could see an increase of more than 12 percent and summers could see a decrease of more than 12 percent. Seasonal storm intensity changes will increase the impact of these changes." The southeast may have elements of a Mediterranean climate, according to the report. "If it's pouring rain, I'll say, 'We're in the climate of the music,'" Irish fiddler Martin Hayes said in the report. " ... That softness of the rain, it's there." Discussing the climate changes possible in Ireland, Hayes said, "I feel frightened and worried. I feel despair. It goes into every aspect of my life." Ireland is especially good as a focus because some 80 million people around the world can claim Irish heritage, compared to the 5 million or so who actually live in Ireland. Of these, Sweeney said, most associate Ireland with green pastures, rolling hills and rain. And that image could change. "This is not Africa, where ... the rain may dry up and millions of people might have to move," Sweeney said. "People can raise their children, they can make a living, they can find sustenance in Ireland, but it will look and feel and be different. And that's the subtlety we want to explain here. We don't want to project that this is catastrophe. What it is, is it's heartbreaking."

The United States will tell a July meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations that it cannot meet big cuts in emissions of planet-warming gases by 2020, its chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson said. "It's frankly not do-able for us," he told Reuters on Tuesday, referring to a goal for rich countries to curb greenhouse gases by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. A draft summit declaration, dated May 5 and seen by Reuters, showed Washington is blocking efforts to get the summit to agree targets for cutting carbon emissions, insisting that responsibility be shared by big emerging economies. The European Union says it will cut emissions by 30 percent if other rich countries do and supports a goal of 25-40 percent for all industrialized nations. But the candidates running to replace U.S. President George W. Bush, and who all support action to stem climate change, were only talking about returning to 1990 or 2000 U.S. emissions levels by 2020, Watson said. "And I think most analysis of whether we could do that (say) it would be a heavy lift for the United States given our current infrastructure." U.S. power production is about 50 percent reliant on high carbon-emitting coal, Watson added. Watson was speaking on the sidelines of U.N.-led climate talks in Germany. He held out hope for agreement in the July G8 meeting on a global goal to halve emissions by 2050. "We'd certainly like to get agreement on that, I'm not going to say specific numbers. We're seriously considering this 50 by 50," he said, referring to a halving of global greenhouse gases by mid-century, supported by Japan and the EU. CLIMATE FIGHT The United States wants all major economies -- code for including big developing countries such as China -- to agree to contribute more to the climate fight, for example funding R&D into clean energy technologies. Financing such research was currently dominated by the United States and Japan, Watson said. Talks this week in Bonn are meant to dovetail with the upcoming G8 meeting and a U.S. initiative on the fringes of the G8 involving all major economies, into a U.N. process to agree a new global climate pact by the end of next year in Copenhagen. A key sticking point in talks is how to split the cost of re-deploying the world's entire energy system away from fossil fuels, and how soon emerging economies adopt emissions caps. The present Kyoto Protocol caps the greenhouse gases of some 37 industrialized countries, but not the world's top two emitters -- the United States and China. Scientists say that the world must brake and reverse annual increases in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change including rising seas and more extreme weather.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, said he was getting straight back to work on the "planetary emergency" of climate change. But he refused to answer reporters' questions on whether the award would make him change his mind and enter the U.S. presidential campaign as a Democratic candidate before the November 2008 election. "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing," Gore said, appearing in public nearly nine hours after the award was announced in Oslo. Gore shared the Nobel prize with the U.N. climate panel for their work helping galvanize international action against global warming. "It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced but it is also the greatest opportunity that we have ever had to make changes that we should be making for other reasons anyway," said Gore, standing with his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University faculty members who work with the U.N. climate panel. "This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now." "I'm going back to work right now. This is just the beginning," Gore added, leaving the 70 journalists hanging by not taking questions. That left unanswered a question on the minds of many in the United States after his Nobel win: would Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, jump in to join a crowded Democratic field of candidates ahead of the presidential election next year. Gore has made it known he is not interested, although some Democratic activists are campaigning for him to get into the race, and the Nobel award on Friday further fueled their hopes. Gore has campaigned on climate change since leaving office in 2001 after the bruising and disputed election result that put Bush in the White House. BUSINESS AS USUAL Gore, who appeared somber rather than elated over the award, said, "For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency." "It truly is a planetary emergency and we have to respond quickly," he said. Gore carried on with his plans despite the life-changing announcement, attending a scheduled meeting in Palo Alto in the heart of the Silicon Valley, where innovators are eager to jump start the clean technology industry. Stanford biology professor Chris Field said the prize "adds tremendous momentum" to work on conservation, efficiency, new technology and carbon capture and storage. "I think we are seeing there is no single solution ... but there are great opportunities in all four areas," Field said. Gore said in a statement earlier that he would donate all of his share of the Nobel prize winnings to the Alliance for Climate Protection -- a nonprofit group Gore founded last year to raise public awareness of climate change. "This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the world's pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis -- a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years," Gore said in his earlier written statement.

A pressing issue not in the official program is the controversy that has been swirling for weeks around the chief of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, threatening her leadership. An investigation last month accused Georgieva of rigging data to paint China as more business-friendly in a 2018 report when she was CEO at the World Bank. Georgieva has denied any wrongdoing. The scandal has focused on the bank’s credibility — billion-dollar decisions can be made on the basis of its information — as well as Georgieva’s culpability. But lurking behind the debate over her future are foundational questions about the shifting role of the IMF, which has helped guide the global economic and financial system since the end of World War II. Once narrowly viewed as a financial watchdog and a first responder to countries in financial crises, the IMF has more recently helped manage two of the biggest risks to the worldwide economy: extreme inequality and climate change. Some stakeholders, though, have chafed at the scope of the fund’s ambitions and how much it should venture onto the World Bank’s turf of long-term development and social projects. And they object to what’s perceived as a progressive tilt. “There is a modernizing streak here running through major financial institutions, which is creating a kind of tension,” said Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University and the author of “Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World’s Economy.” Other pressures weigh on the agency as well. Washington is still home to the IMF’s headquarters, and the United States is the only one of the 190 member countries with veto power, because it contributes more money than any other. But its dominance has been increasingly challenged by China — straining relations further tested by trade and other tensions — and emerging nations. The willingness of the Federal Reserve and other central banks to flush trillions of dollars into the global economy to limit downturns also means that other lenders, aside from the IMF, have enough surplus cash on hand to lend money to strapped nations. China has also greatly expanded its lending to foreign governments for infrastructure projects under its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, long-held beliefs like the single-minded focus on how much an economy grows, without regard to problems like inequality and environmental damage, are widely considered outdated. And the preferred cocktail for helping debt-ridden nations that was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s — austerity, privatization of government services and deregulation — has lost favour in many circles as punitive and often counterproductive. International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks during a joint news conference at the end of the Summit on the Financing of African Economies in Paris, France May 18, 2021. Ludovic Marin/Pool via Reuters The debate about the role of the IMF was bubbling before the appointment of Georgieva, who this month started the third year of her five-year term. But she has embraced an expanded role for the agency. A Bulgarian economist and the first from an emerging economy to head the fund, she stepped up her predecessors’ attention to widening inequality and made climate change a priority, calling for an end to all fossil fuel subsidies, for a tax on carbon and for significant investment in green technology. International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks during a joint news conference at the end of the Summit on the Financing of African Economies in Paris, France May 18, 2021. Ludovic Marin/Pool via Reuters She has argued that however efficient and rational the market is, governments must step in to fix built-in flaws that could lead to environmental devastation and grossly inequitable opportunity. Sustainable debt replaced austerity as the catchword. When the coronavirus pandemic brutally intensified the slate of problems — malnourishment, inadequate health care, rising poverty and an interconnected world vulnerable to environmental disaster — Georgieva urged action. Here was “a once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said, “to support a transformation in the economy,” one that is greener and fairer. The IMF opposed the hard line taken by some Wall Street creditors in 2020 toward Argentina, emphasizing instead the need to protect “society’s most vulnerable” and to forgive debt that exceeds a country’s ability to repay it. This year, Georgieva created a special reserve fund of $650 billion to help struggling nations finance health care, buy vaccines and pay down debt during the pandemic. That approach has not always sat well with conservatives in Washington and on Wall Street. Former President Donald Trump immediately objected to the new reserve funds — known as special drawing rights — when they were proposed in 2020, and congressional Republicans have continued the criticism. They argue that the funds mostly help US adversaries such as China, Russia, Syria and Iran while doing little for poor nations. Georgieva’s activist climate agenda has also run afoul of Republicans in Congress, who have opposed carbon pricing and pushed to withdraw from multinational efforts like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris climate agreement. So has her advocacy for a minimum global corporate tax such as the one that more than 130 nations agreed to on Friday. In July, Laurence D. Fink, who runs BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management company, and was at odds with the IMF’s stance on Argentina, called the fund and the World Bank outdated and said they needed “to rethink their roles.” The investigation into data rigging at the World Bank focused on what is known as the Doing Business Report, which contains an influential index of business-friendly countries. WilmerHale, the law firm that conducted the inquiry, said various top officials had exerted pressure to raise the rankings of China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Azerbaijan in the 2018 and 2020 editions. The law firm reported that Georgieva was “directly involved” with efforts to improve China’s rating for the 2018 edition. She said WilmerHale’s report was inaccurate and rejected its accusations. The IMF executive board is reviewing the findings. The United States, which is the fund’s largest shareholder, has declined to express support for her after the allegations. Before a meeting of the IMF board on Friday, Georgieva maintained strong support from many of the fund’s shareholders, including France, which had lobbied hard for her to get the job in 2019. Late Friday, the IMF released a statement saying the board would “request more clarifying details with a view to very soon concluding its consideration of the matter.” In Congress, Republicans and Democrats called for the Treasury Department to undertake its own investigations. A letter from three Republicans said the WilmerHale inquiry “raises serious questions about Director Georgieva’s ability to lead the International Monetary Fund.” Several people sprang to her defence, including Shanta Devarajan, an economist who helped oversee the 2018 Doing Business Report and a key witness in the investigation. He wrote on Twitter that the law firm’s conclusions did not reflect his full statements, and that the notion that Georgieva had “put her thumb on the scale to benefit one nation is beyond credulity.” “It was her job to ensure the final report was accurate and credible — and that’s what she did,” Devarajan added. In an interview, he said critics had used the investigation to discredit Georgieva. The problem, he said, is “how people may have chosen to read the findings of the report and use that to criticize Kristalina’s credibility and leadership.” Devarajan was not the only one to make the case that the controversy was functioning in some ways as a proxy for the contest over the IMF’s direction. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia, wrote in The Financial Times that Georgieva was receiving “McCarthyite treatment” by “anti-China forces” in Congress. Whatever role one might prefer for the IMF — traditional, expanded or something else entirely — the scandal is both a distraction and a threat. Nicholas Stern, a British economist who formerly served as the chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, said this controversy could not come at a worse moment. “The coming few years are of vital importance to the future stability of the world economy and environment,” he wrote in a letter to the IMF board in support of Georgieva. “This is as decisive a period as we have seen since the Second World War.”   © 2021 The New York Times Company

More than 19 million children live in the most disaster-prone districts of low-lying Bangladesh, according to a new report from the UN children's agency UNICEF. In addition, longer-term changes such as rising sea levels are pushing families deeper into poverty and forcing some from their homes, disrupting children's education and access to health services, UNICEF said. "Children who miss out on good nutrition or on education, who are uprooted from their homes, or who are forced into exploitative labour, will fail to fulfil their potential as citizens," said the author of the report, Simon Ingram. The call comes weeks after schoolchildren around the world walked out of classes to protest against global government inaction on climate change. Global temperatures are on course to rise by 3 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, far overshooting a global target of limiting the increase to 2C or less, the UN World Meteorological Organization says. That is bringing growing risks from extreme weather - including worsening droughts, floods, fires and storms - as well as threats of worsening hunger, poverty and water shortages, scientists say. Bangladesh ranked ninth in the Global Climate Risk Index 2019, which said it was the seventh worst hit by climate change between 1998 and 2017, with 37 million people affected. UNICEF said Bangladesh had already done much to reduce the exposure of poorer communities to cyclones and other threats, notably through the construction of shelters. But it called for more focus on the specific needs of children threatened by the effects of climate change, including food shortages and increased migration to cities as flooding and drought make some rural areas uninhabitable. That should include making schools and health facilities in flood-prone areas more resilient and introducing stronger measures to protect children affected by climate-induced disasters against exploitation and abuse, said Ingram. Nurul Qadir, a senior official at Bangladesh's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the government was already addressing the issues raised in the report. "Right now, we are going to schools across the country to make children aware about climate change and how it can be tackled," he said. The UNICEF study found 12 million children in Bangladesh live near rivers that regularly burst their banks. Another 4.5 million live in coastal areas vulnerable to cyclones and 3 million are at risk from drought, it said. These risk factors are forcing people from rural areas into cities, where children are at greater risk of being pushed into forced labour or early marriage. "They face danger and deprivation in the cities, as well as pressure to go out to work despite the risk of exploitation and abuse," said UNICEF Bangladesh representative Edouard Beigbeder.

Xi has not left China in 21 months — and counting. The ostensible reason for Xi’s lack of foreign travel is COVID-19, though officials have not said so explicitly. It is also a calculation that has reinforced a deeper shift in China’s foreign and domestic policy. China, under Xi, no longer feels compelled to cooperate — or at least be seen as cooperating — with the United States and its allies on anything other than its own terms. Still, Xi’s recent absence from the global stage has complicated China’s ambition to position itself as an alternative to American leadership. And it has coincided with — some say contributed to — a sharp deterioration in the country’s relations with much of the rest of the world. Instead, China has turned inward, with officials preoccupied with protecting Xi’s health and internal political machinations, including a Communist Party congress next year where he is expected to claim another five years as the country’s leader. As a result, face-to-face diplomacy is a lower priority than it was in Xi’s first years in office. “There is a bunker mentality in China right now,” said Noah Barkin, who follows China for the research firm Rhodium Group. Xi’s retreat has deprived him of the chance to personally counter a steady decline in the country’s reputation, even as it faces rising tensions on trade, Taiwan and other issues. Less than a year ago, Xi made concessions to seal an investment agreement with the European Union, partly to blunt the United States, only to have the deal scuttled by frictions over political sanctions. Since then, Beijing has not taken up an invitation for Xi to meet EU leaders in Europe this year. “It eliminates or reduces opportunities for engagements at the top leadership level,” Helena Legarda, a senior analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said of Xi’s lack of travels. “Diplomatically speaking,” she added, in-person meetings are “very often fundamental to try and overcome leftover obstacles in any sort of agreement or to try to reduce tensions.” Xi’s absence has also dampened hopes that the gatherings in Rome and Glasgow can make meaningful progress on two of the most pressing issues facing the world today: the post-pandemic recovery and the fight against global warming. Biden, who is attending both, had sought to meet Xi on the sidelines, in keeping with his strategy to work with China on issues like climate change even as the two countries clash on others. Instead, the two leaders have agreed to hold a “virtual summit” before the end of the year, though no date has been announced yet. “The inability of President Biden and President Xi to meet in person does carry costs,” said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was the director for China at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. Only five years ago, in a speech at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Xi cast himself as a guardian of a multinational order, while President Donald Trump pulled the United States into an “America first” retreat. It is difficult to play that role while hunkered down within China’s borders, which remain largely closed as protection against the pandemic. “If Xi were to leave China, he would either need to adhere to COVID protocols upon return to Beijing or risk criticism for placing himself above the rules that apply to everyone else,” Hass said. Xi’s government has not abandoned diplomacy. China, along with Russia, has taken a leading role in negotiating with the Taliban after its return to power in Afghanistan. Xi has also held several conference calls with European leaders, including Germany’s departing chancellor, Angela Merkel; and, this week, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, will attend the meetings in Rome, and Xi will dial in and deliver what a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, said Friday would be an “important speech.” While Biden has spoken of forging an “alliance of democracies” to counter China’s challenge, Xi has sought to build his own partnerships, including with Russia and developing countries, to oppose what he views as Western sanctimony. “In terms of diplomacy with the developing world — most countries in the world — I think Xi Jinping’s lack of travel has not been a great disadvantage,” said Neil Thomas, an analyst with the Eurasia Group. He noted Xi’s phone diplomacy this week with the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape. “That’s a whole lot more face time than the prime minister of Papua New Guinea is getting with Joe Biden,” Thomas said. Still, Xi’s halt in international travel has been conspicuous, especially compared with the frenetic pace he once maintained. The last time he left China was January 2020, on a visit to Myanmar only days before he ordered the lockdown of Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus emerged. Nor has Xi played host to many foreign officials. In the weeks after the lockdown, he met with the director of the World Health Organization and the leaders of Cambodia and Mongolia, but his last known meeting with a foreign official took place in Beijing in March 2020, with President Arif Alvi of Pakistan. Chinese leaders have long made a selling point of their busy schedule of trips abroad, especially their willingness to visit poorer countries. Before COVID, Xi became the first to outpace his American counterpart in the annual average number of visits to foreign countries, according to research by Thomas. In the years before COVID, Xi visited an average of 14 countries annually, spending around 34 days abroad, Thomas estimated. That notably surpassed Obama’s average (25 days of foreign travel) and Trump’s (23). “President Xi’s diplomatic footsteps cover every part of the world,” said an article shared by Communist Party media outlets in late 2019. Xi has made his mark on the world by jettisoning the idea that China should be a modest player on the international stage — “hiding our strength and biding our time,” in the dictum of his predecessor Deng Xiaoping. Now, though, he finds himself trying to project China’s new image of confident ambition over video meetings. He is doing so while facing international scrutiny over many of China’s policies; the origins of the coronavirus; mounting rights abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang; and its increasingly ominous warnings to Taiwan. Surveys have shown that views of China have deteriorated sharply in many major countries over the past two years. Victor Shih, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, said that Xi’s limited travel coincided with an increasingly nationalist tone at home that seems to preclude significant cooperation or compromise. “He no longer feels that he needs international support because he has so much domestic support, or domestic control,” Shih said. “This general effort to court America and also the European countries is less today than it was during his first term.” The timing of the meetings in Rome and Glasgow also conflicted with preparations for a meeting at home that has clearly taken precedence. From Nov 8-11, the country’s Communist elite will gather in Beijing for a behind-closed-doors session that will be a major step toward Xi’s next phase in power. Xi’s absence in Rome and Glasgow could be a missed opportunity for countries to unite around a stronger, unified global effort on climate or economic recovery. It seems unlikely that the Chinese delegations will have the authority on their own to negotiate significant compromises. “These are issue areas where there was some hope for cooperation and some hope for positive outcomes,” Legarda, the China analyst at the Mercator Institute, said of the climate summit in Glasgow. “With Xi Jinping not attending, it is, first of all, unclear if they will manage to get there. Second, I guess the question is, is this not a priority for Beijing, in many leaders’ minds?” © 2021 The New York Times Company

The Obama administration backed away on Friday from a showdown with Beijing over the value of China's currency that would have caused new frictions between the world's only superpower and its largest creditor. The Treasury Department delayed a much-anticipated decision on whether to label China as a currency manipulator until after the U.S. congressional elections on November 2 and a Group of 20 leaders summit in South Korea on November 11. Washington and the European Union accuse China -- set to become the world's second-largest economy after the United States this year -- of keeping the yuan artificially low to boost exports, undermining jobs and competitiveness in Western economies. Fears are growing of a global "currency war" as major trading powers, such as the United States and Japan, seek to weaken their currencies while emerging economies such as Brazil and South Korea raise or threaten tougher controls to limit capital flows. The decision to delay the Treasury's semi-annual currency report reflects a desire by the Obama administration to pursue diplomacy to resolve the dispute with China rather than provoke a confrontation that could potentially lead to a trade war and affect long-term interest rates. In July, China held $847 billion in U.S. government debt. In its statement, the Treasury seemed to be encouraged by China's recent action to allow its currency to rise by roughly 3 percent against the dollar since June 19. "Since September 2, 2010, the pace of appreciation has accelerated to a rate of more than 1 percent per month," it said. "If sustained over time, this would help correct what the IMF (International Monetary Fund) has concluded is a significantly undervalued currency." China argues that moving too quickly with currency reforms could devastate its export-driven economy. It blames the United States for sluggish growth, high debts and an easy monetary policy that has flooded the market with newly printed dollars, weakening the U.S. currency and putting pressure on emerging countries to keep their currencies low. But Washington argues that Beijing could relieve that pressure by letting the yuan strengthen. "YUAN SHOULD NOT BE A SCAPEGOAT" The Treasury said the G20 gathering in Seoul would give world leaders an opportunity to look at how best to rebalance the global economy. This was not just the responsibility of China and the United States, it stressed. In another important summit, leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will meet on November 13-14. "The Treasury will delay the publication of the report on international economic and exchange rate policies in order to take advantage of the opportunity provided by these important meetings," it said. China left little doubt about the rancor that would ensue if it is branded as a currency manipulator -- a largely symbolic move by the United States that would mandate more consultations with Beijing but no immediate penalties. "The Chinese yuan should not be a scapegoat for the United States' domestic economic problems," Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian said on Friday. The decision to delay the Treasury report appears to have been taken at the last minute. Industry sources had been primed to expect it by 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) on Friday. The Obama administration, seeming to anticipate criticism from U.S. lawmakers who are pushing for stronger action against China, brought forward an announcement of an investigation into whether Chinese support for its clean energy sector violates international trade rules. But that was not enough to appease Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who has sponsored legislation to get tough with China over its currency practices. "The Obama administration is treating the symptom but not the disease," he said. "An investigation into China's illegal subsidies for its clean energy industry is overdue but it's no substitute for dealing with China's currency manipulation." CONGRESS EYES DUTIES ON CHINA The Treasury's decision may raise pressure on the Senate to approve a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would allow the United States to slap duties on imports from countries with fundamentally undervalued currencies. "Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress are prepared to move legislation confronting China's currency manipulation this year," Schumer said. "We hope to have the administration's support but will go forward without it if necessary." There had been speculation Obama might be tempted to label China as a currency manipulator for the first time in 16 years to look tough before the elections in which his Democrats risk big losses over discontent with his handling of the economy. But there are concerns about angering China, whose support is needed on issues such as rebalancing the global economy, climate change and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. In an article published on Friday, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan pledged a continuation of yuan reform but only on Beijing's gradual terms. "The yuan exchange rate will be basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level," he wrote in China Finance, a magazine published by the central bank. The Treasury Department is mandated by law to issue a report every six months on whether any country is manipulating its currency for an unfair trade advantage. But the last time any administration -- Republican or Democrat -- has cited a country under the 1988 currency law was in July 1994, when China was put in the spotlight.

The facility earned BP Plc  more than $650 million in profits in 2019, according to financial filings reviewed by Reuters. Yet the oil major agreed to sell a third of its majority stake in the project earlier this year. The deal exemplifies a larger strategy to liquidate fossil-fuel assets to raise cash for investments in renewable-energy projects that BP concedes won't make money for years. BP's big bet is emblematic of the hard choices confronting Big Oil. All oil majors face mounting pressure from regulators and investors worldwide to develop cleaner energy and divest from fossil fuels, a primary source of greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming. That scrutiny has increased since early August, when the United Nations panel on climate change warned in a landmark report that rising temperatures could soon spiral out of control. BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney, who took office in February 2020, is gambling that BP can make the clean-energy transition much faster than its peers. Last year, he became the first major oil CEO to announce that he would purposely cut future production. He aims to slash BP's output by 40%, or about 1 million barrels per day, an amount equal to the UK's entire daily output in 2019. At the same time, BP would boost its capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources to 50 gigawatts, a 20-fold increase and equivalent to the power produced by 50 US nuclear plants. To hit those targets, Looney plans $25 billion in fossil-fuel asset sales by 2025. That's equivalent to about 13% of the company's total fixed assets at the end of 2019. Under his watch, BP has already sold legacy projects worth about $15 billion. In addition to the Oman deal, Looney unloaded oil and gas fields in Alaska and the North Sea and sold off BP's entire petrochemical operation, which produced a $402 million profit in 2019. Two of BP's key renewables investments, by contrast, are losing tens of millions of dollars, according to a Reuters review of financial filings with Companies House, Britain's corporate registry. BP owns half of Lightsource, a solar energy company that lost a combined 59.3 million pounds ($81.8 million) in 2018 and 2019, the last year for which data is available. The company's UK-based electric-vehicle charging firm, bp pulse, lost a combined 22.3 million pounds ($30.8 million) over the two years. Performance figures for other assets recently bought or sold by BP are not available because, like other oil majors, it does not usually disclose financials of individual projects. The performance numbers for the two renewable projects and the Oman unit have not been previously reported. BP did not give Reuters updated financials for those projects or others beyond 2019. The company acknowledged that its fast-growing clean-energy business - including its solar, EV-charging and wind ventures - continues to lose money. BP does not expect profits from those businesses until at least 2025. The losses are not slowing Looney's spending on renewable energy. He aims to boost annual investment to $5 billion by 2030, a 10-fold increase over 2019. For bp pulse, that means operating 70,000 charging points by 2030, up from 11,000 now. Lightsource, meanwhile, recently completed a $250 million solar farm in rural north Texas and, separately, acquired a US solar company for $220 million. BP is also moving aggressively into offshore wind power, and paying a high cost of entry relative to companies who got established in the business earlier. As he launched the transition, Looney has slashed jobs, cutting 10,000 employees, or about 15% of the workforce he inherited. BP's share price, meanwhile, has fallen 39% since Looney arrived, the worst performance by any oil major during the period. In an interview with Reuters, BP Chief Financial Officer Murray Auchincloss dismissed the importance of the company's recent share performance and said BP and its investors can weather the rapid transformation. The declining oil-and-gas revenue this decade will be offset, in part, by higher expected revenues from gasoline stations and their attached convenience stores, he said. Those stations will increasingly offer electric vehicle charging, a business Auchincloss said is growing much faster than BP had expected, especially in Europe, because of plans by automakers including BMW and Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, to introduce more electric models. "Electrification is growing at a much faster pace than we ever could have dreamed," Auchincloss said. When BP's wind and solar investments start returning healthy profits, Auchincloss said, the returns will be lower than BP expects from oil and gas. But they will be far more stable, he said, compared to the "super volatile" oil business, where prices can rise or fall dramatically. The company also plans to boost profits through its energy-trading operation, one of the world's largest, which will benefit from BP's new focus on generating electricity, Auchincloss said. Seven current and former BP executives spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity and shared their views on Looney's transition plan. The executives generally supported the direction but expressed varying levels of concern that Looney is moving too fast in trading high-quality oil assets for more speculative renewable-energy investments. Some worried in particular that selling higher-quality oil assets now could leave BP with mostly lower-quality assets, which will become harder to unload later as the entire industry looks to transition to cleaner energy sources. A recent attempted sale illustrates the increasing challenge of selling oil assets. When BP tried to sell two stakes in North Sea fields to Premier Oil, it slashed its price by two-thirds in negotiations, to $205 million, only to see the deal collapse entirely late last year when Premier hit financial difficulties. One former senior BP executive said that Looney may have erred in setting a specific target for renewable-power capacity - one that would be difficult to meet while also hitting profit targets. Meeting those two conflicting goals will become harder as industry competition to acquire renewable assets heats up, said the former executive, who recently left BP. Missing either mark will not go over well with investors, the executive said. A current senior BP executive countered that Looney, backed by company directors, has taken a bold but reasonable strategy to tackle the vexing challenges facing the industry. "The board knows that you can't please everybody," this executive said, "and the worst thing you can do is take no stand." BP spokesman David Nicholas said the company has been "strictly disciplined" in choosing renewable investments that meet certain financial criteria and will allow Looney to continue hitting corporate profit targets. Looney faces a steep challenge in convincing shareholders to come along on what promises to be a wild ride for BP, said Russ Mould, the investment director for AJ Bell, one of UK's largest consumer-investing platforms, serving 368,000 people. "BP is still looking to sell assets, at a time when demand for them is not great, and recycle that cash into renewable-energy assets, where competition for them is fierce," Mould said in an August note to investors. "That sounds like a potential recipe for selling low, buying high and destroying shareholder value along the way." 'BEYOND PETROLEUM' REDUX Looney is a 50-year-old Irishman who grew up on a family farm in County Kerry with four siblings. He joined BP in 1991 as a drilling engineer and rose through the ranks of its oil-and-gas exploration and production division -- "upstream" in industry parlance -- before becoming its head in 2016. Confident and charismatic, Looney set his ambitions on "reinventing" BP as a green-energy provider when he took over the CEO's job from Bob Dudley. Looney's transition may unnerve shareholders who recall BP's late-1990s foray into renewables -- the ultimately abandoned effort to rebrand BP as "Beyond Petroleum." Then-CEO John Browne was the first oil major chief to publicly acknowledge that fossil fuels contributed to climate change. He invested billions of dollars in wind and solar projects, only to see most of them fail over the next decade. Browne did not respond to a request for comment. This time, BP is going beyond investing in renewables; it's unloading core oil and gas assets. The Oman project is among the world's largest natural-gas fields, and BP reported to Companies house that the field earned a 17% return on capital deployed in 2019. When BP expanded the Oman project in October 2020 to boost its gas output, Looney called it central to BP's strategy. He has said he envisions natural gas, which has lower emissions of atmosphere-warming carbon than crude oil or coal, as a long-term revenue source to finance the company's metamorphosis. Late last year, however, Looney faced rising pressure to steady the ship amid the coronavirus crisis, which sapped global fuel demand and crushed oil and gas prices. BP ended the year with $39 billion in net debt, a level that concerned executives including Looney, according to one senior BP executive with knowledge of their internal deliberations. The debt had become problematic because of the company's falling value, which increased its debt-to-equity ratio and jeopardised its credit rating. The concerns, the executive said, also stemmed from a difficulty in convincing bankers and investors that BP's growing renewable-energy business could make money. In early 2021, Looney called a meeting of BP's top leadership and told them to urgently find ways to cut debt to below $35 billion, the executive said. Soon after, on February 1, BP announced the agreement to sell part of its stake in the Oman gas field for $2.6 billion to Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production. BP gave up a third of its 60% ownership - or 20% of the whole project - in the deal. That sale and others helped BP cut debt to $33 billion by the end of March. The effort was also aided by rising oil and natural gas prices. Three current and former BP executives told Reuters that the company decided to sell the stake in such a profitable project because it struggled to find buyers for other assets during the pandemic, which left few firms with an appetite for acquisitions. BP spokesman Nicholas said that BP had started planning to sell a stake in the Oman project before Looney launched the drive to cut debt. In a brief interview at a company announcement in April, Looney told Reuters that he was happy with the price for the Oman stake and didn't sell it under duress. "We're not in a panic here," Looney said. "There is no rush; net debt is very much under control." Anish Kapadia, head of energy at the investor advisory service Palissy Advisors, said the price for the Oman stake was relatively low compared to comparable sales of natural-gas assets. Based on the project's earnings, Kapadia said he would have expected a value about 25% higher. BP also might have made substantially more money, Kapadia said, by waiting until the oil-and-gas industry rebounded. "They're selling a profitable, long-life, long-reserve business," Kapadia said of BP. "They're selling it and using those proceeds to fund alternative businesses that aren't going to generate free cash flow for the best part of this decade." Several months before the Oman deal, in June 2020, BP sold its petrochemicals business for $5 billion to chemicals giant INEOS. The business generated about 4% of BP's total annual profit in 2019. Some other majors, by contrast, have targeted petrochemicals as a growth area and a hedge against expected long-term declines in oil demand. Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have in recent years invested heavily in petrochemicals, which supply industries including plastics. BP spokesperson Nicholas said the company had long ago, in 2005, sold a bigger piece of its petrochemical business to INEOS and only retained two specialist operations that were not integrated with the rest of BP. "We sold for a very good price," he said, "to a company that could integrate them into their business." Looney has often delighted in taking a different path - especially more recently, as the company reported strong second-quarter profits of $2.8 billion on the strength of its recovering oil-and-gas business. Looney has indicated, however, that the fresh influx of cash only makes him want to sell BP's oil assets faster - while it can fetch higher prices for them to finance more renewable investments. "While we understand the questions in some investors' minds, we do see a compelling proposition to deliver competitive returns" in renewable energy, Looney told investors on the August earnings call. Mould, the AJ Bell investment director, said Looney's strategy may prove to be the "least bad option" facing BP and other oil firms under pressure to overhaul their businesses. Investors who buy BP shares at their current, beaten-down prices, he said, could see strong long-term returns. LOSS LEADERS As BP's fossil-fuel footprint shrinks, it faces a steep challenge in filling the financial void with profits from clean-energy ventures. For now, BP's renewable projects are taking losses. The firm bought its bp pulse electric-vehicle charging firm - then named Chargemaster - in June 2018 for 130 million pounds ($179.3 million). The oil major hopes to boost the firm's fortunes in part by installing thousands of fast EV chargers alongside gas pumps at its large service-station network. The stations and their attached convenience stores have been a key profit driver, and BP is betting that EV drivers will shop and snack more while charging their cars, which takes longer than a gasoline fill-up. BP announced a deal to acquire a 43% stake in Lightsource in December 2017 for $200 million. It now owns 50% of the firm, which operates solar farms in 15 countries and has tripled capacity since 2017 to 20 gigawatts. Dev Sanyal, chief of BP's natural-gas and renewables businesses, said that solar-power businesses start delivering profits more quickly than offshore wind, where development can take much longer. But solar initially delivers lower returns than wind, Lightsource BP CEO Nick Boyle said in the 2019 filing reviewed by Reuters. The returns increase gradually, in part because solar has lower maintenance costs than wind facilities. BP this week announced the appointment of Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, a veteran renewables and power sector executive, as its new head of natural gas and renewables, replacing Sanyal. The move was seen as further sign of Looney's drive to diversify away from oil and gas. read more PRICEY WIND PROJECTS BP moved aggressively into offshore wind in October 2020 when it bought a 50% stake from Norwegian energy giant Equinor in two projects off the US East Coast for about $1 billion. Offshore projects, the industry's next frontier, are far more complex and capital-intensive than onshore projects and use newer technology. Many top oil companies with experience in operating deepwater oil and gas fields have made a similar push. Some, such as Shell and Equinor, started their offshore wind ventures several years ago. Utilities such as Spain's Iberdrola and Denmark's Orsted are also well established. That stiff competition means BP is paying a hefty price of entry, some rivals say privately. In February, BP and its partner Energie Baden-Württemberg AG paid 900 million pounds ($1.24 billion) for the rights to build two projects in the Irish Sea in Britain's offshore wind licensing round. BP's Sanyal acknowledged the high costs of entry. But he said the prospect of long-term power-supply contracts will make the returns more reliable. "You don't have the highs and lows of oil and gas," Sanyal said. It will be years before investors know the outcome of Looney's wager on renewables. Still, even BP's relatively fast transformation doesn't go far enough in reducing climate damage, said Kim Fustier, an oil-and-gas analyst at HSBC bank. She expects BP's earnings from renewables and low-carbon businesses to represent 4% to 5% of total earnings by the middle of the decade and 10% to 15% by 2030. "This is nowhere near enough for investors to start thinking of these companies as being part of the solution," Fustier said.

The Taliban government, struggling to cope with the disaster that has affected more than a third of its provinces, will approach international relief organisations for help, officials said. "Due to flooding and storms in 12 provinces, 22 people have died and 40 injured," said Hassibullah Shekhani, head of communications and information at Afghanistan's National Disaster Management Authority. The rain and flooding were particularly severe in the western provinces of Badghis and Faryab and the northern province of Baghlan. Afghanistan has been suffering from drought in recent years, made worse by climate change, with low crop yields raising fears of serious food shortages. The weather has exacerbated problems of poverty caused by decades of war and then a drop in foreign aid and the freezing of assets abroad after the Taliban took over, and US-led forces withdrew, in August. Shekhani said 500 houses were destroyed, 2,000 damaged, 300 head of livestock killed and some 3,000 acres of crops damaged. He said the International Committee of the Red Cross was helping and officials would approach other international organisations for help. The international community is grappling with how to help the country of some 40 million people without benefiting the Taliban.

The program titled ‘Leadership matters- Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in the Contemporary World,' was organised by the Indian mission and staged at the UN headquarters. The heads of seven countries, including the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong, and the president of South Korea, participated in the programme. Gandhi was a true patriot, a statesman and a saint who dedicated his life for humankind, said the Bangladesh leader. “His brilliant and mesmerising leadership showed the world that an individual could bring earth-shaking social and political change in a non-violent way.” Mahatma Gandhi was an influential politician and spiritual leader of the subcontinent, the Father of the Nation of India, and one of the pioneers of the anti-British movement. Born on Oct 2, 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi on Jan 30, 1948, a year and a half after the creation of two independent states, India and Pakistan.  He was given the title of Mahatma (Great Spirit) because of his selfless love for all people, regardless of social status, customs and creed. Expressing her honour at attending the event, Hasina said, "We are living in a world, where hatred and bigotry leading to terrorism and violent extremism are dividing the humankind more than ever before." “Gandhiji’s philosophy of life and his unwavering support for all peoples can unite us today to meaningfully and effectively address formidable challenges of global concerns like hunger, poverty and impacts of climate change.” She continued: “His selfless love and affection for people, regardless of social standing, caste, colour, creed or religion earned him the title ‘Mahatma.’ His principles of tolerance, non-violence and harmonious coexistence would continue to guide us as we seek to build nations. In fact, his ideals of diversity are cherished and celebrated all over the globe, wherever democracy is practised.” Hasina then told the audience that Bangladesh was proud to have the Gandhi Ashram Trust, which followed the Gandhian philosophy of rural development, peace and social harmony, and worked for the rural poor with particular focus on women. She also revealed that her father Bangabandhu took inspiration from Gandhi during the formative stage of his leadership. "We are now preparing to celebrate the Birth Centenary of Bangabandhu beginning in March 2020," she announced. Hasina underscored Gandhi's love for common people and ideals of non-violence, which contributed to shaping Bangabandhu’s vision of struggle against the oppression and tyranny by the then Pakistani rulers against the peace-loving Bangalis. “In the face of provocations, Bangabandhu remained unmoved and committed to the principles of non-violence. He, however, declared the independence of Bangladesh in the early hours of Mar 26, 1971 and called for armed struggle against the Pakistan occupation military when they unleashed an unprecedented genocide against the unarmed civilians in Bangladesh.”

