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China and India's hesitation to back formally a Copenhagen climate agreement could jeopardise $30 billion in climate aid to the developing world, a senior European Union official said on Wednesday. Some 100 countries have signed up for the Copenhagen Accord for fighting climate change, two months after it was agreed at a summit in December, documents showed on Tuesday. China, India and Russia are the largest greenhouse gas emitters yet to make clear if they fully endorse the deal, which sets a goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). Under the non-binding pact, rich nations also plan to give $30 billion in climate aid from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020, largely channelled through a "Copenhagen Green Climate Fund". Karl Falkenberg, the director general of environment at the EU Commission, said on Wednesday that the fund would be only available "in the context of an international framework that leads to the reduction of CO2 emissions." "It is not money for free, it is money that comes with an outcome where everyone is making an effort, then we are helping developing countries to make more of an effort than they could do on their own," he told reporters on the sidelines of a UN environment conference in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali. Falkenberg suggested that, in particular, countries which did not fully support the Accord may not qualify for the funds. China has already said it did not expect to be a big recipient. "If countries hesitate to commit to the Copenhagen Accord which has created this green fund then it's difficult to talk about the green fund with countries that are not clear whether they are in or out or whether they want it," said Falkenberg. "We need to see a preparedness to work with the Accord." China said in Copenhagen last year it did not want any of the green funds. A spokesman for British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said earlier this month that the aid would not be contingent on cooperation from big polluters. China and India have submitted emissions goals under the Accord, but have stopped short of saying they want to be listed as "associates", using the formal language of the agreement. | 0 |
Record high food prices and resulting inflation are set to continue until at least 2010, fuelling a "new hunger" across the globe and anarchy on the streets of poorer nations, a top UN official said. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations' World Food Programme, said the world's economy "has now entered a perfect storm for the world's hungry" caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks. "Our assessment is that the current level will continue for the next few years ... in fact rise in 2008, 2009 and probably at least until 2010," she said on a visit to Brussels on Thursday where she met European Union officials. Her visit came on a day that oil, gold and copper surged to record highs as investors fleeing a weak dollar piled into commodities. Sheeran said food prices were rising due to a combination of soaring oil and energy prices, the effects of climate change, growing demand from countries such as India and China and use of crops to produce biofuels. "This is leading to a new face of hunger in the world, what we call the newly hungry. These are people who have money, but have been priced out of being able to buy food," she said. "Higher food prices will increase social unrest in a number of countries which are sensitive to inflationary pressures and are import-dependent. We will see a repeat of the riots we have already reported on the streets such as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal."
FOOD GAP Over 25,000 people die from hunger or a related illness every day across the world, with one child dying every five seconds. The UN aid official was in Brussels seeking help in bridging a $500 million dollar "food gap" created by soaring commodity costs which have increased by around 40 percent since 2007. The WFP is currently drawing up a list of 30 countries which they believe are "most vulnerable" to the current food inflation crises such as Afghanistan where $77 million is needed to feed an additional 2.5 million people. "Our budget shortfall for 2008 means that at the moment we have to decide do we provide 40 percent less food or do we reach out to 40 percent less people. This is unacceptable," Sheeran said. Along with extra funding, she said one solution would be to increase food production by using more land for agriculture and reducing the amount of land set aside for biofuels. The EU last year set itself a target for biofuels to account for 10 percent of fuel used by transport in the bloc by 2020. But critics have recently questioned whether the plan needs to be reviewed in the light of concerns about the impact of biofuels on food supplies and whether they really contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "Governments need to look more carefully at the link between the acceleration in biofuels and food supply and give more thought to it (biofuels policy)," Sheeran said. "We are not seeing any benefits to small farmers, particularly in the less-developed world. This land could be better used." Speculative investment in commodities markets in products such as grains and cereals, which has helped fuel the price surge, is not a short-term phenomenon, she said. "This is not a short-term bubble and will definitely continue," Sheeran said. | 0 |
The business community has urged the government to frame a long-term and attainable policy to improve the investment climate, in its recommendations on forming a Better Business Forum. "We have requested the government to frame a long-term and achievable policy within a couple of months," FBCCI president Mir Nasir Hossain told bdnews24.com Wednesday. "We have requested they make the policy a final one so that the next government do not bring any changes," said Nasir. The recommendations came after the government sent a draft framework on its plan to form a 'Better Business Forum' to regain business confidence in a bid to improve the investment climate and accelerate the pace of the economy. The recommendations from the private sector were submitted to the chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed Wednesday, according to Nasir, coordinator of representatives from business and industry. The proposed forum is expected to have a central body, comprising senior advisers, top business leaders, representatives of government agencies like the Bangladesh Bank, National Board of Revenue and government secretaries. The government took the initiative to form the forum amid deterioration of business confidence, resulting in a steady decline in both domestic and foreign investment. Deterioration of business confidence also affected demands for credit from the banking sector holding over Tk 140 billion in excess liquidity by the end of July. FDI in Bangladesh had dropped 6 percent to $792 million in 2006, from $845 million the previous year, mainly due to political unrest, volatility and changes in governments, according to the World Investment Report 2007. Local investment proposals also dropped, according to Board of Investment figures. The proposed forum will be headed by chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed, and finance adviser Mirza Azizul islam will act as executive chairman of the forum. The body is also expected to have sub-forums on different issues such as ports, export, import, banking and investment. Advisers of the concerned ministries are expected to chair the committees with leaders of the associations and government officials concerned to act as members. The forum will discuss the problems and grievances of the business community and suggest remedies and action plans, according to businessmen. Nasir said they urged the government to include private sector representatives and recommended selection of the working groups as early as possible. "We have also proposed bringing changes in amendments in laws to smooth business activities," he said. | 1 |
The new US president and the long-serving stateswoman, whose country is Europe's largest economy, will discuss funding for NATO and relations with Russia in their first meeting since Trump took office in January. The meeting is consequential for both sides. Merkel, who officials say has prepared carefully for the encounter, is likely to press Trump for assurances of support for a strong European Union and a commitment to fight climate change. Trump, who as a presidential candidate criticized Merkel for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, will seek her support for his demand that North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations pay more for their defense needs. Relationship building will be a less overt but important agenda item. Merkel had close relations with Trump's Democratic and Republican predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and she is likely to seek a strong working relationship with Trump despite major policy differences and wariness in Germany about the former New York businessman. "Those who know the chancellor know that she has a knack for winning over people in personal discussions. I am sure that Donald Trump will not be immune," said Juergen Hardt, a conservative lawmaker who helps coordinate transatlantic relations for the German government. Trump is eager to see follow-through on his demand that European countries shoulder more of the burden of paying for the NATO alliance, which he has criticized. He will also seek counsel from Merkel on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader Merkel has dealt with extensively and whom Trump, to the consternation of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, has praised. "The president will be very interested in hearing the chancellor's views on her experience interacting with Putin," a senior administration official told reporters. CLIMATE ACCORD A US official said the Trump administration's position on US participation in the Paris agreement to curb climate change would likely come up in the Merkel meeting and be further clarified in the weeks and months ahead. Merkel is a strong supporter of international efforts to fight global warming. Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed during his campaign to "cancel" the Paris agreement within 100 days, saying it would be too costly for the US economy. Since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue. In a New York Times interview in November, he said he would keep an open mind about the Paris deal. Merkel is also likely to press Trump about US support for European security, despite assurances from Vice President Mike Pence about that issue on his recent trip to Europe. "There is still lingering doubt about ... how the US sees European security, and whether the US sees its security and Europe’s security as intrinsically linked and inseparable," Jeffrey Rathke, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told reporters. | 0 |