NEW DELHI, Mon Mar 16,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - India is pressing ahead with a trading scheme centred on energy efficient certificates that could possibly expand to renewable energy, the country's climate change envoy said on Monday. The plan involves creating a market-based mechanism that would allow businesses using more energy than stipulated to compensate by buying energy certificates from those using up less energy or using renewable energy. The government is setting up energy benchmarks for each industry sector. Those companies that do not meet the benchmarks would have to buy these certificates under a reward and penalty system. "We hope that this may perhaps even be linked with the concept of renewable energy certificates," Shyam Saran told a business meeting in New Delhi. "And if this link could be established we will probably have a very fast growing market in energy efficiency, renewable energy certificates in this country. And that would be a very major innovation." Energy efficiency is among eight areas that India identified in its national climate change policy last year. It hopes to reduce energy consumption by at least 25 percent in energy-intensive sectors such as power and cement. No timeline is prescribed for reaching the target. Most firms in India, which is Asia's third-largest economy and the fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, have yet to plan for the impact of climate change and do not measure emissions or have deadlines to curb them, according to studies. India's top firms also face little stakeholder pressure to combat climate change with only about 40 percent of the companies setting voluntary carbon emissions reduction goals, according to a survey of CEOs by KPMG consultants last year. Experts say Indian firms' response to climate issues is driven largely by the need to comply with expected regulations, while leaving the leadership role in tackling global warming to the government. Saran hoped a domestic trading system would draw upon the market mechanism to further encourage energy efficiency. India says it wants to save 10,000 Megawatts by the end of the 2012 through energy efficiency measures. "We are looking at trading mechanisms so if you are more efficient you get a certain credit, if you are less efficient you have to buy it," Saran said. India, whose economy has grown by 8-9 percent annually in recent years, contributes around 4 percent of mankind's global greenhouse gas emissions, but says its levels will never go beyond those of developed countries. The country faces an election in a few weeks, and though climate change is not a poll issue, many fear policy announcements such as energy efficiency trading schemes could get delayed until a new government is installed.

SINGAPORE, Sep 14, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A team of scientists studying rock samples in Africa has shown a strong link between falling carbon dioxide levels and the formation of Antarctic ice sheets 34 million years ago. The results are the first to make the link, underpinning computer climate models that predict both the creation of ice sheets when CO2 levels fall and the melting of ice caps when CO2 levels rise. The team, from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A&M Universities, spent weeks in the African bush in Tanzania with an armed guard to protect them from lions to extract samples of tiny fossils that could reveal CO2 levels in the atmosphere 34 million years ago. Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, mysteriously fell during this time in an event called the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition. "This was the biggest climate switch since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," said co-author Bridget Wade from Texas A&M University. The study reconstructed CO2 levels around this period, showing a dip around the time ice sheets in Antarctica started to form. CO2 levels were around 750 parts per million, about double current levels. "There are no samples of air from that age that we can measure, so you need to find something you can measure that would have responded to the atmospheric CO2," Paul Pearson of Cardiff University told Reuters. Pearson, Wade and Gavin Foster from the University of Bristol gathered sediment samples in the Tanzanian village of Stakishari where there are deposits of a particular type of well-preserved microfossils that can reveal past CO2 levels. "Our study is the first that uses some sort of proxy reconstruction of CO2 to point to the declining CO2 that most of us expected we ought to be able to find," Pearson said on Monday from Cardiff. He said that CO2, being an acidic gas, causes changes in acidity in the ocean, which absorbs large amounts of the gas. "We can pick that up through chemistry of microscopic plankton shells that were living in the surface ocean at the time," he explained. Evidence from around Antarctica was much harder to find. "The ice caps covered everything in Antarctica. The erosion of sediments around Antarctica since the formation of the ice caps has obliterated a lot of the pre-existing evidence that might have been there." "Our results are really in line with the most sophisticated climate models that have been applied to this interval," Pearson added. The results were published online in the journal Nature. "Those models could be used to predict the melting of the ice. The suggested melting starts around 900 ppm (parts per million)," he said, a level he believes could be reached by the end of this century, unless serious emissions cuts were made.

Nearly 63 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 in the region as rising seas and rivers swallow villages, and drought-hit land no longer supports crops, said ActionAid International and Climate Action Network South Asia in a report. The projection does not include those who will be forced to flee sudden disasters such as floods and cyclones and so is likely an under-estimate, noted Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid. He said the situation could become "catastrophic". Many will head from rural areas to towns and cities in their own countries, in search of work, he said. There they often end up living in slum areas exposed to flooding and with very limited access to social services, doing precarious jobs such as rickshaw-pulling, construction or garment-making. "Policy makers in the Global North and the Global South are not yet waking up to this reality," Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "They are not realising the scale of the problem, and how we are going to deal with (it)." He urged rich nations with high planet-warming emissions to redouble efforts to reduce their carbon pollution and provide more funding for South Asian countries to develop cleanly and adapt to conditions on a warming planet. If governments meet a globally agreed goal to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, the number of people driven to move in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal could be cut almost by half by 2050, the report said. It builds on research published in 2018 by the World Bank, which said unchecked climate change could cause more than 140 million people to move within their countries' borders by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. The new report, which used an updated version of the same methodology, raises the original 2050 projection for South Asian migration by about half, adding in new data on sea level rise, as well as the effects of ecosystem losses and droughts. The new report also tracks expected migration on a finer scale. PREPARING FOR MOVEMENT The projections have financial implications for countries such as India and Bangladesh, where the poorest people often lack the means to move far from their original homes to safer places without state support. Residents are evacuated by boat in Bangladesh before cyclone Amphan on May 19, 2020. The new figures show the largest number of people are expected to migrate by 2050 in India, at more than 45 million. Residents are evacuated by boat in Bangladesh before cyclone Amphan on May 19, 2020. But the country with the sharpest projected rise in migration is Bangladesh, with a seven-fold increase from today. The report included examples collected by aid workers of people who have already been hit by worsening climate pressures. In Pakistan's arid Tharparkar district, Rajo, 37, and her husband, both labourers, moved to three different places in their area in the last three years to escape hunger caused by severe drought. She lost a baby because of heavy lifting in her job and had to borrow money from the landowner to cover medical bills for her family, she told the researchers. Kabita Maity, from an island in the Sundarbans delta region of India, has had to move five times as previous homes were gobbled up by the sea. "We will have to stay here until the sea forces us out, as we do not have resources to buy land and resettle inwards," Maity was quoted as saying. The report called on South Asian governments to do more to prepare for worsening displacement linked to climate change - and emphasised the importance of acting now to limit the number of people who will be forced to migrate in the future. It recommended strengthening social protection systems to provide cash and work for those affected by climate extremes and improving essential services for migrant workers in cities - now hit doubly by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many left jobless. Measures that can help prevent "distress migration" include promoting farming methods that keep soils in good condition, managing water more efficiently, improving access to markets or trying new crops and ways to earn money, the report noted. Where people are relocated, authorities need to ensure the land is safe and fertile, tenure rights are secure and people have enough money to build new homes, it added. Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, said tackling poverty and inequality also needed to be part of regional responses to climate migration. "South Asian leaders must join forces and prepare plans for the protection of displaced people," he said in a statement.

Climate scientists can’t say where or when the next big storm will hit, but all the evidence points to this: Global warming is bringing the planet into an era of wilder, more dangerous rains with ruinous and long-lasting consequences. “Where it rains, it’s raining heavier,” said Raghu Murtugudde, a professor of Earth systems science at the University of Maryland who edited a recent book on extreme weather in the tropics. “It’s the classic loaded-dice analogy.” The dice, he said, are “throwing up some numbers more often” in the form of extreme weather. How? The greenhouse gases humans have already injected into the atmosphere have heated up the planet and now pack so much moisture into the air that they heighten the risk of more extreme precipitation. The good news is that floods and storms don’t kill as many people as they once did. Early warning systems are in place. So are shelters. People have learned to evacuate from danger zones, including in flood-prone places like the lowlands of Bangladesh, where individual storms once killed tens of thousands of people. In the Philippines this year, Typhoon Mangkhut left a death toll of 100, sharply lower than the 6,000 fatalities from Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever recorded, which hit the country in 2013. The bad news is everything else. Even after floodwaters recede, the ruin from a storm can be felt for a very long time. A study of more than 6,500 cyclones found that tropical storms, especially if they struck frequently, could substantially alter a country’s economic trajectory. Researchers found that in countries hit by the storms, national incomes hadn’t caught up to their previous pace of growth even 15 years after the disaster. Video grab shows heavy rain and wind caused by Typhoon Trami in Okinawa, Japan in this September 29, 2018 photo by @KAZU.KTOMSN. Instagram @KAZU.KTOMSN via Reuters Storms have struck the Philippines very frequently. And they have affected how the country feeds itself. Video grab shows heavy rain and wind caused by Typhoon Trami in Okinawa, Japan in this September 29, 2018 photo by @KAZU.KTOMSN. Instagram @KAZU.KTOMSN via Reuters Between 2006 and 2013, the Philippines was pummelled by 76 natural disasters, primarily floods and tropical storms, with an estimated $3.8 billion in losses to the country’s agricultural sector over that 8-year period, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. This year, because of Typhoon Mangkhut, which struck the country’s rice belt, the Philippines is expected to import much more rice than it otherwise would have. Sometimes, a disaster can reverberate years later in unexpected ways. In the Philippines, researchers found, baby girls were more likely to die in the two years after a typhoon than at other times, a reflection of the grim decisions that families made about how to stretch their resources in the aftermath of disaster. A damaged house is seen after Typhoon Mangkhut hits Philippines, Bolinao, Pangasinan, Philippines Sept 15, 2018 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Daeve Del Fierro via Reuters And in Peru, children born right before or right after the 1997-98 El Niño storm cycle that ruined roads and destroyed crops were more likely to be stunted, a symptom of malnutrition that can diminish a child’s intellectual capacity for life, according to another study. A damaged house is seen after Typhoon Mangkhut hits Philippines, Bolinao, Pangasinan, Philippines Sept 15, 2018 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Daeve Del Fierro via Reuters On average, floods and storms have displaced nearly 21 million people every year over the last decade, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. That is three times the number displaced by conflict. Worldwide, according to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, damaging floods and storms have more than tripled in number since the early 1980s. Their economic losses have risen sharply, too, with two record years in the last decade in which damages topped $340 billion. The company said 2017 was “a wake-up call.” “The slow speed of adaptation to the higher risks is my biggest issue,” said Ernst Rauch, chief climatologist at Munich Re. “We all know, we should know, the risks are changing.” Preparing for that future of wilder storms, climate scientists acknowledge, is especially difficult when it’s hard to pinpoint, when, where and how often extreme weather will strike, except to warn that it will. Luis Durban walks with supplies through floodwater caused by Hurricane Florence in Lumberton, North Carolina, US Sept 16, 2018. Reuters In the United States, heavy downpours in most parts of the country have increased “in both intensity and frequency since 1901,” a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in 2017. The largest increases were in the Northeast. Luis Durban walks with supplies through floodwater caused by Hurricane Florence in Lumberton, North Carolina, US Sept 16, 2018. Reuters NOAA also said 2017 was a record year for high-tide floods. And 2017 was a particularly nasty hurricane year, in part because of the warming of the Atlantic Ocean, with six major hurricanes with wind speeds of at least 111 mph. “The problem is how much money am I willing to spend for how much protection when I know only that we need more protection but not how much,” said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at Potsdam University in Germany. The cost of doing nothing is likely to be steep. Levermann’s team concluded that river floods alone would result in global economic losses of approximately 17 percent worldwide in the next 20 years. Climate change, though, doesn’t just bring more rain. While some of the wettest parts of the world are seeing heavier and more unpredictable precipitation, scientists say, some drier parts of the planet are becoming measurably drier. The combination can be dangerous. In India, for instance, even as total annual rainfall has dipped slightly, bursts of intense rain are becoming more powerful, one recent study concluded. Another group of researchers drilled down to find that, in the centre of India between 1950 and 2015, there was a threefold increase in what were once rare cloudbursts, those that dump 150 millimetres, or nearly 6 inches, or more of rain on a single day. Partially submerged houses are seen at a flood-affected village in Hojai district, in the northeastern state of Assam, India, June 16, 2018. Reuters Lisa Goddard, director of the International Research Institute at Columbia University, compared the atmosphere to “a big giant sponge” that grows heavy with moisture and, at some point when it’s too heavy, has to be squeezed out, resulting in intense rains. Partially submerged houses are seen at a flood-affected village in Hojai district, in the northeastern state of Assam, India, June 16, 2018. Reuters The results can be overwhelming. If emissions continue to rise and global temperatures grow by 2 degrees Celsius, the mighty Ganges River could double in volume, with devastating consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who live in its basin. All that unpredictability creates painful choices for government officials who manage reservoirs and dams: Whether to store water in case of drought, or release it to avert floods. Take Kerala, one of India’s richer states, for instance. Its record rains this summer followed a long dry spell. After years, the reservoirs were good and full. And even though meteorologists warned of unusually heavy rains in August, dam operators did not open the floodgates in advance. It was a difficult call: What if the forecasts were wrong? What if the rains didn’t come? By the time the dam gates were opened, it was too late. The water engulfed whole villages and towns. More than 500 people died. The devastation was only beginning. Soon came an outbreak of leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that can damage the liver and kidneys and is sometimes fatal. More than 57,000 hectares of farmland were decimated. Yields of Kerala’s high-value spices, including cardamom and black pepper, were sharply hit. Even the best forecasts, Murtugudde pointed out, are only as good as the people who use them. To avert the worst impacts of disaster in the age of wild rains, it’s not just the science that matters, he said, but the ability of climate experts to persuade the people to follow the science. “You have to get them to trust the forecast,” he said.© 2018 New York Times News Service

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

The cache of 113 documents, translated and declassified by US intelligence agencies, are mostly dated between 2009 and 2011, intelligence officials said. The documents - the second tranche from the raid to have been declassified since May 2015 - depict an al Qaeda that was unwavering in its commitment to global jihad, but with its core leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan under pressure on multiple fronts. US President Barack Obama has said drone strikes and other counter-terrorism operations depleted al Qaeda's original leadership, culminating in bin Laden's killing by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. In the years since, the organization has proved resilient from Afghanistan to North Africa, and its ideological rival, Islamic State, has grown and spread. In one document, bin Laden issues instructions to al Qaeda members holding an Afghan hostage to be wary of possible tracking technology attached to the ransom payment. "It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it," bin Laden states in a letter to an aide identified only as "Shaykh Mahmud." In an apparent reference to armed US drones patrolling the skies, bin Laden says his negotiators should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar "except on a cloudy overcast day." While the document is undated, the hostage, Afghan diplomat Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was held from September 2008 to late 2010. Another, fragmentary document acknowledges that al Qaeda executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to discover they were probably innocent, according to senior US intelligence officials authorized to discuss the materials in advance of their public release. "I did not mention this to justify what has happened," wrote the undated letter's unidentified author, adding, "we are in an intelligence battle and humans are humans and no one is infallible." In a May 11, 2010 letter to his then second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, bin Laden urged caution in arranging an interview with al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Zaidan, asserting that the United States could be tracking his movements through devices implanted in his equipment, or by satellite. "You must keep in mind the possibility, however, slight, that journalists can be under surveillance that neither we nor they can perceive, either on the ground or via satellite," he wrote. GROWING PRESSURE Even as al Qaeda came under growing pressure, bin Laden and his aides planned a media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the documents show. They plotted diplomatic strategy and opined on climate change and the US financial collapse. In a undated letter "To the American people," the al Qaeda chief chides Obama for failing to end the war in Afghanistan; and accurately predicts that the US president's plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will fail. On April 28, 2011, just four days before his death, bin Laden was editing a document he had written on the Arab Spring revolutions. Al Qaeda's leaders also urged further attacks on the United States. "We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes," says a letter, apparently written by bin Laden, to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of al Qaeda's Yemen branch. Bin Laden "was still sort of thinking in very kind of grand schemes, and still ... trying to reclaim that 9/11 'victory'," said one of the senior intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. But he was "somewhat out of touch with the (actual) capabilities of his organization," the official said. The documents show the strains of managing al Qaeda's external networks, including identifying capable leaders and finding resources to fund operations abroad. One associate, who signed his 2009 note simply as "Your beloved "Atiyah," acknowledged troubles replacing an ineffective leader for external operations, saying some of the best candidates were dead. "There are new brothers, perhaps some would be suitable in the future, but not now," he wrote. Suspicion of tracking devices pops up again and again in the group's writings. The concern may have been merited - the United States conducts extensive electronic surveillance on al Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups. Abu Abdallah al-Halabi - who the US Treasury has identified as a name used by bin Laden's son-in law Muhammad Abdallah Hasan Abu-Al-Khayr - writes in a letter to "my esteemed brother Khalid" about intercepting messages of "spies" in Pakistan, who he said would facilitate air strikes on al Qaeda operatives by marking cars with infrared streaks that can be seen with night vision equipment. In another, bin Laden, writing under the pseudonym Abu Abdallah, expresses alarm over his wife's visit to a dentist while in Iran, worrying that a tracking chip could have been implanted with her dental filling. "The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli," he wrote.

One of the best-known international NGOs, with aid programmes running across the globe, Oxfam was under threat of losing its British government funding over sexual misconduct allegations first reported by the Times newspaper last week. The scandal was fast escalating into a broader crisis for Britain's aid sector by bolstering critics in the ruling Conservative Party who have argued that the government should reduce spending on aid in favour of domestic priorities. Aid minister Penny Mordaunt, who threatened on Sunday to withdraw government funding from Oxfam unless it gave the full facts about events in Haiti, summoned senior managers from the charity to a meeting on Monday. "Oxfam made a full and unqualified apology – to me, and to the people of Britain and Haiti - for the appalling behaviour of some of their staff in Haiti in 2011, and for the wider failings of their organisation's response to it," Mordaunt said after meeting Oxfam's chief executive, Mark Goldring. "I told Oxfam they must now demonstrate the moral leadership necessary to address this scandal, rebuild the trust of the British public, their staff and the people they aim to help, and deliver progress on these assurances," she added in a statement. The statement did not address the question of funding. There was no immediate comment from Oxfam. The Times newspaper reported on Friday that some staff who were in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there had paid for sex with prostitutes. Oxfam has neither confirmed nor denied that specific allegation but has said an internal investigation in 2011 had confirmed sexual misconduct had occurred. Reuters could not independently verify the allegation. Announcing her resignation on Monday, Deputy Chief Executive Penny Lawrence said Oxfam had become aware over the past few days that concerns were raised about the behaviour of staff in Chad as well as Haiti that the organisation failed to adequately act upon. "It is now clear that these allegations - involving the use of prostitutes and which related to behaviour of both the country director and members of his team in Chad - were raised before he moved to Haiti," she said. "As programme director at the time, I am ashamed that this happened on my watch and I take full responsibility." UN target Oxfam has said that as a result of its internal investigation in 2011, four people were dismissed, and three others - including the Haiti country director who had previously held the same role in Chad - had resigned. Reuters was unable to reach any of the Oxfam staff who worked in Haiti at the time. In its last financial year Oxfam received 32 million pounds ($44 million) from Britain's aid ministry, about 8 percent of its overall income. Whether or not it loses that funding, private donations could be hit by the bad publicity. Founded in 1942, Oxfam is one of Britain's best-known charities. Its 650 shops selling second hand clothes and books to raise funds are a familiar sight on the high street. For a sex scandal to hit such a high-profile brand, it risks affecting the wider British charity sector. Britain is one of only six nations to hit the UN target of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on aid - about 13 billion pounds a year - but there have been increasingly vitriolic attacks on that spending in recent years. Meeting the UN target was a policy championed by former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as part of his efforts to re-brand his party as more compassionate. But with Cameron gone after campaigning on the losing side in the 2016 Brexit referendum, the political climate on aid has changed. Priti Patel, an aid critic despite being Mordaunt's predecessor as international development minister, said the Haiti incidents were just "the tip of the iceberg" and there was a "culture of denial" in the sector. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent right-wing Conservative lawmaker, delivered to May's office on Friday a petition by readers of the Daily Express newspaper complaining that the aid budget was not well spent and should be cut.

Airports operator BAA won a court injunction on Monday barring environmental activists from disrupting London's Heathrow airport next week. BAA, owned by Spanish construction and services group Ferrovial, went to the High Court in London to restrict the actions of campaigners attending a "Climate Action" camp near the airport between Aug. 14 and 21. The judge, Justice Caroline Swift, said her decision would allow peaceful and lawful protests but barred a named group of individuals from taking disruptive action. She said it was nothing like as wide-ranging as originally sought by BAA, which had focused on four representatives from four different groups. The camp is being held to demonstrate against climate change and a proposed third runway at Heathrow. "The purpose of the injunction is to enable the airport to continue to function and to permit those responsible for security at the airport and elsewhere to focus on their prime concern of protecting the public from the risk of terrorist attack," Swift said. Swift said it would only apply to a limited group of individuals "intent upon disrupting the operation of the airport irrespective of the rights of passengers and others to go about their lawful activities". The order names Joss Garman and Leo Murray, representing activist group Plane Stupid, one of the organisers of the protest, and another individual, John Stewart. It also applies to any protester associated with any unlawful activity carried out by Plane Stupid. Environmental umbrella group AirportWatch had claimed the original injunction would hit millions of its members in its affiliated bodies, which include groups as diverse as Greenpeace, the National Trust and Friends of the Earth. Heathrow Airport Managing Director Mark Bullock said the injunction had never been about stopping lawful protests but was to minimise disruption to the 1.5 million passengers due to pass through the airport in the week of the planned protests. Garman said the injunction granted was not far-ranging enough to stop the protests. "BAA have lost badly," he told BBC television. "The Camp for Climate Action is going ahead." BAA runs London airports Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick, and four other airports in Britain. It was bought by Ferrovial for 10.1 billion pounds last year.

Scientists studying global warming have warned that rising temperatures make many species worldwide vulnerable, but the phenomenon is already playing out in Latin America where frog and toad species are heading toward extinction. "Some 60-70 percent of (amphibians) are in critical danger or almost extinct," said Luis Merlo, a veterinarian working with the animals, surrounded by terrariums filled with small toads. The survival of nearly 20 frog and toad species, which top Venezuela's list of endangered species, may rest on a small group of academics in a Caracas laboratory attempting to recreate the amphibians' natural reproductive conditions. Merlo leads Venezuela's first center for the conservation of amphibians, where studies them in hope of boosting the fledgling population. Dendrobates leucomelas Amphibians in the Venezuelan wild have been increasingly threatened over the last two decades, according to this year's "Red Book of Venezuelan Fauna," published by a group of Venezuela-based scientists. Dendrobates leucomelas There are 15 species of a small frog endemic to Venezuela's mountains that have been hit especially hard, their brilliant colors not seen for some three decades. Biodiverse Venezuela boasts vast tracts of rainforest, Andean mountains and Caribbean coastline. It is in the world's top 10 nations in terms of amphibian numbers. "They are very sensitive, dependent on the environment and beneficial to humans," Merlo said. Bellwethers These amphibians are also considered bellwethers for the health of their ecosystem. They are especially susceptible to warming because they have non-hard-shelled eggs, which cannot survive drying. An epidemic of the deadly amphibian chytrid fungus, which attacks their skin, has also led to the frogs' decline worldwide. Mannophryne herminae Mannophryne herminae The wave of frog extinction began in Mexico and has spread south to South America, said Jon Paul Rodriguez of the Species Conservation Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Countries such as Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador have also initiated conservation centers. "The toads are like the canaries that were used in ancient times in the mines: they are a sign that something serious is going on in the environment," Rodriguez said. "If we do not stop it in time, we will all be losers."

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

But now the streets of the Ashok Meadows housing complex where she lives are clear, with workers picking up garbage from residents' doorsteps each day and turning some of it into electricity. Since 2017, the complex has fed its food waste into a digester that converts it into biogas used to light the area's streetlights, park, social club and gym. "Clean energy from our rancid food leftovers, vegetable peels and other such throwaways? It is unbelievable how the concept of waste management has changed in the past few years," Bai Patil, 62, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Biogas generators like the one used in Ashok Meadows are now installed in more than 75 locations across India. Developed by Xeon Waste Managers (XWM), based in Pune, the EnergyBin systems let communities turn waste into free, renewable energy, said company president Jalaj Kumar Chaturvedi. "It is a common sight to find overburdened landfills with garbage that grows by the day. But since these EnergyBins dispose of the waste at the source itself, the landfills are spared," he said. According to Ashok Meadows resident Rishika Mahalley, the complex's system - operated and maintained by residents - has helped solve the problem of how to dispose of the nearly a tonne of garbage produced each day by the complex's 550 homes and common areas. Before the community bought the generator at the cost of 2.3 million Indian rupees ($31,000), it struggled with unreliable municipal garbage collection, which often left waste piling up, Mahalley noted. But "we have now gotten rid of the buzzing flies, scourge of mosquitoes and other insects, besides of course the stink that came from the vats where the garbage would be left until the municipal vehicles arrived to collect them," she said. FOOD TO FUEL Each day, waste pickers paid by the Ashok Meadows residents put between 550 kg and 600 kg (1,300 pounds) of food waste into the biogas plant, Mahalley said. As the organic matter breaks down it produces a flammable gas made up mainly of methane and carbon dioxide. The methane is then pressurised and piped into a power generator that burns the gas to convert it into 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity for the community each day. Mahalley said before the plant was installed the complex spend about 550 rupees ($7.50) a day on electricity for streetlights and other common facilities - a cost that has now virtually disappeared. It also saves the residents up to 6,000 rupees ($82) every month on municipal garbage disposal costs, she said. COSTS The biggest benefit of biogas plants - which are becoming increasingly popular around the world as a way to create climate-smart energy - is their ability to reduce emissions, said Jitendra S Sangwai, a chemical engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai. In particular, by capturing climate-changing gases that would normally be released into the atmosphere when organic matter decays in the open, such technology can curb emissions of methane gas, a potent short-term driver of climate change. While many small-scale biogas digesters are in operation around the globe, for now the costs and climate benefits of large biogas generators like EnergyBins are limited to communities that can afford them, Sangwai added. The systems can be expensive to buy, set up and maintain, he said. But XWM president Chaturvedi said the digesters provide multiple benefits. Besides cutting electricity and rubbish collection costs, some municipalities can tap into property tax rebates offered to residents who process their own organic waste, part of an effort to ease the heavy burden on landfills, he said. "With that tax concession and the other savings, the generators pay for themselves in three years," he said. GREEN GARBAGE DISPOSAL At the South Eastern Railways (SER) headquarters, a complex of offices and staff residences in Kolkata, a 1,000-kg-capacity XWM biogas generator has been operating since January 2020. It services a complex that houses 1,200 homes, a market, a social club and a hospital, which has a kitchen that generates food waste throughout the day. Prior to the installation of the digester, a once-daily municipal collection was not enough to get rid of all of the food leftovers produced, said the hospital's senior dietician Dr Sanchita Mazumder. "It was a nightmare to dispose of so much waste. We had to dig holes in the backyard to dump it," she said, adding that stray animals would then dig up the garbage and spread it around the complex. That has not been a problem since the biogas unit was installed, she said, noting that the gas generated from the kitchen's garbage has helped the hospital reduce its use of LPG gas for cooking by 80%. Having a better way to dispose of waste has also cut littering around the complex, said Altaf Hussain, head of the SER conservancy department. "The best part is how the community is learning to adopt clean garbage disposal methods," he said. ($1 = 74.2490 Indian rupees)

Thawing permafrost can release nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, a contributor to climate change that has been largely overlooked in the Arctic, a study showed on Sunday. The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere. Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas. "Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range," the study said. The scientists, from Denmark and Norway, studied sites in Canada and Svalbard off northern Norway alongside their main focus on Zackenberg. The releases would be a small addition to known impacts of global warming. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas from human activities, dominated by carbon dioxide ahead of methane. It is among the gases regulated by the UN's Kyoto Protocol for limiting global warming that could spur more sandstorms, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. Nitrous oxide comes from human sources including agriculture, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, and use of fossil fuels as well as natural sources in soil and water, such as microbes in wet tropical forests. The scientists said that past studies had reckoned that carbon dioxide and methane were released by a thaw of permafrost while nitrous oxide stayed locked up. "Thawing and drainage of the soils had little impact on nitrous oxide production," Nature said in a statement of the study led by Bo Elberling of Copenhagen University. "However, re-saturation of the drained soils with meltwater from the frozen soils -- as would happen following thawing -- increased nitrous oxide production by over 20 times," it said. "Nearly a third of the nitrous oxide produced in this process escaped into the atmosphere," it added.

Rwanda's President Paul Kagame is expected to win a resounding victory in Monday's election, partly due to the growth and stability he has delivered since the 1994 genocide and partly because of a crackdown on rivals. Rights groups and foreign diplomats say signs of repression have marred the runup to the poll, although donors expect it to be peaceful and say the revised electoral code will make it more transparent than in 2003 when Kagame won 95 percent of the vote. Kagame is applauded locally and internationally for rebuilding institutions, promoting women, boosting agricultural output and tripling household income. His two main rivals in the presidential race offer little genuine alternative, having spent 16 years as part of the ruling coalition led by his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). "RPF is strong, it is organized, it has planned over a long time, historically it has been with the people to resolve challenging issues and therefore that results in a kind of overwhelming support," Kagame told reporters on his last day of campaigning. "I have no regrets about it, I make no apologies." Rights group Amnesty International says the poll will take place in a climate of fear. Registration troubles prevented three outspoken parties from fielding candidates. Two party chiefs were arrested on charges including stirring ethnic hatred and genocide ideology. Opponents say they have been threatened and intimidated. Two newspapers were suspended in April, a critical journalist was shot in the head in June and a senior member of the Democratic Green Party was found nearly beheaded in July. Some analysts say that although Rwandans would like more choice, they are haunted by the genocide, in which gangs of Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. "A lot of Rwandans would want him (Kagame) to be a lot more open, and like to see more choices and feel more consulted but I don't see any evidence that they want radical regime change," author Philip Gourevitch told Reuters. "I'm afraid I can't see how a candidate like Victoire Ingabire, who is clearly identified with the old Hutu Power politics, would be healthy for this country at this time," said Gourevitch, who wrote "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," a book about the genocide. Ingabire, a former accountant who lived in exile in the Netherlands for 16 years, returned to Rwanda earlier this year to run for office. Her name will not appear on the ballot paper. The genocide was spawned, in part, by the surge of radical ethnic politics that followed the birth of multi-party democracy in Rwanda in the early 1990s. "Kagame is afraid that widening the democratic space would allow in wolves in sheepskins," said a western diplomat. Foreign diplomats said Kagame's real challenge comes from within his Tutsi cadres in the ruling party and army and that his war on graft, which has seen former political associates locked up, is a way of sidelining possible threats to his power. Since the beginning of the year top army officials have fled the country, been arrested, demoted or shot in mysterious circumstances. Kagame rejects allegations of a rift with his brothers in arms. "What I know does not suggest any kind of crisis at all. There are differences in terms of opinions like anywhere else in the world," he said. But exiled army and intelligence top brass are sounding increasingly belligerent and say Rwandans should stand up and fight for their freedom. "It boils down to a struggle for power among the party's inner cabal that could end up becoming very nasty. In private, RPF officials have told me: 'This is probably the biggest challenge we have faced as a party in many years,'" independent regional analyst Jason Stearns said on his Congo Siasa blog.

In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly since his resounding election victory in May, Modi also invoked India's Hindu and ascetic traditions, saying they might provide answers to climate change. Modi appeared to chastise Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had used his own General Assembly address on Friday to blame India for the collapse of the latest talks over Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed in full by both countries. "By raising this issue in this forum," Modi said in Hindi, "I don't know how serious our efforts will be, and some people are doubtful about it." Last month, India announced it was withdrawing from the planned peace talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbors because of plans by Pakistan to consult Kashmiri separatists beforehand. India was willing to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan, Modi said, so long as those talks are in "an atmosphere of peace, without a shadow of terrorism." India says Pakistan supports separatist militants that cross from the Pakistan-controlled side of Kashmir to attack Indian forces. Pakistan denies this, saying India's military abuses the human rights of Kashmiris, most of whom are Muslim. Modi is India's first Hindu nationalist prime minister in a decade, embracing a strain of politics that maintains that India's culture is essentially Hindu, although his Bharatiya Janata Party says such a culture is welcoming to other religions. He has said fears that he will favor India's Hindu majority over its large religious minorities, including some 170 million Muslims, are unfounded, and his comments on spirituality in his address are likely to be scrutinized for evidence of this. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when religious riots raged across the northwestern state in 2002 after a Muslim mob set alight a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, killing 59 people. More than 1,000 people were killed in the riots, most of them Muslims. Critics have accused Modi of allowing or even encouraging the riots to happen, but courts have found no evidence to indict him. In his address on Saturday, Modi invoked the "ancient wisdom" of India's Vedic era, during which Hinduism's most sacred texts were written. He also encouraged more people to take up yoga, the spiritual practice that predates the arrival of Islam in India. "Yoga should not be just an exercise for us, but it should be a means to get connected with the world and with nature," he said, calling on the United Nations to adopt an International Yoga Day. "It should bring a change in our lifestyle and create awareness in us, and it can help fighting against climate change." Modi is due to have private meetings with the prime ministers of Nepal and Bangladesh and the president of Sri Lanka on Saturday in New York. No meetings are planned with Sharif or other Pakistani officials, according to the Indian delegation. Next week, less than a decade after the United States banned him from visiting the country in 2005 under a law barring entry to foreigners who have severely violated religious freedoms, Modi is due to meet with US President Barack Obama at the White House. Modi will not eat at the state dinner, however, as he will be fasting for the Hindu festival of Navratri, his delegation has said.

The Indian Ocean chain of islands, famous for its luxury resorts, has been in turmoil since February 2012 when former president Mohamed Nasheed was ousted in what his supporters called a coup.Nasheed, who won the Maldives' first free election in 2008 and was frontrunner for Saturday's halted vote, warned on Sunday of a "constitutional void" if a new election was not held before President Mohamed Waheed's term ends on November 11.He demanded the resignation of Waheed, who in turn said he would carry the country forward "without any bloodshed" and had no desire to stay in office beyond the deadline.The police said they stopped the vote because they could not support an election held in contravention of the Supreme Court guidelines after some candidates failed to sign a new voter register. Nasheed's supporters condemned it as a new coup."We have decided to hold the first round of presidential elections on November 9, and if necessary, a second round on November 16," Elections Commissioner Fuwad Thowfeek told reporters in the capital Male.He said the commission set the date after discussions with the political parties and the government.World powers, including the Commonwealth, the United States and Britain, condemned as a threat to democracy the delay to Saturday's polls, which came just weeks after the Supreme Court had annulled a first attempt to hold the election on September 7, citing allegations of fraud."LAST DECISION"Waheed, who was Nasheed's vice president and took power when he was ousted, said he did not want to stay in the office "even a day beyond November 11"."It is not me who will decide on an arrangement post November 11. I believe the Supreme Court and the People's Majlis (parliament) need to think about this," he told reporters.Dismissing the international criticism, Waheed said: "I know the dangers and opportunities in the Maldives. We do things with the advice of others like Commonwealth and other governments, but I will make the last decision.""I have to consider the country's interests to carry the country forward without any bloodshed," he said.Nasheed has called for blocking of all streets in Male and bring the densely populated island and the capital of the archipelago to a standstill after the delay in the polls.Nasheed's supporters have staged protests since he was ousted in 2012, and masked men this month fire-bombed a television station that backs Nasheed, who came to international prominence in 2009 after holding a cabinet meeting underwater in scuba gear to highlight the threat of climate change.His main election rival is Abdulla Yameen, a half-brother of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled for 30 years and was considered a dictator by opponents and rights groups. Holiday resort tycoon Gasim Ibrahim, finance minister under Gayoom, was also running.Nasheed had looked set to return to office when he won the first round of the election on September 7, putting him in a good position to win a run-off vote set for September 28. But it was cancelled by the Supreme Court citing fraud despite international observers saying the election was free and fair.The country's new leader will need to tackle a rise in Islamist ideology, rights abuses and a lack of investor confidence after Waheed's government cancelled the biggest foreign investment project, with India's GMR Infrastructure.

The International Monetary Fund should set up an early warning system to prevent crises like the global credit crunch, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday. Proposing sweeping changes to international institutions, Brown called for rapid response teams of police and experts to be set up that could be sent quickly to trouble spots to restore order and begin rebuilding after conflicts. And he called for the creation of a multi-billion-dollar global climate change fund within the World Bank to finance environmentally sustainable development in the poorest countries. Brown believes that the rapid spread of the credit crisis last year after problems with US sub-prime mortgages points to failings in global financial supervision that must be fixed. "With financial markets and flows transformed by globalisation, I propose that -- acting with the same independence as a central bank -- the IMF should focus on surveillance of the global economic and financial system and thus prevent crises, not just resolve them," he said in excerpts of a speech he will deliver to business executives in New Delhi. The IMF, working with the Financial Stability Forum -- a group of central banks, regulators and international bodies -- "should be at the heart of an early warning system for financial turbulence affecting the global economy," he said. The credit crunch claimed a high-profile casualty when British mortgage lender Northern Rock suffered the country's first bank run in more than a century last year. Northern Rock has borrowed about 26 billion pounds ($50.9 billion) from the Bank of England, creating a huge political headache for Brown. CALL FOR CHANGE "The IMF and World Bank ... have to change to become properly equipped for a world where national problems can quickly become global -- and contagion can move as swiftly as the fastest communication," said Brown, who ends a four-day trip to India and China later on Monday. Brown meets the leaders of France, Germany and Italy as well as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in London on January 29 to discuss how to respond to the crisis. Brown said he supported India's bid for a permanent place, with other countries, on an expanded UN Security Council. British officials would not say however how many permanent members they believed a reformed Security Council could have. Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States have been veto-bearing permanent members of the council since the United Nations was created in 1945. But they face growing pressure for reform with Brazil, Germany, India and Japan all demanding permanent seats. Brown said another problem was that there was no mechanism for quickly sending in experts, police and judges to get states back on their feet when peacekeepers intervened in a conflict. "We must do more to ensure rapid reconstruction on the ground once conflicts are over," he said. "I propose that we constitute rapid response standby teams of judges, police, trainers and other civilian experts who can work on the ground to help put countries on the road to economic recovery and political stability," he said. He called for a new UN crisis prevention and recovery fund to provide immediate support for reconstruction in such cases.

Like other right-wing populists, from Britain and Brazil to Poland and Germany, Orban was still coming to grips with the defeat of populism’s flamboyant standard-bearer in the White House. The Hungarian leader acknowledged that a victory by Trump was his “Plan A.” There wasn’t really a Plan B. While Trump’s defeat is a stinging blow to his populist allies, its consequences for populism as a global political movement are more ambiguous. Trump, after all, won more votes than any American presidential candidate in history aside from Biden, which attests to the enduring appeal of his message. The economic, social and political grievances that fed populist and xenophobic movements in many countries are still alive, and indeed, may be reinforced by the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. Social media continues to spread populist ideas, often cloaked in conspiracy theories designed to sow doubt about the scientific facts behind the virus or the legitimacy of the electoral process that brought about Trump’s defeat. “It’s arguably the most consequential election in our lifetime, but I would be very cautious about a mood swing toward believing populism is finished,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford University. “In general,” he said, “all such extreme mood swings are mistaken, and specifically, more than 70 million Americans voted for Trump.” Moreover, some of these leaders are likely to be able to exploit the aftereffects of the pandemic — from chronic unemployment and insecurity to soaring public debt and racial tensions — even if they themselves worsened the problems by playing down the threat of the virus and politicising the public-health response. Some tried to pivot quickly to the new political reality. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whom Trump once referred to as “Britain’s Trump,” spoke by phone with Biden on Tuesday, telling him he looked forward to working with the United States on “shared priorities, from tackling climate change to promoting democracy, and building back better from the coronavirus pandemic.’” That last line was a reference to a slogan from Biden’s campaign, also used by Johnson’s government. For all the talk of a populist wave that swept the world after Britain’s Brexit vote in June 2016 and Trump’s election five months later, experts point out that the populist and far-right movements in Germany and other European countries always had their own roots that were distinct and predated the Anglo-American variety. Their fortunes have waxed and waned, largely independent of Trump. In France, right-wing leader Marine Le Pen suffered a crushing defeat by Emmanuel Macron in 2017, at a time when the American president was riding high. Now, with Macron beleaguered by the pandemic and deeply unpopular, polls suggest that Le Pen is poised to make a comeback in elections scheduled for 2022. In Italy, where Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, once dreamed of opening an academy to train populist leaders in a converted monastery, the far-right parties built their political base by opposing migration from the south, a phenomenon that predated Trump and will outlast his presidency. “Trump gave these parties legitimacy,” said Fabrizio Tonello, a political-science professor at the University of Padua. But he said the president’s unyielding manner and winner-take-all style never had much influence in Italy’s messy politics, where the premium is on deal-making and compromise. In Germany, Trump’s complicated legacy was evident in how the main rightist party, Alternative for Germany, dithered over how to treat Biden’s victory. While some lawmakers parroted Trump’s false claims about the vote counting, party leaders quietly congratulated Biden after the vote was called. Some interpreted the more conciliatory tone as a recognition that Trump’s defeat was also a defeat for the polarising politics of the German party, which has seen its popularity hover around 10% in recent surveys. “All of those who focused on a politics of polarization around the globe have suffered a setback,” said Hans Vorländer, a professor of political science at the Technical University Dresden “It is a very clear signal.” Others, though, are more sceptical. Populism in Europe is a homegrown phenomenon, they said, so while populist leaders could point to Trump as a kindred spirit while he was in office, their fortunes were not directly tied to his. “Trump was more or less irrelevant for populist and right-wing movements in Germany and Europe,” said Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democratic politician who is vying to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of the party. “For that reason, his defeat will not affect them in a fundamental way.” Conspiracy theorists and the movements they have spawned — like QAnon, which has taken root in Germany — will also be unmoved by Trump’s defeat, according to some experts, because his allegations of fraud simply give them another opportunity to spin the situation to their advantage. “The wonderful thing about conspiracy theories is that they are non-falsifiable and impossible to refute with facts,” said Anna Grzymala-Busse, a professor of politics at Stanford University who specializes in populism. Where Trump will continue to cast a shadow, Röttgen said, is in how the United States engages with the world. Immigration, the great-power rivalry with China, suspicion of foreign entanglements, and doubts of the value of alliances — all these themes will continue to drive debates over the country’s foreign policy. Populist leaders are also likely to keep borrowing from Trump’s playbook. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, a retired military officer who dined with the president at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Mar-a-Lago, modelled his response to the pandemic on Trump’s — disdaining lockdowns and face masks, and endorsing an anti-malaria pill that was ineffective and dangerous. Bolsonaro mimicked Trump in making unsubstantiated allegations of voting irregularities, which he said were to blame for him having to compete in a runoff election in 2018. Political scientists in Brazil said they viewed Trump’s refusal to concede his electoral loss as a dangerous precedent. In Hungary, Orban made no secret of his preference in the US election. “We root for Donald Trump’s victory,” he wrote on Nov 3. While the ballots were being counted, his Cabinet posted a message saying, “We supported Donald Trump, whereas Joe Biden has been supported by George Soros,” the billionaire financier who is the perennial subject of conspiracy theories on the right. When Orban finally congratulated Biden on Sunday, it was for his “successful presidential campaign,” not for winning the White House. He went on to wish Biden “continued success in fulfilling your responsibilities.” The departure of Trump will make life more difficult for Orban and other populists in Eastern Europe, said Andras Biro-Nagy, of Policy Solutions, a think tank in Budapest that has tracked Orban for the past decade. But he questioned whether Biden would succeed in getting them to change their ways. “For leaders like Viktor Orban, the easy days are over,” Biro-Nagy said. “The biggest challenge for them is that there will be more pressure and more attention on policies that went unchecked in the last four years.” For example, he cited Orban’s expulsion of the Central European University from Hungary. Founded in Budapest by Soros, the school was forced to move the majority of its operations to Vienna. Biro-Nagy said it was “unprecedented” that the State Department did not intervene in the situation. “Orban could get away with policies that hurt American interests,” he said. “The big question for me, is how important will Hungary or Poland be to the new U.S. administration? At least this open support will cease to exist.” To some experts, the greatest significance of Trump’s defeat is not how it will change the populists but whether it will embolden those who oppose them. In countries like Hungary, where the democratic system has been corroded almost out of recognition, the vanquishing of Trump could serve as a beacon. “It shows them it really is possible to get rid of the populists,” Grzymala-Busse said.   c.2020 The New York Times Company

Obviously, in a world of differences, some people can do more to tackle the climate crisis than others. So it’s essential to recognise how much neglected potential exists among nearly half the human race. But there’s a snag, and it’s a massive one: the women and girls who can do so much to avert global heating reaching disastrous levels need to be able to exercise their right to education. Bold claims?  Project Drawdown is a group of researchers who believe that stopping global heating is possible, with solutions that exist today. To do this, they say, we must work together to achieve drawdown, the point when greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start to decline. The project’s conclusions are startling − and positive. One is that educating girls works better to protect the climate than many technological solutions, vital though they are, and including several variants of renewable energy. Yet, the group finds, girls and women suffer disproportionately from climate breakdown, and failures in access to education worsen this problem. After the horrendous 2004 tsunami, for example, an Oxfam report found that male survivors outnumbered women by almost 3:1 in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. Men were more likely to be able to swim, and women lost precious evacuation time trying to look after children and other relatives. But given more power and say in how we adapt to and try to prevent global heating, the female half of humankind could make disproportionally positive contributions, the project says. Using UN data, it suggests that educating girls could result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 51.48 gigatonnes by 2050. The UN Environment Programme says that total greenhouse gas emissions had reached a record high of 55.3 gigatonnes in 2018. Multiple barriers The Rapid Transition Alliance (RTA) is a UK-based organisation which argues that humankind must undertake “widespread behaviour change to sustainable lifestyles … to live within planetary ecological boundaries and to limit global warming to below 1.5°C”. It says that although access to education is a basic human right, across the world. girls continue to face multiple barriers based on their gender and its links to other factors such as age, ethnicity, poverty and disability. But the RTA adds: “Research shows that for each intake of students, educating girls has multiple benefits that go far beyond the individual and any particular society. It can also result in rapid and transformative change that affects the planet itself.” One example it cites is from Mali, in West Africa, where women with secondary education or higher have an average of 3 children, while those with no education have an average of 7 children. Environmentalists’ failure It says that while the UN currently thinks the world’s population will grow from 7.3 billion today to 9.7bn by 2050, with most of the growth happening in developing countries, recent research shows that if girls’ education continues to expand, that number would total 2 billion fewer people by 2045. It argues that it is not just politicians and the media who fail to focus on this grossly slewed access to education. The RTA says the environmental movement itself rarely makes connections between the education of girls and success in tackling climate change. One example of conservation work being tied successfully to educating and empowering women it cites is the Andavadoaka clinic in Madagascar, which is funded by a British charity, Blue Ventures Conservation (BVC). The link between population growth, the lack of family planning facilities and the increasing pressure on fragile natural resources prompted BVC to establish the clinic, which has been running for over a decade and is part of a wider programme serving 45,000 people. As well as the original clinic other projects have grown up that concentrate on specific economic and participation opportunities for women and girls. Making a difference In the least developed countries women make up almost half of the agricultural labour force, giving them a huge role in feeding the future population. But there is a massive gap between men and women in their control over land, their ability to obtain inputs and the pay they can expect. Individual girls and women continue to make a massive difference, whether Greta Thunberg spurring action on climate change or Malala Yousafzai, shot for trying to attend school in Afghanistan, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign for girls’ education. Women who have climbed high up the political ladder have sometimes used their success to ensure that girls are taken seriously. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of an African country − Liberia − used her power to expand the quality of provision in pre-school and primary education by joining the Global Partnership for Education, and the former US First Lady, Michele Obama, spearheaded the Let Girls Learn organisation. The Rapid Transition Alliance’s conclusion is short and simple: “Educating girls brings broad benefits to wider society as well improving efforts to tackle the climate emergency.”

Mexico scrambled to break an impasse between rich and poor nations over future cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on Friday as 190-nation climate talks went down to the wire. Delegates said there was little progress in overnight talks in Mexico's beach resort of Cancun and that the negotiations, due to end on Friday, may well be extended into Saturday as all sides seek a deal to address global warming. "It's in the hands of the Mexican presidency," John Ashe, who is chairing key discussions about the future of the Kyoto Protocol, told Reuters. The Kyoto Protocol currently binds almost 40 rich countries to cut greenhouse gases until 2012, but wealthy and poor nations are divided over what obligations they should all assume over the next few years. Negotiators hope for a modest deal in Cancun to set up a fund to help developing nations tackle climate change, protect tropical forests and agree a mechanism to share clean technologies Ambitions are low after last year's U.N. summit in Copenhagen fell short of a treaty. Mexico's Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa is presiding over the two weeks of talks in Cancun and is leading efforts to broker a deal over the future of Kyoto which is blocking progress on other issues. Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan by telephone to discuss the standoff after Tokyo said it would not sign up for an extension of Kyoto beyond 2012 unless developing nations also commit to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions. The position has angered many developing countries. A Japanese foreign ministry statement said that Kan would work to make the talks a success. Delegates of Britain and Brazil are also working in Cancun to help unlock a deal. Ashe said it was "hard to say" if there would be progress on Friday, adding that Mexico's Espinosa was drawing up new texts for delegates. "At least there's confidence that she could put something for them to consider. This was not the case in Copenhagen. If there's one thing that we've learned in Cancun is that trust has been restored," he told Reuters. The Copenhagen summit collapsed in acrimony, agreeing only a non-binding accord to limit a rise in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times. Another failure in Cancun would badly damage the UN-led talks. Kyoto currently obliges almost 40 developed nations to cut emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012. Japan insists that all major emitters, including China, India and the United States, must sign up for a new treaty to succeed Kyoto. Developing nations say that rich nations, which have emitted most greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, must extend Kyoto before the poor sign up for curbs that would damage their drive to end poverty. Separately, India said that it might eventually commit itself to legally-binding emissions curbs in a shift that could help the negotiations in Cancun. India has previously rejected any legally binding commitments.

The incongruity was on centre stage both at the global climate summit taking place in Scotland, and in Rome this past weekend during a gathering of leaders from the 20 largest economies. The president’s comments highlighted the political and economic realities facing politicians as they grapple with climate change. And they underscored the complexity of moving away from the fossil fuels that have underpinned global economic activity since the Industrial Age. “On the surface, it seems like an irony,” Biden said at a news conference Sunday. “But the truth of the matter is — you’ve all known; everyone knows — that the idea we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight,” he said, was “just not rational.” Biden’s words have drawn fire from energy experts and climate activists, who say the world cannot afford to ramp up oil and natural gas production if it wants to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Environmental groups are intensely watching to see how the president intends to meet his ambitious goal of halving the nation’s emissions, compared to 2005 levels, by the end of this decade. A recent International Energy Agency report found that countries must immediately stop new oil, gas and coal development if they hope to keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius. “We are in a climate crisis. There is no room for the left hand and the right hand to be doing different things,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director at Greenpeace International. “It’s not credible to say you’re fighting for 1.5 degrees while you’re calling for increased oil production.” With gasoline prices rising above $3.30 a gallon nationwide, Biden over the weekend urged major energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production, part of a larger effort to pressure OPEC countries and Russia to increase the supply of oil. He was joined by President Emmanuel Macron of France, whose country hosted the 2015 meeting in Paris where 200 countries agreed to collectively tackle global warming. At the conclusion Sunday of a Group of 20 summit that ended with lofty rhetoric on climate but fewer concrete actions than activists had hoped, Biden addressed the irony head-on. The transition to lower-emission sources of energy would take years, and in the meantime, it was important to ensure that people can afford to drive their cars and heat their homes, he said at a news conference. “It does, on the surface, seem inconsistent,” the president said, “but it’s not at all inconsistent in that no one has anticipated that this year we’d be in a position — or even next year — that we’re not going to use any more oil or gas; that we’re not going to be engaged in any fossil fuels. We’re going to stop subsidising those fossil fuels. We’re going to be making significant changes. And it just makes the argument that we should move more rapidly to renewable energy — to wind and solar and other means of energy.” Biden’s climate and social spending plan pending in Congress does not eliminate government subsidies for fossil fuels, which are estimated to be about $20 billion annually. His comments came as the president and his aides are struggling to parry Republican attacks linking his economic agenda to rising inflation, including higher gasoline prices, which are helping to drive down his approval ratings. Biden has shown a high sensitivity to the politics of the pump. He repeatedly rebuffed efforts by Republican senators earlier this year to raise federal gasoline taxes — a move economists widely say would discourage oil demand — over concerns that they would place an undue burden on middle-class Americans and violate his pledge not to increase taxes on people earning less than $400,000 a year. Middle-class Americans “have to get to their work. They have to get in an automobile, turn on the key, get their kids to school,” Biden said at the news conference. “The school buses have to run.” He said the idea “that there’s an alternative to walk away from being able to get in your automobile is just not realistic; it’s not going to happen.” Higher gas and oil prices can have a ripple effects across the broader economy, raising costs for transportation-related industries such as trucking. That in turn increases the costs of anything that has to be shipped, pushing up prices for goods. And if consumers are spending a greater share of their income to fill up their cars and heat their homes, they have less money to spend on those goods. The president’s answers in some ways echoed the executives of several large oil and gas companies, who testified last week before a House panel investigating the role of their industry in disinformation aimed at slowing down a transition to wind, solar and other clean energy. As Democrats on the committee tried to extract promises from the executives that they would phase out oil and gas development, Republicans noted that Biden was asking the companies to increase production. “Oil and gas will continue to be necessary for the foreseeable future,” Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon Mobil, told the committee. “We currently do not have the adequate alternative energy sources.” Biden’s legislative agenda seeks to speed the migration away from oil in several ways. The large spending bill pending in Congress includes $550 billion in climate initiatives, largely concentrated in tax credits to incentivise solar power, electric cars and other technologies meant to reduce emissions. A separate piece of legislation, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, includes a down payment on Biden’s goal of building out a national network of electric-vehicle charging stations. But those initiatives have not yet passed. And even if they do, they could take years to begin to bend American consumer preferences away from gasoline-powered vehicles, a lag that administration officials repeatedly cite in explaining his push for more oil production in the short term. “If he were asking them to boost their production over five years, I’d quit,” John Kerry, Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate, told reporters Sunday. “But he’s not. He’s asking them to boost production in this immediate moment.” Kerry maintained that as the world expands wind and solar energy and invests in new transmission networks to carry that renewable electricity to homes and businesses, it will “liberate” countries from dependence on fossil fuels. “But you can’t just shut down everybody’s economy across the planet and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to use oil’ or whatever,” Kerry said. Some energy analysts agreed, saying that while the timing of Biden’s request for increased oil production may be awkward, doing so reflects economic reality. “There’s a difference between the world we have today and the world we want in the future,” said Jason Bordoff of the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. “It makes perfect sense for the Biden administration to simultaneously seek to make sure there’s adequate and affordable energy for households today and at the same time take the most aggressive measures in US history to spur vehicle electrification and move beyond oil in the future,” he said. In its road map detailing how to slash global carbon dioxide emissions by midcentury, the International Energy Agency urged ending sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035; phasing out by 2040 power plants that burn coal, oil and gas without capturing their emissions; and creating a global energy sector based largely in renewables by 2050. The IEA also warned that emissions are still rising and that the world is still going in the wrong direction, failing to grasp the massive transformation of the global energy system required to keep the planet safe. The World Meteorological Organization reported last month that the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record level in 2020, despite an economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, and is rising again this year. Meanwhile, China is expanding coal production and imports in response to power shortages the past several months. Justin Guay, director of global strategy with the Sunrise Project, a nonprofit group that advocates for a global transition away from oil, gas and coal, said the United States and other nations need to immediately halt new fossil fuel production. “Net zero lives or dies on whether we move beyond fossil fuels,” said Guay, whose group is not affiliated with the Sunrise Movement activist group. “That starts with an immediate halt to the expansion of coal, oil and gas. Not next year or next decade. Right now.” ©2021 The New York Times Company

Johnson will head to India on Thursday with calls for his resignation ringing in his ears after he was fined for breaking his own COVID-19 lockdown rules by attending a birthday party for him in Downing Street in June 2020. Parliament returns from its Easter vacation on Tuesday and Johnson has said he would "set the record straight" about gatherings in his office. He had previously told lawmakers there were no parties and guidance was always followed. In details released late on Saturday, Johnson's office said the British leader would use his trip to India to deepen relations, including in-depth talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Mod on the two nations' "strategic defence, diplomatic and economic partnership". He will also push for progress in talks on a free trade deal, which Britain is hoping to strike as part of its post-Brexit strategy. His office said such a trade deal was predicted to boost Britain's total trade by up to 28 billion pounds ($36.5 billion) annually by 2035. But the visit will be overshadowed in part by disagreement over the Ukraine conflict. Western allies have called for India, which imports arms from Russia, to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin in stronger terms, and US President Joe Biden earlier this week told Modi that buying more oil from Russia was not in India's interest. British trade minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan also said last month Britain was very disappointed with India's stance. However, Johnson's office made no direct reference to the conflict, although a source said it was expected Ukraine would be discussed "among other geopolitical issues". Johnson said India, as a major economic power, was a highly valued strategic partner. "As we face threats to our peace and prosperity from autocratic states, it is vital that democracies and friends stick together," he said in a statement. Last year, he was forced to cancel a planned trip to India because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last May, the two countries announced a partnership involving more than 530 million pounds of Indian investment into Britain, and Downing Street said Johnson was expected to announce further major investment and new collaboration on cutting-edge science, health and technology.

Down at the waterfront port, which is spread across several artificial islands, the land moved like water, rippling in the seismic waves. Concrete quays collapsed into Osaka Bay. These structures built to keep water out no longer did. Seismographs quickly confirmed: A magnitude 6.9 earthquake had paralysed the entire city. Bridges and highways were ruined; water, electricity, and telecommunication lines were cut off. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes. Over 6,000 people died. Restoration work endured for years. Today, researchers worldwide view Kobe as an example of a modern city where structures failed to perform the way engineers thought they would. Halfway around the world another metropolis — San Francisco — has drawn worrisome parallels: Like Kobe, the Northern California coastal city sits at the heart of a dense, seismically active urban area constructed on enormous areas of filled land, much of which is protected by a sea wall vulnerable to the rising waters caused by climate change. Its particular confluence of geology, city construction and overdue infrastructure updates feeds into its vulnerability, but other cities around the world, too, face the twin challenges of seismic hazards and rising seas, from Jakarta, Indonesia to Christchurch, New Zealand, and any city along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean from Alaska in North America to Patagonia in South America. While each locale must find solutions suited to its individual circumstances, the premise remains the same: Time is running short to fortify infrastructure built in a world that did not account for climate change. Wealthier countries will have better odds of succeeding. Nonetheless, the challenge for all becomes how cities secure themselves against disaster today while also anticipating future adjustment and adaptation. San Francisco is a microcosm of some of the challenges lurking around the globe. And while the city is making some progress in fortifying its protective sea wall, the question is: Are the plans unfolding fast enough? Are they ambitious enough? Researchers from the US Geological Survey say San Francisco has a 72% chance of at least a magnitude 6.7 quake’s occurring before 2043, and it could come as early as tomorrow. At levels like that, Port of San Francisco engineers calculate that the city’s underwater sea wall, a 19th-century pile of rocks and concrete that holds the northeast waterfront in place, is likely to slide into the San Francisco Bay. The result: a catastrophic unhemming of a city of nearly 900,000 people. That the wall has already sunk into the bay makes future risk that much more foreseeable. In an earthquake over 7.0 in magnitude and with an epicenter within 10 miles of San Francisco, the Embarcadero roadway, which on a typical day hosts around 94,000 vehicle passenger trips, is predicted to split. Along this thoroughfare, bookended by views of the city’s two bridges, lies the West Coast’s key financial district on one side, and the historic waterfront that welcomes over 15 million visitors each year on the other. About 300,000 tourists arrive through its international cruise terminal each year, and as many as 48,000 regional commuters pass through the Embarcadero BART station each weekday. It’s a central channel for utilities that keep the city in motion, from water to sewer lines, electrical to natural gas conduits. During one of the most worrisome earthquake scenarios, described in Waterfront Resilience Programme documents, when the ground spills into the bay, engineers fear that so, too, might the utility corridor, rupturing pipes and electricity lines. The historic pier sheds and bulkhead wharves would tumble into the water, and the wooden piles supporting them would splinter. Researchers predict that the land supporting near-shore blocks of the city — former marshland — will convulse like water just as in Kobe, displacing anything and anyone atop it. If the quake hits on a weekday, 40,000 people could be along the waterfront, many stuck in collapsed structures or piers over water. This same area, along the Embarcadero, holds the city’s disaster response services, including evacuation facilities and its emergency operation centre, which would be cut off when most needed. Over $100 billion in building value and economic value are potentially at risk from sea wall collapse, not including pricey utility repair. Port engineers fear much of the sea wall itself would be irreparable. The Port of San Francisco (which manages 7.5 miles of the city’s waterfront, including the 3 miles buttressed by the sea wall) had assumed the wall needed upgrading, but it did not know just how direly until 2016, when officials released a preliminary study of the seismic vulnerabilities. Unlike some sea walls, San Francisco’s provides structural support as well as flood protection. The subsequent 2020 report detailed its weak points on both fronts. As climate change makes ocean levels rise, the sea wall will increasingly have to perform in a context it was not designed for. Given that an earthquake could strike any day, the port’s immediate priority is ensuring the sea wall’s integrity in such an event. But doing so also must consider sea level rise, and its uncertainties of how fast and how high. Risk mitigation decisions made now must allow for the unknowable. Patrick King, who directs port and maritime work at Jacobs, the engineering firm managing the port’s resiliency programme, articulates the urgent challenge of designing a future waterfront. “This infrastructure was built for a certain environment that no longer exists and is rapidly changing,” he said. And now, to the best of their ability, “We need to predict what that environment is going to look like.” “Wall” is a generous word for the pile of rocks sitting on top of mud running along San Francisco’s northeastern waterfront. During the feverish early days of the gold rush, San Franciscans built the sea wall in a slapdash effort to establish some flat land at the edge of the hilly city. Horses were struggling to lug gold-filled wagons over the hills, and San Franciscans needed warehouses and counting-houses on level ground. Impatient for steam-powered shovels to arrive from across the country, residents began dumping into the marshland of Yerba Buena Cove whatever was on hand: loose sand, debris remnant from city construction, unwanted goods, trash, remains of abandoned ships. After a year, San Francisco had expanded three blocks into the Bay. To rein in the construction chaos, the California Legislature established a Board of State Harbour Commissioners to create a harbour development plan. Construction of their first sea wall — essentially a rescue mission for the trashed harbour — began in 1867. A better-funded effort took off in 1878, and construction continued in stages over the next four decades. Though longevity was not at the forefront of the undertaking, the wall still stands — long outlasting what anyone could have expected. And to some experts, this is worrisome. “I would suggest that San Francisco has triple jeopardy,” King said: earthquakes, sea level rise and aged infrastructure. Until now, the wall has mostly worked, though barely. In the 1906 earthquake, the sea wall shifted into the Bay, crumpling streetcar tracks, rupturing pipes and destroying homes. Entire stretches of street slid sideways; other portions dropped a couple of feet. In today’s city, a similar disaster would be even worse. In 1989, the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake liquefied sections of soil, most notably in the Marina District, where terrible fires broke out. Along the Embarcadero, the sea wall cracked. Some of its construction joints split open. “We had a huge fissure out here,” recalled Mac Leibert, 51, general manager of Pier 23 Cafe Restaurant & Bar, gesturing to the Embarcadero roadway outside of the squat blue-and-white cafe. The epicentre of Loma Prieta was 60 miles southeast of San Francisco. The effects of its shaking in the city were tempered by its distance. Next time, San Francisco might not be so lucky. Despite impending bleak scenarios, steps to a safer, more secure future along the waterfront have started to become visible. Ahead lies the difficult work of balancing design solutions, an unknown future and budget constraints — all against the backdrop of the fast-ticking clock. Seismically shoring up the sea wall is first on the port’s list of projects. This means retrofitting bulkhead wharves and walls by reinforcing piles, joints, and decks, and strengthening the fill so it will not liquefy. It also involves working with emergency medical workers and emergency responders to understand how their capabilities might be affected by an earthquake. Right now, the port is in “the creative phase,” developing its first adaptation plans, which will be revealed in the fall. The measures will not be restricted to seismic risks. According to the port’s Waterfront Resilience Program director, Brad Benson, “It’s better to build once to solve multiple problems.” Making seismically fortified structures resilient to rising seas is not as simple as raising the wall’s height. Generally speaking, most sea wall infrastructure has, until now, been designed to weather an isolated storm, allowing time to repair before the next one. Going forward, sea walls will need to provide protection not just several days a year, but twice daily, at increasingly elevated high tides. Infrastructure design will have to account for this increased stress, and even more so in seismic zones, says Mark Stacey, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “The seismic aspect has to be really robust, and probably some redundancies or over design,” he explained. “Because earthquakes will coincide with those flood protection systems being active.” While much of the San Francisco Bay is suited to marshes or other green infrastructure as flood control, the Embarcadero nearshore waters are generally too deep for such strategies. Certain ecological interventions, like a textured sea wall to encourage marine life, could provide critical habitat but will not benefit seismic or flooding mitigation strategies. However structures are seismically strengthened, the ability to adjust them will be built in. Because the sea wall material, the mud and fill underneath, and the infrastructure adjacent vary along the waterfront, so will strengthening and adaptation techniques. “It can’t just be, let’s elevate 3 feet so that we can’t flood in this particular area,” King said. “It’s got to be, what is the future state of this environment, and what is the population going to need? You have to build in the adaptive capacity to change as the environment changes.” The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission recently permitted a levee upgrade project in nearby Foster City that exemplifies how adaptation over time could play out. Every five years, the city will evaluate the physical structures and updated federal and regional guidance. If necessary, it will perform a new risk assessment, potentially adjusting structures. The looming question over any discussion is how to pay for these projects. The sea wall project is estimated at $5 billion, and it is only one of many port projects addressing waterfront resiliency. But it is a price tag that will be paid over 30 years, and funding options look better now than they have recently. The successes of public-private partnerships in existing waterfront projects bode well for future work. California’s state budget surplus just yielded a proposed $11.8 billion to address climate risks, with $211.5 million allocated to coastal resiliency. The Biden administration recently announced expanding the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities programme, which provides preemptive hazard mitigation funding. All these options are positive developments in the United States, where funding is typically not allocated until after the disaster: Think of the FEMA and HUD money after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. “This really separates us from other places, doing upfront planning,” said Brian Strong, San Francisco’s capital planning director and chief resilience officer. “It’s very hard to get the money before the disaster happens, to be proactive about it.” Strong’s remarks come just months after his city weathered other simultaneous disasters: COVID-19, noxious air quality, extreme heat. The surplus budget enabling climate funding happened in part because the pandemic did not sink the economy as severely as projected. According to California Assembly member Al Muratsuchi, chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies, now could be “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to invest in climate crisis preparedness. After shepherding his city through the challenges of the past year and culling lessons about disaster response along the way, Strong is sanguine, if sober, about San Francisco’s ability to be prepared for what comes next. “We really don’t have a choice,” he says. “It’s impossible to solve everything in a few years. We’re taking a long-term view.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

SYDNEY, Dec 24(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - An ancient underground water basin the size of Libya holds the key to Australia avoiding a water crisis as climate change bites the drought-hit nation. Australia's Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world, covering 1.7 million sq km and lying beneath one-fifth of Australia. The basin holds 65 million gigalitres of water, about 820 times the amount of surface water in Australia, and enough to cover the Earth's land mass under half a metre of water, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee. And it is slowly topped up with 1 million megalitres a year as rain filters through porous sandstone rock, becoming trapped in the underground basin. "There is probably enough water in there to last Australia's needs for 1,500 years, if we wanted to use it all," says John Hillier, a hydrogeologist who has just completed the Great Artesian Basin Resource Study. But he and other experts warn that access to the basin's water supply is under threat from declining artesian pressure, which forces the water to the surface via bores and springs. If artesian pressure falls too far, due to excessive extraction of water, the ancient water source will be unreachable, except through costly pumping. Lying as much as two km below ground, some parts of the basin are 3 km deep from top to bottom. The basin was formed between 100 and 250 million years ago and consists of alternating layers of waterbearing sandstone aquifers and non-waterbearing siltstones and mudstones. Basin water is extracted through bores and is the only source of water for mining, tourism and grazing in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia states, and the Northern Territory. The underground water spawns A$3.5 billion (US$2.4 billion) worth of production a year from farming, mining and tourism, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee. The mining and petroleum industry extracts 31,000 megalitres of basin water a year, which is used in production or pumped out as a by-product of mining, and is vital for future expansion. Mining giant BHP-Billiton draws about 11,680 megalitres a year from the basin to operate its Olympic Dam gold, copper and uranium mine in South Australia. It would treble water usage under a plan to double production, with the extra water drawn from the basin and a new desalination plant. Swiss-based miner Xstrata Plc is looking at the basin as a water source for what would be Australia's biggest open cut thermal coal mine, at Wandoan in Queensland, which would supply 20 million tonnes a year, with a mine life of 30 years. But the pastoral industry is by far the biggest user, taking 500,000 megalitres a year to water some of Australia's most productive farmlands. Angus Emmott runs a cattle property called Moonbah in central Queensland and relies on basin water in times of drought. "The bores underpin the social and economic value of this huge inland area of Australia where there wasn't permanent fresh water," said Emmott. "With climate change, we will be more reliant on the Great Artesian Basin, so we're morally obliged to make the best use of that water...so we don't waste it." BASIN WATER THREATENED Since it was first tapped in 1878, an estimated 87 million megalitres has been extracted and up to 90 percent of it wasted. As a result of falling water pressure, more than 1,000 natural springs have been lost and one-third of the original artesian bores have ceased flowing. The extraction of ancient basin water into the atmosphere also contributes to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, releasing 330,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. A 15-year Great Artesian Basin Sustainability project started in 1990 aims to protect the water supply and the hydraulic pressure necessary to access it. Today, there are still some 3,000 bores which pour water into 34,000 km of open bore drains, with 90 percent of the water evaporating in the outback heat. But more than 1,052 bores have now been controlled and tens of thousands of kilometres of open drains removed and pipelines laid, saving 272 gigalitres of water a year. Farmers are now fencing off bores and using mobile telephone, satellite and computer imaging technology to control livestock access to bores and control bore flows. "Bores and springs that had previously ceased to flow have begun to flow again. It's a huge change to land management and has allowed better pasture and stock management," said Emmott. "With the capping and piping programme you don't get the bogging of domestic animals, you don't get the maintenance cost of drains and you don't get soil salination," he said. SUSTAINABLE USAGE Farmers and scientists say it is crucial that more work is done to avoid a water crisis in the Great Artesian Basin as there will be greater demand on basin water in the future. "It is absolutely crucial for the existence of communities that it is looked after," said Emmott. "We realise there is a lot there, but we need to look after it very carefully because it needs such a huge time for recharge that if we lose it now it will not recharge in human lifetimes." A A$17 million long-term sustainability report on the Great Artesian Basin announced this month will look at how to ensure water for future mining, pastoral and environmental development. The global commodities boom in recent years has seen mining activity over the basin increase dramatically and authorities expect the mining industry's extraction will continue to rise. "An expansion in exploration and mining activities in the area will place increased demands on securing groundwater allocations for economic development," said Andy Love, from Flinders University in Adelaide, who will lead the study. "Clearly a balance between development and environmental protection needs to be achieved. However, this is not possible without increased knowledge about the amount of groundwater that can be safely extracted," said Love.

The UNHCR estimated that more than 85,000 people had fled into neighbouring Chad in recent days, while at least 15,000 people had been forced to seek shelter within Cameroon. "Indications are that displacement into Chad has accelerated," UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters, adding that the agency and humanitarian partners were rushing to deliver life-saving assistance. Forty-four people have been killed in the fighting and 111 injured, Saltmarsh said. Chad is home to nearly a million refugees and internally displaced people. The vast majority of new arrivals into Chad were children, and 98% of the adults were women, Saltmarsh said, adding that refugees "are in dire need of shelter, blankets, mats and hygienic kits". The clashes broke out in early December after disputes between herders, fishermen and farmers over dwindling water resources, the agency said, adding that climate change is exacerbating a competition for resources, especially water. "The surface of Lake Chad has decreased by as much as 95% in the past 60 years," Saltmarsh said. "We're calling for support from the international community to assist the forcibly displaced."

The decree's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan that required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015. The so-called "Energy Independence" order also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production, and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. "I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters, speaking on a stage lined with coal miners. The wide-ranging order is the boldest yet in Trump’s broader push to cut environmental regulation to revive the drilling and mining industries, a promise he made repeatedly during the presidential campaign. But energy analysts and executives have questioned whether the moves will have a big effect on their industries, and environmentalists have called them reckless. "I cannot tell you how many jobs the executive order is going to create but I can tell you that it provides confidence in this administration’s commitment to the coal industry," Kentucky Coal Association president Tyler White told Reuters. Trump signed the order with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Vice President Mike Pence by his side. US presidents have aimed to reduce US dependence on foreign oil since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, which triggered soaring prices. But the United States still imports about 7.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, almost enough meet total oil demand in Japan and India combined. While Trump's administration has said reducing environmental regulation will create jobs, some green groups have countered that rules supporting clean energy have done the same. The number of jobs in the US wind power industry rose 32 percent last year while solar power jobs rose by 25 percent, according to a Department of Energy study. 'Assault on American values' Environmental groups hurled scorn on Trump's order, arguing it is dangerous and goes against the broader global trend toward cleaner energy technologies. "These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American," said billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, the head of activist group NextGen Climate. Green group Earthjustice was one of many organizations that said it will fight the order both in and out of court. "This order ignores the law and scientific reality," said its president, Trip Van Noppen. An overwhelming majority of scientists believe that human use of oil and coal for energy is a main driver of climate change, causing a damaging rise in sea levels, droughts, and more frequent violent storms. But Trump and several members of his administration have doubts about climate change, and Trump promised during his campaign to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, arguing it would hurt US business. Since being elected Trump has been mum on the Paris deal and the executive order does not address it. Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change who helped broker the Paris accord, lamented Trump's order. "Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics," she said. The order will direct the EPA to start a formal "review" process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014 but was never implemented in part because of legal challenges brought by Republican-controlled states. The Clean Power Plan required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Some 85 percent of US states are on track to meet the targets despite the fact the rule has not been implemented, according to Bill Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, a group of state and local air pollution control agencies. Trump’s order also lifts the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management's temporary ban on coal leasing on federal property put in place by Obama in 2016 as part of a review to study the program's impact on climate change and ensure royalty revenues were fair to taxpayers. It also asks federal agencies to discount the cost of carbon in policy decisions and the weight of climate change considerations in infrastructure permitting, and reverses rules limiting methane leakage from oil and gas facilities.