Vancouver, Canada’s third-largest city, lost its road and rail links to the rest of the country, cut off by washed-out bridges and landslides. It was the second time in six months that the province had endured a major weather-related emergency, and experts say the two disasters are probably related to changes in the climate. British Columbia has been besieged this year by record-breaking heat, wildfires and floods. The disasters have killed hundreds — including three people in the recent rains — and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The impact has rippled across Canada after hobbling the province and the port of Vancouver, which is vital to the country’s economy. “In the last six months, BC has both burned and drowned,” said Merran Smith, executive director of Clean Energy Canada, a climate program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “So there’s really no greater evidence of climate change right now than here in British Columbia.” In July, record temperatures as high as 121 degrees Fahrenheit brought drought and uncontrollable wildfires. The heat, which was concentrated in the province’s interior, killed 595 people from June to August, and fire consumed an entire town. The floods last week have spared more lives but have destroyed vital infrastructure and left freight to pile up at Vancouver’s port, Canada’s gateway to Asia. The country’s supply lines have been disrupted as well at a time when US ports are too backed up to offer much help. Experts said that events in this sequence — heat, fire, drought, flood — could produce so-called compound effects. A drought can dry out vegetation, which in turn can fuel and intensify fires. Fire itself can weaken or kill plants and make the soil less permeable, meaning that rain is more likely to run off rather than soak in, causing flash floods and landslides. Rachel White, a professor at the University of British Columbia who studies how large-scale atmospheric patterns contribute to extreme weather, said it was impossible to say for sure whether the extraordinary heat and the devastating rains resulted directly from climate change. “We need to do more research to really try and understand what’s going on here,” she said. “Is this also a sign of climate change, or did British Columbia just get incredibly unlucky this year?” However, she said, one thing is certain: “These events were made worse because of climate change.” A common weather event known as an “atmospheric river” led to the province’s devastating flooding and set rainfall records in several communities. A moisture conveyor belt, perhaps better known as the Pineapple Express, it is a relatively narrow but very long band of fast-moving, moisture-laden air that forms in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Normally, such systems release that moisture as intense rain once they reach British Columbia’s coastal mountains and peter out before they enter the dry interior region on the other side. But this atmospheric river was different, said Armel Castellan, a meteorologist with the weather service at Environment and Climate Change Canada. “This had so much potency to it that it was able to ride up those mountains and really unleash into what is otherwise the dry belt,” he said. Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric science at UCLA, added that the phenomenon was notable for its scale. The interior town of Hope, for instance, was hit with 11.6 inches of rain in 52 hours, about a third more than the amount of rain it usually receives in all of November. “What’s not normal is to have atmospheric river events that are this large,” he said, adding that in terms of rainfall, these events “are nearly equalling the historic record.” Because the interior region had already had an usually wet fall, the ground was saturated before the storm hit, Castellan said. Compounding the situation, there was relatively little snow at higher altitudes to soak up water. In addition, the summer of extreme heat, drought and wildfires had left little vegetation to slow or prevent mudslides. “When you have those sequences set up right, you produce even more extreme conditions,” Hall said. Human meddling with geography has also made things worse. Much of the fertile farmland near Abbotsford was created 100 years ago by draining the Sumas Lake, a process that forced Indigenous people onto other land. While pumps and levees held back some of the water, the storm last week allowed the lake to reassert itself after a century. As the rain poured down and roads closed, panicked shoppers reprised the early days of the pandemic and cleared out several grocery stores, particularly in the Vancouver area. Rebuilding lost bridges, roadways and railways could take months. But Greg Wilson, director of government relations in British Columbia for the Retail Council of Canada, said that widespread shortages were not likely in the province. Fresh produce can still arrive on the highway from Seattle, the route much of it usually follows to supply Vancouver this time of year. One highway out of Vancouver reopened to light cars and trucks over the weekend, and another restored a single lane of traffic for essential travel. But trucks from elsewhere in Canada are mainly reaching Vancouver by detouring through the United States. And much of the interior of British Columbia, the hardest-hit area, is still open to the rest of Canada by train and truck. “There’s no danger of the Vancouver area running out of food,” Wilson said. “There will be challenges, but there’s lots of supply.” British Columbia has been a leader in trying to mitigate the effects of climate change, said Barry Prentice, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the former director of its transport institute. In 2008, it introduced North America’s first carbon tax. It has also taken physical measures. The port in Vancouver, he said, has been lifted by about 3 feet to accommodate rising sea levels. But the province’s mountainous nature, he said, limits what is possible and will make rebuilding a difficult and prolonged process. “To try and make everything resilient is very hard,” he said. “We don’t have many options for routes coming through the mountains.” The delays in reopenings will most likely significantly affect all of Canada since Vancouver’s port connects the country to Asia, both for imports of consumer goods and economically vital exports of resources like grains and potash for fertilizers. While a rail line to the port in Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia remains open to the east, Prentice said that the port could not physically handle all of Vancouver’s traffic on top of its normal operations. While it may be possible to beef up the transportation network during rebuilding, Prentice said that the only long-term solution remained dealing effectively with climate change. Smith of Clean Energy Canada said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government had a credible and ambitious climate plan but that the country had yet to rein in its oil and gas industry, particularly oil sands operations based largely in neighbouring Alberta. “We need to reduce the emissions from the oil and gas sector; it is one of Canada’s biggest challenges,” she said. “All of these other good policies, we need to see them implemented without delays. There’s a lot of inaction that gets disguised as flexibility, and we’re past that time.” While the water has started to recede in most flood zones, it is unclear when evacuees will return home or abandoned cars will be returned to their owners. And more danger may be ahead for British Columbia. Forecasts predict another batch of heavy rain this week. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The authorities discovered dozens of dead,
injured or starving koalas on private property in Cape Bridgewater in southwest
Victoria in February of last year, after the landowner and a forest and
earth-moving business cleared their habitat, the state’s conservation regulator
said in a statement Wednesday. The operation wreaked havoc on more than
200 koalas, causing “unreasonable pain or suffering to dozens,” the regulator
said. Animal activists said that trees had been
bulldozed with the koalas still in them. “Some were killed instantly, their bodies
found trapped under heavy branches or strewn amongst piles of felled trees,”
according to the conservation group Animals Australia, which sent veterinarians
to the scene. “Some suffered traumatic injuries and broken bones. Some were
orphaned, and others were found huddled together in the few remaining trees
left on the property.” The authorities found 21 dead koalas on the
site, and an additional 49 that were found starving, dehydrated or suffering
from fractures had to be euthanised. Seventy more koalas were treated for
injuries, and 120 others were released back into the wild. The deaths prompted national outrage when
they were first reported by a resident on social media, and the Victoria state
government vowed that those responsible would be punished. The property owner and business were
charged with more than 250 animal cruelty offenses, including 36 counts of
aggravated cruelty charges for causing fatal injuries. Another contracting
company was charged with a cruelty offense. The authorities did not identify
the landowner or the businesses. The case is scheduled to be heard in court
in February. The maximum penalty for one charge of aggravated animal cruelty
leading to death is $157,000 for a business and $65,500 or two years’
imprisonment for an individual. Andy Meddick, a Victoria state lawmaker who
is a member of the Animal Justice Party, said he was “relieved” that “hundreds
of charges were laid for the Cape Bridgewater koala massacre.” He added, “I
visited the site myself and saw the aftermath, and it was one of the worst
things I’ve experienced.” Koalas are a protected species in
Australia, and the marsupials are listed as vulnerable in the states of New
South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory. Their numbers
were severely affected by the catastrophic 2019 fires that burned millions of
acres in the country. Many were rescued, singed and dehydrated, from the wild. While koalas have evolved to adapt to