Heckling is something Trudeau has always faced, but this time the attacks have new bite. After six years in office, a prime minister who promised “sunny ways” and presented himself as a new face is now the political establishment, with a track record and missteps for opponents to criticise. Even if the Liberal Party clings to its hold on Parliament, as observers expect, this bruising election campaign has done him no favors. Ben Chin, the prime minister’s senior adviser, said that no politician could have sustained Trudeau’s initial popularity. “If you’re in power for six years or five years, you’re going to have more baggage,” Chin said. “You have to make tough decisions that not everybody’s going to agree with.” For much of his time in office, opposition party leaders have accused Trudeau of putting his personal and political interests before the nation’s good — of which the snap election being held Monday is the most recent example. They also have had rich material to attack him on over controversies involving a contract for a charity close to his family, and a finding that he broke ethics laws by pressing a minister to help a large Quebec company avoid criminal sanctions. And for every accomplishment Trudeau cites, his opponents can point to unfulfilled pledges. Anti-vax protesters have thronged his events, some with signs promoting the far-right People’s Party of Canada, prompting his security detail to increase precautions. One rally in Ontario where protesters significantly outnumbered the police was shut down over safety concerns, and at another in the same province, the prime minister was pelted with gravel as he boarded his campaign bus. A local official of the People’s Party later faced charges in that episode of assault with a weapon. Trudeau has many achievements since 2015 to point to. His government has introduced carbon pricing and other climate measures, legalized cannabis, increased spending for Indigenous issues and made 1,500 models of military-style rifles illegal. A new plan will provide day care for 10 Canadian dollars a day per child. Although his popularity has diminished, Trudeau’s star power remains. When he dropped by the outdoor terrace of a cafe in Port Coquitlam, an eastern suburb of Vancouver, for elbow bumps, quick chats and selfies with voters, a crowd soon swelled. “We love you, we love you,” Joy Silver, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher from nearby Coquitlam, told Trudeau. But as Election Day nears, many Canadians are still asking why Trudeau is holding a vote now, two years ahead of schedule, with COVID-19 infections on the rise from the delta variant, taxing hospitals and prompting renewed pandemic restrictions in some provinces or delaying their lifting in others. Also criticized was that he called the vote the same weekend Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, when Canadian troops were struggling to evacuate Canadians as well as Afghans who had assisted their forces. “They’ve been struggling with answering that question the whole campaign,” said Gerald Butts, a longtime friend of Trudeau’s and a former top political adviser. “And that’s part of why they’re having trouble getting the message across.” Trudeau has said that he needs to replace his plurality in the House of Commons with a majority to deal with the remainder of the pandemic and the recovery that will follow — although he avoids explicitly saying “majority.” The Liberal Party’s political calculation was that it was best to strike while Canadians still held favorable views about how Trudeau handled pandemic issues, particularly income supports and buying vaccines. “We’re the party with the experience, the team and the plan to continue delivering real results for Canadians, the party with a real commitment to ending this pandemic,” Trudeau said at a rally in Surrey, another Vancouver suburb, standing in front of campaign signs for candidates from the surrounding area. “Above all, my friends, if you want to end this pandemic for good, go out and vote Liberal.” During much of the 36-day campaign, the Liberals have been stuck in a statistical tie with the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Erin O’Toole, each holding about 30% of the popular vote. The New Democrats, a left-of-center party led by Jagmeet Singh, lies well behind at about 20 percent. Kimberly Speers, a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said that Trudeau’s personality and celebrity may be working against him. “The messaging, from the NDP and the Conservatives especially, is that it’s a power grab and it’s all about him,” she said. “And that message has just really seemed to stick with voters.” Some scandals during Trudeau’s tenure have helped the opposition, too. In 2019, Trudeau’s veterans affairs minister, an Indigenous woman, quit amid allegations that when she was justice minister, he and his staff had improperly pressured her to strike a deal that would have allowed a large Canadian corporation to avoid a criminal conviction on corruption charges. Despite his championing of diversity, it emerged during the 2019 election that Trudeau had worn blackface or brownface three times in the past. And last year a charity with deep connections to his family was awarded a no-bid contract to administer a COVID-19 financial assistance plan for students. (The group withdrew, the program was canceled, and Trudeau was cleared by the federal ethics and conflict of interest commissioner.) His opponents have also focused on promises they say he has fallen short on, including introducing a national prescription drug program, creating a new electoral structure for Canada, lowering debt relative to the size of the economy, and ending widespread sexual harassment in the military and solitary confinement in federal prisons. The Center for Public Policy Analysis at Laval University in Quebec City found that Trudeau has fully kept about 45 percent of his promises, while 27 percent were partly fulfilled. Singh has been reminding voters that Trudeau vowed to bring clean drinking water to all Indigenous communities. There were 105 boil-water orders in effect at First Nations when Trudeau took power, with others added later. The government has restored clean water to 109 communities, but 52 boil-water orders remain. “I think Mr Trudeau may care, I think he cares, but the reality is that he’s often done a lot of things for show and hasn’t backed those up with real action,” Singh said during the official English-language debate. O’Toole, for his part, has sought to portray the vote as an act of personal aggrandisement. “Every Canadian has met a Justin Trudeau in their lives: privileged, entitled and always looking out for No 1,” he said at a recent event in rural Ottawa. “He was looking out for No 1 when he called this expensive and unnecessary election in the middle of a pandemic.” Security and secrecy have increased at Trudeau’s campaign stops after several of them were disrupted by protesters angry about mandatory COVID-19 vaccination rules and vaccine passport measures that the prime minister has imposed. At the rally outside a banquet hall in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, Trudeau, sleeves rolled up and microphone in hand, gave an energetic speech before diving into a mostly South Asian crowd eager to pose for pictures with him. In a change from previous practice, the crowd had been gathered by invitation rather than by public announcement, partly to keep its size within pandemic limits, and no signs promoted the event on the formidable gate to the remote location. Up on the hall’s roof, two police snipers in camouflage surveyed the scene. After an earlier rally in Ontario was canceled, Trudeau was asked if U.S. politics had inspired the unruly protests. His answer was indirect. “I think we all need to reflect on whether we do want to go down that path of anger, of division, of intolerance,” he said. “I’ve never seen this intensity of anger on the campaign trail or in Canada.” Translating wider poll results into precise predictions of how many seats the parties will hold in the next House of Commons is not possible. But all of the current polling suggests that Trudeau may have alienated many Canadians with an early election call and endured abuse while campaigning, for no political gain. The most likely outcome is that the Liberals will continue to hold power but not gain the majority he sought. If that proves to be the case, Butts said, “it’s going to end up pretty close to where we left off, which is a great irony.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Southeast Asian nations are battling a surge in dengue cases, amid signs that climate change could make 2007 the worst year on record for a disease that often gets less attention than some higher-profile health risks. The spread of dengue, which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito and is endemic in much of the region, has also accelerated in recent years due to increasing urbanisation and travel or migration within the region, experts say. Efforts to develop a vaccine are proving difficult because dengue can be caused by four viruses. So the only real method to fight the disease at present is to eliminate likely breeding spots for mosquitoes from discarded tires to plant pots. "The threat of dengue is increasing because of global warming, mosquitoes are becoming more active year by year and their geographical reach is expanding both north and south of the Equator," said Lo Wing-lok, an expert in infectious diseases. "Even Singapore, which is so affluent and modern, can't exercise adequate control," Hong Kong-based Lo added. Dengue cases in Hong Kong usually involve people returning from hotter parts of Asia, but Lo warned that warmer temperatures meant the disease could ultimately become endemic in southern China. Dengue sufferers often describe the onset of high fever, nausea and intense joint pain. There is no real treatment, apart from rest and rehydration, and in severe cases it can be fatal. In Indonesia, where concerns over bird flu more frequently grab headlines, dengue saw a dramatic peak earlier this year after much of the Jakarta area was flooded. "It's not so much the rise in temperature that affects dengue, rather the rising rainfall has lengthened the lifespan of the epidemic each season," said Wiku Adisasmito, a dengue expert at the University of Indonesia. The Asian Development Bank developed a model suggesting that dengue might rise three-fold in Indonesia due to climate change. By last month there had been 68,636 cases and 748 deaths so far this year, according to Health Ministry data. Although cases are slowing at the end of the wet season, experts warn that 2006's record 106,425 cases could easily be overtaken. The record number of deaths was 1,298 in 2005. ANTI-DENGUE CAMPAIGNS The picture looks similar in neighboring countries. Thailand had more than 11,000 cases of dengue fever and 14 deaths by this month, up 18 percent from the same period of 2006. In May, the worst month, 3,649 people were found with dengue. Most patients were between 10-24 years old, Deputy Public Health Minister Morakot Kornkasem said in a statement. The number of dengue cases in Singapore last month was nearly three times that in the same period a year ago, according to the government, which says warmer weather was partly to blame. The surge in cases has prompted the government to step up its anti-dengue campaign, urging Singaporeans to clear roofs and gutters, and throw out stale water in containers. Between May 20 and 26, there were 259 dengue cases according to the Straits Times newspaper, the highest weekly figure this year, but below the weekly record of 714 cases in September 2005. In Malaysia, 48 people died from dengue during the first five months of the year, health officials said, up roughly 71 percent from 2006. By May 26, 20,658 people had caught the disease, a surge of 55 percent over the corresponding 2006 figure. "We are concerned over the increase and we need everyone to cooperate with the authorities to fight the menace," Health Ministry official Hasan Abdul Rahman told the New Straits Times recently. Prevailing weather patterns of hot days punctuated by a day of rain have worsened the problem. "There is no medicine to cure dengue fever, so the only treatment is to have a lot of electrolytes," said Noranita Badrun, a Kuala Lumpur resident whose daughter, Nurin Syakilah, spent a week in hospital in April battling the disease. If not diagnosed early, dengue can kill, but Nurin, who received 18 bottles of intravenous fluids during her hospital stay, recovered soon and is back at school, where two other students also had the disease, Noranita said.

“Indian Ocean has remained at the centre of interest to the major players of the world because of its strategic location and natural resources,” AH Mahmood Ali said on Friday, speaking at a conference on the Indian Ocean in Singapore. India Foundation, in collaboration with the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), Institute of Policy Studies Sri Lanka and S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore, organised the conference, the foreign ministry said. Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan inaugurated the conference which brought together ministers, senior civil and military bureaucrats, diplomats, academicians, researchers and civil societies of the countries along the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean region has emerged as the most prominent global economic highway with 66 percent of the world’s oil shipments, 33 percent of its bulk cargo and 50 percent of the world’s container traffic passing through its waters. The oil arteries of the world flow through the Indian Ocean, the foreign minister said. “It is not only trade and economy, competition among some of the major powers in securing visible and credible presence in the Indian Ocean has shaped the dynamics of the Indian Ocean region,” he said. “We see growing interests among countries in the region to develop new infrastructures in the Indian Ocean. Countries also seek to build, expand and strengthen their naval infrastructures in the Indian Ocean. “Overlapping territorial claims and disputes have added new dimension to this evolving security scenario,” he said. Ali noted that countries in Asia and the Pacific are four times more likely to be affected by a natural catastrophe than those in Africa, and 25 times more vulnerable than Europe and North America. The climate change impacts and resultant sea level rise have further enhanced the risks and vulnerabilities of the Indian Ocean countries. A variety of security threats is posing danger to maritime peace and stability. Piracy continues to remain as one of the most worrisome maritime security challenges to date, the foreign minister observed. Maritime terrorism has also surfaced as an omnipresent global and regional threat. Human trafficking and drug smuggling are the twin issues that have lately re-captured global attention. “It, however, requires strong commitment from all the nations of the Indian Ocean region and beyond towards achieving this shared objective,” he said. “We must follow the path of cooperation and collaboration, not competition and conflict in tapping the full potentials of the Indian Ocean.” Former president of the Maldives Maumoon Abdul Gayoom delivered the keynote address at the session. The session proposed to organise a summit level conference, engaging governments, academicians, civil society and private sectors to find out a “common approach” for cooperation to respond the challenges. The foreign minister said the maritime disputes including the overlapping territorial claims need to be resolved through “peaceful” means. He referred to Bangladesh’s steps in settling the maritime problems with the neighbours -- India and Myanmar. Ali meets Singapore minister, Indian state minister According to the foreign ministry, Mahmood Ali also held meeting with his Singapore counterpart Balakrishnan on the sidelines and discussed issues of mutual interests and cooperation. Indian State Minister for External Affairs MJ Akbar also called on him. Balakrishnan appreciated the “prompt and bold” actions taken by the Bangladesh government in tracking and eliminating the terrorists including the masterminds. Mahmood Ali briefed him on security, political and social measures adopted in combating terrorism and violent extremism in Bangladesh. During the meeting with MJ Akbar, both sides expressed satisfaction over the current pace of progress of bilateral relations and reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthening and expanding the relations. Akbar renewed India’s support to Bangladesh in fight against terrorism and violent extremism. He conveyed that the prime minister of India is certain in two aspects, as far as Bangladesh is concerned -- Bangladesh has the absolute liberty to decide its own course of actions as an independent nation, and India attaches high importance to building equal partnership for development with Bangladesh. And this was particularly for the advancement of the marginalised and disadvantaged people, Akbar said.

Back then, they desperately struggled to feed their families. Today, the collection of villages in Lalmonirhat district has a bustling marketplace, well-built homes with TVs inside and solar panels on the roofs, and thriving fields of a crop that pulled the community out of poverty: corn. "Once I was landless and a rickshaw-puller," said Hasen Ali, 50, who spent more than two decades in the capital Dhaka scraping together an income before returning to his farm about five years ago. After failing to grow both rice and wheat on his land, Ali tried corn, also called maize, and now earns about 200,000 taka ($2,360) each season, he said. "I restored my property and bought some new land by selling maize," he said, adding he now sends his children to school. Around Bangladesh's flood-prone north, farmers who can no longer grow their regular crops in the sandy soil after flood waters recede are turning to corn, which needs less water and brings in more money than most other staple crops here. "No other crop is better and more profitable than maize cultivation in sandy land," said Romij Uddin, an agronomy professor at Bangladesh Agricultural University. Maize is currently grown on more than 101,300 hectares in the northern region, which produces one-third of the national supply, according to government figures. This fiscal year, which ends in June, farmers who a decade ago grew rice, tobacco and wheat have produced a record 1 million tonnes of the grain. As the impacts of climate change drive more frequent and devastating floods in the north, agriculture expert Mahfuzul Haque said maize can help farmers adapt and prosper. "Its root can go as deep as 6 feet (1.83 m) to absorb water... Paddy (rice) roots can go only down six inches in sandy soil," said Haque, senior scientific officer at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute. And the "huge demand" in Bangladesh for corn - used to make everything from poultry feed to sugar and paper - means it is more profitable than rice or wheat, he said. Farmers can earn up to 850 taka for about 40 kg (88 pounds) of corn, about 15% more than they would earn growing rice and 40% more than wheat, said Rafiqul Islam, an agriculture officer in Hatibandha upazila, where Shaniazan is located. ALL-YEAR WORK Ataur Rahman, who teaches water resources engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said riverbank erosion and flooding were becoming increasingly common problems in northern Bangladesh. Rising global temperatures melt glaciers in the Hindu Kush mountains, causing more water to surge through major rivers downstream, which brings large amounts of sand, he explained. "Heavy rainfall also creates floods in the monsoon season, and when the water recedes after flooding, the cultivable land is filled with sand," he added. Farmer Abdul Latif Talukdar, 62, recalled the impact of the flooding in Shaniazan three decades ago, when the Teesta river overflowed and then changed course a few years later. The villagers got their land back but could not grow anything on it, he said. He and some other local farmers decided to experiment with maize, after consulting a local agriculture officer. Following the first few attempts, which involved switching to higher-quality seeds and fertiliser, they produced a decent yield, he said. "We were very happy to know that something was being cultivated in this sandy land and it would alleviate our poverty," Latif Talukdar said. By 1997, having borrowed 300,000 taka from the Agricultural Development Bank, the farmers were cultivating about 400 kg of maize on one acre of land. A year later, the same plot yielded nearly four times as much, the farmer said. Today, Shaniazan's farmers produce so much corn they generate enough work to last the entire year, according to Abdus Sabur, who buys their harvest to sell to poultry feed companies. Workers keep busy preparing fields, weeding, irrigating, collecting and drying the cultivated grain. "No one is unemployed here," he said. GOVERNMENT BACKING With training, financial assistance and incentives, the government is encouraging farmers all over Bangladesh to grow corn in a bid to move away from thirstier crops and meet demand, said MD Moniruzzaman, regional deputy director at the Department of Agriculture Extension. Even with more than 3.8 million tonnes of maize being produced, the country will still need to import 2 million tonnes of corn this financial year, he added. Agriculture Minister Mohammad Abdur Razzaque said the number of farmers starting to grow corn is "increasing day by day". "If we can properly utilise sandy land for maize cultivation, then we would be able to get extra maize for export within five years," he said in a phone interview. In Shaniazan, Abuja Mia, 50, remembers barely getting by as a day labourer until about seven years ago, when he used all his savings to lease a piece of land to grow maize. Since then, he has bought three acres of land and grows corn on two of them, last year earning 140,000 taka. Now he has a new motorcycle, a satellite TV connection and solar panel on his roof, and makes enough to send his son and daughter to school. Before growing corn, "I had to struggle very hard to maintain my family. I couldn't even ensure three meals a day for them. My children's education was only a dream," he said. "But maize cultivation has ended my struggle and made my dream come true."

Governments agreed in Poland that a new deal in 2015 would consist of a patchwork of national contributions to curb emissions that could blur a 20-year-old distinction between the obligations of rich and poor nations.The two-week meeting also created a Warsaw International Mechanism to help the poor cope with loss and damage from heatwaves, droughts, floods, desertification and rising sea levels - although rich nations refused to pledge new cash.Many said Warsaw had fallen short of what was needed."We did not achieve a meaningful outcome," said Naderev Sano, a Philippines delegate who had been fasting throughout the talks to urge action in sympathy with victims of Typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 5,000 people.No major nation offered tougher action to slow rising world greenhouse gas emissions and Japan backtracked from its carbon goals for 2020, after shutting down its nuclear industry after the Fukushima disaster.GREEN PROTESTEnvironmentalists walked out on Thursday, exasperated by lack of progress. Rich nations are preoccupied with reviving their weak economies rather than climate change."It is abundantly clear that we still have a long way to go," said Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief.Negotiators were on course for a 2015 summit in Paris but not on track for limiting global warming to an agreed ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times to avoid dangerous change, she said.In September, the UN panel of climate experts raised the probability that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, were the main cause of warming since 1950 to 95 percent, from 90 in a previous assessment.Delegates in Warsaw agreed that a new global deal, due to be struck in Paris in 2015 and to enter into force from 2020, would be made up of what they called "intended nationally determined contributions" from both rich and poor nations.Until now, rich nations that have emitted most greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution have been expected to take the lead with "commitments" to cut emissions while the poor have been granted less stringent "actions"."In the old system you had this firewall between commitments and actions, now there is one word for all," European Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. "There are many ways to Paris that would be more beautiful and faster."But developing nations said the rich still needed to lead. "In my understanding the firewall exists and will continue to exist," India's Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said.Either way, US climate envoy Todd Stern said there would be no coercion. "It is not like someone is going to stand over you with a club and tell you what to do," he said.The Warsaw deal called on those nations able to do so to put forward their plans for curbs on emissions by the first quarter of 2015 to give time for a review before a summit in Paris at the end of the year.Under the last climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, only the most developed countries were required to limit their emissions - one of the main reasons the United States refused to accept it, saying rapidly growing economies like China and India should also take part.Until Saturday, the only concrete measure to have emerged in Warsaw was an agreement on new rules to protect tropical forests, which soak up carbon dioxide as they grow.Developed nations, which promised in 2009 to raise aid to $100 billion a year after 2020 from $10 billion a year in 2010-12, rejected calls to set targets for 2013-19.A draft text merely urged developed nations to set "increasing levels" of aid.

Backers of extreme technologies to curb global warming advocate dumping iron dust into the seas or placing smoke and mirrors in the sky to dim the sun. But, even though they are seen by some as cheap fixes for climate change when many nations are worried about economic recession, such "geo-engineering" proposals have to overcome wide criticism that they are fanciful and could have unforeseen side effects. "We are at the boundaries, treading in areas that we are not normally dealing with," said Rene Coenen, head of the Office for the London Convention, an international organization that regulates dumping at sea. The London Convention, part of the International Maritime Organization, will review ocean fertilization at a meeting this week. Among those hoping for approval for tests is Margaret Leinin, chief science officer of California-based Climos, a company that is looking at ways to use the oceans to soak up greenhouse gases. "The world has not been able to get carbon emissions under control" Leinin said. "We should look at other options." Climos is seeking to raise money to test adding iron dust to the southern ocean to spur growth of algae that grow by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the air. When algae die, they fall to the seabed and so remove carbon. Other short-cut ideas include spraying a smoke of tiny particles of pollutants into the sky to dim sunlight, or even deploying a vast thin metallic barrier in space, with 100 space shuttle flights, to deflect the sun's rays. "CHEMICAL SOUP" The U.N. Climate Panel has said world greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, mainly burning fossil fuels, rose 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. But it said that fertilizing the oceans or dimming the sun "remain largely speculative and unproven, and with the risk of unknown side-effects." "More evidence has been coming in since then, but it's far from making a reliable case for geo-engineering," said Terry Barker, head of the Cambridge Center for Climate Change Mitigation Research and one of the leading authors of the U.N. panel report. The seas are already suffering enough from a "chemical soup" of pollution from humans, he said. "There's no need to add to the mess." With fears of recession and amid the deepest financial crisis since the 1930s, some governments may find cheap geo-engineering attractive compared with reducing carbon emissions. "It would be shortsighted," Baker said. Last year, the London Convention said that "knowledge about the effectiveness and potential environmental impacts of ocean iron fertilization currently was insufficient to justify large-scale operations." Those doubts were "still valid," the Convention's Coenen said. Firms such as Australia's Ocean Nourishment, Atmocean in New Mexico and Climos are working on varying sea-based projects. Another start-up, Planktos, indefinitely suspended operations in February after failing to raise cash. Some like Climos hope that sucking carbon into the ocean, if it works, could qualify for credits as carbon trading. "It is possible to design experiments to avoid harm to the oceans," said Leinin. Climos wants to test iron fertilization in the southern ocean, at the earliest in January 2010 in a test that could $15-20 million, she said. If it works, Leinin said it could be one of the cheapest ways to combat global warming. LESSER RISK Among objections are that carbon makes water more acidic and could undermine the ability of shellfish, crabs or lobsters to build shells. That in turn could disrupt the marine food chain. Backers of geo-engineering say the risks are slight compared to far bigger disruptions from climate change, stoked by human emissions of greenhouse gases, which could lead to heatwaves, floods, droughts, more disease or rising seas. "We are already bludgeoning nature," said Victor Smetacek, a professor at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, who is planning an iron sulphate fertilization experiment off Antarctica in early 2009. His institute will cooperate with India to disperse 20 tonnes of iron sulphate near South Georgia over 300 sq kms (115 sq miles). "Iron has a very positive effect. Added to the ocean it's like water in the desert," he said. "We don't have space to store the carbon we are producing on land," he said of proposals including planting more forests. They will study how far algae grow and absorb carbon. The extra algae, as food, might help a recovery of stocks of shrimp-like krill, a species on which penguins and whales depend. Among other schemes, Nobel chemistry prize winner Paul Crutzen has floated the idea of blitzing the upper atmosphere with sulfur particles to reflect some sunlight back into space. "The price is not a factor...it's peanuts," he told Reuters in Nicosia earlier this month. "The cost has been estimated at some 10, 20 million U.S. dollars a year." Similar smoke is released naturally by volcanic eruptions, such as Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 or Tambora in Indonesia in 1815. The Indonesia eruption led to a "year without a summer," according to reports at the time. Other proposals reviewed by the U.N. Climate Panel include installing a metallic screen covering a 106 sq km (40.93 sq mile) patch of space 1.5 million kms (930,000 miles) away from earth in the direction of the sun. The 3,000-tonne structure could be put in place over 100 years by 100 space shuttle flights. "The cost has yet to be determined," the panel said. Another idea is to spew more sea spray into the air -- a natural process caused by waves. The plan would make low-level clouds slightly whiter and bounce solar rays back into space. Advantages are that the only ingredient is sea water, and production could be turned off. But the U.N. panel said "the meteorological ramifications need further study."

LONDON Nov 25, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Cutting meat production and consumption by 30 percent would help to reduce carbon emissions and improve health in the most meat-loving nations, scientists said on Wednesday. Using prediction models, British and Australian researchers found that improving efficiency, increasing carbon capture and reducing fossil fuel dependence in farming would not be enough to meet emissions targets. But combining these steps with a 30 percent reduction in livestock production in major meat-producing nations and a similar cut in meat-eating, would lead to "substantial population health benefits" and cut emissions, they said. The study found that in Britain, a 30 percent lower intake of animal-source saturated fat by adults would reduce the number of premature deaths from heart disease by some 17 percent -- equivalent to 18,000 premature deaths averted in one year. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, it could mean as many as 1,000 premature deaths averted in a year, they said. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are from meat production and experts say rising demand for meat, particularly in countries with growing economies, could drive livestock production up by 85 percent from 2000 levels by 2030. The scientists said global action was needed to maximise the benefits of cutting meat production and consumption, and that the environmental advantages "may apply only in those countries that currently have high production levels." The study was published in The Lancet medical journal as part of a series in climate change and health ahead of the Copenhagen global climate summit scheduled next month. In a second study, British scientists found that increased walking and cycling, and fewer cars, would have a much greater impact on health than low-emission vehicles in rich and middle-income countries. Andrew Haines, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and head of the research series, said delegates at Copenhagen needed "to understand the potential health impacts of their plans".

WASHINGTON, Wed Sep 24, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A US Senate panel voted on Tuesday to approve the US-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement without a controversial proposal that would give Congress more influence over future deals. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 19-2 in favor of the deal, which would end the three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with India and is seen by the White House as the cornerstone of a new strategic partnership with New Delhi. Critics believe the deal undermines efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and sets a precedent allowing other nations to seek to buy nuclear technology without submitting to the full range of global nonproliferation safeguards. The bill text approved did not include language advocated by an influential congressman to give the US Congress greater say over future such agreements. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman last week proposed changing US law so any future agreements would become effective only if Congress votes to approve them, sources familiar with the matter said. Such agreements now typically go into effect unless Congress rejects them during a 60-day period. As a result, the law is now tilted in favor of the agreements going through. Berman asked for the change in the Atomic Energy Act in exchange for speeding up a vote on the US-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement. The fuel and technology deal would help India meet rising energy demand without aggravating climate change and open a market worth billions of dollars. US lawmakers are racing to finish their work this week, including a massive Bush administration financial bailout plan for Wall Street, so they can campaign for the Nov. 4 election. It is unclear whether the measure can get passed during this week and, if it does, whether Berman's proposal may be included. House Foreign Affairs Committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil declined direct comment on the details of Berman's proposal, but stressed that he supported nuclear cooperation with India and was discussing ways to expedite approval of the deal. A senior US official who spoke on condition that he not be named said that the Bush administration was still in negotiations with members of Congress and hoped to assuage their concerns and to secure approval this year. "I don't know where we are going to come out of this but certainly ... the spirit is positive and I think there is a chance we can come through this and win congressional approval in this session in a way that addresses many, if not all, of the concerns that have been raised," said the official.

China aims to create a basic financial policy framework by 2030 to support green and low-carbon development, and will also aim to give more play to market mechanisms like carbon and pollution discharge trading, according to policy recommendations from the Ministry of Finance published late on Monday. The world's biggest producer of climate warming greenhouse gas has pledged to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030 and to become fully carbon neutral by around 2060. It has already vowed to start cutting coal consumption from 2026 and bring wind and nearly double solar power capacity to 1,200 gigawatts by the end of the decade. The new guidelines are aimed at creating "a fiscal and taxation policy system that promotes the efficient use of resources and green, low-carbon development," the ministry quoted an unnamed official as saying. The ministry also aims to build an "incentive and restraint mechanism" to encourage green and low-carbon practices among local governments, the official said. According to the recommendations, the tax system will be adjusted to include more preferential policies encouraging energy and water conservation as well as carbon emission cuts. Import tariffs should also be adjusted to meet low-carbon development requirements, it said. As well as focusing on key sectors such as energy storage and the shift to renewables, new financial tools will also be developed to help transform the transportation sector and promote new energy vehicles, and encourage recycling and the comprehensive use of resources. The ministry also said more financial policy support would be given to the construction of carbon sinks, the protection of forests and grasslands, as well as climate change adaptation.

SYRACUSE, Italy, April 22(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Environment ministers from rich and poor nations discussed a green technology stimulus on Wednesday to help tackle global warming and overcome the global economic crisis. The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight industrial countries and major developing economies opened in Sicily, with attention focused on how far the new U.S. administration would go in its environmental strategy. The meeting, taking place on Earth Day, marked the first ministerial-level talks this year in negotiations toward a major U.N. deal on climate change, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen to replace the 1997 Kyoto agreement. "Without leadership from the G8 countries an international response to climate change will not happen. This meeting needs to point the way," said Yvo de Boer, the United Nation's top climate change official. "The new American administration is incredibly important to addressing this issue. Trying to come to a climate change agreement without the United States makes no sense." U.S. President Barack Obama has already pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, reversing the policies of his predecessor George W. Bush, whose administration refused to sign up to Kyoto. Delegates said they were watching closely for any details of American plans for action. On Wednesday, the meeting discussed ways to reconcile the investment required to cut carbon emissions with the trillions of dollars being spent to stabilize financial markets. Many of the countries present, including the United States and China, have already pledged major investment in green technologies. Wednesday's talks focused on the most efficient ways to focus spending and the best means to promote green technologies in developing countries. "This G8 aims to spread low-carbon technology in order to allow developing and emerging countries to follow the path to eco-friendly development hand in hand with Western countries," Italian Environment Minister Stefania Pestigiacomo said. For the first time, the G8 ministerial meeting included a broad spread of developing countries in the hope of forging a broader consensus, grouping China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia, South Korea and Egypt. U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany this month exposed wide differences on emissions, with poor countries saying rich nations that earned their wealth from industrialization must act first and help pay for the cost of their carbon reduction. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has put the price of a "green revolution" to halve emissions by 2050 at $45 trillion. De Boer said he would hold talks with developed countries at Syracuse to discuss funding for green technology.

A threat warning issued by the United States in Germany last month could involve attack plans by an al Qaeda-affiliated group of Kurdish militants, officials said on Friday. US and German authorities said, however, that there was no new threat in Germany beyond the official April 20 State Department warning. They were responding to a report by ABC News on its Web site on Friday that officials believe terrorists were in the advanced planning stages for an attack on US military personnel or tourists in Germany. In the April 20 warning, the US Embassy in Germany encouraged Americans in the country to increase their vigilance and take appropriate steps to bolster their personal security. "We're unaware of anything new. We have not changed our force posture," a US defense official said on Friday. In Germany, the Interior Ministry said there had been no change in the security situation. "There is nothing new," a spokesman for the ministry said. "What we're looking at is the state of affairs that has been long since known. This caused the US authorities to publish a warning to their own citizens in Germany." Counterterrorism officials in Europe and the United States have for weeks been investigating a suspected plot against US interests in the country, which will host a G8 summit of major industrialized countries next month. US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said recent intelligence reports suggested possible involvement by Kurdish Islamists from outside Germany. The group is believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda but not formally a part of the militant network led by Osama bin Laden, they said. They had no specific information about targets or timing. Some German media reports have suggested involvement by Iraqi militants. However, US officials rejected the notion of a role by Ansar al-Islam, a militant group of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs who have vowed to establish an independent Islamic state in Iraq. "There is intelligence reporting suggesting there is a group interested in staging an attack, potentially in Germany," said a US official who asked not to be named because the issue involves classified information. "The thinking is that this plot was beyond the talking stage, certainly," the official added. "The concerns are real, but not new." ABC News quoted German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble as saying, "The danger level is high. We are part of the global threat by Islamist terrorism." The ABC report, quoting US and German law enforcement officials, said Patch Barracks, headquarters to the US military's European Command, could be a target following reports that suspected terrorists had conducted surveillance at the facility. An official with US European Command said there was no new intelligence strong enough to warrant heightened security at military facilities in Germany. "The threat condition has not been raised," the official said. "There's been no actionable intelligence." German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States at the June 6-8 summit, which will focus on climate change, African poverty and economic cooperation. Schaeuble has said border controls have been tightened ahead of the summit.

Now, the heat wave that has been pummeling India and Pakistan for weeks is expected to intensify over the weekend. In some hard-hit areas, it may be weeks before the region's annual monsoon sweeps in to provide relief. Heat-related watches were in effect Thursday afternoon for all but a few of India’s 28 states, encompassing hundreds of millions of people and most of the country’s major cities. An alert — one notch up in severity — was in effect for the northwestern state of Rajasthan on Thursday and would come into effect for other central and western states starting Saturday. The heat wave poses health and logistical challenges for manual laborers, farmers, firefighters, power engineers, government officials and others, particularly in areas where air-conditioning is scarce. “Our condition is not good,” said Sawadaram Bose, 48, a cumin and wheat farmer in Rajasthan, where temperatures climbed to 112 degrees Fahrenheit this week. He and his family are only leaving the house before 11 a.m. or after 5 pm, he said, and never without a water bottle or head and face coverings. The temperatures are well above normal. The subcontinent’s scorching weather is a reminder of what lies in store for other countries in an era of climate change. Climate scientists say that heat waves around the world are growing more frequent, more dangerous and lasting longer. They are certain that global warming has made heat waves worse because the baseline temperatures from which they begin are higher than they were decades ago. “Extreme heat is obviously one of the hallmarks of our changing climate,” said Clare Nullis, an official at the World Meteorological Organisation, a UN agency that certifies weather records at the international level. It is too early to say whether the current temperatures in India or Pakistan will lead to any national-level weather records, she added. In India, where forecasters said that March was the hottest month the country has witnessed in over a century, the National Weather Forecasting Centre said this week that temperatures in some states were 10 degrees Fahrenheit or more above normal in some areas. The heat-related watches in parts of southern and eastern India, where rain was in the forecast, were expected to end within a day or two, authorities said. But in a diagonal band stretching from Rajasthan in the northwest to Andhra Pradesh in the southeast, the watches were expected to persist or be elevated into heat alerts through Monday. The forecast looked similar in most of neighboring Pakistan, where government forecasters said this week that a high pressure system would likely keep temperatures above normal through Monday. Pakistan’s Meteorological Department also warned that in regions dotted with glaciers, the heat could lead to so-called outburst floods, in which water spills from glacial lakes into populated areas. In 2013, an outburst flood in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand led to flooding that destroyed villages and killed several thousand people. In both countries, the forecasts cited only temperature, not the heat index — a measure that combines temperature and humidity and tends to give a more accurate portrait of what extreme weather feels like. Dr Fusaram Bishnoi in Barmer, an area of Rajasthan that has recorded some of India’s highest temperatures this week, said he had seen a surge of patients arriving with heat-related illnesses in recent days. That includes not only heat stroke, he said, but also foodborne illnesses linked to the consumption of food that spoiled in the heat. “We tell people not to venture out during the day and to drink more, and more water,” Bishnoi said. ‘Everything is ready to burn.’ The extreme heat poses a problem for agriculture, a primary source of income for hundreds of millions of people across the subcontinent. In India, wheat farmers have been saying for weeks that high temperatures were damaging their yields. The Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip garden closed a week early this spring because many bulbs had flowered and then died before an annual monthlong exhibition had run its course. Bose, the farmer who lives in the Barmer district of Rajasthan, said that about 15 percent to 20 percent of the local wheat crop, as well as half the cumin crop, had already been lost because of unseasonably hot weather and changes in wind flow. It does not help, he added, that the current heat wave has made it harder to work outdoors. “No work during the day in the fields,” he said. The heat wave is also straining basic municipal services. In India, more than 10 states, including the one that includes the city of Mumbai, have faced power shortages in recent days. That is partly a function of the heat but also of a national shortage of coal, a fuel that accounts for about three-quarters of the country’s power supply. In New Delhi this week, there has been a rash of landfill fires that officials said were caused by spontaneous combustion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said Wednesday that the extreme heat was raising the risk that more fires would occur in the capital, and beyond. Calls to fire departments in New Delhi typically rise at this time of year, but an increase in recent months — from 60 to 70 calls per day to more than 150 per day — has been larger than usual, said Atul Garg, the director of fire services in New Delhi. “Everything is ready to burn,” he said. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Dhaka, Mar 15 (bdnews24.com)—The government is optimistic over fair distribution of Teesta waters between Bangladesh and India, said a minister on Sunday, though co-speakers at a conference highlighted the challenges for managing the country's water resources. Discussion with India is continuing over distribution of waters, said food and disaster management minister Abdur Razzaque at the international conference on water and flood management. He said he hoped the successful resolution in Ganges water sharing would be duplicated in the case of the Teesta. Though 57 rivers of India enter Bangladesh, he said, a water-sharing agreement had been reached for only the Ganges. He said Dhaka and New Delhi would discuss the Tipai Mukh dam project in the Indian state of Manipur, addressing its impact on the Surma, Kushaira and Meghna rivers. The dam has already been given the go-ahead by the Indian government. A.M.M. Shafiullah, vice chancellor of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said three major rivers of the sub-continent fall into Bangladesh making the water resources system extremely complex and its management a big challenge. Fritz Meijndert, Dutch deputy ambassador and head of development cooperation at the mission, said long term vision and commitment was required to manage water resources. He said it could not be managed without addressing climate change. Bangladesh had a strategy to face climate change, but lacked the broader vision over the next 10 to 50 years, he said. He pledged the Netherlands' support for Bangladesh's water management. The three-day conference, to end Monday, was being held by the BUET Institute of Water and Flood Management at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Centre. A total 135 experts from 13 countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, UK, USA, Nepal, Australia, Japan and France, are participating.