wildfires, the animals are facing new threats from climate change and human
development, which have dislocated local populations, impairing their ability
to survive fires. In some regions, scientists say, koalas’ numbers have
declined by up to 80%, though it is difficult to know how many remain across
Australia. They are also susceptible to chlamydia,
which can lead to infertility and death. Some surveys of koala populations in
Queensland have suggested that at least half of wild koalas are infected with
the disease. This shared susceptibility with humans has
led some scientists to argue that studying, and saving, koalas may be the key
to developing a chlamydia vaccine for humans. Last year, the Australian government began
an effort to count the population of the native marsupials and record where
they live — a daunting operation, since koalas are not easy to spot in the
wild. When the marsupials are high up in trees, staying still and obscured by
canopy, they’re easy to miss with the naked eye. So the government deployed
heat-seeking drones, acoustic surveys and detector dogs. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Hours after Australia set a record for its warmest day across the continent, with even hotter temperatures in the near forecast, Greg Marshall, a garden designer in Adelaide, said he had found birds of different species gathered on the ground Wednesday, under the shade of trees. It was 106 degrees. “I’ve been walking around the parklands, turning on the taps at the bottom of the trees,” he said. The birds — “with their beaks open, all gasping for air,” he said — huddled around the faucets, trying to get a drink. A national heat wave, triggered by a confluence of meteorological factors that extends well beyond Australia’s shores, pushed high temperatures across the country on Tuesday to an average of 105.6 degrees, or 40.9 degrees Celsius, breaking the record of 104.5, or 40.3 Celsius, set on Jan 7, 2013. On Thursday, said Dean Narramore of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the heat will spread even farther across the central and southern parts of the country, like an inkblot blooming and growing on a page. As the temperatures have risen, so has the threat of fires, which have ravaged large swathes of the country and shrouded Sydney in smoke. Late monsoons in India, an imbalance in sea temperatures in the Indian Ocean and strong winds have hampered rainfall in Australia. The country was already in the grip of a years-long drought. “Friday looks like it will be a very bad day,” Narramore said, adding that lightning strikes in bush land could start even more fires. For weeks, Australians on the eastern coast have been living under a total fire ban as bush fires have raged unabated, burning through houses, killing wildlife and making the air dangerous to breathe. The Air Quality Index, which measures pollution, has exceeded 400 in some parts of Sydney. Readings of 100 and above are considered “poor.” “All of this is connected,” Narramore said. “A record-late monsoon in India means the rain will be late coming to Australia, it’s the worst fire season we’ve seen across Australia, it’s warming through climate change, and it’s only the third week of summer.” Forecasters have said that the heat wave could bring temperatures never before seen in Australia. The highest temperature ever recorded in the country was 123 degrees on Jan 2, 1960, in Oodnadatta, a remote outback town in South Australia. On Wednesday, the hottest place on the continent was Birdsville, Queensland, which reached 117 degrees. Nine of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, with last year the third hottest. As the country bakes and burns, the government has come under criticism for refusing to actively address climate change through sharper emissions cuts. Prime Minister Scott Morrison generated disapproving headlines on Wednesday after it was reported that he had left Australia for a Hawaii vacation as authorities raised emergency warnings across the country, fires continued to burn and Australians sweltered. In Perth, a man drew wide attention on social media after roasting pork inside his old Datsun car, whose interior he said reached 178 degrees. In Adelaide, people were still outside working, delivering parcels and labouring on building sites, Marshall said. He normally tours one or two of his gardens during a workday, largely for maintenance. On Wednesday, he visited 12. “Some of the larger ones are really suffering,” he said. “Right now, we’re waiting for the fire. It’s a tinderbox, and everything’s aligning for Friday. It’s pretty bad.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
NEW DELHI, Sun Jan 20, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for greater cooperation with India on combating terrorism as he began a visit to New Delhi on Sunday. Brown wants India to become a member of an international body that counters terrorist financing -- the Financial Action Task Force -- and also wants to help it to acquire sophisticated equipment to detect people carrying weapons or explosives at ports and airports. "There's got to be greater cooperation between the major countries and Britain in the fight against terrorism," he told the BBC in an interview on Sunday. "I want not just China and Pakistan but also India to play their part in cooperating with us so we can root out those who are seeking to use terrorist finance," he said. "That means India should join what's called the Financial Action Task Force -- it's not yet a member -- so it can play its part in working to deal with terrorist structures," Brown said. He also called for a hearts and minds campaign to combat "extremist ideologies". Brown arrived in India from China where he focused on expanding trade and investment and on cooperation against climate change. In India he will hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meet business leaders and give a speech on Monday on reforming international institutions. Brown arrived armed with promises of hundreds of millions of dollars of development aid to combat poverty in India, where 400 million people live on less than $1 a day despite the country's rapid economic growth. Britain said that over the next three years it will give India 825 million pounds ($1.6 billion) in development aid, with more than half spent on health and education. The money will help provide 300,000 more teachers and enable four million more children to go to school by 2011, the British government said. In a sign of the growing economic ties between Britain and India and India's increasing financial clout, Tata Steel Ltd last year bought Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus for 6.2 billion pounds. Ford Motor Co this month chose a sister company, Tata Motors Ltd, as the front-runner to buy famous British vehicle makers Jaguar and Land Rover. Brown is also expected to discuss trade and his ideas for an international early warning system to prevent a recurrence of the U.S. sub-prime lending shock which has led to a global credit crunch and claimed a high-profile casualty in Britain in mortgage lender Northern Rock. Brown called on Saturday for a new drive to reach a global trade agreement. Years of talks on a new trade liberalization pact have made slow progress. (1 pound=$1.945) | 1 |
Ukraine says it is investigating some 7,600 potential war crimes and at least 500 suspects following Russia's Feb 24 invasion of its neighbour. "Russia has brought barbarity to Ukraine and committed vile atrocities, including against women. British expertise will help uncover the truth and hold (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's regime to account for its actions," Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said. The announcement comes as Truss travels to The Hague to meet with International Criminal Court President, Judge Piotr Hofmanski, and her Dutch counterpart Wopke Hoekstra. "The specialist team will assist the Ukrainian government as they gather evidence and prosecute war crimes and will include experts in conflict-related sexual violence," said a foreign office statement. Moscow calls its actions a "special operation" aimed at degrading Kyiv's military power and protecting Russian-speakers living in the east of the country. | 1 |
US President George W. Bush goes into his farewell European summit on Tuesday seeking to work with allies to ratchet up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program but still at odds with them over climate change. Bush is due to meet European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Janez Jansa, prime minister of current European Union president Slovenia, before he heads off to the capitals of Europe's four biggest powers. Washington and European governments have played down the chance of dramatic announcements during the visit, which comes in the twilight of a presidency marked by fierce opposition from many Europeans to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Divisions over Iraq have eased somewhat, even as Europeans look increasingly past Bush to his successor who will be chosen in the November election. Despite that, a draft of the summit statement obtained by Reuters showed the United States and EU were ready to threaten extra measures against Iran on top of U.N. sanctions if Tehran keeps defying demands to suspend sensitive nuclear work. The U.N. Security Council passed a third sanctions package against Tehran in April, and Washington has pressed the EU to deny some Iranian banks access to the world financial system. EU diplomats have said recently the bloc was prepared to go beyond the approved sanctions, citing previous travel bans and asset freezes on Iranian officials. MORE COOPERATIVE APPROACH Bush, accused by critics of "cowboy diplomacy" during much of his presidency," has tried to take a more cooperative approach with allies in his second term. He hopes to forge a foreign policy legacy defined by more than Iraq. With low approval ratings at home, Bush acknowledges, however, he is also unpopular in Europe. "A lot of people like America. They may not sometimes necessarily like the president," Bush told Slovenia's Pop TV before arriving in Ljubljana late on Monday. On climate change, EU policymakers say they have given up trying to get Washington to join with the bloc in signing up now for binding cuts of greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. officials insist that big developing nations such as China and India have to make similar commitments for the United States to join in too, and say Europeans hoping for big changes with a new president will be disappointed. "Barack Obama and John McCain are very close to