Major corporations are joining environmental groups to press US President George W Bush and Congress to address climate change more rapidly, news reports said on Friday. The coalition, including Alcoa Inc, General Electric, DuPont, and Duke Energy plans to publicize its recommendations on Monday, a day ahead of the president's annual State of the Union address, The Wall Street Journal reported. The group also includes Caterpillar, PG&E, the FPL Group, PNM Resources, BP and Lehman Brothers, The New York Times reported. The group, known as the United States Climate Action Partnership, will call for a firm nationwide limit on carbon dioxide emissions that would lead to reductions of 10 to 30 percent over the next 15 years, the NYT reported. The Journal said the coalition will discourage the construction of conventional coal-burning power plants and a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The coalition's diversity could send a signal that businesses want to get ahead of the increasing political momentum for federal emissions controls, in part to protect their long-term interests, the Times said. Officials from the companies were not immediately available for comment. Bush in his speech next week is likely to support a massive increase in US ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy, sources familiar with the White House plans said on Tuesday. The White House on Tuesday confirmed that the speech will outline a policy on global warming, but said Bush has not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on the heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol is the only global pact obliging signatories to cut carbon dioxide emissions, but the United States is not a member, nor are China and India. The protocol expires in 2012. News of the coalition comes as different governments and groups devote more attention to global environmental policy. Global warming has moved to the heart of European foreign policy, the EU executive's top diplomat said on Thursday. On Monday, a summit of Asian leaders promised to encourage more efficient energy use to help stave off global warming. An EU-United States summit in April is expected to focus on energy security and a Group of Eight summit in early June will highlight energy and climate. Most scientists agree that temperatures will rise by 2 and 6 degrees Celsius this century, mainly because of increasing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

But the future, or at least a forewarning of it, came to her instead in the shape of Typhoon Haiyan, underlining concerns that damaging storms could increasingly threaten coastal nations such as the Philippines as oceans warm and seawater levels rise.Scientists have cautioned against blaming individual storms such as Haiyan on climate change. But they agree that storms are likely to become more intense."It's just about impossible to attribute a specific extreme event to climate change," said Kevin Walsh, an associate professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne.But "a fair amount of work has been done that suggests the likelihood of extreme tropical cyclones like Haiyan is likely to increase around the world".As Haiyan bore down, Segayo, a member of the Philippine Climate Change Commission, dashed to the airport in Tacloban city to try to get back to Manila. The storm, with winds of 314 kph (195 mph), the fastest ever recorded as having made landfall, met her there."It sounded like a pig being slaughtered," Segayo said, referring to the noise of the city being torn apart and inundated with surging seawater. "We experienced first hand what we had been lecturing."The monster storm that has killed an estimated 10,000 people in Tacloban alone has thrown a fresh spotlight on climate change. It comes as governments gather in Warsaw, Poland for the latest round of talks on achieving a global climate pact. Only piecemeal progress is expected.Major tropical storms - variously called cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, depending on where they strike - are a hard riddle for climate scientists to solve.The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says it is "more likely than not" that storms will increase in intensity in the coming century."SEVERE STORMS"At the heart of the uncertainty is the decades of detailed data of storm behaviour needed to actively plot trends, said Walsh of the University of Melbourne.But one thing is fairly concrete, said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute: climate change is causing surface waters to warm, which in turn feeds more energy into storms."You can't say that any single event, like the typhoon that hit the Philippines, was caused or even exacerbated by climate change. But you can say with some confidence that we're loading the dice for more severe storms in the future," he said.One area of climate change where there is even more certainty is the rise in sea levels. Higher seas mean storm surges like the tsunami-like flood that caused much of the devastation in Tacloban will get worse, Steffen said.At Tacloban, it appears rising sea levels played a small role, contributing to about 5 percent of an estimated four-metre (13 ft) storm surge, said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the website Weather Underground.That is based on sea level rises of less than two cm (0.8 inch) over the 20th century. The IPCC estimates the coming century could see rises of between 26 and 62 cm (10 and 24 inches)."So we can expect future storms like Haiyan to be even more destructive, due to higher storm surges from sea level rises," Masters said.MORE SOUTHERN STORMSThe Philippines has a long history of being lashed by deadly typhoons, although none as intense as Haiyan, which cut across a number of areas including Leyte, Samar and Cebu islands.While about 20 typhoons strike the country each year, most hit the north along the main island of Luzon.Concerns over extreme weather have been exacerbated by an apparent shift in location of those storms, which in the past two years have also battered southern regions that rarely if ever experienced the powerful gusts of typhoons.Bopha, a category 5 typhoon with maximum winds of 280 kph (174 mph) slammed into Davao Oriental province last December, the first storm to ever hit the province, killing about 600 and leaving thousands homeless in the southern Mindanao region.Philippines climatologists earlier this year said Mindanao could no longer regard itself as a typhoon-free region after two straight years of strong storms. Tropical storm Washi hit the western coast of Mindanao in December 2011, triggering flashfloods that killed around 700. Haiyan also grazed Mindanao."Before, they almost never reached Cebu and definitely not Davao. Now they are reaching that area," said Jose Maria Lorenzo Tan, president of World Wildlife Fund Philippines, a local arm of the global conservation group.

He was in a band in Niterói, a beach-ringed city in Brazil, and practiced guitar by watching tutorials online.YouTube had recently installed a powerful new artificial intelligence system that learned from user behavior and paired videos with recommendations for others. One day, it directed him to an amateur guitar teacher named Nando Moura, who had gained a wide following by posting videos about heavy metal, video games and, most of all, politics.In colorful and paranoid far-right rants, Moura accused feminists, teachers and mainstream politicians of waging vast conspiracies. Dominguez was hooked.As his time on the site grew, YouTube recommended videos from other far-right figures. One was a lawmaker named Jair Bolsonaro, then a marginal figure in national politics — but a star in YouTube’s far-right community in Brazil, where the platform has become more widely watched than all but one TV channel.Last year, he became President Bolsonaro.“YouTube became the social media platform of the Brazilian right,” said Dominguez, now a lanky 17-year-old who says he, too, plans to seek political office. Matheus Dominguez, who said YouTube was crucial to shifting his political views to the far right, recording a YouTube video in Niterói, Brazil, April 29, 2019. YouTube built its business on keeping users hooked. This has been a gift to extremist groups. An investigation in the company’s second-biggest market found serious consequences. (Dado Galdieri/The New York Times) Members of the nation’s newly empowered far right — from grassroots organizers to federal lawmakers — say their movement would not have risen so far, so fast, without YouTube’s recommendation engine.New research has found they may be correct. YouTube’s search and recommendation system appears to have systematically diverted users to far-right and conspiracy channels in Brazil.A New York Times investigation in Brazil found that, time and again, videos promoted by the site have upended central elements of daily life.Teachers describe classrooms made unruly by students who quote from YouTube conspiracy videos or who, encouraged by right-wing YouTube stars, secretly record their instructors.Some parents look to “Dr YouTube” for health advice but get dangerous misinformation instead, hampering the nation’s efforts to fight diseases like Zika. Viral videos have incited death threats against public health advocates.And in politics, a wave of right-wing YouTube stars ran for office alongside Bolsonaro, some winning by historic margins. Most still use the platform, governing the world’s fourth-largest democracy through internet-honed trolling and provocation.YouTube’s recommendation system is engineered to maximize watchtime, among other factors, the company says, but not to favor any political ideology. The system suggests what to watch next, often playing the videos automatically, in a never-ending quest to keep us glued to our screens.But the emotions that draw people in — like fear, doubt and anger — are often central features of conspiracy theories, and in particular, experts say, of right-wing extremism.As the system suggests more provocative videos to keep users watching, it can direct them toward extreme content they might otherwise never find. And it is designed to lead users to new topics to pique new interest — a boon for channels like Moura’s that use pop culture as a gateway to far-right ideas.The system now drives 70% of total time on the platform, the company says. As viewership skyrockets globally, YouTube is bringing in more than $1 billion a month, some analysts believe.Zeynep Tufekci, a social media scholar, has called it “one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.”Company representatives disputed the studies’ methodology and said that the platform’s systems do not privilege any one viewpoint or direct users toward extremism. However, company representatives conceded some of the findings and promised to make changes.Farshad Shadloo, a spokesman, said YouTube has “invested heavily in the policies, resources and products” to reduce the spread of harmful misinformation, adding, “we’ve seen that authoritative content is thriving in Brazil and is some of the most recommended content on the site.”Danah Boyd, founder of the think tank Data & Society, attributed the disruption in Brazil to YouTube’s unrelenting push for viewer engagement, and the revenues it generates.Though corruption scandals and a deep recession had already devastated Brazil’s political establishment and left many Brazilians ready for a break with the status quo, Boyd called YouTube’s impact a worrying indication of the platform’s growing impact on democracies worldwide.“This is happening everywhere,” she said.The Party of YouTubeMaurício Martins, the local vice president of Bolsonaro’s party in Niterói, credited “most” of the party’s recruitment to YouTube — including his own.He was killing time on the site one day, he recalled, when the platform showed him a video by a right-wing blogger. He watched out of curiosity. It showed him another, and then another.“Before that, I didn’t have an ideological political background,” Martins said. YouTube’s auto-playing recommendations, he declared, were “my political education.”“It was like that with everyone,” he said.The platform’s political influence is increasingly felt in Brazilian schools.“Sometimes I’m watching videos about a game, and all of a sudden it’s a Bolsonaro video,” said Inzaghi D, a 17-year-old high schooler in Niterói.More and more, his fellow students are making extremist claims, often citing as evidence YouTube stars like Moura, the guitarist-turned-conspiracist.“It’s the main source that kids have to get information,” he said.Few illustrate YouTube’s influence better than Carlos Jordy.Musclebound and heavily tattooed — his left hand bears a flaming skull with diamond eyes — he joined the City Council in 2017 with few prospects of rising through traditional politics. So Jordy took inspiration from bloggers like Moura and his political mentor, Bolsonaro, turning his focus to YouTube.He posted videos accusing local teachers of conspiring to indoctrinate students into communism. The videos won him a “national audience,” he said, and propelled his stunning rise, only two years later, to the federal legislature.“If social media didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Jair Bolsonaro wouldn’t be president.”Down The Rabbit HoleA few hundred miles from Niterói, a team of researchers led by Virgilio Almeida at the Federal University of Minas Gerais hunched over computers, trying to understand how YouTube shapes its users’ reality.The team analyzed transcripts from thousands of videos, as well as the comments beneath them. Right-wing channels in Brazil, they found, had seen their audiences expand far faster than others did, and seemed to be tilting the site’s overall political content.In the months after YouTube changed its algorithm, positive mentions of Bolsonaro ballooned. So did mentions of conspiracy theories that he had floated. This began as polls still showed him to be deeply unpopular, suggesting that the platform was doing more than merely reflecting political trends.A team at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center set out to test whether the Brazilian far right’s meteoric rise on the platform had been boosted by YouTube’s recommendation engine.Jonas Kaiser and Yasodara Córdova, with Adrian Rauchfleisch of National Taiwan University, programmed a Brazil-based server to enter a popular channel or search term, then open YouTube’s top recommendations, then follow the recommendations on each of those, and so on.By repeating this thousands of times, the researchers tracked how the platform moved users from one video to the next. They found that after users watched a video about politics or even entertainment, YouTube’s recommendations often favored right-wing, conspiracy-filled channels like Moura’s.Crucially, users who watched one far-right channel would often be shown many more.The algorithm had united once-marginal channels — and then built an audience for them, the researchers concluded.One of those channels belonged to Bolsonaro, who had long used the platform to post hoaxes and conspiracies. Though a YouTube early adopter, his online following had done little to expand his political base, which barely existed on a national level.Then Brazil’s political system collapsed just as YouTube’s popularity there soared. Bolsonaro’s views had not changed. But YouTube’s far-right, where he was a major figure, saw its audience explode, helping to prime large numbers of Brazilians for his message at a time when the country was ripe for a political shift.YouTube challenged the researchers’ methodology and said its internal data contradicted their findings. But the company declined the Times’ requests for that data, as well as requests for certain statistics that would reveal whether or not the researchers’ findings were accurate.‘Dr YouTube’The conspiracies were not limited to politics. Many Brazilians searching YouTube for health care information found videos that terrified them: some said Zika was being spread by vaccines, or by the insecticides meant to curb the spread of the mosquito-borne disease that has ravaged northeastern Brazil.The videos appeared to rise on the platform in much the same way as extremist political content: by making alarming claims and promising forbidden truths that kept users glued to their screens.Doctors, social workers and former government officials said the videos had created the foundation of a public health crisis as frightened patients refused vaccines and even anti-Zika insecticides.The consequences have been pronounced in poorer communities like Maceió, a city in Brazil’s northeast that was among the hardest hit by Zika.“Fake news is a virtual war,” said Flávio Santana, a pediatric neurologist based in Maceió. “We have it coming from every direction.”When Zika first spread in 2015, health workers distributed larvicides that killed the mosquitoes that spread the disease.Not long after YouTube installed its new recommendation engine, Santana’s patients began telling him that they’d seen videos blaming Zika on vaccines — and, later, on larvicides. Many refused both.Dr Auriene Oliviera, an infectious disease specialist at the same hospital, said patients increasingly defied her advice, including on procedures crucial to their child’s survival.“They say, ‘No, I’ve researched it on Google, I’ve seen it on YouTube,’ ” she said.Medical providers, she said, were competing “every single day” against “Dr. Google and Dr. YouTube” — and they were losing.Mardjane Nunes, a Zika expert who recently left a senior role in the Health Ministry, said health workers across Brazil have been reporting similar experiences. As more communities refuse the anti-Zika larvicide, she added, the disease is seeing a small resurgence.“Social media is winning,” she said.Brazil’s medical community had reason to feel outmatched. The Harvard researchers found that YouTube’s systems frequently directed users who searched for information on Zika, or even those who watched a reputable video on health issues, toward conspiracy channels.A spokesman for YouTube confirmed the Times’ findings, calling them unintended, and said the company would change how its search tool surfaced videos related to Zika.An ‘Ecosystem of Hate’As the far right rose, many of its leading voices had learned to weaponize the conspiracy videos, offering their vast audiences a target: people to blame. Eventually, the YouTube conspiracists turned their spotlight on Debora Diniz, a women’s rights activist whose abortion advocacy had long made her a target of the far right.Bernardo Küster, a YouTube star whose homemade rants had won him 750,000 subscribers and an endorsement from Bolsonaro, accused her of involvement in the supposed Zika plots.The very people working to help families affected by Zika, their videos implied, were behind the disease. Backed by shadowy foreigners, their goal was to abolish Brazil’s abortion ban — or even make abortions mandatory.As far-right and conspiracy channels began citing one another, YouTube’s recommendation system learned to string their videos together. However implausible any individual rumor might be on its own, joined together, they created the impression that dozens of disparate sources were revealing the same terrifying truth.“It feels like the connection is made by the viewer, but the connection is made by the system,” Diniz said.Threats of rape and torture filled Diniz’s phone and email. Some cited her daily routines. Many echoed claims from Küster’s videos, she said.Küster gleefully mentioned, though never explicitly endorsed, the threats. That kept him just within YouTube’s rules.When the university where Diniz taught received a warning that a gunman would shoot her and her students, and the police said they could no longer guarantee her safety, she left Brazil.“The YouTube system of recommending the next video and the next video,” she said, had created “an ecosystem of hate.”“‘I heard here that she’s an enemy of Brazil. I hear in the next one that feminists are changing family values. And the next one I hear that they receive money from abroad” she said. “That loop is what leads someone to say ‘I will do what has to be done.’ ”“We need the companies to face their role,” Diniz said. “Ethically, they are responsible.”As conspiracies spread on YouTube, video makers targeted aid groups whose work touches on controversial issues like abortion. Even some families that had long relied on such groups came to wonder if the videos might be true, and began to avoid them.In Brazil, this is a growing online practice known as “linchamento” — lynching. Bolsonaro was an early pioneer, spreading videos in 2012 that falsely accused left-wing academics of plotting to force schools to distribute “gay kits” to convert children to homosexuality.Jordy, Bolsonaro’s tattooed Niterói protégé, was untroubled to learn that his own YouTube campaign, accusing teachers of spreading communism, had turned their lives upside down.One of those teachers, Valeria Borges, said she and her colleagues had been overwhelmed with messages of hate, creating a climate of fear.Jordy, far from disputing this, said it had been his goal. “I wanted her to feel fear,” he said.“It’s a culture war we’re fighting,” he explained. “This is what I came into office to do.”‘The Dictatorship of the Like’Ground zero for politics by YouTube may be the São Paulo headquarters of Movimento Brasil Livre, which formed to agitate for the 2016 impeachment of left-wing President Dilma Rousseff. Its members trend young, middle-class, right-wing and extremely online.Renan Santos, the group’s national coordinator, gestured to a door marked “the YouTube Division” and said, “This is the heart of things.”Inside, eight young men poked at editing software. One was stylizing an image of Benito Mussolini for a video arguing that fascism had been wrongly blamed on the right.But even some people here fear the platform’s impact on democracy. Santos, for example, called social media a “weapon,” adding that some people around Bolsonaro “want to use this weapon to pressure institutions in a way that I don’t see as responsible.”The group’s co-founder, a man-bunned former rock guitarist name Pedro D’Eyrot, said “we have something here that we call the dictatorship of the like.”Reality, he said, is shaped by whatever message goes most viral.Even as he spoke, a two-hour YouTube video was captivating the nation. Titled “1964” for the year of Brazil’s military coup, it argued that the takeover had been necessary to save Brazil from communism.Dominguez, the teenager learning to play guitar, said the video persuaded him that his teachers had fabricated the horrors of military rule.Borges, the history teacher vilified on YouTube, said it brought back memories of military curfews, disappeared activists and police beatings.“I don’t think I’ve had my last beating,” she said. Matheus Dominguez, who said YouTube was crucial to shifting his political views to the far right, recording a YouTube video in Niterói, Brazil, April 29, 2019. YouTube built its business on keeping users hooked. This has been a gift to extremist groups. An investigation in the company’s second-biggest market found serious consequences. (Dado Galdieri/The New York Times)

TOKYO, Nov 13, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US President Barack Obama arrived in Tokyo on Friday, kicking off his first Asian tour since becoming leader, during which he is expected to try to smooth troubled ties with Japan and deepen relations with China. Obama will hold a summit later in the day with Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office in September vowing to steer a more independent diplomatic course from the United States, sparking concerns about the 50-year-old alliance. On Saturday, Obama will give a speech on US relations with Asia and meet Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko before moving on to Singapore for a forum of regional leaders at which the global economy is expected to top the agenda. He then moves on to China and South Korea. Tokyo is the first stop in a nine-day Asian tour that will take Obama to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific summit, to China for talks on climate change and huge trade imbalances and to South Korea where Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions will be in focus. Washington's relations with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's new government, which has pledged to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on its long-time ally and forge closer ties with Asia, have been frayed by a feud over a US military base. Obama and Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party ousted its long-dominant rival in a historic August election, were expected to turn down the heat in the dispute over the US Marines' Futenma air base on Japan's southern Okinawa island, a key part of a realignment of the 47,000 US troops in Japan. "I want to make this a summit that shows the importance of Japan-US relations in a global context," Hatoyama told reporters on Friday morning ahead of Obama's arrival. But assuaging anxiety and beginning to define a new direction for the five-decade-old alliance will be a difficult task. No breakthroughs were likely in the feud over Futenma during Obama's visit, although Hatoyama said on Thursday he would tell the US leader that he wants to resolve the issue soon. U.S. officials have made crystal clear they want Tokyo to implement a 2006 deal under which Futenma, located in a crowded part of Okinawa, would be closed and replaced with a facility in a remoter part of the island. Replacing Futenma is a prerequisite to shifting up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam. REDEFINING THE ALLIANCE But Hatoyama said before the election that the base should be moved off Okinawa, fanning hopes of the island's residents, reluctant hosts to more than half the US forces in Japan. Entangled with the feud are deeper questions about whether Obama and Hatoyama can start to reframe the alliance in the face of changing regional and global dynamics. China is forecast to overtake Japan as the world's second-biggest economy as early as next year, raising concerns in Japan that Washington will cosy up to Beijing in a "Group of Two" (G2) and leave Tokyo out in the cold. While Obama begins his Asian trip in Tokyo, he will spend just 24 hours in the Japanese capital compared to three days in China, where he will discuss revaluing the yuan, encouraging Chinese consumers to spend and opening Chinese markets further. Some in Washington are equally worried by signs Japan is distancing itself from its closest ally by promoting an as yet ill-defined East Asian Community, despite Hatoyama's assurances the US-Japan alliance is at the core of Tokyo's diplomacy. Hatoyama has said he wants to begin a review of the alliance with an aim to broadening ties longer term, and the leaders could agree at the summit to begin that process. The two leaders will also call for an 80 percent cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and issue a statement pledging to cooperate to promote nuclear disarmament, Japanese media said.

They already know the answer to one crucial question: Although it appeared to be the largest eruption in the world in three decades, the explosion of the Hunga volcano on Saturday will very likely not have a temporary cooling effect on the global climate, as some past enormous eruptions have. But in the aftermath of the event, there may be short-term effects on weather in parts of the world and possibly minor disruptions in radio transmissions, including those used by global positioning systems. The shock wave produced by the explosion, as well as the unusual nature of the tsunamis it generated, will have scientists studying the event for years. Tsunamis were detected not just in the Pacific, but in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean as well “Not that we weren’t aware of volcanic explosions and tsunamis,” said Lori Dengler, an emeritus professor of geophysics at Humboldt State University in California. “But to witness it with the modern array of instruments we have is truly unprecedented.” The explosion of the underwater volcano, which is formally known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Haʻapai, rained hazardous ash over the region, including the Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa, about 40 miles south. The capital also experienced a 4-foot tsunami and higher wave heights were reported elsewhere. The government called the eruption an “unprecedented disaster,” although the full scope of the damage has been difficult to determine because the explosion severed undersea telecommunications cables and ash has forced Tonga’s airports to shut down. Beyond Tonga, though, the enormity of the explosion was readily apparent. Satellite photos showed a cloud of dirt, rock, volcanic gases and water vapour several hundred miles in diameter, and a narrower plume of gas and debris soared nearly 20 miles into the atmosphere. Some volcanologists drew comparisons to the catastrophic explosion of Krakatau in Indonesia in 1883 and to the most recent huge eruption, of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, in 1991. Pinatubo erupted for several days, sending about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, or upper atmosphere There, the gas combined with water to create aerosol particles that reflected and scattered some of the sun’s rays, keeping them from hitting the surface. That had the effect of cooling the atmosphere by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about half a degree Celsius) for several years. (It is also the mechanism of a controversial form of geoengineering: using planes or other means to continuously inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to intentionally cool the planet.) The Hunga eruption “was matching the power of Pinatubo at its peak,” said Shane Cronin, a volcanologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who has studied earlier eruptions at the volcano. But the Hunga eruption lasted only about 10 minutes, and satellite sensors in the days that followed measured about 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide reaching the stratosphere. “The amount of SO2 released is much, much smaller than, say, Mount Pinatubo,” said Michael Manga, an earth sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So unless the Hunga eruption resumes and continues at a similarly strong level, which is considered unlikely, it won’t have a global cooling effect. Cronin said the power of the eruption was in part related to its location, about 500 feet underwater. When superhot molten rock, or magma, hit seawater, the water instantly flashed into steam, expanding the explosion many times over. Had it been much deeper, water pressure would have dampened the explosion. The shallower depth created perfect “almost Goldilocks” conditions, he said, to supercharge the explosion. The blast produced a shock wave in the atmosphere that was one of the most extraordinary ever detected, said Corwin Wright, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Bath in England. Satellite readings showed that the wave reached far beyond the stratosphere, as high as 60 miles up, and propagated around the world at more than 600 mph. “We’re seeing a really big wave, the biggest we’ve ever seen in the data we’ve been using for 20 years,” Wright said. “We’ve never seen anything really that covers the whole Earth like this, and certainly not from a volcano.” The wave resulted when the force of the blast displaced huge amounts of air outward and upward, high into the atmosphere. But then gravity pulled it down. It then rose up again, and this up-down oscillation continued, creating a wave of alternating high and low pressure that moved outward from the blast source. Wright said that although the wave occurred high in the atmosphere, it may potentially have a short-term effect on weather patterns closer to the surface, perhaps indirectly by affecting the jet stream. “We don’t quite know,” he said. “We’re looking to see what happens over the next few days. It could just sort of ripple through and not interact.” Wright said that because the wave was so high, it could also potentially have a slight effect on radio transmissions and signals from global positioning systems satellites. The atmospheric pressure wave may have also played a role in the unusual tsunamis that occurred. Tsunamis are generated by the rapid displacement of water, usually by the movement of rock and soil. Large underwater faults can generate tsunamis when they move in an earthquake. Volcanoes can cause tsunamis as well. In this case, the underwater blast, and the collapse of the volcano’s crater, may have caused the displacement. Or one flank of the volcano may have become unstable and collapsed, with the same result. But that would only account for the local tsunami that inundated Tonga, scientists said. Ordinarily, said Gerard Fryer, an affiliate researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who formerly worked at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. “You’d expect that energy to decay away with distance,” Fryer said. But this event generated tsunamis of roughly the same size of the local one, and over many hours, in Japan, Chile and the West Coast of the United States, and eventually generated small tsunamis in other basins elsewhere around the world. That’s a sign that as it travelled through the atmosphere, the pressure wave may have had an effect on the ocean, causing it to oscillate as well. It will take weeks or months of analysing data to determine if that’s what happened, but some researchers said it was a likely explanation. “We know that the atmosphere and the ocean are coupled,” Dengler said. “And we see the tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean. It didn’t go around the tip of South America to get there.” “The evidence is very clear that the pressure wave played a role. The question is how big a part.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

COPENHAGEN, Nov 17, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A binding international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions will slip to mid-2010 or beyond and a summit in Copenhagen next month will fall short of its ambitions, the United Nations and Denmark said on Monday. The United Nations' top climate official said a treaty could be wrapped up at talks in Bonn by mid-2010. Denmark, host of next month's meeting, said it might take longer - until Mexico in December. Negotiations on a deal, initially due to be reached at the Dec. 7-18 summit in Copenhagen, have stalled. US President Barack Obama and some other Asia Pacific leaders embraced a proposal by Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen on Sunday that next month's summit should aim for political agreements but delay a legally binding treaty. A prominent member of the US Congress also acknowledged it could be months before the Senate gets around to passing a domestic climate bill. Senator John Kerry, who is leading Senate negotiations on a compromise US measure to tackle global warming, said he and other Democrats were working toward "trying to see if we can get this to the (Senate) floor sometime in the early spring, as early as possible." Denmark still wants the summit to agree emissions cuts by each developed country, actions by developing nations to slow their rising emissions, and new funds and technology to help the poor. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said he favoured at most a six-month delay for a legally binding deal -- until a meeting in Bonn in mid-2010. That would give time for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping laws, he said. "It's like metal, you've got to beat it when it's hot," he told Reuters at two days of talks involving 40 environment ministers. They are trying to end rich-poor splits blocking even a political deal for sharing out greenhouse gas curbs. "If we get clarity on (emission) targets, developing country engagement and finance in Copenhagen, which I'm confident we will, then you can nail that down in a treaty form six months later." MEXICAN TREATY? Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard also said the December summit should end with a clear deadline. "Maybe a realistic deadline would be Mexico but it depends on how far parties go on crunch issues," she told reporters. Ministerial talks are scheduled for Mexico in December 2010. Denmark wants world leaders to sign up to a 5-8 page "political agreement" next month, backed up by annexes outlining commitments by each nation. At a UN food summit in Rome, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "I remain positive about Copenhagen. There is no cause for alarm." He also said a climate deal was crucial to fighting global hunger because climate change hurts farm output in poor countries. "There can be no food security without climate security," he said. "Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change." China, which is under pressure to restrict its emissions growth even though its industrial expansion is very recent, said it was "studying" the Danish proposal for a political deal. China has overtaken the United States as top emitter. It made clear it is keen to tie down points that have been agreed in principle on transfers of technology and funding from long-industrialised nations to the developing world. India's Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh said: "It seems like the inability of the US to come forward with a meaningful emissions cut by the year 2020 has led to such a situation ... I am hoping that we can get a full agreement but it looks increasingly unlikely." STILL HOPING Poor nations insisted that a binding treaty was still possible next month, even though Obama and most other leaders reckon it has slipped out of reach, not least because the US Senate is unlikely to pass carbon-capping laws by December. "We believe that an internationally legally binding agreement is still possible," Michael Church, the environment minister of Grenada who chairs the 42-nation Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters. Developing nations say they are most at risk from heatwaves, droughts, floods, disease and rising sea levels, and so are pressing for action most urgently.

Germany on Wednesday agreed to make all trips on government business 'carbon neutral', joining a recent trend among companies and individuals in Europe to offset the environmental impact of trips by car and plane. Keen to demonstrate its environmental credentials during its six-month presidency of the European Union, Germany will 'offset' the emissions produced by the journeys taken by government employees and ministers from 2007 onwards. This will include all ministerial flights on the country's official aircraft and journeys made in the government's fleet of cars, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement. "With this step the Federal Government is setting a good example and is also making a clear signal of the need for more climate protection given the alarming revelations about climate change," Gabriel said. Carbon offsetting involves paying others to cut or compensate for emissions on your behalf, for example by planting trees or building wind farms. The programme will cost the government three to four million euros ($4-$5.3 million), the environment ministry said, a sum that will be included in the 2008 budget. Germany is Europe's biggest polluter and has a history of defending its heavy industry against environmentally-friendly legislation. It put up resistance to a cap by the European Commission on carbon dioxide emissions earlier this year and also complained over new EU emissions limits for cars.

Sarah Famery, a 20-year resident of the Marais neighbourhood, braced for the tumult. She looked left, then right, then left and right again before venturing into a crosswalk, only to break into a rant-laden sprint as two cyclists came within inches of grazing her. “It’s chaos!” said Famery, shaking a fist at the swarm of bikes that have displaced cars on the Rue de Rivoli since it was remade into a multilane highway for cyclists last year. “Politicians want to make Paris a cycling city, but no one is following any rules. It’s becoming risky just to cross the street!” The mayhem on Rue de Rivoli — a major traffic artery stretching from the Bastille past the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde — is playing out on streets across Paris as authorities pursue an ambitious goal of making the city a European cycling capital by 2024. Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who is campaigning for the French presidency, has been burnishing her credentials as an ecologically minded Socialist candidate. She has earned admirers and enemies alike with a bold program to transform greater Paris into the world’s leading environmentally sustainable metropolis, reclaiming vast swaths of the city from cars for parks, pedestrians and a Copenhagen, Denmark-style cycling revolution. She has made highways along the Seine car-free and last year, during coronavirus lockdowns, oversaw the creation of more than 100 miles of new bike paths. She plans to limit cars in 2022 in the heart of the city, along half of the Right Bank and through the Boulevard Saint Germain. Parisians have heeded the call: A million people in a metropolis of 10 million are now pedalling daily. And Paris now ranks among the world’s Top 10 cycling cities, But with success has come major growing pains. “It’s like Paris is in anarchy,” said Jean-Conrad LeMaitre, a former banker who was out for a stroll recently along the Rue de Rivoli. “We need to reduce pollution and improve the environment. But everyone is just doing as they please. There are no police, no fines, no training and no respect.” At City Hall, the people in charge of the transformation acknowledged the need for solutions to the flaring tensions, and to the accidents and even deaths that have resulted from the free-for-all on the streets. Anger over reckless electric scooter use in particular boiled over after a 31-year-old woman was killed this summer in a hit-and-run along the Seine. Delivery workers along Rue de Rivoli in Paris, Sept 16, 2021. The New York Times “We are in the midst of a new era where bikes and pedestrians are at the heart of a policy to fight climate change,” said David Belliard, Paris’ deputy mayor for transportation and the point person overseeing the metamorphosis. “But it’s only recently that people started using bikes en masse, and it will take time to adapt.” Delivery workers along Rue de Rivoli in Paris, Sept 16, 2021. The New York Times Belliard hopes Parisians can be coaxed into complying with laws, in part by adding more police to hand out 135 euro fines ($158) to unruly cyclists and by teaching schoolchildren about bike safety. Electric scooters have been restricted to a speed of 10 kph (just over 6 mph) in crowded areas and could be banned by the end of 2022 if dangerous use does not stop. The city also plans talks with delivery companies such as Uber Eats, whose couriers are paid per delivery and are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to breaking traffic rules. “Their economic model is part of the problem,” Belliard said. Probably the biggest challenge, though, is that Paris does not yet have an ingrained cycling culture. The abiding French sense of “liberté” is on display in the streets at all hours, where Parisians young and old jaywalk at nearly every opportunity. They appear to have carried that freewheeling spirit to their bikes. “In Denmark, which has a decadeslong cycling culture, the mentality is, ‘Don’t go if the light is red,’ ” said Christine Melchoir, a Dane who has lived in Paris for 30 years and commutes daily by bike. “But for a Parisian, the mentality is, ‘Do it!’ ” Urban planners say better cycling infrastructure could help tame bad behaviour. Copenhagen — the model that Paris aspires to — has efficient layouts for cycling paths that allow bikes, pedestrians and cars to coexist within a hierarchy of space. Citizens are taught from a young age to follow rules of the road. In Paris, parts of the 1,000-kilometer citywide cycling network (about 620 miles) can steer bikers into hazardous interactions with cars, pedestrians and other cyclists. At the Bastille, a once-enormous traffic circle that was partly appropriated from cars, a tangle of bike lanes weave through traffic. Cyclists who respect signals can take up to four minutes to cross. “Paris has the right ideas and they’re absolutely the main city to watch on the planet, because no one is near them for their general urban transformation visions,” said Mikael Colville-Andersen, a Copenhagen-based urban designer who advises cities on integrating cycling into urban transport. “But the infrastructure is like spaghetti,” he said. “It’s chaotic, it doesn’t connect up and there’s no cohesive network. If you can get that right, it will eliminate a lot of confusion.” Belliard, the deputy mayor, said Paris would soon unveil a blueprint to improve infrastructure. But for now, the tumult continues. On a recent afternoon, eight cyclists ran a red light en masse on the Boulevard de Sébastopol, a major north-south artery. Wary pedestrians cowered until one dared to try crossing, causing a near pileup. Back on the Rue de Rivoli, cyclists swerved to avoid pedestrians playing a game of chicken with oncoming bikes. “Pay attention!” a cyclist in a red safety vest and goggles shouted at three women crossing against a red light, as he nearly crashed in the rain. Cyclists say Paris has not done enough to make bike commuting safe. Bike accidents jumped 35% last year, from 2019. Paris en Selle, a cycling organization, has held protests calling for road security after several cyclists were killed in collisions with motorists, including, recently, a 2-year-old boy riding with his father who was killed near the Louvre when a truck turned into them. A small but growing number of cyclists say they are too nervous to ride anymore. “I’m afraid of being crushed,” said Paul Michel Casabelle, 44, a superintendent at the Maison de Danmark, a Danish cultural institute. On a recent Sunday, Ingrid Juratowitch had to talk her daughter Saskia safely across bike lanes near the Saint Paul metro station while she held her two other young daughters at a safe distance from the street. “Be careful, there are bikes coming from the left and right,” said Juratowitch, who has lived in Paris for 14 years. She is increasingly reluctant to let her children walk to school for fear of reckless riders. “There’s another one coming," Juratowitch said. "OK, now you can go! “From an environmental point of view, we don’t want to see the city go back to cars,” Juratowitch said. “But it’s not safe. It’s as if bikes and pedestrians don’t know how to coexist.” Saskia, 12, chimed in. “It’s not the bikes; it’s the bikers,” she said. “They think the rules apply to everyone except them.”   © 2021 The New York Times Company

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned his top lieutenants on Friday that the global financial crisis jeopardized everything the United Nations has done to help the world's poor and hungry. "It threatens to undermine all our achievements and all our progress," Ban told a meeting of UN agency chiefs devoted to the crisis. "Our progress in eradicating poverty and disease. Our efforts to fight climate change and promote development. To ensure that people have enough to eat." At a meeting also attended by the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Ban said the credit crunch that has stunned markets worldwide compounded the food crisis, the energy crisis and Africa's development crisis. "It could be the final blow that many of the poorest of the world's poor simply cannot survive," he added, in one of his bleakest assessments of the impact of the financial turmoil. In a statement after the meeting, Ban picked up a theme he has stressed since the crisis erupted last month, that it should not be allowed to hit hardest "those least responsible" -- the poor in developing countries. The UN chief told reporters he would put that case to a financial summit in Washington on Nov. 15 by US called by President George W. Bush. Ban has been invited to that gathering along with leaders of the G20 -- the Group of Seven top industrial democracies and key emerging economies. "As secretary-general I am going to emphasize, as I have been doing in the past, to ask the world leaders to give priority in addressing the challenges of developing countries," he said. Ban said it was important that, despite the world economic downturn, the United Nations continue to pursue its so-called Millennium Development Goals -- eight targets for slashing poverty, hunger and disease by 2015. He also said the world must persist with efforts to tackle climate change through two major conferences over the next 15 months, and he called on rich countries to keep up their overseas aid despite domestic financial woes. In a statement, the UN chiefs promised "proactive leadership" to ensure a "coordinated and comprehensive response on trade, development, employment, finance, humanitarian assistance, environment and the protection of global goods and norms." They also pledged to support a "meaningful, comprehensive and well-coordinated reform of the international financial system," but offered no specifics on what this should entail.