the positions of the administration and there is no difference with the administration on the need to engage China," the U.S. envoy to the EU, C. Boyden Gray, told reporters. But polls show Europeans are especially fond of Obama, a Democrat who would be the first black U.S. president, for his opposition to the Iraq war, which has frayed America's image. Obama and McCain both win high marks in Europe for calling for the closing of the Guantanamo military prison where terrorism suspects are held. Bush says he wants to shut it down too but only after other arrangements are made for detainees. THE DOLLAR Money matters will also figure in Bush's weeklong trip, which will see stops in Germany, Italy, France and Britain. He made clear before leaving Washington that he would press his commitment to a "strong dollar" -- its weakness is seen as a barometer of the U.S. economic slowdown -- and his concern about record oil prices. Bush will also seek EU support to help combat treatable diseases in Africa and provide health care in Afghanistan, a White House official said. He will ask for financial commitments to treat so-called neglected tropical diseases such as hookworm and river blindness, which is caused by a parasite spread by blackflies. "These diseases are treatable and beatable by medicines that are available today," Dan Price, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, told reporters aboard Air Force One with Bush. Bush will also propose boosting the number of health care workers in Afghanistan, he said without elaborating. A decade-old EU ban on U.S. poultry imports is also likely to be raised. Though affecting only a fraction of trans-Atlantic trade, it is taken by Washington as the test of a new body designed to smooth such trade disputes. For the Bush era, Slovenia carries special meaning. It was there Bush met Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2001 and said he had peered into his soul. Critics called him naive, and relations with Moscow have since deteriorated. Bush and some European allies differ on how to deal with a resurgent Moscow. | 0 |
Britain - which hosted the COP26 UN climate conference and will lead work through to the 2022 gathering in Egypt - must now team up with activists and green-minded businesses to shift plans and maintain pressure on laggard countries, they said. That could include everything from expanding a pioneering funding programme to help South Africa break its coal dependency to other nations, to dialling up political pressure on less-climate-ambitious countries from Australia to Russia and Brazil. For now, efforts to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius - a level scientists say gives the best chance of keeping people and nature safe - are "hanging by a thread", said Richard Black of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. "We don't need more pledges... That's not really credible anymore. We need actions, policies," Black, a senior associate with the UK nonprofit, said at a briefing on the COP26 outcome. The summit, which ended on Saturday, achieved some notable commitments, including to double financing for adaptation to climate impacts, "phase down" coal power, cut "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies and end deforestation by 2030. But campaign groups lamented it was far from enough to keep the world on a safe path, with Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition, a UK-based group of climate justice organisations, saying it showed "utter disregard of science and justice". Nations' emissions-cutting pledges for 2030 put the world on track for 2.4C of temperature rise, with projected emissions double what is needed to hold onto 1.5C, according to Climate Action Tracker researchers. David King, a former British chief scientist, said in his view "there was no real understanding in the (Glasgow) agreement of the extreme nature of the crisis". But the government of Bangladesh, current head of the Climate Vulnerable Forum of 55 countries, said the talks had nonetheless delivered "substantial progress". "The world has recognised the urgency of the situation here in Glasgow - now the hard work begins back home," it said in a statement after the meeting ended. Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities network of large metropolises pushing climate action, said the top priority should be "big breakthroughs" in action on the ground. "As world leaders depart Glasgow, it is now up to others to pick up the torch," he said in a statement. RATCHETING UP ACTION The Glasgow Climate Pact asks countries to come back by the end of 2022 with more ambitious plans to cut their emissions by 2030 in a bid to hold onto the fast-fading 1.5C goal. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations were required to update their carbon-reducing plans only every five years. The new request for faster ratcheting - alongside pressure from climate activists and businesses eager for clearer market signals on how to drive green shifts - mean more leaders now feel "squeezed from both sides" to take action, said Chris Stark, head of Britain's independent Climate Change Committee. Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, an industry trade association, said the Glasgow deal's first-ever references to phasing down coal and fossil fuel subsidies amounted to "a really strong market signal" for business. That could drive shifts in private investment that will ultimately have a bigger influence on emissions than smaller amounts of government climate finance, the analysts said. But long-overdue rules governing carbon markets, finally agreed in Glasgow, leave open the possibility that companies and countries making net-zero pledges could rely too heavily on offsetting emissions rather than cutting them, Pinchbeck said. Whether carbon trading systems actually reduce global emissions is "a wait and see", she said during the online discussion. One significant shift at the COP26 talks, she noted, is that more leaders have grasped not just that climate change presents a genuine risk in their own countries but that demands for action are coming from a broader spectrum of society. "Countries understand the threat of climate change now physically but also in terms of social pressure and the pressure from businesses," she said. Amber Rudd, a former UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, said that with politicians weighing up what swifter emissions cuts might mean for their re-election chances, keeping up public pressure for climate action was crucial. Leaders are too often interested only in future climate action that is NIMTOO, or "not in my term of office", she added. "Politicians know what they need to do. They just don't know how to get re-elected after they've done it," she said - a worry that clear public support for climate action could alleviate. | 1 |
The agency said in a statement that Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and Sabah were still affected by floods, and 8,727 people were taking shelter at 128 relief centres. A total of 125,490 people have been affected by the floods nationwide, it said, of which 117,700 evacuees have returned home. Floods are common on the eastern coast of Malaysia during the annual monsoon season between October and March, but unusually heavy rainfall that started on Dec. 17 displaced thousands and strained emergency services. Fifty people have died in the floods, and two remain missing, according to a police tweet citing Inspector-General Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani. Following the meteorological department's warning of continuous heavy rains, the National Disaster Control Centre has issued a disaster operation preparedness notice. The Department of Irrigation and Drainage also issued a warning of high tides between Jan. 2-5, and cautioned residents on the west coast in Peninsula Malaysia, the statement said. Malaysia said it will provide 1.4 billion ringgit ($336.22 million) in cash aid and other forms of relief for those hit by severe flooding this month. It is also seeking $3 million from the UN Green Climate Fund to develop a national plan to adapt to climate change. | 0 |
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Fiji in a meeting of Pacific foreign ministers in Samoa on Saturday to ensure the country's military rulers held elections as promised in March 2009. Rice arrived in Samoa from Auckland for a three-hour stop-over where she joined more than a dozen ministers from the Pacific Forum to discuss Fiji, maritime security and climate change, among other issues, said a senior U.S. official. A Pacific diplomat who attended the talks but asked not to be named, said Rice raised the issue of elections with Fiji's interim foreign minister Brigadier General Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, who arrived late for the meeting at a holiday resort near the airport. Rice had said beforehand she would use the occasion to deliver a strong message to Fiji. "There is especially hard work to do concerning Fiji where a return to democracy is an absolute necessity," Rice said in Auckland late on Saturday before leaving for Apia. "Those elections should not be based on any other conditions but the ability to hold an election, something that the government of Fiji has promised to do and has promised to do next year and should do forthright," added Rice, who also visited Singapore and Australia on an eight-day trip that ends on Monday. It was the first visit to Samoa by a U.S. Secretary of State for 20 years and Rice was joined on her plane by New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who has taken a leading role among Pacific countries to get Fiji's military to restore democracy. Fiji's military strongman Frank Bainimarama originally promised elections for March 2009, but he said in June this was now unlikely because reforms were needed to the electoral system. Bainimarama staged a bloodless coup in December 2006, claiming the then government of Laisenia Qarase was corrupt and soft on those behind an earlier 2000 coup. Fiji has been hit by four coups and a military mutiny since 1987. Sanctions have been applied by Australia, New Zealand and the European Union on Fiji, including the suspension of aid and travel bans on Fijian military and political officials. The United States also canceled military aid to Fiji after the coup. The senior U.S. official traveling with Rice said she did not plan to meet separately with the Fijian minister, who went to Apia along with more than a dozen other ministers from the Pacific. Ministers and officials from Australia, Fiji, Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu, Guam, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Palau and Papua New Guinea were among those at the meeting, hosted by Samoa's prime minister. | 0 |
The vote passed with overwhelming support, despite criticism in the lead-up from some countries, notably the United States and Britain. The resolution, first discussed in the 1990s, is not legally binding but has the potential to shape global standards. Lawyers involved in climate litigation say it could help them build arguments in cases involving the environment and human rights. "This has life-changing potential in a world where the global environmental crisis causes more than nine million premature deaths every year," said David Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, who called the decision a "historic breakthrough". The text, proposed by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland, was passed with 43 votes in favour and 4 abstentions from Russia, India, China and Japan, prompting a rare burst of applause in the Geneva forum. Britain, which was among the critics of the proposal in recent intense negotiations, voted in favour in a surprise, last-minute move. Its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Rita French, said the UK was voting 'yes' because it shared supporters' ambition to tackle climate change but added that states would not be bound to the resolution's terms. The United States did not vote since it is not currently a member of the 47-member Council. Costa Rica's ambassador, Catalina Devandas Aguilar, said the decision will "send a powerful message to communities around the world struggling with climate hardship that they are not alone". Critics had raised various objections, saying the Council was not the appropriate forum and citing legal concerns. Environmental defenders had said Britain's earlier critical stance was undermining its pledges ahead of the global climate conference it is hosting in Glasgow next month. John Knox, a former UN special rapporteur, said ahead of the vote that those who had criticised the resolution were "on the wrong side of history". The World Health Organization estimates that some 13.7 million deaths a year, or around 24.3% of the global total, are due to environmental risks such as air pollution and chemical exposure. Another proposal led by the Marshall Islands to create a new special rapporteur on climate change was also approved by the Council on Friday. | 0 |
Arctic peoples and tropical islanders will try to strengthen an unusual alliance on the front lines of global warming from Sunday by seeking ways to cope with melting ice and rising seas. Inuit hunters from Canada and Greenland and a Sami reindeer herder from Norway will be among those meeting local community leaders and other experts from French Polynesia, Fiji and the Caribbean at talks in Belize from May 27-30. Polar ice and permafrost sound an odd combination with tropical palm beaches and coral atolls but scientists say both the Arctic and small islands are among the most vulnerable to global warming, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels. "There are so many similarities between the two regions and we hope to ... see how collaboration can be made at community level," said Grete Hovelsrud, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. Hovelsrud told Reuters the meeting of 40 delegates would be the first of its kind since a "Many Strong Voices" plan for Arctic peoples and island states was launched at UN talks in Montreal in 2005. Hovelsrud is a leader of the programme. Both Arctic peoples and those in tropical islands depend on the coasts -- Inuit people rely on sea ice for hunts of polar bears or seals while many islands rely on fishing or tourism based on the lure of white sands, coral reefs and palm beaches. "In the Arctic the ice is disappearing," she said. "In the tropics, rising seas are damaging beaches. And seawater is percolating into the ground water and damages crops." The Arctic region and small island developing states account for just one percent of greenhouse gases. By teaming up they might raise their political clout. "The Inuit don't have the front seat when it comes to policy making and I don't think the small islands do either," Hovelsrud said. The talks are partly sponsored by the United Nations and the Organisation of American States. The talks would try to work out a five-year plan of work and examine possibilities for a broader study of threats to small islands modelled on a 2004 study of the Arctic by 250 experts. A report by the UN climate panel in April said that small islands were "especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, sea level rise and extreme events." Erosion of beaches or damage to corals could damage fisheries and tourism. It also said that warming is happening faster in the Arctic than elsewhere -- dark ground or sea, once uncovered, soaks up far more heat than reflective ice or snow. | 0 |
He was speaking at a leading CSR forum in Germany. “Politicians have to give the framework and enforce law, buyers need to be ethical and pay reasonable prices, factory owners need to strengthen their middle management and think about compliance, HR and environment, and finally customers in Germany need to be educated,” he said. BGCCI is the largest bilateral chamber in Bangladesh. The 11th German CSR Forum was held in Stuttgart on Apr 20 and Apr 21. It is the leading forum on Corporate Social Responsibility in Germany. The forum is themed “Without CSR no business success,” the BGCCI said. More than 800 participants from the private sector, governments, NGOs and universities took part in the conference. Prizes have been awarded in six categories for best practices. They include: CO2 avoidance as a contribution to climate protection, gender diversity, exemplary cooperation of a company with NGOs/NPOs, CSR in the supply chain, sustainable urban development and best video on the CSR commitment of a company. Germany is one of the leading destinations for Bangladeshi garments where all products manufactured in Bangladesh have duty-free market access.The conference also discussed the RGM (ready-made garment) supply chain in Bangladesh. It was suggested that, apart from the policy guidelines, the standards in the supply chain must also improve, BGCCI said. “Companies have their products often manufactured by independent firms abroad and you have no control over whether standards are met,” said sustainability consultant Jan Eggert, former CEO of BSCI. The BGCCI Executive Director said: “At the moment, only the price counts, but this needs to change if we want to have sustainable business models”. | 2 |
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, behind in polls ahead of a 2007 election, was accused on Monday of trying to scare voters by saying opposition plans to cut greenhouse gases would cause an economic recession. Howard, seen as a climate change laggard who has not set emissions reduction targets, said the opposition planned 20 percent cuts from 1990 levels by 2020 -- as mentioned by rock star Peter Garrett before he became Labor environment spokesman. Such a target "would be a recipe for a Garrett recession. That is not a recession which Australia has to have," Howard told his Liberal party on Sunday. Labor's stated policy is for a 60 percent cut in emissions by 2050 and it has made no mention of earlier targets. "The prime minister is now looking at this issue through the prism of politics and it is blatant scaremongering...," Garrett told reporters on Monday. "Labor's policy of having a 60 percent cut in emissions by 2050 is fully backed by science." Britain has already committed to 60 percent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 and Canada and the European Union have set 20 percent cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020. Australia's major newspapers on Monday charged Howard with trying to scare voters as he seeks a fifth term in office at an election expected in late 2007. "John Howard has launched the government's climate change fright line for the federal election," wrote political editor Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald. The Australian newspaper said Howard was linking climate change to the economy, his political strength after 11 years of economic growth, to "run a scare campaign". Several Australian reports on reducing greenhouse gas emissions have found minimal adverse economic impact. A 60 percent cut in emissions by 2050 would restrict economic growth by an average annual 0.1 percent of gross domestic product, said a 2006 report by the government's top scientific body and the Allen Consulting Group. It said the Australian economy would grow by 2.1 percent in 2050 with such cuts, compared with 2.2 percent without. Another study by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and Monash University found a worst case scenario would see only a small dip in economic growth. "Instead of the economy growing at 3.0 percent without a target it would be growing roughly 2.75 percent," said Monash economist Phillip Adams. Howard, who has spent much of the past 11 years in power playing down the risks of global warming, said on Sunday that dealing with climate change would be the most momentous economic decision Australia would take in the next decade. He said his government would implement a carbon trading scheme by 2012, but will not disclose targets for reducing emissions until 2008, after the next election. Carbon trading involves putting a price and limits on pollution, allowing companies that clean up their operations to sell any savings below their allocated level to other companies. Australia accounts for 1.5 percent of global carbon emissions, but relies on coal for about 80 percent of electricity, and is the world's biggest coal exporter. While Howard's commitment to a carbon trading scheme has been welcomed, the lack of any greenhouse gas reduction targets has been criticised. "The Australian public, Australian investors and Australia's environment all need a target to ensure their future security and certainty," said John Connor, head of The Climate Institute Australia. "Without targets to reduce emissions, no climate change policy has credibility," Connor said. | 0 |