UK Environment Secretary David Miliband will unveil plans on Thursday to improve Britain's poor record on recycling its rubbish. The government's new Waste Strategy will outline how it plans to meet tough European Union rules on reducing the amount of garbage buried in landfill sites in England. A government consultation document last year proposed increasing the level of recycling and composting of household waste from 27 percent today to 40 percent by 2010 and 50 percent by 2020. Britain is near the bottom of Europe's recycling league, with only Greece and Portugal recycling less, according to figures from the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Green Alliance. Campaigners want the government to introduce a rising level of charges for rubbish collections to encourage householders to recycle more. Last year's consultation found strong support among the public for some form of variable charging, but there was also concern that extra costs could lead to a rise in fly-tipping. Friends of the Earth said the recycling targets should be set as high as 75 percent of all household waste by 2015. It said Flanders in northern Belgium was already recycling 71 percent. The environmental group said there should also be legally binding recycling targets for businesses. It said government proposals in the consultation to build more incinerators to burn waste instead of burying it would be a backward move. It said incinerators produced more climate-changing carbon dioxide than gas-fired power stations and would face fierce opposition from local communities concerned about other pollutants released into the air.

The global average temperature has increased over the past 160 years, but short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other and need more research, the UK Met Office's Hadley Center said. In a report on long and short-term climate trends, the Hadley Center found several factors that indicate a warming world and said 2010 has been one of the warmest years on record. The report drew on the work of more than 20 institutions worldwide and used a range of measurements from satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ocean buoys, ships and field surveys. The report showed increases in air temperatures above both land and sea, increases in water temperature and humidity, sea level rises and the shrinking of Arctic sea ice. "The average temperature over the first decade of the 21st century was significantly warmer than any preceding decade in the instrumental record, stretching back over 160 years," the report said. Despite variability from year to year, with some years warmer and others cooler, a clear trend of increasing global temperature can be seen from the late 1970s onwards at about 0.16 degrees per decade, the report said. "It is clear from the observational evidence across a wide range of indicators that the world is warming," said Matt Palmer, ocean observations specialist at the Met Office. "As well as a clear increase in air temperature observed above both the land and sea, we see observations which are all consistent with increasing greenhouse gases," he added. However, short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other. The rate of temperature increases has slowed over the past 10 years, while the level of sea ice has increased. Climate models suggest that the internal variability of the climate system may be responsible for the recent decrease in the rate of warming, the report said. Changes in solar activity, water vapor, increased aerosol emissions from Asia and changes to the way sea surface temperatures are measured over the past decade could have contributed to some artificial cooling, the report said. "We expect warming to increase in the next few years ... However, other future external factors, such as volcanic eruptions or changes in solar activity, could prolong the current reduction in warming," the report said. More research is needed into some of the factors that influence short-term climate trends, which are not fully understood or represented in climate models.

That's the view of some major automakers, including BMW and Audi, which are developing hydrogen fuel-cell passenger vehicle prototypes alongside their fleets of battery cars as part of preparations to abandon fossil fuels. They are hedging their bets, calculating that a change in political winds could shift the balance towards hydrogen in an industry shaped by early-mover Tesla's decision to take the battery-powered road to clean cars. Global auto hub Germany is in sharp focus. It is already betting billions on hydrogen fuel in sectors like steel and chemicals to meet climate targets, and closely-fought elections this month could see the Greens enter the coalition government and further push the technology. BMW is hydrogen's biggest proponent among Germany's carmakers, charting a path to a mass-market model around 2030. The company also has one eye on shifting hydrogen policies in Europe and in China, the world's largest car market. The Munich-based premium player has developed a hydrogen prototype car based on its X5 SUV, in a project already partly funded by the German government. Jürgen Guldner, the BMW vice president who heads up the hydrogen fuel-cell car programme, told Reuters the carmaker would build a test fleet of close to 100 cars in 2022. "Whether this (technology) is driven by politics or demand, we will be ready with a product," he said, adding that his team is already working to develop the next generation vehicles.

The German chancellor, although credited for navigating multiple crises, was long criticised for lacking strategic vision. Macron, whose more swaggering style has sometimes ruffled his European partners — and Washington — has put forward ideas for a more independent and integrated Europe, better able to act in its own defence and its own interests. But as the Anglo-American “betrayal” in the Australian submarine affair has underscored, Macron sometimes possesses ambitions beyond his reach. Despite the vacuum Merkel leaves, a Macron era is unlikely to be born. Instead, analysts say, the European Union is heading for a period of prolonged uncertainty and potential weakness, if not necessarily drift. No one figure — not even Macron or a new German chancellor — will be as influential as Merkel was at her strongest: an authoritative, well-briefed leader who quietly managed compromise and built consensus among a long list of louder and more ideological colleagues. That raises the prospect of paralysis or of Europe muddling through its challenges — on what to do about an increasingly indifferent America, on China and Russia, and on trade and technology — or even of a more dangerous fracturing of the bloc’s always tentative unity. And it will mean that Macron, who is up for reelection in April and absorbed in that uncertain campaign, will need to wait for a German government that may not be in place until January or longer, and then work closely with a weaker German chancellor. “We’ll have a weak German chancellor on top of a larger, less unified coalition,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “A weaker chancellor is less capable of exerting influence in Europe, and then with the Macron election, the political cycles of these two key countries will not be in sync.” The uncertainty is likely to last until after the French parliamentary elections in June — and that is presuming Macron wins. Macron has argued forcefully that Europe must do more to protect its own interests in a world where China is rising and the United States is focusing on Asia. His officials are already trying to prepare the ground on some key issues, looking forward to January, when France takes over the rotating EU presidency. But given the likelihood of lengthy coalition talks in Germany, the window for accomplishment is narrow. Macron will need German help. While France and Germany together can no longer run the European Union by themselves, when they agree, they tend to bring the rest of the bloc along with them. So building a relationship with the new German chancellor, even a weaker one, will be a primary goal for Macron. He must be careful, noted Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia of the Open Societies Foundations, not to scare off the Germans. “Macron’s leadership is disruptive, and the German style is to change institutions incrementally,” she said. “Both sides will need to think through how they make it possible for the other side to answer constructively.” French officials understand that substantive change will be slow, and they will want to build on initiatives already underway, like the analysis of Europe’s interests called “the strategic compass” and a modest but steady increase in military spending on new capabilities through the new European Defense Fund and a program called Pesco, intended to promote joint projects and European interoperability. After the humiliation of the scuttled submarine deal, when Australia suddenly cancelled a contract with France and chose a deal with Britain and the United States instead, many of his European colleagues are more likely now to agree with Macron that Europe must be less dependent on Washington and spend at least a little more in its own defence. Few in Europe, though, want to permanently damage ties with the Americans and NATO. “Italy wants a stronger Europe, OK, but in NATO — we’re not on the French page on that,” said Marta Dassu, a former Italian deputy foreign minister and director of European affairs at the Aspen Institute. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose voice is respected in Brussels, believes strongly in the trans-Atlantic relationship, Dassu said, adding, “We’re closer to Germany than to France, but without all the ambiguities on Russia and China.” France also wants to become more assertive using the economic and financial tools Europe already has, especially trade and technology, the officials say. The point, they say, is not to push too hard too fast, but to raise the European game vis-à-vis China and the United States, and try to encourage a culture that is comfortable with power. But France’s German partners will be going through a period of uncertainty and transition. A new German chancellor is expected to win only one-quarter of the vote and may need to negotiate a coalition agreement among three political parties. That is expected to take at least until Christmas, if not longer. The new chancellor will also need to get up to speed on European issues, which barely surfaced in the campaign, and build credibility as the newcomer among 26 other leaders. “So it’s important now to start thinking of concrete French-German wins during a French presidency that Macron can use in a positive way in his campaign,” Schwarzer said. “Because Berlin does not want to ponder a scenario in which Macron loses” to far-right Marine Le Pen or in which euroskeptics like Matteo Salvini take over in Italy. Whoever wins, German policy toward Europe will remain roughly the same from a country deeply committed to EU ideals, cautious and wanting to preserve stability and unity. The real question is whether any European leader can be the cohesive force Merkel was — and if not, what it will mean for the continent’s future. “Merkel herself was important in keeping the EU together,” said Ulrich Speck of the German Marshall Fund. “She kept in mind the interests of so many in Europe, especially Central Europe but also Italy, so that everyone could be kept on board.” Merkel saw the European Union as the core of her policy, said a senior European official, who called her the guardian of true EU values, willing to bend to keep the bloc together, as evidenced by her support for collective debt, previously a German red line, to fund the coronavirus recovery fund. “Merkel acted as mediator when there have been a lot of centrifugal forces weakening Europe,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “It’s less clear how the next chancellor will position himself or herself and Germany.” Still, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted that “whoever is the chancellor, Germany is still responsible for more than half of Chinese trade with Europe.” Germany is “vastly more important than the other countries on all the big issues, from how to handle China to the tech wars and climate change,” he said. That means Macron “knows he has to channel German power behind his vision,” he said. But French and Italian positions will be crucial, too, on important pending financial issues like fiscal and banking integration, trying to complete the single market and monitoring the pandemic recovery fund. Merkel’s departure may provide an opportunity for the kinds of change Macron desires, even if in vastly scaled-down version. Merkel’s love of the status quo, some analysts argue, was anachronistic at a time when Europe faces so many challenges. Perhaps most important is the looming debate about whether to alter Europe’s spending rules, which in practical terms means getting agreement from countries to spend more on everything, from defence to climate. The real problem is that fundamental change would require a treaty change, said Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels research institution. “You can’t have fiscal and defence integration by stealth,” he said. “It won’t have legitimacy and won’t be accepted by citizens.” But the German election debates ignored these broad issues, he said. “The sad news,” Wolff said, “is that none of the three chancellor candidates campaigned on any of this, so my baseline expectation is continued muddling forward.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

BEIJING,Feb 21(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States and China must work together in dealing with the global financial crisis, climate change and North Korea, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Beijing on Saturday. "It is, in our view, imperative that the United States and China cooperate on a range of issues from the economy to global climate change to development and so much else," Clinton told Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi during talks. On Friday, Clinton said Washington would press China on human rights but added that this would not keep them from working together on a range of issues such as the financial crisis and how to respond to the security threats posed by North Korea. Clinton's visit to China is the fourth and final leg of a tour of Asia that has also taken her to South Korea, Indonesia and Japan. It is her first trip abroad as secretary of state. Earlier, Yang said the world faced a series of "major and pressing" challenges. "The larger situation requires our two countries to strengthen dialogue ... and work together to elevate our relationship to a new level," Yang said. The United States has long accused China of human rights abuses and pressed Beijing to grant greater autonomy to Tibet. In a 1995 speech in Beijing, Clinton openly criticized China's human rights record. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that Clinton's comments on Friday had undermined human rights reform in China and sent the wrong message to the Chinese government. "Secretary Clinton's remarks point to a diplomatic strategy that has worked well for the Chinese government -- segregating human rights issues into a dead-end dialogue of the deaf," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "A new approach is needed, one in which the U.S. engages China on the critical importance of human rights to a wide range of mutual security interests." Clinton will also meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday. High on the agenda will be how to get North Korea to fulfill its commitments to dismantle its nuclear arms program and well as recent threats by the reclusive state to carry out missile tests. China is the nearest North Korea has to a powerful ally.

Much of the displacement caused by cyclones, floods and fires appeared temporary and in some cases due to better efforts to evacuate people ahead of danger, Oxfam researchers said. But its “sheer scale” was a surprise, said Tim Gore, Oxfam’s climate policy leader, with island nations like Cuba, Dominica and Tuvalu seeing on average close to 5 percent of their people out of their homes in any given year. “This is the warming world we have long been warning about. Now we’re seeing it play out before our eyes,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Oxfam study, released as two weeks of UN climate negotiations start in Madrid, examined the numbers of people displaced inside their home countries by climate-fuelled disasters between 2008 and 2018, based on government and international agency data, as well as media reports. People were three times more likely to be displaced by cyclones, floods or fires than by conflicts, it found. Some countries, like war-torn Somalia, were battered by both droughts and floods, sometimes in the same year. That “confluence of disasters” leaves many poor nations - where most of the displacement is occurring - struggling to recover from one crisis before the next hits, Gore said. Some have run aid appeals for both drought and flood relief simultaneously, he said. “This is extraordinary,” he said. “This is climate chaos - what it actually looks like.” Seven of the top 10 countries with the highest displacement by proportion of their population were developing island states, largely in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the report found. But around 80 percent of all people forced from their homes by weather disasters over the last decade were in Asia, where large populations in countries from the Philippines to Sri Lanka live in areas threatened by cyclones or flooding, it said. In May, Cyclone Fani alone led to the displacement of 3.5 million people in Bangladesh and India, most of them evacuated in advance of the storm in order to hold down casualties. Overall, the number of weather disasters considered extreme grew five-fold over the last decade, researchers said. The study did not look comprehensively at how many people were uprooted by “slow onset” disasters like droughts where it is harder to judge the beginning and end, Gore said. Including drought-linked displacement would make the numbers “much higher”, he added. It also did not estimate how much of the displacement became permanent - “a really unknown quantity”, Gore said. In 2018, Oxfam made a rough estimate of the number displaced by extreme weather disasters during the year who were still out of their homes by the end of it, and came up with about 10-20 percent. SPIRALING COSTS As more people leave their homes as a result of weather disasters, costs - and threats to social stability - are rising quickly for the countries trying to manage that displacement, often with few resources, the report said. At the UN climate talks in Madrid, environmental and development groups are pushing to establish a fund to bail out countries on the frontline of “loss and damage” as a hotter planet brings wilder weather and rising seas. A Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was created at climate negotiations in 2013 with the aim of aiding poor nations that have produced few of the emissions that drive climate change but are suffering its strongest effects. So far, however, the mechanism has produced little concrete help or new money for those countries, beyond backing the use of insurance policies to limit losses, critics say. Gore said insurance alone could not address the whole problem. “Loss and damage is the next key battleground of the climate talks,” he added. Recent analysis by the Stockholm Environment Institute, endorsed by nearly 100 civil society groups, estimated new finance of at least $50 billion a year would be needed by 2022 to deal with loss and damage, rising to $300 billion by 2030. Gore said no amount of help would enable everyone to stay in their homes as climate change impacts strengthen, and preparing now would help protect those on the move. “Are we going to manage this, or see the people least responsible for the crisis forced from their homes in a chaotic way that tramples on their rights?” he asked. “The costs are going to continue to spiral. The sooner we get down to serious negotiations about how to manage it in a serious, responsible way, the better,” he said.

With more fires burning this season than any since 2018, British Columbia is scorching, trapped in a record-breaking heat wave driven in part by climate change. In June, the relentless wildfire season claimed the small town of Lytton, after three consecutive days of extreme heat broke national temperature records, rising to 121 degrees Fahrenheit (about 49 degrees Celsius). Two people died, the only casualties of the province’s wildfire season, which is mainly affecting sparsely populated areas. Since April, more than 1.6 million acres have burned, data released by the province this week show. That is about 80% more than what would normally have been expected at this time in wildfire season, based on the province’s 10-year average. At least 3,100 firefighters and personnel are working to suppress the flames. Powerful firefighting tanker airplanes whir about, with fleets that include helicopters fitted with a 2,650-gallon tank that can be filled in less than one minute. The flames have forced the evacuation of thousands of homes — but some residents have refused to leave, prompting the government to warn against complacency. Where are the wildfires? The majority of the nearly 260 wildfires still burning are in the interior region, closer to British Columbia’s southeast border with the province of Alberta, and miles away from the Pacific coastline. One massive fire has burned more than 139,600 acres, and was stoked further Tuesday by gusting winds and dry conditions at White Rock Lake, about 21 miles northwest of a bigger town, Vernon. It’s one of more than 30 wildfires that are considered to pose a threat to public safety under the province’s wildfire classification system. The rest are viewed as less of a threat. Some say government officials are not doing enough. In Monte Lake, a town near one of the fires ranked as most dangerous, the flames have been burning since July 13, and residents criticised the province for what they called a slow response. Rick Manwaring, a deputy minister for British Columbia’s forest and natural resource operations department, defended the government’s efforts. Two crews and one helicopter with a 1000-liter water bucket responded to the blaze immediately, he said at a news conference Tuesday. “And this has been standard for us this unusual fire season,” Manwaring said. The crews worked with local ranchers and residents to build barriers to protect property, he said. A network of close to 200 helicopters, mass-water delivery systems and other heavy machinery have been dispatched across the various sites to help quell the flames. And more than 150 firefighters from outside the province, including 100 from Mexico who arrived in late July, are assisting thousands of local fire crew members and Canadian armed forces personnel. But countries that would normally be ready to assist Canada, including the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, have not been able to provide support this year because they are battling wildfires on their own soil. Pandemic travel restrictions have also complicated things. How are the evacuations going? As of Tuesday, about 5,400 properties were under an evacuation order. Another 31,000 are on alert for evacuation, meaning that the authorities are asking residents to prepare grab-and-go bags of essential items. They have also been advised to have an evacuation plan for pets and livestock, and a full tank of gas in the car in case they are told to flee their homes on short notice. The authorities have urged residents to obey evacuation orders immediately. A failure to do so, they warned, could put the lives of firefighters at risk should evacuation routes become blocked by flames. “I know people are scared and frustrated,” said Katrine Conroy, the minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development. “You simply put your life and lives of others at risk, and we can’t ask firefighters to risk their lives and face down a wall of flames because someone made an unwise decision to not evacuate.” Ryan Reynolds, a postdoctoral researcher in household preparedness and evacuations at the University of British Columbia, said forest fires posed a complex challenge for emergency planners. Among the biggest problems is their unpredictability: In the blink of an eye, the flames can change direction and suddenly threaten evacuation routes. The province has 14 reception centres open to support evacuees, and group lodging facilities. Some evacuation orders have been scaled back, allowing businesses like the Monte Creek Winery, previously evacuated because of the White Rock Lake fire, to reopen. “It feels like a normal thing for us now,” said Ashley Demedeiros, a marketing manager at the winery. Businesses, Demedeiros said, have long since learned that people need to have a wildfire plan. “It’s not a drill anymore,” she said. What is causing the fires? During the past decade in British Columbia, an average of 58% of the wildfires have been caused by lightning, and 42% by humans. But that changed a bit in 2018 — a record 3.3 million acres burned — when 70% of the fires were attributed to lightning, according to government data. Of the active wildfires now taking place, more than 180 were ignited by natural causes, including lightning, and just over a dozen by human activity, the government says. What has the health effect been? Casualties have been low, in part because of evacuation orders and in part because of the distance between the fires and population centres. But Canada’s environmental agency warned that the air quality has deteriorated in areas like the Okanagan Valley and Kamloops because of the smoke. That can lead to chronic illness, including some that shorten lives, said Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia who researches the effects of air pollution on human health. What’s next? More hot weather, unfortunately. Temperatures in British Columbia’s Interior region are expected to rise from Thursday to Saturday. Some forecasts predict temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit or above, according to weather alerts by Environment and Climate Change Canada, a government agency. That makes it even harder to fight the fires already taking place. When the thermometer climbs, helicopter engines can overheat and other machines can fail. That happened during the province’s record-breaking heat wave in June. © 2021 The New York Times Company

The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists said on Friday: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down. The North and South poles are both subject to solar radiation and rising levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the researchers said in a telephone briefing. But Antarctica is also affected by an ozone hole hovering high above it during the austral summer. "All the evidence points toward human-made effects playing a major role in the changes that we see at both poles and evidence that contradicts this is very hard to find," said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. An examination of many previous studies about polar climate, to be published May 6 in the journal Eos, "further depletes the arsenal of those who insist that human-caused climate change is nothing to worry about," Francis said in a telephone briefing. In the Arctic, Francis and co-authors of the research said, warming spurred by human-generated carbon dioxide emissions has combined with natural climate variations to create a "perfect Arctic storm" that caused a dramatic disappearance of sea ice last year, a trend likely to continue. 'NEW STATE' "Natural climate variability and global warming were actually working together and they've sent the Arctic into a new state for the climate that has much less sea ice," said James Overland, an oceanographer at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "There's very little chance for the climate to return to the conditions of 20 years ago." In Antarctica, the ozone hole adds a new factor to an already complicated set of weather patterns, according to Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey. The changes in air pressure that go along with depleted stratospheric ozone are responsible for an increase in the westerly winds that whip around the Southern Ocean, at latitudes a bit north of most of Antarctica. These winds isolate much of the southern continent from some of the impact of global warming, Marshall said. The exception is the Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches northward toward South America. There, the effects of warming have been dramatic, he said, because the winds that protect the rest of Antarctica do not insulate the peninsula. The stratospheric ozone hole, caused by the ozone-depleting release of chemicals found in refrigerants and hair sprays, is likely to fully recover by 2070 as less of these chemicals are in use, as a result of international agreements. The ozone layer shields Earth from harmful solar radiation, but its recovery is likely to open the way for warming in central Antarctica, the scientists said.

Hollywood celebrities Harrison Ford, Bo Derek and Robert Duvall on Monday threw their support behind a new global initiative by the World Bank to save tigers from extinction. While the global development agency's main mission is to fight poverty in developing countries, it has rarely taken on wildlife conservation efforts of endangered species. The new Tiger Conservation Initiative will bring together wildlife experts, scientists and governments to try to halt the killing and thriving illegal trade in tiger skins, meat and body parts used in traditional Asian medicines. Ford, a long-time environmental activist, said efforts to protect tigers would only succeed if local communities were involved in conservation efforts. "By committing to help wild tigers, the World Bank is sounding its intention to be a global leader in biodiversity conservation," Ford, the star of the latest "Indiana Jones" movie, told an event at Washington's Smithsonian National Zoo. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the decline in the number of tigers was "shocking" from over 100,000 a century ago to currently less than 4,000. The clearing of large areas of forest land for urban development has added to their decline and disappearance from Central Asia, the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, and most of China. POACHING AT ALL-TIME HIGH A World Bank report warned that "if current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times." "Just as with many other challenges of sustainability, such as climate change, pandemic disease, or poverty, the crisis facing tigers overwhelms local capabilities and it is one that transcends local borders," Zoellick said. "This is a problem that cannot be handled by individual nations alone, it requires an alliance of strong local commitment backed by deep international support," he added. Zoellick said the World Bank would convene a series of discussions with countries, conservationists and the private sector to mobilize funding for tiger conservation, and launch studies on how better to protect the cats. The World Bank chief said there were examples of where tigers had been brought back from the brink of extinction, such as in Russia and Nepal, but added that saving the world tiger population would not be an easy task. "All those concerned may not agree but this does not mean we should stand on the sidelines and do nothing," he said. John Seidensticker, chief scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation Ecology Center, said tiger poaching and trafficking in tiger parts and meat was at an all-time high and the biggest immediate threat to tigers. "For wild tigers to live they must have much better security on their home ground," he said, also calling on countries to properly enforce laws to protect tigers. This, Seidensticker said, required strong political will. "We're at a tipping point and we're going to lose wild tigers but with the World Bank initiative wild tigers now have a chance," he added Seidensticker said tiger conservation efforts needed to be more coordinated and focused, and the World Bank could help as a global institution.

United Nations climate talks threaten Saudi Arabia's economic survival and the kingdom wants support for any shift from fossil fuels to other energy sources such as solar power, its lead climate negotiator said. Contrasting interests of different countries are challenging faltering climate talks, meant to forge by December a new global deal in Copenhagen to curb man-made climate change. Small island states say their survival is threatened by rising seas. But Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, says it could suffer from any pact which curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions. "It's a matter of survival for us, also. So we are among the most vulnerable countries, economically," Mohammad Al Sabban told Reuters on the fringes of talks which end on Wednesday, after the latest in a series of meetings meant to thrash out a deal to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. "Saudi Arabia has not done that much yet to diversify." Other divisions in the talks include rich versus poor, nations which contribute more to climate change than others, and countries more vulnerable to sea level rise, floods and droughts. Saudi Arabia wants support, for example, to develop alternative energy sources and to earn credits for burying greenhouse gases underground in near-depleted oil wells. Al Sabban said Saudi Arabia's solar power ambition was "much larger" than Abu Dhabi's $15 billion Masdar project to invest in renewable energy and build a carbon neutral city, but declined to put a dollar number on Saudi plans. "We have a lot of sun, a lot of land. We can export solar power to our neighbors on a very large scale and that is our strategic objective to diversify our economy, it will be huge." "We need the industrialized countries to assist us through direct investment, transfer of technologies," to ease the burden of a new climate deal, he added. CASH Developing nations want more cash from rich countries to help fund their fight against climate change but may have to wait until the final days and weeks of haggling in December. Saudi Arabia wants to access an existing adaptation fund which the U.N.'s climate chief Yvo de Boer describes as a "pittance." The country may have to compete with others which want funds to prepare for sea level rise and extreme weather. "Adaptation is not only to the impact of climate change but also the impact of climate policies," said Al Sabban. Other Saudi demands from the U.N. talks include a re-vamping of fossil fuel taxes in industrialized countries to focus on carbon rather than energy, which may benefit oil because it emits less of the greenhouse gas compared to coal. It also wants an elimination of subsidies for rival biofuels which it says harm the environment and hike food prices. The new U.S. administration of President Barack Obama has called for an increase in the amount of corn-based ethanol to be used in gasoline in the United States. Al Sabban said Saudi Arabia was "worried" about a "dangerous" threat to its economy but would cooperate. Environmental groups say the country has obstructed the climate talks for years, filibustering with frequent interventions in debates involving up to 190 countries. "We get used to these allegations," Al Sabban said. "We are faithfully engaging in these negotiations. Everybody here is coming to protect their interests, we are doing the same, the EU is doing the same, the United

European Union foreign ministers sought on Monday to narrow differences on how to combat climate change but resistance remained to a German bid to fix mandatory targets for the use of 'green fuels'. It will be up to EU leaders meeting this week to hammer out whether the bloc commits to binding objectives for the use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power as part of its ambition to lead the world in fighting climate change. "There was no final solution," one EU diplomat said after the talks. "As expected the summit will have to deal with it," he said of the meeting set for Brussels on Thursday and Friday. "They (ministers) repeated the well-known positions. It's been like that for months," said another EU official, adding that only Sweden, Denmark, Britain and Italy had stated their support during the talks for establishing binding targets on renewable energy. The EU plans to adopt a unilateral commitment to a 20 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases, rising to 30 percent if other major industrialised and emerging powers join in. Germany, the current EU president, also wants the summit to set a binding target for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar to supply 20 percent of energy consumption by 2020. France and some 10 other countries, including several in central Europe, are wary of binding targets that would impinge on their national energy strategies. British officials have signalled that Prime Minister Tony Blair has dropped resistance to a binding target. Some EU diplomats said they expect French President Jacques Chirac to yield in exchange for a recognition that France's nuclear power programme helps cut carbon dioxide emissions. "Many EU countries have demonstrated a significant readiness to commit to 20 percent (on renewables) as a binding goal," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily in an interview. She did not name those countries. A possible compromise, diplomats said, could be to make the 20 percent target binding on the EU as a whole but not on individual states, with burden-sharing to be negotiated later. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the EU should aim for something stronger than vague guidelines. "If the requirements are drafted in such a way that they are in the form of guidelines that we should respect, that is good. But I am personally in favour of clearer requirements," he said. Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said binding targets would be a sign the EU was serious. "Europe has to become greener and credibly so. So benchmarking and setting ourselves goals and ambitions explicitly is a reasonable instrument," she told reporters. Underlining the difficulties ahead, an independent audit of British climate change policies reported by the Guardian on Monday said Britain will fall short of a target of a 30 percent cut in CO2 emissions by 2020, not reaching that level till 2050. The ministers were also due to discuss crises in Darfur, the Middle East and Iran's nuclear programme. They are expected to urge the United Nations to consider tightening sanctions on Sudan over Darfur and pledge funds to help create a joint African Union-UN peace force. On the Middle East, they are expected to reiterate a willingness to work with a new Palestinian national unity government provided it adopts an acceptable platform.

While cooler weather overnight brought some relief for firefighters in New South Wales (NSW) state, attention shifted to its northern neighbour, Queensland, where hot, dry and windy conditions brought severe fire danger. Authorities issued a "leave immediately" warning, the highest level, for several areas including Noosa, a beachside holiday destination 150 km north of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland. "Conditions are now very dangerous and firefighters may soon be unable to prevent the fire advancing," Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) said. "The fire may pose a threat to all lives directly in its path." Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington told Reuters many of the residents in the affected north, accessible only by ferry or via the beach, had got out this week. But he added that winds were picking up, making things particularly tricky. "There are plenty of crews battling the fire, including two helicopters," he said. The blaze in Noosa is one of more than 80 fires across Queensland, leaving firefighters stretched. QFES said one its water-bombing helicopters crashed while battling a fire in Pechey, west of Brisbane, though the pilot escaped with minor injuries. Bushfires are common in Australia's hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires in the southern spring this year has caught many by surprise. The blazes have claimed three lives and destroyed about 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of farmland and bush, fuelled by extremely dry conditions after three years of drought, which experts say has been exacerbated by climate change. 'OUT OF WATER' The hot and windy conditions are set to spike again next week. "We will not have all these fires contained before then," NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told reporters in Sydney. "We will not have all these fires contained and locked up for many, many weeks." "Unfortunately, what we need is rain ... and there is certainly nothing in the forecast for the foreseeable future that's going to make any discernible difference to the conditions." Some 300 homes have been destroyed in NSW in recent days, Fitzsimmons said, as flames stretched from the state's north coast to within metres of homes in Greater Sydney. No deaths were reported on Tuesday as warning systems and evacuation plans appeared to save lives in the face of what officials said was the greatest threat in at least a decade. "It was just chewing up everything," Karen Weston told Australian Broadcasting Corp from an evacuation centre of a fire near Taree on the mid-north coast. "I've survived two other bushfires before this but never anything like this." Academy award winning actor Russell Crowe tweeted photos and video footage on Wednesday of firefighters using helicopters to waterbomb his property near Nana Glen, an rural community some 580 km (360 miles) north of Sydney. Crowe said the property had "lost a couple of buildings", some fires were still burning and "we are out of water". The fires have sparked increasingly acrimonious debate over climate and fire-prevention policies, with the ruling conservative Liberal Party and the minor opposition Australian Greens exchanging barbs. Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce was among those who have suggested that climate activists were at least partly responsible for the fires by lobbying to reduce so-called back burns, fires deliberately lit to clear dry undergrowth. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, meanwhile, said linking the fires to the government's support of the coal industry was "the ravings of some pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies". Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has declined to comment on climate change during the crisis, has called for moderation in the debate.

A multibillion dollar trade deal to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions may sweeten talks this month on tackling climate change, providing an answer to the question of who pays to save the planet. When delegates to the UN climate talks sit down in Kenya on November 6, they will be mindful of this week's British report which warned of economic catastrophe if urgent and dramatic action is not taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of global warming will be at the heart of the Nairobi talks, meant to make progress on drawing up a successor to the UN's Kyoto Protocol on cutting emissions, and agreeing much tougher emissions targets to those which run out in 2012. But to get consensus the world will have to plug big cracks between rich and poor countries over the bill. The United States -- the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases -- pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol partly because big developing countries like China were not included in the cuts. China is the world's number two emitter but Beijing argues that as industrialised nations bear historical responsibility for most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it should be allowed to pursue economic growth without emissions limits. One way round the problem is to set much tougher targets for developed nations only, but sweeten these by expanding Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), allowing them to pay developing countries like China and India to deliver the cuts. The CDM allows rich nations to invest in developing nations -- ranging from hydropower dams in India to capturing methane from trash dumps in Brazil -- and then claim the credits back home for averted greenhouse gas emissions. "The key term you'll be hearing in Nairobi is scaling up," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, head of the UN group set up to plot Kyoto's future post-2012. "If we're heading to a much more energetic and ambitious emission reduction strategy beyond 2012 there'll have to be a bigger CDM." The British report on the economic consequences of global warming, by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, said that to avoid catastrophic climate change the world should cut emissions by some 50 to 70 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent -- 50-70 gigatonnes -- per year by 2050. The CDM could contribute to a big chunk of that -- say 10 percent -- even though this would mean scaling up by a factor of 20 the emissions cuts pledged under CDM last year, said Janos Pasztor, an official at the UN's climate change body. "Potentially it (CDM) could be much, much bigger, " he said. "I don't see any inherent problem scaling up. All of this is feasible, let it come." Expanded carbon trading under Kyoto could help raise $100 billion annually by 2050 to fund clean energy projects in poor countries, the head of the U.N.'s climate change secretariat Yvo de Boer said in September. How can CDM grow so fast? The Nairobi talks will broach this question -- but it seems there's no lack of scope. First up could be a proposal to allow oil firms and others to earn carbon credits by burying carbon dioxide underground using an emerging technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS), considered a potentially vital climate change bandage. A report last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated in all some 2,000 gigatonnes of CO2 could be buried, just the kind of volume Stern would find useful to balance the emissions books. Next could be forest protection through "avoided deforestation." Deforestation to make way for crops and pastures was responsible for more than 7 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2000 alone -- nearly a fifth of annual emissions -- according to the World Resources Institute. As trees burn and rot, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "Industrial countries could pay the poor farmers for forest conservation, at some amount between $200 and $10,000 a hectare, and both parties would gain," said a detailed World Bank report published in October, which identified gains from including deforestation under CDM. Expanding CDM to include carbon capture and storage and deforestation will not be cleared up in Nairobi, but support there could be a big step in that direction. "Both CCS and avoided deforestation themes are in vogue, but both processes have some way to go," said Cutajar. And he said CDM still had to solve perhaps its biggest problem -- a focus on big developing countries like China, Brazil and India, to the detriment of "greening" the economies of small countries that also need help, for example in Africa. By October, around one third of the carbon credits in a CDM pipeline of hundreds of projects come from just 15 industrial-scale cases, according to Stern. "It's not only an African problem, it's an issue for many smaller, poor developing countries, it's important to build capacity to design and host projects."