BANGKOK, Wed Oct 29,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Seven weeks before it hosts ASEAN's annual jamboree of regional leaders, Thailand has suddenly decided to switch the venue from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Officially, the reason for the 700 km (435 mile) move to the northern city is because of its pleasant climate in December and a desire to "show the delegates some other part of Thailand," according to foreign ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat. In private, however, officials admit it has nothing to do with tourism or the weather and everything to do with the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the protest movement that has occupied the Prime Minister's official compound in Bangkok since August. "They are just trying to avoid trouble with the PAD," one government official said, trying to play down suggestions that the last-minute change of venue represents a loss of face and makes the country look unstable. Thai media have speculated that the PAD, whose street protest has crippled government decision-making since it started in May, will target the summit venue to embarrass the elected administration in what should be one of its proudest moments. As well as government leaders from the 10 Association of South East Asian Nations countries -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines -- the meeting also includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Bangkok-based diplomats are fuming at the abrupt switch for the summit, which coincides with the height of the tourist season. Coming at such short notice, it is hard to see a city with a population of 200,000 finding enough beds to cope with the influx of thousands of government officials and foreign media. When neighbouring Laos hosted the meeting in its sleepy capital, Vientiane, four years ago it barred all foreign visitors from entry to the country for the duration of the summit to ensure enough space. "This is a massive pain in the backside," one Bangkok-based diplomat said. "None of this has been budgeted for and how are we going to get hotel rooms at this time of year? We're going to be sharing rooms and sleeping on the floor." The reservation department at the Shangri La hotel in Chiang Mai, which is hosting the meeting, said the entire hotel had been block-booked from Dec. 11-19 although tourists with existing reservations would not be booted out. News of the move appeared to have passed by the original venue for the meeting, Bangkok's swanky new Centara Grand hotel, where sales staff said the summit booking remained in place. | 1 |
European Union leaders, worried that Kosovo's push for independence could trigger instability in the Balkans, were set to offer Serbia a fast-track route to joining the bloc at a summit on Friday. A day after signing a treaty to end a long institutional stalemate, the leaders switched focus to challenges posed by the Balkans -- a test of the EU's new hopes of strengthening its foreign policy clout -- and by globalisation and immigration. The leaders were due to say that Serbia should be offered an accelerated path towards EU membership, once Belgrade meets the conditions to sign a first-level agreement on closer ties. "It reiterated its confidence that progress on the road towards the EU, including candidate status, can be accelerated," a draft copy of the summit communique obtained by Reuters said. It also said talks on the breakaway Serbian province had been exhausted, the status quo was untenable and a settlement of Kosovo's future status was essential for Balkan stability. Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen called the draft statement "a major step in the right direction". Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht pointed to the lessons of the 1990s Balkans wars, saying: "We have seen what happened in former Yugoslavia when the European Union did not take things in hand." A handful of EU states -- Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia and Romania -- remain reluctant to recognise an independence declaration expected early next year. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana welcomed the announcement this week of a Serbian presidential election on Jan. 20. The election will give voters a say on whether Serbia should move closer to the EU or protest at its role in Kosovo. "We are very pleased and support the decision ... calling for presidential elections in Serbia and as you know we are in a position in our minds that the final status of Kosovo has to be resolved," he told reporters. The draft also showed the EU leaders were set to say they were ready to tighten sanctions on Myanmar if the country's military rulers do not ease repression. FOCUS ON CHALLENGES In addition to foreign policy issues, the leaders were due to address public concern over the strain on European job markets from immigration and cheap imports, issues on which the EU hopes to focus now that the new Lisbon Treaty has been inked. "The Union will be able to fully concentrate on the concrete challenges ahead, including globalisation and climate change...," the draft final communique said. Replacing the more ambitious constitution abandoned after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005, the Lisbon Treaty preserves most of the key institutional reforms but drops contentious symbols of statehood such as a flag and anthem. EU leaders hope the treaty will streamline the bloc's structures to cope with enlargement after it opened its doors to 12 mostly ex-communist states in 2004 and 2007. Critics say it will curb national sovereignty and put more power in Brussels. Friday's summit is due to agree on a mandate for a "reflection group" on the bloc's long-term future, naming a chairperson for the panel who will select the other members by next March and report conclusions to EU leaders in June 2010. A spokesman for EU president Portugal declined to comment on candidates, but a source close to the negotiations said former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and former European Parliament chief Pat Cox were in contention for the role. The chairman of phone giant Nokia, Jorma Ollila, was also expected to join the panel, diplomats said. Other figures mentioned as possible members of the group, likely to number at most nine people, are Dutch soccer hero Johann Cruyff and European trade union leader John Monks. Talks on how the EU should deal with globalisation will be closely followed for how they reconcile the free trade approach of countries such as Britain with the French view of protecting home-grown industries from cheap imports. | 0 |
President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives resigned on Tuesday after weeks of protests erupted into a police mutiny, leaving the man widely credited with bringing democracy to the paradise islands accused of being as dictatorial as his predecessor. Nasheed handed power over the Indian Ocean archipelago to Vice-President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, explaining that continuing in office would result in his having to use force against the people. "I resign because I am not a person who wishes to rule with the use of power," he said in a televised address. "I believe that if the government were to remain in power it would require the use of force which would harm many citizens." In the morning, soldiers fired teargas at police and demonstrators who besieged the Maldives National Defence Force headquarters in Republic Square. Later in the day, scores of demonstrators stood outside the nearby president's office chanting "Gayoom! Gayoom!", referring to Nasheed's predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Nasheed swept to victory in 2008, pledging to bring full democracy to the luxury holiday resort nation and speaking out passionately on the dangers of climate change to the low-lying islands. But he drew opposition fire for his arrest of a judge he accused of being in the pocket of Gayoom, who ruled for 30 years. Protests at the arrest set off a constitutional crisis that had Nasheed in the unaccustomed position of defending himself against accusations of acting like a dictator. Overnight, vandals attacked the lobby of the opposition-linked VTV TV station, witnesses said, while mutinying police attacked and burnt the main rallying point of Nasheed's Maldives Democratic Party before later taking over the state broadcaster MNBC and renaming it TV Maldives. SCRAMBLE FOR POSITION Gayoom's opposition Progressive Party of the Maldives accused the military of firing rubber bullets at protesters and a party spokesman, Mohamed Hussain "Mundhu" Shareef, said "loads of people" were injured. He gave no specifics. An official close to the president denied the government had used rubber bullets, but confirmed that about three dozen police officers defied orders overnight and attacked a ruling party facility. "This follows Gayoom's party calling for the overthrow of the Maldives' first democratically elected government and for citizens to launch jihad against the president," said the official who declined to be identified. The protests, and the scramble for position ahead of next year's presidential election, have seen parties adopting hardline Islamist rhetoric and accusing Nasheed of being anti-Islamic. The trouble has also shown the longstanding rivalry between Gayoom and Nasheed, who was jailed in all for six years after being arrested 27 times by Gayoom's government while agitating for democracy. The vice-president is expected to run a national unity government until next year's presidential election. The trouble has been largely invisible to the 900,000 or so well-heeled tourists who come every year to visit desert islands swathed in aquamarine seas, ringed by white-sand beaches. Most tourists are whisked straight to their island hideaway by seaplane or speedboat, where they are free to drink alcohol and get luxurious spa treatments, insulated from the everyday Maldives, a fully Islamic state where alcohol is outlawed and skimpy beachwear frowned upon. Nasheed was famous for his pleas for help to stop the sea engulfing his nation and in 2009 even held a cabinet meeting underwater, ministers all wearing scuba gear, to publicise the problem. An Asian diplomat serving in Male told Reuters on condition of anonymity: "No one remembers the underwater cabinet meeting. They remember Judge Abdbulla Mohamed," a reference to Nasheed having the military arrest the judge accused of being in Gayoom's pocket. Meanwhile, Twitter user Alexander Brown said he was in the Maldives enjoying life. "Maldives government overthrowing (sic) and im watching a Vogue photo shoot infront of me on Four Seasons ... very strange world." | 0 |
People in the United States, Britain and India see war and terrorism as the top global challenges while Chinese are more worried about climate change, according to a poll commissioned by King's College London. In an Ipsos MORI survey conducted in eight countries -- Australia, Brazil, China, Britain, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United States -- for the London university, 62 percent of the Americans polled chose war and terrorism as a top issue the world needed to address. In China, only 17 percent of respondents cited the same issue, called national security. Asked what the top two or three challenges were for the world today, the Chinese named global warming and climate change, followed closely by pollution. War and terrorism ranked highest also in Britain and India, as well as Saudi Arabia. People polled in South Africa and Brazil chose it the least. The economy was the overwhelming choice as a national challenge for Americans and British. Eighty-two percent of Americans polled chose the economy as one of the top issues facing their government while 74 percent of Britons picked it. The Chinese surveyed were most worried about overpopulation and ageing as well as pollution. Australians and the British were more likely to cite cancer as one of the greatest challenges facing their country, with one in four people polled citing it as an important issue. South Africa had the highest percentage of people who selected AIDS as a big challenge both globally, at 37 percent, and at a national level, at 63 percent. Ipsos-MORI polled 7,055 people between 16 and 64 years across the eight countries in September. | 0 |
The deal, which includes the world's two
biggest economies, the United States and China, divides countries into three
groups with different deadlines to reduce the use of factory-made
hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases, which can be 10,000 times more powerful than
carbon dioxide as greenhouse gases. "It’s a monumental step forward,"
US Secretary of State John Kerry said as he left the talks in the Rwandan
capital of Kigali late on Friday. As Rwanda's Minister for Natural Resources,
Vincent Biruta, began spelling out the terms of the deal shortly after sunrise
on Saturday, applause from negotiators who had been up all night drowned out
his words. Under the pact, developed nations,
including much of Europe and the United States, commit to reducing their use of
the gases incrementally, starting with a 10 percent cut by 2019 and reaching 85
percent by 2036. Many wealthier nations have already begun
to reduce their use of HFCs. Two groups of developing countries will
freeze their use of the gases by either 2024 or 2028, and then gradually reduce
their use. India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the Gulf countries will meet the
later deadline. They needed more time because they have
fast-expanding middle classes and hot climates, and because India feared
damaging its growing industries. "Last year in Paris, we promised to
keep the world safe from the worst effects of climate change. Today, we are
following through on that promise," said UN environment chief Erik Solheim
in a statement. Gaining momentum The deal binding 197 nations crowns a wave
of measures to help fight climate change this month. Last week, the 2015 Paris
Agreement to curb climate-warming emissions passed its required threshold to
enter into force after India, Canada and the European Parliament ratified it. But unlike the Paris agreement, the Kigali
deal is legally binding, has very specific timetables and has an agreement by
rich countries to help poor countries adapt their technology. The United Nations says phasing out HFCs
will cost billions of dollars. But a quick reduction of HFCs could be a
major contribution to slowing climate change, avoiding perhaps 0.5 degrees
Celsius of a projected rise in average temperatures by 2100, scientists say. Environmental groups had called for an
ambitious agreement on cutting HFCs to limit the damage from the roughly 1.6
billion new air conditioning units expected to come on stream by 2050,
reflecting increased demand from an expanding middle class in Asia, Latin
America and Africa. The HFC talks build on the 1987 Montreal
Protocol, which succeeded in phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
widely used at that time in refrigeration and aerosols. The aim was to stop the depletion of the
ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet rays linked to skin
cancer and other conditions. | 0 |
The United States supported a global call to action at the United Nations on Friday to conserve and sustainably use oceans, seas and marine resources, even as it noted President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from a pact to fight climate change. The first UN Ocean Conference ended on Friday with the adoption of a Call to Action, which said: "We are particularly alarmed by the adverse impacts of climate change on the ocean." "We recognize, in this regard, the particular importance of the Paris Agreement, adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change," it read. After the consensus adoption, David Balton, deputy US assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries, reminded the summit "that on June 1 our president announced that the United States will withdraw from or renegotiate US participation in the Paris agreement or another international climate deal." Trump's decision to pull the United States from the landmark 2015 Paris agreement drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry. Speaking after the United States, French Ambassador for the Oceans Serge Segura received applause from delegates in the UN General Assembly after stating climate change was real. "France is committed to upholding all of our obligations under the Paris agreement both for our welfare, but also for the welfare of the international community as a whole," he said. The week long ocean summit promoted partnerships, such as between governments and businesses, to address issues such as marine pollution, ocean acidification, and marine research. More than 1,300 voluntary commitments to save the ocean were made. Safeguarding the ocean was one of 17 goals adopted in 2015 by the 193 UN member states as part of an agenda for the world's sustainable development up to 2030. Another goal calls for "urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts." | 0 |
David Attenborough has done more than just about anyone to teach us about our planet. As he marks the end of his sweeping natural history television series, seen by hundreds of millions of people over 30 years, the British broadcaster is fearful of what the future holds for the Earth and its inhabitants. "We've come to an end of a particular genre, a particular type of making programmes," Attenborough told Reuters, referring to the series that began with "Life on Earth" in 1979 and ended earlier this year with "Life In Cold Blood". "You could say that this is a survey of how the world looked and how it may not look the same in 50 years' time." The series took Attenborough around the world and included memorable scenes like his encounter with mountain gorillas when he whispered to the camera as the animals surrounded him. It also featured startling images from wildlife that were the result of pioneering camerawork and painstaking research. "Life on Earth" alone was watched by an estimated 500 million people worldwide, according to the BBC. Attenborough, who began his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1952, said the impact of global warming over the last 50 years meant that making the same programmes today would be difficult, if not impossible. "There are some things in that series that would be very difficult to film again, they are much more difficult to find." He added that he did not know of a single "major" vertebrate species that had become extinct during his career, but serious risks to plants, animals and humans lay ahead. "The plain, simple, overwhelming fact of the matter is that since I started making programmes, there are three times as many people on the Earth," he said. "It is inevitable that you are going to make huge inroads into what was wild nature and that process is going on. It's going to get worse before it gets better."
"DEEPLY DEPRESSING" Attenborough, younger brother of film director Richard, agreed with some scientists' prediction that it was too late to reverse the impact of climate change. "Whatever we do now the world is going to change. The question is can we slow down those changes or reduce them? One clutches at straws to try and find something in this bleak picture which is not deeply depressing." Among those straws are the fact that governments are taking the issue seriously and popular awareness of the dangers climate change poses to the environment has spread. "People recognise that the only conceivable way in which you'll save the life in the sea and the climate in the air is by international agreement," he explained. "It's damned difficult." His comments came as 17 countries responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions met in Paris to find common ground on how to thrash out a new treaty to fight climate change. The publicly funded BBC is releasing a DVD box set of four of Attenborough's documentary series to coincide with Earth Day on April 22. The environmental awareness campaign organises events around the world each year, and dates back to 1970. Attenborough welcomed popular movements promoting a sustainable environment, saying young people were what counted. "It's all very well for me crying doom and gloom, but the people who are going to suffer are my grandchildren, and my grandchildren are certainly exorcised about. They are outraged at what's happening to the wild places of the Earth." At 81, the broadcaster said he was not about to retire, although his globetrotting filmmaking days may be over. "Next February is the 200th anniversay of the birth of Charles Darwin and I am making a programme about evolution. | 0 |
In all, there were at least 19 deaths in several states related to the storm. It ranked No. 3 in terms of snowfall accumulation in New York City history with at least 25.1 inches (63.7 cm), and was among Washington's biggest too, the National Weather Service said. Thirteen people were killed in weather-related car crashes in Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia. One person died in Maryland and three in New York City while shovelling snow. Two died of hypothermia in Virginia, officials said. After dumping nearly two feet (60 cm) of snow on the Washington area overnight, the storm unexpectedly gathered strength as it spun northward and headed into the New York metropolitan area, home to about 20 million people. With the storm persisting through the night, accumulations of between 24 and 28 inches (60 to 71 cm) of snow were expected in New York City, northern New Jersey and western Long Island, with winds gusting to 45 mph (72 kph), the NWS said.