Often the features of our dystopia are itemised, as if we are briskly touring the concentric circles of hell — rising inequality, declining democracy, unending pandemic, the financial system optimistically described as “late” capitalism — until we have reached the inferno’s toasty centre, which is the destruction of the Earth through global warming caused by humans. This style is native to Twitter, but it has migrated to earnest slice-of-life Facebook pages, to Netflix, to books. Lauren Oyler’s coolly funny novel “Fake Accounts” begins in this mode (“Consensus was the world was ending, or would begin to end soon”) and Bo Burnham’s depressed drama-kid Netflix special “Inside” ends in it, as Burnham shrugs off the rising oceans and sings, “You say the world is ending. Honey, it already did.” And it is darkly inverted on the Instagram account @afffirmations, where new-age positive thinking buckles under the weight of generational despair, and serene stock photography collides with mantras like “I am not climate change psychosis” and “Humanity is not doomed.” Ours is a banal sort of apocalypse. Even as it is described as frightfully close, it is held at a cynical distance. That is not to say that the rhetoric signals a lack of concern about climate change. But global warming represents the collapse of such complex systems on such an extreme scale that it overrides our emotional capacity. This creates its own perverse flavour of climate denial: We acknowledge the science but do not truly accept it, at least not enough to urgently act. This paralysis itself is almost too horrible to contemplate. As global warming cooks the Earth, it melts our brains, fries our nerves and explodes the narratives that we like to tell about humankind — even the apocalyptic ones. This “end of the world” does not resemble the ends of religious prophecies or disaster films, in which the human experiment culminates in dramatic final spectacles. Instead we persist in an oxymoronic state, inhabiting an end that has already begun but may never actually end. Faced with this inexorable decline, the fire-and-brimstone fantasies grow ever more appealing. The apocalyptic drumbeat of social media gestures at the hopelessness of our situation while supplying a kind of narcotic comfort for it. Some plead: Just hit us with the comet already. That brings us to the premise of “Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay’s end-of-the-world comedy that he has said is an allegory for inaction on global warming. In it, an American astronomer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a PhD candidate (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a comet hurtling toward Earth. More chilling than this cosmic snowball is the fact that no one seems particularly concerned by its approach. Comet denialists hold rallies instructing people to “don’t look up,” but even those who accept the situation only gesture lazily at trying to stop it. A pop star (Ariana Grande) stages a grotesque benefit concert; a daytime television host (Tyler Perry) jokes that he hopes the comet takes out his ex-wife; his co-host (Cate Blanchett) is more interested in bedding the astronomer than heeding him. As she paws at him in a hotel corridor, her subconscious death drive becomes manifest, as she purrs: “Tell me we’re all gonna die!” “Don’t Look Up” fails as a climate change allegory, because climate change resists metaphor. Even though I count among the film’s villains (all its journalists are bad), I do not feel as implicated as I should. For one thing, humans didn’t make the comet. Global warming is not approaching from space but oozing all around. My attention is diverted not only by shiny pop stars but also by taxing responsibilities and traumas, many of which are themselves related to ecological collapse. I am terrified of how global warming will affect my son’s generation, but when I learned we would need to travel regularly to a hospital as COVID spiked in New York City, I bought a car. But the greatest liberty “Don’t Look Up” takes with its source material comes at the end: The comet hits Earth at its appointed time, at which point nearly everybody dies. It is final, dramatic, easy to understand. So, nothing like our current situation. Global warming is what eco-philosopher Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject, a concept that is too large to be adequately comprehended by human beings. (McKay’s production company is called Hyperobject Industries.) Its scale is not just world-historical but geological, and though it is already very bad, it will only fulfil its catastrophic potential many lifetimes from now. Its effects are distributed unequally; what I experience as an ambient stressor may cause strangers to suffer or die. Global warming suggests that humans are powerful enough to destroy the world but too weak to stop it. Though we are driven toward world-changing innovation, we are inflexible, fearful of abandoning the destructive comforts we once saw as progress: our cars, our meats, our free next-day deliveries. Knowing all this, isn’t it about time we do something? Hmmm. “Don’t Look Up” turns on one of the most vexing aspects of the crisis: Stating the data, shouting it even, often fails to move people, though the film is largely incurious about why. One of the stories we tell ourselves about global warming is that we need only “listen to the science.” When this does not work, we are supplied with more science — more glacier drone shots, more projections of soaring temperatures, more scary stories about dead bees. In the book “Being Ecological,” Morton calls this “ecological information dump mode,” in which an expert commences “shaking your lapels while yelling disturbing facts.” But even this seemingly rational approach stokes an irrational fantasy: that we have a certain amount of time “left” to stop global warming — just as soon as we get our heads around what’s going on. The word “apocalypse” is derived from the Latin for “revelation,” and our current predicament draws out the irony of that double meaning, as we mistake obsessing about the “end of the world” for acting on it. Lizzie, the narrator of Jenny Offill’s 2020 cli-fi novel “Weather,” is an information person: a Brooklyn librarian who assists the host of a cult-hit global warming podcast called “Hell or High Water.” The podcast is “soothing to me even though she talks only of the invisible horsemen galloping toward us,” Lizzie says. The more Lizzie doomscrolls about climate change, the more she turns away from the outside world, lurking on survivalist forums and planning her family doomstead. “Weather” sketches a scene of intellectual preppers hoarding information about global warming as if cramming for a cosmic test. But the more information they find, the more they are able to tailor it to satisfy their own egos. In “Weather,” a podcast listener waves off talk of melting glaciers and asks: “But what’s going to happen to the American weather?” A parable unfolds along these lines in the final season of “Search Party”: The show’s crew of millennial narcissists founds a Brooklyn startup called Lyte, which manufactures an “enlightenment” pill with the unfortunate side effect of turning people into zombies. As the group’s craven pursuit of consumerist illumination inadvertently hastens the apocalypse, an egomaniacal imp, Dory (Alia Shawkat), tries to explain that she just wanted to help people, but all that comes out is this: “I just wanted …” We may not fully comprehend global warming, but we can feel it, and not just in the weather. A whole lexicon has arisen to attempt to describe its psychological impact: climate nihilism, climate grief, climate melancholia, eco-anxiety, pretraumatic stress. A global survey of young people released last year found that more than half of respondents between the ages of 16 and 25 “felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty” about it, and believed that “humanity is doomed.” In the 2020 Hulu documentary “I Am Greta,” teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg explains how knowledge of global warming nearly killed her. After watching a film in school featuring “starving polar bears, flooding, hurricanes and droughts,” she says, she became depressed and anxious, stopped speaking and “almost starved to death.” We are getting accustomed to the idea that global warming feels bad, and this provides its own sense of comfort, as if our psychological distress proves that we are taking the problem seriously. “Civilians love to panic,” says an epidemiologist in Hanya Yanagihara’s novel “To Paradise,” which is partially set in an unbearably hot, totalitarian future Manhattan ruled by blinkered scientists. “Survival allows for hope — it is, indeed, predicated on hope — but it does not allow for pleasure, and as a topic, it is dull.” In our response to global warming, we resemble the frog who does not hop from the heating water until it’s too late. Except we are aware that the water is boiling; we just can’t imagine leaving our tumultuous little pot. Perhaps one of the many creature comforts we must abandon to address global warming is the anaesthetising stream of global warming content itself. As David Wallace-Wells writes in his 2019 book, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” climate-themed disaster films do not necessarily represent progress, as “we are displacing our anxieties about global warming by restaging them in theatres of our own design and control.” Even YouTube videos of climate conferences can slip into this role. As we frame an activist like Thunberg as a kind of celebrity oracle, we transfer our own responsibilities onto a teenager with a preternatural command of dismal statistics. We once said that we would stop climate change for the benefit of our children, but now we can tell ourselves that our children will take care of it for us. The internet is often criticised for feeding us useless information, and for spreading disinformation, but it can enable a destructive relationship with serious information, too. If you’re a person who accepts the science, how much more do you really need to hear? The casual doomsaying of social media is so seductive: It helps us signal that we care about big problems even as we chase distractions, and it gives us a silly little tone for voicing our despair. Most of all, it displaces us in time. We are always mentally skipping between a nostalgic landscape, where we have plenty of energy to waste on the internet, and an apocalyptic one, where it’s too late to do anything. It’s the centre, where we live, that we can’t bear to envision. After all, denial is the first stage of grief. ©2022 The New York Times Company

Hollywood celebrities Harrison Ford, Bo Derek and Robert Duvall on Monday threw their support behind a new global initiative by the World Bank to save tigers from extinction. While the global development agency's main mission is to fight poverty in developing countries, it has rarely taken on wildlife conservation efforts of endangered species. The new Tiger Conservation Initiative will bring together wildlife experts, scientists and governments to try to halt the killing and thriving illegal trade in tiger skins, meat and body parts used in traditional Asian medicines. Ford, a long-time environmental activist, said efforts to protect tigers would only succeed if local communities were involved in conservation efforts. "By committing to help wild tigers, the World Bank is sounding its intention to be a global leader in biodiversity conservation," Ford, the star of the latest "Indiana Jones" movie, told an event at Washington's Smithsonian National Zoo. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the decline in the number of tigers was "shocking" from over 100,000 a century ago to currently less than 4,000. The clearing of large areas of forest land for urban development has added to their decline and disappearance from Central Asia, the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, and most of China. POACHING AT ALL-TIME HIGH A World Bank report warned that "if current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times." "Just as with many other challenges of sustainability, such as climate change, pandemic disease, or poverty, the crisis facing tigers overwhelms local capabilities and it is one that transcends local borders," Zoellick said. "This is a problem that cannot be handled by individual nations alone, it requires an alliance of strong local commitment backed by deep international support," he added. Zoellick said the World Bank would convene a series of discussions with countries, conservationists and the private sector to mobilize funding for tiger conservation, and launch studies on how better to protect the cats. The World Bank chief said there were examples of where tigers had been brought back from the brink of extinction, such as in Russia and Nepal, but added that saving the world tiger population would not be an easy task. "All those concerned may not agree but this does not mean we should stand on the sidelines and do nothing," he said. John Seidensticker, chief scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation Ecology Center, said tiger poaching and trafficking in tiger parts and meat was at an all-time high and the biggest immediate threat to tigers. "For wild tigers to live they must have much better security on their home ground," he said, also calling on countries to properly enforce laws to protect tigers. This, Seidensticker said, required strong political will. "We're at a tipping point and we're going to lose wild tigers but with the World Bank initiative wild tigers now have a chance," he added Seidensticker said tiger conservation efforts needed to be more coordinated and focused, and the World Bank could help as a global institution.

Water levels in Indian Kashmir's rivers and streams have decreased by two-thirds as a result of global warming which is melting most of the Himalayan region's glaciers, a voluntary group said on Monday. According to an ActionAid report on the impact climate change is having in Kashmir, many small glaciers in the disputed state have completely disappeared over the last four decades. "The study shows that the water level in almost all the streams and rivers in Kashmir has decreased by approximately two-thirds during the last 40 years," said the report titled "On the Brink?" The report said the average temperature in the mountainous parts of the restive state had increased by 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.6 Fahrenheit) over the last two decades, while in the southern plains the temperature rise was 2.32 degrees Celsius (4.2 Fahrenheit). Scientists warn that receding Himalayan glaciers could jeopardise water supplies for hundreds of millions of people and rising sea levels threaten Indian cities like Mumbai and Kolkata. Floods and droughts could become more common, diseases more rampant and crop yields lower as temperatures rise, they add. Kashmir is in the grip of a nearly 18-year-old insurgency that has killed 42,000 people. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000.

SINGAPORE, Fri Jul 10, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Rising seas, a rapid weakening of the Indian monsoon and spiralling costs of adapting to a warmer, drier world are just some of the looming risks from rapid climate change, a report for the Australian government says. The report, "Climate change 2009, faster change and more serious risks", examines the rapid progress of climate change science in recent years and the growing threats that face billions of people around the planet. Rising temperatures, drought and long-term drying out of farmlands in Australia, Africa, the United States, acidifying oceans and rapid switches in weather patterns all threaten to undermine societies and cost billions in damage. "Part of the reason for suggesting that the risks are higher than we thought is that the climate system appears to be changing faster than we thought likely a decade ago," the report's author Will Steffen told Reuters on Friday from Canberra, Australia. The report was written for the Department of Climate Change and comes five months before a major U.N. meeting that aims to seal a broader pact to fight global warming. (The report is available here) Many scientists have revised upwards their projections for the pace of global warming since United Nation's Climate Panel issued a major report in 2007, underscoring the increased focus on understanding the risks from climate change. Steffen, executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, said drought and long-term drying out of farmlands and water catchment areas will likely cause costs to spiral as societies try to adapt. "I think there are risks that are potentially more important. One is drought and drying risk and not just in Australia but in other parts of the world where that appears to be linked to climate change. That's going to affect water resources, it's affecting it now," he said. He said there was now evidence of climate change being linked to the drying trends in major agricultural regions of Victoria state and southern South Australia. Evidence was much stronger for the grain-growing area of south-west of Western Australia. SEA LEVEL Sea level was less of a risk in the medium-term. "Whereas sea level rise, unless there is a really fast, catastrophic event in West Antarctica, we're not going to see huge changes till the second half of the century at least," he said referring to a major collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Potentially greater threats were abrupt changes to the ocean and atmosphere that led to irreversible switches in weather or ocean patterns, so-called "tipping points". "An example is the Indian monsoon. According to some models, that could switch into a drier mode in a matter of years," he said. More than a billion people in South Asia rely on the monsoon for agriculture and water supplies. Steffen pointed to the accumulation of carbon-dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in the atmosphere that is now near the upper range of scenarios by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 report. Sea level rise of more than 3 millimetres per year was also tracking near the upper range of the panel's projections. The rate at which global ocean temperatures have been rising had also been revised up by 15 percent, he said. "I think the reports coming out at various fora are clear the system seems to moving at the upper range of IPCC projections," he said. "That in itself is a major change in thinking. What it says is there's a sense of urgency to getting on top of this issue."

Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft UN report shows. Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach. The 21-page study, due for release in November, lays out possible responses to global warming but cautions that some impacts are already inevitable, such as a gradual rise in sea levels that is set to last for centuries. The report gives a first overview of 3,000 pages of research by the UN's climate panel already published in three instalments this year about the science, the likely impacts and the costs of slowing climate change. The authoritative summary, obtained by Reuters and meant to guide governments in working out how to slow warming, reiterates that humans are to blame for climate change but that clean technologies are available to offset the most harmful emissions. "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities) greenhouse gas concentrations," it says. "Very likely" means at least 90 percent probability, up from 66 percent in a previous report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 when the link was only judged "likely". The IPCC draws on work by 2,500 scientists. The report shows a table indicating worsening damage such as bleached corals, coastal flooding, increasing costs of treating disease, deaths from heatwaves and rising risks of extinctions of species of animals and plants. But it says: "Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed" by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Among options to offset warming, blamed mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are energy efficiency, wider use of renewable energies, carbon markets or burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. The report indicates that the cost of such initiatives would be manageable for the world economy. Global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030 would be reduced by up to 3 percent in the most stringent case that would require emissions to peak within about 15 years. Other less tough goals would mean only a fractional loss of GDP by 2030. The report will be issued in Valencia, Spain, on Nov. 17 after review by governments, along with an even shorter 5-page summary. The draft is dated May 15 -- an updated version has been written this month to take account of government suggestions, scientists said. "Warming of the climate is now unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global mean sea level," the summary begins. The report reiterates best estimates that temperatures will rise by 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres. But it says ocean levels are likely to keep rising "for many centuries" even if greenhouse gases are stabilised, because water expands as it heats up. The deep oceans will keep heating up as warmth filters down from the surface. Under a range of scenarios, such thermal expansion of the oceans alone would bring sea level rises of 0.4 to 3.7 metres in coming centuries, without counting any melting of ice in glaciers or in the vast Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets. About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are meeting in Vienna this week to discuss ways to extend the UN's Kyoto Protocol for fighting warming beyond 2012 and to widen it to include outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.

"In the past – as far back as the 1940s, but continuing for decades – the Department of State was among many public and private employers that discriminated against employees and job applicants on the basis of perceived sexual orientation, forcing some employees to resign or refusing to hire certain applicants in the first place," Kerry said in a statement. "These actions were wrong then, just as they would be wrong today." He added: "On behalf of the Department, I apologize to those who were impacted by the practices of the past and reaffirm the Department's steadfast commitment to diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community." US Senator Ben Cardin, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from Maryland, wrote Kerry in November referring to the time as a "deep stain on our national history and that of the State Department." Cardin told Kerry he intended to "remedy this injustice" by introducing legislation to acknowledge the "lavender scare" years and offer an apology on behalf of Congress.

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

Laying out his new Cuba policy in a speech in Miami, Trump signed a presidential directive to roll back parts of Obama’s historic opening to the Communist-ruled country after a 2014 diplomatic breakthrough between the two former Cold War foes. But Trump was leaving in place many of Obama’s changes, including the reopened US embassy in Havana, even as he sought to show he was making good on a campaign promise to take a tougher line against Cuba. "We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer," Trump told a cheering crowd in Miami’s Cuban-American enclave of Little Havana, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who helped forge the new restrictions on Cuba. "Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration's completely one-sided deal with Cuba," Trump declared as he made a full-throated verbal assault on the government of Cuban President Raul Castro. Trump’s revised approach, which will be contained in a new presidential directive, calls for stricter enforcement of a longtime ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists, and seeks to prevent US dollars from being used to fund what the Trump administration sees as a repressive military-dominated government. But facing pressure from US businesses and even some fellow Republicans to avoid turning back the clock completely in relations with communist-ruled Cuba, the president chose to leave intact some of his Democratic predecessor's steps toward normalization. The new policy bans most US business transactions with the Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group, a Cuban conglomerate involved in all sectors of the economy, but makes some exceptions, including for air and sea travel, according to US officials. This will essentially shield US airlines and cruise lines serving the island. "We do not want US dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba," Trump said, pledging that US sanctions would not be lifted until Cuba frees political prisoners and holds free election. However, Trump stopped short of breaking diplomatic relations restored in 2015 after more than five decades of hostilities. He will not cut off recently resumed direct US-Cuba commercial flights or cruise-ship travel, though his more restrictive policy seems certain to dampen new economic ties overall. The administration, according to one White House official, has no intention of “disrupting” existing business ventures such as one struck under Obama by Starwood Hotels Inc, which is owned by Marriott International Inc, to manage a historic Havana hotel. Nor does Trump plan reinstate limits that Obama lifted on the amount of the island’s coveted rum and cigars that Americans can bring home for personal use. While the changes are far-reaching, they appear to be less sweeping than many US pro-engagement advocates had feared. Still, it will be the latest attempt by Trump to overturn parts of Obama's presidential legacy. He has already pulled the United States out of a major international climate treaty and is trying to scrap his predecessor's landmark healthcare program. Trump justified his partial reversal of Obama’s Cuba measures to a large extent on human rights grounds. His aides contend that Obama’s efforts amounted to "appeasement" and have done nothing to advance political freedoms in Cuba, while benefiting the Cuban government financially. Trump’s critics have questioned why his administration is now singling out Cuba for its human rights record but downplaying the issue in other parts of the world. Citing the lack of human rights concessions from Cuba in the detente negotiated by Obama, Trump said, "It's hard to think of a policy that makes less sense than the prior administration's terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime." International human rights groups say, however, that again isolating the island could worsen the situation by empowering Cuban hard-liners. The Cuban government has made clear it will not be pressured into reforms in exchange for engagement. The Cuban government had no immediate comment, but ordinary Cubans said they were crestfallen to be returning to an era of frostier relations with the United States with potential economic fallout for them.

The speeches, aired hours apart, combined the inspirational advice given to graduates — build community, do what is right, be a leader — with pointed criticism of the handling of an outbreak that has killed more than 87,000 Americans and crippled much of the economy. “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said in his first address, directed at graduates of historically black colleges and universities. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.” Although Obama did not mention President Donald Trump by name, some saw his comments as criticism of his successor. “President Trump’s unprecedented coronavirus response has saved lives,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that cited the administration’s travel restrictions, small business loan program and use of the private sector “to fill the stockpile left depleted by his predecessor.” In speeches that spoke to social inequities, Obama said the pandemic was a wake-up call for young adults, showing them the importance of good leadership and that “the old ways of doing things just don’t work.” “Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think,” he said during a prime time special for high school seniors. “Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others.” Obama’s comments were one of his few public addresses to a national audience during the outbreak, and he said a leadership void had created a clear mandate for the graduates: “If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you,” he said. Obama’s remarks were billed as commencement speeches, but they also appeared to be an effort to comfort and assure an American public divided by Trump’s handling of the crisis. The former president also used the occasions to attempt to rally the nation in an election year around values historically championed by Democrats, like universal health care and environmental and economic justice. Since leaving office three years ago, Obama generally has avoided publicly criticising Trump. But his jabs at the pandemic response could further inflame tensions between the two most recent occupants of the White House. Obama called the current administration’s response to the pandemic “anemic and spotty” in a private call last week with thousands of supporters who had worked for him. And in recent days Trump has unleashed tirades against Obama on Twitter and on television, resurrecting unfounded claims that his predecessor tried to bring him down by manufacturing the Russia investigation. The prime-time event, “Graduate Together: High School Class of 2020 Commencement,” was organized by XQ Institute, a think tank that works with schools, in partnership with LeBron James’ foundation and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a philanthropic organisation. It aired on major television networks. Obama told the seniors the outbreak had forced them to “grow up faster than some generations,” as they have had to deal with the pressures of social media, school shootings, climate change and, now, a pandemic. He encouraged the high school graduates to face down those challenges, as scary as they might be. “If we’re going to create a world where everybody has the opportunity to find a job and afford college; if we’re going to save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re going to have to do it together,” he said. “So be alive to one another’s struggles.” Hours earlier, Obama addressed more than 27,000 students at 78 participating historically black colleges and universities, known as HCBUs. That two-hour event, “Show Me Your Walk HBCU Edition,” was streamed on the social media platforms of its corporate sponsor, JPMorgan Chase. Hosted by Kevin Hart, it also featured dozens of prominent African American athletes, politicians and entertainers, many of whom were HBCU graduates. Obama told the college graduates, most of whom are black, that the coronavirus “just spotlights the underlying inequalities and extra burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country.” The disparities are not just in public health but also “just as we see it when a black man goes for a jog, and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning,” he said. It was a reference to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man who was chased by a white father and son and fatally shot in a coastal Georgia community in February. As communities across the country emerge from stay-at-home measures and people clash over how much freedom they should have, Obama suggested that Americans needed to be considerate of others. He encouraged the graduates to work with other marginalised groups in their efforts to create societal change. “It doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick,” he said, later adding that, “our society and democracy only works when we think not just about ourselves but about each other.” Ariel Turnley, 21, watched her own Spelman College virtual graduation with her mother and aunt in the living room of her Lauderhill, Florida, home, then tuned into Obama’s speech for HBCU students. “I think President Obama said what so many of us feel, that those in power are not doing the best things they can during this pandemic with the power they have,” said Turnley, who graduated with a degree in computer science. “I also appreciated him talking about the injustices that have been highlighted during this pandemic. This is not the graduation that we imagined, but I felt like he offered the words I wanted to hold on to during this crisis.” Obama’s speech came at a time when new social-distancing norms have dashed many graduation traditions — from the ritual of walking across the stage to the tossing of the graduation caps — so popular political leaders and celebrities have stepped in to offer assuring messages as graduates enter a world shaped by uncertainty, infection fears and economic instability. Obama is scheduled to make a third online commencement address June 6, along with Michelle Obama, in a ceremony hosted by YouTube. While he was president, Obama delivered the commencement addresses at three historically black schools, Hampton University, Howard University and Morehouse College. The former president has had a complicated relationship with the HBCU community. While overall funding for the institutions increased during his eight years in office, some complained that he did not make them a priority, and that cuts and changes made under his watch to Pell grants and other loan programs made life difficult for some HBCU students. He called HBCU graduates the “inheritors of one of America’s proudest traditions” and said they needed to act. “Whether you realize it or not, you’ve got more road maps, more role models, and more resources than the Civil Rights generation did,” he said. “You’ve got more tools, technology and talents than my generation did. No generation has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world.” c.2020 The New York Times Company

By Steve Holland WASHINGTON June 4 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama had a blunt, "tough-love" message for Arabs and Israelis that thrust him deeper into Middle East peacemaking -- a tangled web that bedeviled his predecessors and carries risks for him. Quoting a Koran passage to "speak always the truth," Obama set aside diplomatic niceties in a speech in Cairo demanding that Israel stop building Jewish West Bank settlements that antagonize Palestinians, that Palestinians work for peace and accept Israel's right to exist and for Palestinian militants to halt violence. "We cannot impose peace," Obama said in Thursday's speech to the world's Muslims. "But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true." His foray into the Middle East comes far earlier in his presidency than that of his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who waited until late in their terms to make a major push and found themselves disappointed at the outcome. Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said taking the initiative on Middle East peace this early means Obama's ability to deliver will become a test of his credibility. "This administration three years from now when we're in the middle of an election campaign will in part be measured on the extent to which it brings Arabs and Israelis closer to a two-state solution," he said. The president, who is a Christian but whose Kenyan father came from a family that includes generations of Muslims, stressed his Muslim roots in a way that he never did during his presidential campaign last year, when it might have been seen as a political liability. 'CHANGED THE CLIMATE' That may have helped him in delivering a speech which Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called a blunt, honest address that was critical to signaling "a new era of understanding with Muslim communities worldwide." "He said things that if previous presidents had said them, it wouldn't have mattered, but because he is who he is, it changed the climate in which he said them, made it more meaningful," said Ron Kaufman, who was a political adviser to former President George H.W. Bush. "The fact that a Barack Hussein Obama said these things, he can say them in a way that the moderate Muslims would listen," Kaufman said. While direct and frank, Obama struck an empathetic tone with Muslims in seeking what he called a "new beginning" with them, trying to move beyond tensions left by the Bush administration's war in Iraq. A former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk of the Saban Center for Middle East policy, said Obama presented "a dramatic and persuasive American manifesto for a new relationship with the Muslim world." Obama's demand for Israel to freeze settlements represented a challenge for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has defiantly resisted taking that step, and raises the possibility of frictions with pro-Israeli members of the U.S. Congress, many from Obama's own Democratic Party. ELUSIVE GOAL The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, said he was concerned that Obama had seemed to place "equal blame" on the Israelis and the Palestinians." "Because Hamas is a terrorist organization, they've been funded by the Syrians and the Iranians, and I just don't think the Israelis deserve to be put in the same playpen with terrorists," he said. History shows tangling with Israel can at times prove costly for U.S. presidents. George H.W. Bush, president from 1989 to 1993, angered Israel and its U.S. backers by saying he would not support new money for Israel to use for settlements. He has since told former aides he believed a loss of Jewish support was one reason he lost his 1992 re-election bid. Given that Middle East peace has been an elusive goal of every president of the past 50 years, it would come as a surprise to most Americans if Obama were to succeed in bringing Arabs and Israelis together. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted late in May found that only 32 percent of Americans believed there would come a time when the two sides would be able to settle their differences and live in peace. And 66 percent doubted it would happen.

Texas, the nation’s leading energy-producing state, seemed like the last place on Earth that could run out of energy. Then last week it did. The crisis could be traced to that other defining Texas trait: independence, both from big government and from the rest of the country. The dominance of the energy industry and the “Republic of Texas” ethos became a devastating liability when energy stopped flowing to millions of Texans who shivered and struggled through a snowstorm that paralysed much of the state. Part of the responsibility for the near-collapse of the state’s electrical grid can be traced to the decision in 1999 to embark on the nation’s most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation, handing control of the state’s entire electricity delivery system to a market-based patchwork of private generators, transmission companies and energy retailers. The energy industry wanted it, the people wanted it, both parties supported it. “Competition in the electric industry will benefit Texans by reducing monthly rates and offering consumers more choices about the power they use,” George W. Bush, then the governor, said as he signed the top-to-bottom deregulation legislation. Bush’s prediction of lower-cost power generally came true, and the dream of a free-market electrical grid worked reasonably well most of the time, in large part because Texas had so much cheap natural gas as well as abundant wind to power renewable energy. But the newly deregulated system came with few safeguards and even fewer enforced rules. With so many cost-conscious utilities competing for budget-shopping consumers, there was little financial incentive to invest in weather protection and maintenance. Wind turbines are not equipped with the de-icing equipment routinely installed in the colder climes of the Dakotas and power lines have little insulation. The possibility of more frequent cold-weather events was never built into infrastructure plans in a state where climate change remains an exotic, disputed concept. “Deregulation was something akin to abolishing the speed limit on an interstate highway,” said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. “That opens up shortcuts that cause disasters.” The state’s entire energy infrastructure was walloped with glacial temperatures that even under the strongest of regulations might have frozen gas wells and downed power lines. But what went wrong was far broader: Deregulation meant that critical rules of the road for power were set not by law, but rather by a dizzying array of energy competitors. Utility regulation is intended to compensate for the natural monopolies that occur when a single electrical provider serves an area; it keeps prices down while protecting public safety and guaranteeing fair treatment to customers. Yet many states have flirted with deregulation as a way of giving consumers more choices and encouraging new providers, especially alternative energy producers. California, one of the early deregulators in the 1990s, scaled back its initial foray after market manipulation led to skyrocketing prices and rolling blackouts. States like Maryland allow customers to pick from a menu of producers. In some states, competing private companies offer varied packages like discounts for cheaper power at night. But no state has gone as far as Texas, which has not only turned over the keys to the free market but has also isolated itself from the national grid, limiting the state’s ability to import power when its own generators are foundering. Consumers themselves got a direct shock last week when customers who had chosen variable-rate electricity contracts found themselves with power bills of $5,000 or more. While they were expecting extra-low monthly rates, many may now face huge bills as a result of the upswing in wholesale electricity prices during the cold wave. Gov Greg Abbott on Sunday said the state’s Public Utility Commission has issued a moratorium on customer disconnections for nonpayment and will temporarily restrict providers from issuing invoices. There is regulation in the Texas system, but it is hardly robust. One nonprofit agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, was formed to manage the wholesale market. It is supervised by the Public Utility Commission, which also oversees the transmission companies that offer customers an exhaustive array of contract choices laced with more fine print than a credit card agreement. But both agencies are nearly unaccountable and toothless compared to regulators in other regions, where many utilities have stronger consumer protections and submit an annual planning report to ensure adequate electricity supply. Texas energy companies are given wide latitude in their planning for catastrophic events. Into a Snowstorm With No Reserves One example of how Texas has gone it alone is its refusal to enforce a “reserve margin” of extra power available above expected demand, unlike all other power systems around North America. With no mandate, there is little incentive to invest in precautions for events, such as a Southern snowstorm, that are rare. Any company that took such precautions would put itself at a competitive disadvantage. A surplus supply of natural gas, the dominant power fuel in Texas, near power plants might have helped avoid the cascade of failures in which power went off, forcing natural gas production and transmission offline, which in turn led to further power shortages. In the aftermath of the dayslong outages, ERCOT has been criticised by both Democratic and Republican residents, lawmakers and business executives, a rare display of unity in a fiercely partisan and Republican-dominated state. Abbott said he supported calls for the agency’s leadership to resign and made ERCOT reform a priority for the Legislature. The reckoning has been swift — this week, lawmakers will hold hearings in Austin to investigate the agency’s handling of the storm and the rolling outages. For ERCOT operators, the storm’s arrival was swift and fierce, but they had anticipated it and knew it would strain their system. They asked power customers across the state to conserve, warning that outages were likely. But late on Sunday, Feb 14, it rapidly became clear that the storm was far worse than they had expected: Sleet and snow fell, and temperatures plunged. In the council’s command centre outside Austin, a room dominated by screens flashing with maps, graphics and data tracking the flow of electricity to 26 million people in Texas, workers quickly found themselves fending off a crisis. As weather worsened into Monday morning, residents cranked up their heaters and demand surged. Power plants began falling offline in rapid succession as they were overcome by the frigid weather or ran out of fuel to burn. Within hours, 40% of the power supply had been lost. The entire grid — carrying 90% of the electric load in Texas — was barrelling toward a collapse. In the electricity business, supply and demand need to be in balance. Imbalances lead to catastrophic blackouts. Recovering from a total blackout would be an agonising and tedious process, known as a “black start,” that could take weeks, or possibly months. And in the early morning hours last Monday, the Texas grid was “seconds and minutes” away from such a collapse, said Bill Magness, president and chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council. “If we had allowed a catastrophic blackout to happen, we wouldn’t be talking today about hopefully getting most customers their power back,” Magness said. “We’d be talking about how many months it might be before you get your power back.” Earlier Warnings of Trouble The outages and the cold weather touched off an avalanche of failures, but there had been warnings long before last week’s storm. After a heavy snowstorm in February 2011 caused statewide rolling blackouts and left millions of Texans in the dark, federal authorities warned the state that its power infrastructure had inadequate “winterisation” protection. But 10 years later, pipelines remained inadequately insulated and heaters that might have kept instruments from freezing were never installed. During heat waves, when demand has soared during several recent summers, the system in Texas has also strained to keep up, raising questions about lack of reserve capacity on the unregulated grid. And aside from the weather, there have been periodic signs that the system can run into trouble delivering sufficient energy, in some cases because of equipment failures, in others because of what critics called an attempt to drive up prices, according to Hirs of the University of Houston, as well as several energy consultants. Another potential safeguard might have been far stronger connections to the two interstate power-sharing networks, East and West, that allow states to link their electrical grids and obtain power from thousands of miles away when needed to hold down costs and offset their own shortfalls. But Texas, reluctant to submit to the federal regulation that is part of the regional power grids, made decisions as far back as the early 20th century to become the only state in the continental United States to operate its own grid — a plan that leaves it able to borrow only from a few close neighbours. The border city of El Paso survived the freeze much better than Dallas or Houston because it was not part of the Texas grid but connected to the much larger grid covering many Western states. But the problems that began with last Monday’s storm went beyond an isolated electrical grid. The entire ecosystem of how Texas generates, transmits and uses power stalled, as millions of Texans shivered in darkened, unheated homes. Texans love to brag about natural gas, which state officials often call the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. No state produces more, and gas-fired power plants produce nearly half the state’s electricity. “We are struggling to come to grips with the reality that gas came up short and let us down when we needed it most,” said Michael E Webber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. The cold was so severe that the enormous oil and natural gas fields of West Texas froze up, or could not get sufficient power to operate. Though a few plants had stored gas reserves, there was insufficient electricity to pump it. The leaders of ERCOT defended the organisation, its lack of mandated reserves and the state’s isolation from larger regional grids, and said the blame for the power crisis lies with the weather, not the overall deregulated system in Texas. “The historic, just about unprecedented, storm was the heart of the problem,” Magness, the council’s chief executive, said, adding: “We’ve found that this market structure works. It demands reliability. I don’t think there’s a silver-bullet market structure that could have managed the extreme lows and generation outages that we were facing Sunday night.” In Texas, energy regulation is as much a matter of philosophy as policy. Its independent power grid is a point of pride that has been an applause line in Texas political speeches for decades. Deregulation is a hot topic among Texas energy experts, and there has been no shortage of predictions that the grid could fail under stress. But there has not been widespread public dissatisfaction with the system, although many are now wondering if they are being well served. “I believe there is great value in Texas being on its own grid and I believe we can do so safely and securely and confidently going forward,” said state Rep Jeff Leach, R-Plano, who has called for an investigation into what went wrong. “But it’s going to take new investment and some new strategic decisions to make sure we’re protected from this ever happening again.” Steven D Wolens, a former Democratic lawmaker from Dallas and a principal architect of the 1999 deregulation legislation, said deregulation was meant to spur more generation, including from renewable energy sources, and to encourage the mothballing of older plants that were spewing pollution. “We were successful,” said Wolens, who left the Legislature in 2005. But the 1999 legislation was intended as a first iteration that would evolve along with the needs of the state, he said. “They can focus on it now and they can fix it now,” he said. “The buck stops with the Texas Legislature and they are in a perfect position to determine the basis of the failure, to correct it and make sure it never happens again.”     © 2021 The New York Times Company

Antarctica lost billions of tonnes of ice over the last decade, contributing to the rising seas around the world, a climate researcher said on Monday. The ice melted from two particular parts of the southern continent, according to Eric Rignot and colleagues, who wrote about the phenomenon in the journal Nature Geoscience. Using satellites to monitor most of Antarctica's coastline, the scientists estimate that West Antarctica lost 132 billion tonnes of ice in 2006, compared to about 83 billion tonnes in 1996. The Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches toward South America, lost about 60 billion tonnes in 2006. To put this in perspective, 4 billion tonnes of ice would be enough to provide drinking water to the more than 60 million people of the United Kingdom for a year, fellow author Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol said in a statement. This ice loss is not from the so-called ice sheets that cover the water around the continent. This melting occurred in the glaciers that cover much of the Antarctic land mass, and when that melts, it contributes to sea level rise in a way that sea ice does not. "One immediate consequence (of the melting Antarctic ice) is to raise sea level," Rignot, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an e-mail interview. Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise was about 0.02 inch (0.5 mm) in 2006, compared to about 0.01 inch (0.3 mm) in 1996. Rignot noted that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figured Antarctica would not contribute at all to sea level rise, and in fact predicted a growth of the big ice sheet the covers much of the continent from enhanced precipitation. This prediction was supposed to come from increased evaporation from the oceans as the planet warmed up, but this has not been observed so far in Antarctica, Rignot said. "In some regions the ice sheet is close to warm sources of water. ... The parts of Antarctica we are seeing change right now are closest to these heat sources," he said. These findings are in line with what is happening to the Greenland ice sheet, which melted at a record rate last year, and with studies of Arctic sea ice, which ebbed to its lowest level ever measured in 2007. A study last week by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder found that older, thicker Arctic sea ice that lasts from year to year is giving way to younger, thinner sea ice that is more susceptible to melting.

Trained in soldering, she aspired to a career in electrical work but hemmed saris for her husband's tailor shop in the west Indian city of Pune until two years ago, when she found work in the country's fast-expanding electric vehicle (EV) sector. Kumbhar's ambition, stalled by motherhood and safety worries about working in a roadside electrical shop, has now taken wings as she assembles circuits for EV speedometers at a factory in Pune - her first job as a formal worker with fixed wages. She is one of a small but growing group of women blazing a trail amid India's EV boom, driven by record sales and a policy push, as the government seeks to cut planet-heating emissions by promoting the use of electric scooters, rickshaws and cars run on power that is set to become increasingly clean over time. Despite concerns over safety and quality, as well as a shortage of charging stations, demand for EVs is outstripping supply - and as firms ramp up production, they are offering rare jobs to women in an auto industry that has been male-dominated. "I work fixed hours and I am financially independent," said Kumbhar, assembling circuits with pink-gloved fingers on an all-female shop-floor at Kinetic Communications, a manufacturer of EV components and a subsidiary of Indian auto-maker Kinetic Group. "My soldering is good and I may get a promotion. This was my dream," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The factory's workforce is about four-fifths women, which goes against the grain in India, where only 20% of women are in the labour force. The South Asian nation has one of the world's lowest female participation rates, far below the global average of 47% of women employed or seeking a job compared with 74% of men. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated India's gender gap, as nearly half of women lost their jobs across the formal and informal sectors during lockdowns and had not returned to work by the end of 2020, research shows. Yet in the past two years, as sales of EVs surged by over 200% in India and more factories sprang up to produce them, the doors have started to open for women in manufacturing, design and leadership roles. In contrast to manufacturing of internal combustion engine vehicles, which relies on heavy machinery, EV companies are focused on electronics, assembly, software and design - skill-sets more widely available among women, industry analysts say. Labour rights advocates see women's comparative advantage in the EV business as an opportunity to increase their pay and strengthen their status and influence in the workplace. Rashmi Urdhwareshe, president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, noted that startups in the EV ecosystem are bringing in new ideas and, unlike legacy auto firms with a conventional male workforce, are building their business from scratch. Ride-hailing firm Ola Cabs and Italian motor manufacturer Piaggio have set up all-women shop-floors at their India-based factories in the last year. And Kinetic Green and fellow leading EV makers Hero Electric and Ather Energy plan to expand and employ largely women. Battery-maker Esmito Solutions and EV manufacturing majors Kinetic Green and Mahindra Electric, meanwhile, are helmed by women, as is the federal power ministry's energy transition company. Urdhwareshe, one of the few women in India's auto industry when she started work in the 1980s, said women have the mindset needed to navigate the challenges of a fledgling business, because they care about safety and value for money. "But there are not enough women yet, and the few that are there are trend-setting examples," she emphasised. Mahindra's, e2oPlus, operated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, is seen at an electric vehicle charging station in Nagpur, India Jan 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aditi Shah BREAKING BIAS Mahindra's, e2oPlus, operated by Indian ride-hailing company Ola, is seen at an electric vehicle charging station in Nagpur, India Jan 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aditi Shah Prabhjot Kaur, the co-founder and CEO of Esmito, a startup producing batteries and battery-swapping stations for EVs, remembers having to patiently explain her job in meetings where she was often the only woman. "I would be asked two, three, four times about what I do. I remember the faces and expressions of everyone who assumed I was a secretary, and then saw me take the floor to make my presentation," said the 42-year-old with a smile. Sulajja Firodia Motwani, founder and CEO of Kinetic Green, has also been in Kaur's shoes. After finishing university and returning from the United States in the mid-1990s, she joined her family's auto business, only to be met with scepticism by staff. "They thought I was a privileged daughter who was here for a little time and that I would disappear in a few days," said Motwani, 51. Kaur and Motwani have faced other challenges common to most women in the EV corporate world, from a lack of female toilets to not being taken seriously by colleagues. More positively, many women leaders and shop-floor workers told the Thomson Reuters Foundation their parents had been their loudest cheerleaders, with fathers especially egging them on to pursue their ambitions. Born and brought up in Rajpura, a small town in largely agrarian northern Punjab state, Kaur traces her determination back to her desire to hold her own in the karate classes she took as a teenager - the only girl in a class of 50. Kaur did not want to go, but her father persuaded her. "I was very angry and it translated into me being the best student," she said. "It also taught me not to fear my surroundings and so I never feared large groups of men." As a child, Motwani whiled away the hours in her grandfather's office, scribbling away on its walls - but when she came back armed with a degree from Carnegie Mellon University, she still had to prove her worth. "I have earned my place in the industry... I never took this platform for granted. I was back at work four days after my baby was born," said Motwani, sitting in the same office. In her early days, she travelled across 200 districts to get to know the firm's dealership network. But it is not just female CEOs who are helping steer India's EV surge - there are also thousands of women factory workers. Nasreen Banu, 25, was the first woman from her family to study and find a job. As a production supervisor on scooter manufacturer Ather's battery assembly line, she said she was ready to "break the bias about what girls can and cannot do". "I love the job and I know how everything here works," she said. "A battery weighs 25 kg and we often hear that girls can't lift it, but I do," she said on a break during her shift at the Ather factory in Hosur in southern Tamil Nadu state. E-MOBILITY FOR ALL? In India's capital, New Delhi, Mahua Acharya heads Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL), the federal power ministry's energy transition company. With an environmental management degree from Yale and experience in green finance, renewable energy and carbon markets, Acharya views heading up CESL as an opportunity to "get EVs deployed on Indian roads at scale". "I spend a lot of time thinking of business models and innovative ways to put these vehicles on the road," she said. Government incentives and tax benefits for manufacturers and buyers have supported a rise in the production and sales of EVs, which so far currently number a million, or nearly 2% of all vehicles on Indian roads. CESL is trying to push these still small numbers higher by setting up more charging stations, facilitating easy loans for buyers and placing bulk orders for public transport vehicles in cities, making them more affordable. But Acharya's vision for scale faces obstacles ranging from out-of-stock vehicles and limited supplies of batteries and semiconductors, to safety concerns and too few charging stations mainly fed by fossil-fuel power. As a woman heading the government's e-mobility push, she has not faced bias personally, despite often being the only woman in meetings alongside 15 men, she said. In her experience, women bring up issues men fail to spot, such as flagging the importance of locating EV charging stations "in an area that is safe, not far away or grungy-looking", rather than based solely on electricity and land availability. The perspective and nuance brought by women is welcomed by some in the industry. "We (men) are cut-throat, but discussions are more malleable with them," said Sohinder Singh Gill, CEO of Hero Electric and director general of the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles. About eight years ago, at a meeting with major auto brand representatives - all men - discussing the future of EVs in India, Motwani remembers wondering why they were talking only about cars and Tesla. She spoke out over the chatter to draw attention to the fact that, in India, 90% of people used two- and three-wheeled vehicles or buses, while only 10% drove cars. Her persistence led the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers to set up a focus group on two and three-wheelers, which she was asked to champion. That has enabled her to "contribute and make a difference" to India's new policy for electric vehicles - which she said pays attention to green mobility for the masses. SAFETY FEARS As EV demand outstrips supply in India, the excitement in the business is palpable, despite its teething troubles. Conversations with EV company CEOs are peppered with hopeful predictions that the "sunrise industry" will account for 30% of all vehicle sales sooner than India's target year of 2030. Those working in policy speak of an "unprecedented" response by Indian states to make the EV switch - which promises to reduce crude-oil import costs and nudge India closer to its target to cut emissions to net zero by 2070, announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last November. But beyond the smiling faces of new EV users on social media with their brightly-coloured wheels, the industry faces some big barriers: from e-scooters bursting into flames to a lack of charging points that is eroding buyer confidence. Delhi resident Dolly Maurya, 26, took advantage of a state subsidy and purchased a lilac-coloured electric rickshaw in April, but she fears taking it out in a sprawling city that only has about 600 charging stations. "If the battery gets discharged, where will I go? How will I take it home?" asked Maurya, who wants to use the vehicle for part-time work transporting passengers around the capital as she prepares for an entrance test for a government job. Other concerns are mounting among EV users as sales rise. Esmito's Kaur has tracked recent cases of e-scooters catching fire with an increasing sense of dismay. "It is worrying, because it sends out the wrong signals at a time when the industry is growing," said Kaur, who is set to scale up her manufacturing, currently done in the basement car park of the IIT research park in Chennai. Kaur - also the founder of the Centre for Battery Engineering and Electric Vehicles, which collaborates with auto firms to develop batteries as an alternative to fossil fuel engines - said more R&D was needed to make batteries safe. "Most companies, and there are over 400, import parts and assemble them," she added. "We need to adapt everything to our environment, our needs." CITY SUPPORT To build a consumer base from zero five years ago, Kinetic Green's Motwani partnered with non-profit groups and states to subsidise electric three-wheeler rickshaws as a new source of income for women in insurgency-hit Dantewada in eastern India and bicycle rickshaw pullers in northern Uttar Pradesh state. "We showcased EVs as a means to earn a livelihood with a low running cost," said Motwani, sitting next to a cabinet covered with dozens of business leadership awards. "They could run the e-rickshaw and earn 1,000 rupees ($13) a day and we took care of the servicing," said Motwani, who believes in the Hindi saying: "jo dikhta hai woh bikta hai (what you see, sells)". For her part, Acharya in the federal government is pushing for state agencies that operate public buses to recruit more women drivers. "It is a good job, pays well, has defined hours. One of the things women want is certainty of when they can get home," she said. The Delhi government this year removed height restrictions for bus drivers so that more women can apply and abolished the heavy vehicle driving-licence fee of 15,000 rupees for them. The city has also rolled out e-rickshaws, reserving a third of the vehicles it is subsidising for women like Maurya. "It is about creating an opportunity for women to work," said Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot. The initiative is also about "good messaging" to encourage more people to switch to EVs and spread a sense of safety among public transport users, he added. CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS Beyond financial incentives, rising EV sales in India are also rooted in growing awareness about climate change, soaring fuel prices and mobility challenges in a pandemic-hit world. Mumbai resident Rajni Arun Kumar, 43, an associate director at a human resources startup, frowned on fuel-guzzling cars and used public transport until COVID-19 made her worry about taking her two unvaccinated children out in crowded spaces. She found the perfect solution for her office commute and dropping her children at their hobby classes: an orange e-scooter. But she is now hoping to get a charging point in the vicinity as the nearest one is 3 km (1.86 miles) and a traffic jam away. "There has to be some point where people begin to act to help conserve the environment," she emphasised. Companies know that women like Kumar are key decision-makers on household purchases. Hero Electric's Gill said e-scooters have more women buyers than conventional scooters, as the new machines remove the bother of trips to fuel stations and are easier to manoeuvre. Besides being price-sensitive, Indian women base their purchases on practical features, said Prerana Chaturvedi, co-founder and CEO of Evolet India, an EV startup in Gurgaon near Delhi. Its scooter has a lower seat height and clean edges to stop scarves and saris getting entangled, said Chaturvedi, a former military aviator in the Indian Air Force who believes EVs should be as simple to operate as cell phones. WORKERS' RIGHTS Off the highway connecting Chennai to Bengaluru, cutting through the industrial town of Hosur, the road to the Ather factory meanders through rose plantations. It is a long way from the bustle of Banu's village in Bhatkal, a coastal town in southern Karnataka state, but she loves the independence her job at Ather has given her. She aspired to work in a bank or an air-conditioned office, but her late father encouraged her to join the auto industry. "He kept telling me I could do what boys could do. And here I am, working on batteries, which are the heart of an electric scooter," she said, teary-eyed as she talked about her "hero". Banu, who has a diploma in electrical engineering and electronics, is among thousands who have enrolled in courses at industrial training institutes nationwide, before joining the workforce and honing their skills on the job. Recruitment agency TeamLease Digital, which scouts talent for EV firms, said hiring of both sexes rose by more than 30% in the last two years, with 40% growth forecast by the end of 2022. The government has projected that the EV sector will create 750,000 jobs in the next five years. Munira Loliwala, business head at TeamLease Digital, estimated the number of new job openings at more than 200,000 in the last six months alone - with women especially sought after. "It's like when mobile (phone) manufacturing began in India, women were needed to handle minute pieces with care, their fingers being thinner, more nimble," she said. Similarly, chip manufacturing for EVs requires precise soldering, welding and assembly, bolstering demand for women on the shop-floor and in design and production. "Women leaders are already inspiring many to join," Loliwala added. While welcoming the new job prospects for women, labour and gender campaigners said EV companies should introduce robust measures to better protect labour rights and equalise pay. Other manufacturing industries like clothing, which also employs a majority of women, often opt for female workers because they are regarded as easier and cheaper to employ. They are generally paid less for the same job as men, keeping production costs low, and cause less trouble for bosses, said Preeti Oza, coordinator of the non-profit Centre for Labour Research and Action. "(Women) tend to rush home after work, don't collectively raise demands and hesitate to unionise, making them preferred hires," she added. But for Banu, who is determined to carry on working even after she gets married, the compact Ather factory is home. She fondly recalls the day she took her father to the bus station after his monthly visit to check on her. "There was an Ather parked near the bus station and I excitedly told him that I could dismantle it and put the entire scooter back together right there. He laughed loudly and said the owner might take offence," she said. "He was so proud of me."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday completing a 2005 U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal would boost investment opportunities in his country, a hopeful sign for US companies eyeing India's potential $150 billion market in power plants. Singh, speaking to U.S. business leaders on the eve of talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, said India's ambitious infrastructure build-up would propel growth amid a global slowdown and be open to foreign investors. "We are currently finalizing the details that will make the agreement fully operational," he said of the civilian nuclear deal. "This will open a large area of commercial opportunity." Singh and former U.S. President George W. Bush signed the deal in 2005, but India's parliament has to debate a new law to limit U.S. firms' liability in case of a nuclear accident. The United States has still not signed a nuclear fuel reprocessing agreement with India. The Indian prime minister did not elaborate on what might be announced at his White House summit on Tuesday regarding the unfinished nuclear deal. But some experts familiar with the talks have said the two leaders might issue a joint statement on implementing a deal that would open India's potential $150 billion market in power plants to U.S. suppliers. Singh said he and Obama would sign a set of agreements on energy security, clean energy and climate change to deepen cooperation in an economic relationship that has grown rapidly since India began opening its economy 15 years ago. India's economy was hit by the global crisis and growth moderated to 6.7 percent in 2008 and was likely to grow 6.5 percent this year. But Delhi expects the growth rate to get back to 9.0 percent within three years, Singh told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a speech. He urged the U.S. business community to take advantage of an improved approval and implementation process for infrastructure projects in India and to look at public-private sector projects being signed by his country's federal and state governments. "We need massive investment in energy, transport and urban infrastructure to be able to support a high rate of economic growth," Singh said. Two-way trade, was just $5 billion in 1990 and $14 billion in 2000. But commerce rose to nearly $50 billion last year, according to U.S. figures, making the United States India's largest trading partner. Tuesday's summit is expected to highlight improvement in U.S.-India ties during the past 15 years and underscore shared values between the world's two biggest democracies. But Singh also underscored that India's view on climate change differs from that of the United States and other industrialized states. "India was a latecomer to industrialization and as such we have contributed very little to the accumulation of greenhouse gases that cause global warming," he said in a separate speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Singh said his country wanted to join a global solution as long as it did not come at the expense of economic development and called on developed countries to make more resources and technology available to help poor nations fight climate change. Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar told a separate gathering of businessmen that India-U.S. trade had doubled in the three years before the global financial crisis erupted last year and that U.S. exports had tripled during that period.

Australia's deadliest bushfire has killed at least 84 people, some as they fled in cars or as they huddled in houses when the inferno engulfed rural towns in the country's south east, police said on Sunday. The fire storm tore through several small towns north of Melbourne on Saturday night destroying everything in its path. One family was forced to dive into a farm reservoir to survive while others took refuge in a community shed with firefighters standing between them and a wall of flames. A badly burned man in the town of Kinglake, where there were many fatalities, was kept alive for six hours by being partially submerged by friends in a pool until help arrived. "It rained fire," said one survivor, showing his singed shirt. "We hid in the olive grove and watched our house burn." On Sunday, the remains of charred cars littered the smoldering towns, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne. Some vehicles had crashed into each other as their drivers frantically tried to escape the fire. "Out there it has been hell on earth," Victoria state Premier John Brumby said in a television address. Police said the toll could continue to rise as they search the ruins of the wild fires and with 20 people with serious burns in hospital. Thousands of firefighters were still battling scores of fires in Victoria and New South Wales state on Sunday night. "We will find more bodies as we gain access to different parts of the fire areas," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon told a news conference. "We have found people in cars, it looks like they have decided late to leave their premises. We have found people who have been in properties, in their paddocks. We've found others in their houses. And the sad part is that we found children." Nixon said some of the fires may have been deliberately lit. The previous worst bushfire tragedy was in 1983 when 75 people were killed in the "Ash Wednesday" fires. Survivors said the Victorian inferno reached four storeys high and raced across the land like speeding trains. "It went through like a bullet," Darren Webb-Johnson, a resident of the small rural town of Kinglake, told Sky TV. TOWNS DESTROYED "Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who announced a A$10 million aid package. "The nation grieves with Victoria. Many good people now lie dead. Many others lie injured," said Rudd. The government also put the army on standby. Firefighters said more than 700 homes have been destroyed in the fires across Victoria state so far this weekend, the vast majority in the worst-affected areas north of Melbourne. Wildfires are a natural annual event in Australia, but this year a combination of scorching weather, drought and tinder-dry bush has created prime conditions for blazes to take hold. Green lawmakers have been urging stiffer climate-change policies to reduce the risk of more such summer disasters. Dazed survivors, wrapped in blankets, wandered through twisted and charred remains on Sunday, some crying, not knowing whether friends of family had survived. At the town of Wandong, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Melbourne, one survivor said he had found the body of a friend in the laundry of a burned-out house. "Another 20 seconds and we were gone. We lost our dogs. There have been a lot of dead people. My next door neighbor didn't make it," said one survivor.

Obesity contributes to global warming, too. Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says. This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday. "We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture." At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said. BMI is a calculation of height to weight, and the normal range is usually considered to be 18 to 25, with more than 25 considered overweight and above 30 obese. The researchers found that obese people require 1,680 daily calories to sustain normal energy and another 1,280 calories to maintain daily activities, 18 percent more than someone with a stable BMI. Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture, Edwards said. This is also important because 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture, he added. The next step is quantifying how much a heavier population is contributing to climate change, higher fuel prices and food shortages, he added. "Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food," Edwards and Roberts wrote.

Calling oceans the “beating blue heart of our planet,” the president, Danny Faure, said the sea had “a special relationship with all of us.” Faure, dressed in salmon-colour shorts and a T-shirt with the Seychelles flag, gave his speech from a submersible craft that had dived to 406 feet off Desroches Island in the Seychelles, part of a series of scientific missions to explore and protect the Indian Ocean. Marvelling at the underwater beauty and biodiversity of his surroundings, Faure called for more protection for the ocean’s ecosystem. “It keeps the planet alive, it keeps us alive, and it is clear to me that it is under threat like never before,” he said. The Seychelles, a chain of islands off eastern Africa, faces an existential threat from climate change and rising sea levels. The country, along with other small island nations, is expected to bear the brunt of global warming, including the loss of fresh water, land erosion, dying coral reefs and the increased frequency of extreme weather events. While global powers have gathered repeatedly for summit meetings on how to reduce and mitigate carbon emissions, island nations have expressed increasing desperation at the lack of meaningful action. “The ocean is huge, covering almost 70 percent of our planet, but we have managed to seriously impact this vast environment through climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, plastic and other pollution,” Faure said, adding, “We need decisive, coordinated, international action.” The series of scientific expeditions, called First Descent, was organised by Nekton, a nonprofit research institute, in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The Seychelles mission has included 75 dives so far and has created 3D maps of the seabed from seven research sites, according to a statement issued by Faure’s government. Oceans are major producers of oxygen — due largely to the actions of phytoplankton, tiny single-celled ocean plants — and they absorb half of all climate-warming carbon dioxide, according to the organisation. But the total amount of vertebrate sea life, including fish, has reduced by more than a third since 1970, the fund said.   © 2019 New York Times News Service

Delegates from about 190 nations gathered in Bali on Sunday to try to build on a 'fragile understanding' that the fight against global warming needs to be expanded to all nations with a deal in 2009. The UN's top climate change official told thousands of delegates that the eyes of the world would be on their Dec 3-14 talks in an Indonesian beach resort, saying time was running short to avert ever more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. "We're already seeing many of the impacts of climate change," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference in the tightly guarded venue. "We are on a very dangerous path." The meeting, of senior officials with environment ministers at the final days, will try to launch negotiations ending with a new UN climate pact in two years including outsiders led by the United States and China, the top greenhouse gas emitters. So far, only 36 industrialised nations in the Kyoto Protocol have caps on greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, running to 2012. Most governments agree on a need for more action but disagree about how to share out the burden. "More discussions will be needed to build on this fragile understanding and explore how it can be put into practice," according to a UN report to be submitted in Bali. The report, summing up two years of talks about new ways to fight climate change, said some countries were willing to make deeper cuts in emissions, others said existing promises should be kept and still others wanted incentives to join in. "We heard no dispute that developed countries need to keep taking the lead," wrote Howard Bamsey of Australia and Sandea De Wet of South Africa, the authors of the report. BUSH Prospects for a global deal have been boosted by a decision by President George W Bush for the United State to take part beyond 2012. Bush opposes Kyoto as a threat to US economic growth and said it unfairly excluded goals for poor nations. "We'd like to see consensus on the launch of negotiations. We want to see a Bali roadmap," said Paula Dobriansky, US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs. "We will go to Bali with openness, flexibility." The United Nations wants a new global pact to be agreed at U.N. talks in 2009 in Copenhagen. Many countries are likely to want to see the policies of the next US president taking office in Jan 2009 and want assurances of aid. De Boer said Bali's goal was to agree to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, leaving details for later. "Millions of people around the world...will be focusing their attention on what is going to be the response of the politicians," he said. Senior Beijing officials told Reuters last week that China would do more to strengthen its existing domestic targets to improve energy efficiency, and thereby curb greenhouse gas emissions, if the West shared relevant technologies. "If help is forthcoming, if international cooperation is as it should be ... we will definitely do more," climate change negotiator Yu Qingtai said. Rich nations want developing nations at least to brake the rise of their emissions -- China is opening a new coal-fired power plant at the rate of more than one a week. And developing countries will push for a new system of credits to help slow the rate of deforestation. Trees store carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, when they grow. Kyoto's first period will run out in 2012 but the United Nations says that a new accord needs to be in place by the end of 2009 to give time for parliaments to ratify.

A survey of some of Britain's biggest pension schemes published on Saturday said only a small share of them disclosed investment views on controversies such as climate change and company governance. A survey of the 20 largest occupational pension funds, together worth more than 250 billion pounds ($479 billion), showed only five of them disclosed policies for engaging firms on environmental, social and governance issues, according to FairPensions, an investment campaigning group. Big investors such as pension plans, insurance funds and asset managers have been encouraged by environmental lobbyists and other campaigners to use their economic muscle to change the practices of the firms they invest in. Among the survey's findings, it said organisations like the BBC and the Royal Mail gave little transparency on their investments. Only the pension scheme of BT Group disclosed how votes had been cast on its members' behalf, while the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and pension fund of the UK rail industry gave partial voting data, the report said. The survey showed that 15 of the respondents disclosed their biggest shareholdings. "Pension scheme members will have concerns about how their pensions will be affected by issues such as climate change, but most are not given reassuring information on such issues," Alex van der Velden, Executive Director of FairPensions, said.

The commitment, published at the end of three days of Group of Seven (G7) talks in Berlin, was weaker than a previous draft of the final communique seen by Reuters, which had included a target to end unabated coal power generation by 2030. Sources familiar with the discussions said Japan and the United States had both indicated they could not support that date. But the pledge still marked the first commitment from the G7 countries to quit coal-fuelled power. Coal is the most CO2-emitting fossil fuel and use of it needs to plummet if the world is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The group met against the backdrop of spiralling energy costs and fuel supply worries due to the war in Ukraine. The conflict has triggered a scramble among some countries to buy more non-Russian fossil fuels and burn coal to cut their reliance on Russian supplies. "Replacing fossil fuels from Russia has dominated the political debate and the actions of the government in the past weeks and months," German economy minister Robert Habeck said at a news conference. "But it must be clear to us that the challenges of our political generation, limiting global warming, won't go away if we just concentrate on the present," he said. "Time is literally running out." The G7 also agreed to largely decarbonise their power sectors by 2035, and to stop public financing for "unabated" fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of this year, except in limited circumstances. "Unabated" refers to power plants that do not use technology to capture their emissions. The communique made a commitment to a highly decarbonised road sector by 2030, including significantly increasing the sale, share and uptake of zero emission light duty vehicles. The G7 also aimed to start reporting publicly next year on how the countries are delivering on a past commitment to end "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. SIGNIFICANT SHIFT All G7 countries except for Japan had made the finance pledge at the COP26 climate summit last year, and campaigners said it would be a significant shift if Japan - one of the world's biggest providers of finance for fossil fuel projects abroad - came on board. Japan provided $10.9 billion for such projects on average per year from 2018 to 2020, with most of that spent on oil and gas, according to analysis by non-profit Oil Change International. "If Japan implements this commitment with integrity, it will directly shift $11 billion a year from fossil fuels to clean energy and have a much larger indirect impact given Japan’s influence on other financiers in Asia and around the world," said Susanne Wong, Asia program manager at Oil Change. By covering all fossil fuels, including oil and gas, the agreement goes further than a pledge made by G20 countries last year to halt overseas financing for just coal. The G7 also pledged to take ambitious action against plastic pollution and to increase national efforts to conserve or protect at least 30% of their own coastal and marine areas by 2030.

But four years later, Begum, now 28, became supervisor of a team of 30 workers that checks the quality of clothes made by DBL Group, one of Bangladesh's largest garment suppliers to global fashion retailers like H&M and Walmart. More than half the country's sewing machine operators are women, but over 90% of their supervisors are men - a gender imbalance that hurts workers and productivity, researchers say. A series of training programmes in the last decade, run by nonprofits, development groups and factory owners, has aimed to tackle this contrast in an industry that employs about 4 million workers in the South Asian nation. Giving women more responsibility and higher-paying jobs could also help protect their livelihoods as the industry starts shifting to greener and more high-tech business models, corporate and development bank officials believe. Begum's promotion was the result of one such training project. A couple of years after joining the DBL factory, she noticed the male supervisors of her team were changed regularly due to their poor performance. She took a leap of faith and asked factory officials if she could step in. Following a few weeks of training, she got the job and has been at the helm ever since. "I think it's good if a woman leads the team, because most workers at the sewing lines are women and they will be more open to sharing their problems," Begum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "For instance, if a woman has stomach pain (period cramps), she may not want to share this with a man and just be absent, which hurts production. In these cases, I tell workers to leave early or take a break, which doesn't hurt our target," she said. 'CLEAR BUSINESS CASE' A 2017 study conducted by DBL Group, based on 42 teams led by women, found they were about 3% more efficient than those run by men, yielding an annual benefit of nearly $1.5 million. Today, one in five sewing lines in the factory are managed by women, up from zero in 2013. "This (study) motivated us further as there is a clear business case," said Mohammed Zahidullah, DBL Group's chief sustainability officer. So far the factory has trained just over 100 women supervisors, of whom two-thirds are still working there. "The migration of the (remaining) supervisors has shown the rise in demand for them within our industry," added Zahidullah. A separate donor-backed initiative working to boost garment workers' skills in 60 factories, called the Gender Equality and Returns (GEAR) Program, has seen a 5% increase in productivity on sewing lines led by female supervisors it trained. "With productivity up, turnover and absenteeism down, it is a win-win for both workers and factories," said Nabeera Rahman, head of the programme run by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the International Labour Organization. GEAR's six-month course helps women workers gain confidence, manage stress and learn how to communicate effectively with colleagues. It also offers technical skills like solving production bottlenecks and calculating efficiency. Kulsum Bibi became a supervisor this year after working as a machine operator for 10 years at a Dhaka garment factory. She said the training she received on a women's leadership programme run by Bangladesh-based development organisation BRAC helped her recognise the mistakes her supervisors made. "I learned that when someone commits an error, you need to stay calm and talk to that person with a cool head. Some male supervisors I worked under just shout when something goes wrong," she explained. SOCIAL TABOOS While the programmes have led to a small rise in the number of women supervisors in the garment sector, the change has not come without challenges. In another study carried out at DBL in 2018, some women workers said they felt more comfortable with female supervisors but added they were more likely to listen to male bosses. Machine operators interviewed said male supervisors were more likely to take an independent decision to solve a problem in the line while women tended to consult with management first. "While the transition to female management as a norm has its challenges, promoting female leadership roles on production floors matters. With the correct training and support for female workers, positive change is possible," the study concluded. Jenefa Jabbar, head of social compliance and safeguarding at BRAC, said a more conducive environment was needed to encourage women supervisors. Labour leaders like Kalpona Akter, who heads the Bangladesh Centre for Workers Solidarity, want the government to ask factory owners to introduce a fixed quota for women supervisors. "We shouldn't be needing special training programmes to promote women. They should be automatically promoted within the factories just like the male workers," said Akter. EQUIPPED FOR THE FUTURE? But some experts said the training programmes could also help pave the way for a just transition for women workers, some of whom risk losing their jobs as garment factories invest in high-tech, low-carbon machinery to meet broader climate goals. Wendy Werner, IFC country manager for Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, said that if women learn to manage teams of 30 or more workers, those skills are transferable to other sectors. "(GEAR) is a program which prepares women for leadership positions that go well beyond the factory where they are trained and also beyond the ready-made garments sector," she added. DBL Group Managing Director M. A. Jabbar said the shift to more sustainable business models in the industry could lead to some layoffs but skills training could significantly reduce the impact. Bibi's promotion, for example, increased her monthly salary from $135 to $235, helping her family of four - which lived in a single room until last year - rent an extra room. Importantly, it has given the 35-year-old hope to dream big. "Despite my poor education, I became a supervisor after 10 years. Now my goal is to move even higher," she said. "I want to become a controller or a line manager. If men can do it, why can't I?"

A 190-nation UN climate meeting in Bali edged towards a deal on Saturday, after two weeks of talks to launch two-year negotiations on a broad pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol from Jan 1, 2013. Following are contents of the final draft text, still to be approved by the full conference of ministers and delegates on Saturday, describing the agenda for those negotiations. LAUNCH OF NEW TALKS A new U.N. group would supervise work on a new climate deal, to begin "without delay", not later than April 2008, and "complete its work in 2009". HOW AMBITIOUS? The level of ambition to guide rich countries' efforts to fight climate change was one of the most contentious issues at the Bali talks. The United States opposed a European Union-backed range for greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2020. Earlier drafts had mentioned a goal for rich countries to cut emissions by 25-40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. The EU backed down and the final draft relegated the emissions range to a footnote, which cited 2 pages in a report on fighting climate change published this year by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those pages do not specify which one of six emissions-reduction targets countries should aim for. Those goals range from peaking global greenhouse gas emissions in 8 to 80 years time, resulting in long-term global temperature increases after 2100 of between 2 and 6.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. RICH AND POOR Another contentious item was how far developing countries should match rich nations' efforts to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The final draft called on all developed countries to consider "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives", and "nationally appropriate mitigation commitments or actions". Meanwhile, developing countries should consider "measureable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate mitigation actions", with support for efforts to curb deforestation. The text said "deep cuts in global emissions will be required" to avoid dangerous climate change. ADAPTATION, TECHNOLOGY, FINANCING Many countries worldwide are already suffering from climate change, many delegates said. The final text called for "urgent implementation of adaptation actions" including the "immediate needs" of small island states. The text asked countries to accelerate efforts to transfer technologies which would help developing countries cut their contribution to and adapt to climate change. The final draft called for more financial resources and investment for developing countries on adaptation, mitigation and technology cooperation, especially for the most vulnerable.

Indonesia can achieve a similar growth rate to Asia's economic powerhouses, China and India, provided it fixes its ailing infrastructure and attracts more foreign investment, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Wednesday. Southeast Asia's biggest economy is set to expand 6.3 percent this year, its fastest growth in 11 years, but still lags far behind China, which is set to grow 11.5 percent this year, and India, which is heading for 9 percent growth in its fiscal year. "We can achieve that" kind of growth rate, Kalla told Reuters in an interview, as Indonesia plans to improve infrastructure such as roads, ports, and transportation, and provide "good regulation for investors". President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected in 2004 on the back of promises to tackle corruption, boost growth, and create jobs. Kalla said the government was tackling impediments to growth such as corruption and investor-unfriendly labour laws. "This is a transition period," said the wealthy businessman, who comes from Indonesia's Sulawesi island. With a presidential election due in 2009, Kalla is already seen as a potential opponent to Yudhoyono rather than his running mate. When asked whether he would run with or against Yudhoyono, Kalla said: "this question will be answered in 2009. It is not my personal decision only but this is a party decision." But Kalla, who heads the dominant Golkar party in parliament, did not rule out standing for president. "Anything is possible." Kalla gave an upbeat assessment of the economy, shrugging off recent weakness in the rupiah currency which has been partly blamed on concerns about the impact of high oil prices on the economy and the high cost of government fuel subsidies. The rupiah fell as low as 9,422 per dollar on Wednesday, from around 9,100 at the beginning of November. "The central bank will take care of it," he said. "Between 9,300 and 9,500 they usually intervene." WORLD RESPONSIBLE FOR FORESTS Kalla, who expressed confidence the economy could meet a government growth target of 6.8 percent next year, said there was no plan to cut or reduce fuel subsidies, politically sensitive in Indonesia. Cuts in the level of subsidy have led to riots in the past, and analysts say that with elections slated for 2009, it is unlikely the government will cut subsidies. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Tuesday that energy subsidies could hit 88.2 trillion rupiah ($9.37 billion) this year, well above the 55.6 trillion rupiah allocated in the 2007 budget. On nuclear energy, Kalla it was not a "not a big issue for us", citing a lack of budget, safety worries, and Indonesia's preference for other energy sources such as geothermal and hydropower. Indonesia has said it wants to build its first nuclear plant by 2016, drawing ire from environmentalists worried about a nuclear accident given the country's frequent earthquakes. Kalla said that it was right for Indonesia, which has about 10 percent of the world's tropical rain forests, to press richer nations to help pay to retain forests to reduce global warming. Indonesia, which will host a UN climate change meeting in Bali next month of about 190 nations, is backing a scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forests eligible for carbon trading. Experts estimate Indonesia could earn more than $13 billion by preserving its forests if the plan gets support in Bali. "All the people of the world should be responsible," said Kalla, referring to the exploitation of Indonesian timber by richer countries around the world.

The report said pollution from pesticides, plastics and electronic waste is causing widespread human rights violations as well as at least 9 million premature deaths a year, and that the issue is largely being overlooked. The coronavirus pandemic has caused close to 5.9 million deaths, according to data aggregator Worldometer. "Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment," the report's author, UN Special Rapporteur David Boyd, concluded. Due to be presented next month to the UN Human Rights Council, which has declared a clean environment a human right, the document was posted on the Council's website on Tuesday. It urges a ban on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl, man-made substances used in household products such as non-stick cookware that have been linked to cancer and dubbed "forever chemicals" because they don't break down easily. It also recommends the clean-up of polluted sites and, in extreme cases, the possible relocations of affected communities - many of them poor, marginalised and indigenous - from so-called "sacrifice zones". That term, originally used to describe nuclear test zones, was expanded in the report to include any heavily contaminated site or place rendered uninhabitable by climate change. UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called environmental threats the biggest global rights challenge, and a growing number of climate and environmental justice cases are invoking human rights with success.

Food and Agricultural Organisation director general Jacques Diouf has lauded the achievements of Bangladesh in enhancing food production in recent months in the face of adverse conditions. Diouf said Bangladesh's experience and expertise were appreciated and that it was in a position to share them with others in facilitating the sustainable food security, the UN organisation said in a press statetement on Friday. His comments came from a meeting with agriculture adviser CS Karim who is leading a Bangladesh delegation to the 35th special session of the FAO conference at FAO headquarters in the Italian capital of Rome. Diouf assured Karim of continued FAO support to bolster the efforts of Bangladesh in the coming months. During the meeting Karim appreciated the role of the FAO in meeting the challenges of global food security. He hoped a renewed and revitalised FAO would be able to cope with the emerging challenges including those emanating from climate change. Karim was accompanied by the Bangladesh ambassador in Rome and permanent representative to the FAO, Masud Bin Momen, and other members of the delegation. Karim also held talks with heads of delegations of other member states including the Netherlands to discuss enhancing the bilateral cooperation in the agriculture sector.

Time may be running out for polar bears as global warming melts the ice beneath their paws. Restrictions or bans on hunting in recent decades have helped protect many populations of the iconic Arctic carnivore, but many experts say the long-term outlook is bleak. An estimated 20,000-25,000 bears live around the Arctic -- in Canada, Russia, Alaska, Greenland and Norway -- and countries are struggling to work out ways to protect them amid forecasts of an accelerating thaw. "There will be big reductions in numbers if the ice melts," Jon Aars, a polar bear expert at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said by the fjord in Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, about 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole. Unusually for this time of year, the fjord is ice free. Many restaurants and shops in Longyearbyen, a settlement of 1,800 people, have a stuffed polar bear or pelt -- often shot before a hunting ban from the early 1970s. Self-defense is now the only excuse for killing a bear. Many scientific studies project that warming, widely blamed on emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, could melt the polar ice cap in summer, with estimates of the break-up ranging from decades to sometime beyond 2100. Bears' favorite hunting ground is the edge of the ice where they use white fur as camouflage to catch seals. "If there's no ice, there's no way they can catch the seal," said Sarah James of the Gwich'in Council International who lives in Alaska. 'Gwich'in' means 'people of the caribou', which is the main source of food for about 7,000 indigenous people in Alaska and Canada. THREATENED US President George W Bush's administration is due to decide in January 2008 whether to list polar bears as 'threatenend' under the Endangered Species Act. That would bar the government from taking any action jeopardizing the animals' existence and environmentalists say it would spur debate about tougher US measures to curb industrial emissions. The World Conservation Union last year listed the polar bear as 'vulnerable' and said the population might fall by 30 percent over the next 45 years. Bears also suffer from chemical contaminants that lodge in their fat. Some indigenous peoples, who rely on hunts, say many bear populations seem robust. "The Russians thought there's more polar bears that they're seeing in their communities, so they felt that it's not an endangered species," said Megan Alvanna-Stimpfle, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Youth Council, of an area of Arctic Russia. "But if we're talking about the future and there's no ice, then they are," she said. And some reports say the melt may be quickening. "Arctic sea ice is melting at a significantly faster rate than projected by most computer models," the US National Snow and Ice Data Center said in a report on April 30. It said it could thaw earlier than projected by the UN climate panel, whose scenarios say the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summers any time between about 2050 to well beyond 2100. An eight-nation report by 250 experts in 2004 said "polar bears are unlikely to survive as a species if there is an almost complete loss of summer sea-ice cover." Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo who was a vice-chair of that study, said there was no Arctic-wide sign of a fall in numbers. But there were declines in population and reduced weights among females in the Western Hudson Bay area in Canada, at the southern end of the bears' range where summer ice has been breaking up earlier. Mitchell Taylor, manager of wildlife research at the Inuit-sponsored environmental research department in Nunavut, Canada, said some bears in region had simply moved north. HUNTERS "Hunters in many regions say they are seeing increases," he said. "It's clear that the ice is changing but it's not at all clear that the trend will continue." Prestrud said the fate of polar bears may hinge on whether they adapt to survive longer on land in summers. In the Hudson Bay, bears often go for months without food, scavenging on birds' eggs or even on berries and roots. "Otherwise they will end up in zoos," he said. Aars, however, said the bears had survived temperature swings in the past: "I hear far too often that within 100 years polar bears could be extinct," he told a group of climate students in Longyearbyen. "You will still have bays with ice for many months a year where polar bears can live," he said. On Svalbard, bears may have become less scared of people since the hunting ban, and are more likely to see them as a meal. Aars' recommendation: don't show you are scared. "You start shouting, or use flare shots to make a noise. Most polar bears get scared if you behave in the right way. But you have to act from the start. If you show weakeness you are in trouble."