The statue of Pierre Charles L'Enfant is coated in snow during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters
Visibility was expected to be one-quarter of a mile (400 meters) or less. The statue of Pierre Charles L'Enfant is coated in snow during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency, as have 10 other state governors. He also imposed a ban on all travel on New York City area roads and on Long Island, except for emergency vehicles, from Saturday afternoon until 7am on Sunday, when all bridges and tunnels into the city from New Jersey would also be re-opened. Subways running above ground and trains operated by the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North halted service at 4pm because snow falling at a rate of 3 inches (8 cm) per hour proved too much for ploughs on roads and railways, Cuomo said. The impact of the travel ban on the New York's financial services industry was seen as minimal over the weekend, and it was too soon to tell how much the heavy snow would affect Wall Street's reopening on Monday. On Broadway, however, the impact was immediate. Theatres cancelled Saturday matinee and evening performances at the urging of the mayor. An otherworldly quiet descended on the usually bustling city of 8.5 million, the most populous in the United States. Tourists and residents took to the streets of Manhattan, with many venturing into the white expanses of Central Park, some on skis. Others built snowmen or had good-natured snowball fights.
The grounds around the Washington Monument are covered in snow during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters
While authorities in New York and New Jersey halted public transportation, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority took the rare step of suspending operations through Sunday in the capital. The grounds around the Washington Monument are covered in snow during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters "The forecasts suggest that the snow will wrap up late tonight or in the very early hours of the morning," Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a press conference. "But it doesn't make it any less dangerous. We expect continued high winds throughout the area which will continue to make the conditions and visibility very poor." More than 5,100 flights were cancelled on Saturday and over 3,300 more on Sunday, said FlightAware.com, the aviation data and tracking website. United Airlines said on Saturday that it would not operate at Washington-area airports on Saturday and Sunday, and would gradually resume service on Monday. The airline plans to start "very limited operations" on Sunday afternoon at its Newark, New Jersey, hub and other New York area airports. The brunt of the blizzard reached the New York City area after battering Washington, where snow had piled up outside the White House and the city's famous monuments were frosted with snow. "We haven't made snow angels yet, but we're looking forward to doing that in front of the White House," said Robert Bella Hernandez, 38. "We're just going to walk around, see some snow-covered DC landmarks. And then when it's unsafe, maybe go back in for a minute." The record high of 28 inches (71.1 cm) of snow in Washington was set in 1922 and the biggest recent snowfall was 17.8 inches (45.2) in 2010. Higher tides than during Sandy High winds battered the entire East Coast, from North Carolina to New York, reaching 70 mph (112.5 km) in Wallops Island, Virginia, late on Friday, whipping up the tides and causing coastal flooding, said National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Gallina.
A man walks near the Washington Monument during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters
The snow also engulfed the Mid-Atlantic cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia while about 150,000 customers in North Carolina and 90,000 homes in New Jersey lost electricity in the storm on Saturday. A man walks near the Washington Monument during a winter storm in Washington January 23, 2016. Reuters Tides higher than those caused by Superstorm Sandy three years ago pushed water onto roads along the Jersey Shore and Delaware coast and set records in Cape May, New Jersey, and Lewes, Delaware, said NWS meteorologist Patrick O'Hara. Some evacuations were reported along the New Jersey Shore, where thousands of residents had to abandon their homes during the devastating 2012 storm. The barrier islands near Atlantic City were experiencing significant tidal flooding, said Linda Gilmore, the county's public information officer. The storm developed along the Gulf Coast, dropping snow over Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky on Friday. On the coast, warm, moist air from the Atlantic Ocean collided with cold air to form the massive winter system, meteorologists said. | 5 |
Key developing states rallied to an EU roadmap for a binding pact to fight global warming on Friday, but draft agreements emerging at UN climate talks showed deep divisions remained and Europe said the negotiations could yet collapse. The EU plan sets a 2015 target date for a new deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases, a pact that would come into force up to five years later. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Brazil and South Africa, whose growing economies are heavy polluters, now supported binding cuts to emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause rising sea-levels and increasingly extreme weather. But speaking to reporters in the South African port of Durban she said an agreement was far from certain before the talks' scheduled end on Friday. "The success or failure of Durban hangs on a small number of countries who have not yet committed to the (EU) roadmap and the meaningful content it must have," Hedegaard said. "If there is no further movement from what I have seen until 4 o'clock this morning, I don't think there will be a deal in Durban. That's what we are faced with." A draft text emerged that could legally bind more than 30 industrialised countries to cut emissions under a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol -- the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts. However, it would likely only be adopted if all emitters agreed to take on legal targets in a separate, broader agreement that would bind China, India and the United States. Climate experts doubted the wording of the second text would be acceptable, as it merely referred to a "legal framework," stopping short of a legally binding treaty that the European Union and many developing countries are demanding. "In the next years we will not have a legal regime, nothing will control the big emitters, the developed countries. without that framework everyone can do what they want," said Rene Orellana, chief negotiator for Bolivia and part of the ALBA group of Latin American nations, said if the proposed texts went through. "This is not just the death of Kyoto, it's the death of the planet. We need a regime to control emissions, to enforce compliance," he said. Critics also complain the texts are unclear about when emissions cuts must come into force and how deep the reductions will go. UNDER PRESSURE The EU strategy at the conference has been to forge a coalition of the willing designed to heap pressure on the world's top three carbon emitters -- China, the United States and India -- to sign up to binding cuts. None are bound by the Kyoto Protocol. Washington says it will only pledge binding cuts if all major polluters make comparable commitments. China and India say it would be unfair to demand they make the same level of cuts as the developed world, which caused most of the pollution responsible for global warming. Many envoys believe two weeks of climate talks in Durban will at best produce a weak political agreement, with states promising to start talks on a new regime of binding cuts in greenhouse gases. Anything less would be disastrous, they say. U.N. reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction. The Durban talks are scheduled to wrap up on Friday but are widely expected to extend long into the night and even Saturday. The dragging talks frustrated delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups outside as they tried to enter the main negotiating room. "You need to save us, the islands can't sink. We have a right to live, you can't decide our destiny. We will have to be saved," Maldives' climate negotiator Mohamed Aslam said. Karl Hood, Grenada's foreign minister and chairman of the 43-nation Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) whose members are in the frontline of climate change, said the talks were going around in circles. "We are dealing with peripheral issues and not the real climate ones which is a big problem, like focusing on adaptation instead of mitigation," he said. "I feel Durban might end up being the undertaker of UN climate talks." | 1 |
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said on Sunday US President Barack Obama was not soft on China and said he hoped he would discuss Tibet with the Indian prime minister in Washington this week. "Obama is not soft on China, he just has a different style," the Dalai Lama told the NDTV news channel in an interview. Obama had called for a resumption of dialogue between the Dalai Lama's envoys and China to resolve the Tibet crisis during his just-concluded visit to Beijing. The Tibetan government-in-exile said last week it was willing to talk to China following Obama's comments. Chinese officials and envoys of the Dalai Lama have held eight rounds of talks, but little of substance has been achieved. The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule, said he was not disappointed over failing to meet Obama during his U.S. visit in October. The Dalai Lama, dubbed a "splittist" by Beijing, says he is merely seeking autonomy for Tibet, which last year erupted in riots and protests against the Chinese presence. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits the United States this week to discuss regional issues, climate change and a nuclear deal. | 0 |
More than 60 nations started the biggest scientific investigation of the Arctic and Antarctic on Thursday amid new evidence that global warming is thawing polar ice and raising sea levels. About 3,000 children made slushy snowmen and waved banners saying 'give us back the winter' in Oslo, scientists met in Paris and other experts gathered on a research vessel in Cape Town to mark the start of International Polar Year (IPY). "The polar year is important for everyone on the planet," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters when asked if people living in places such as Africa or Asia should be interested in science at the icy ends of the earth. "We are seeing climate change most clearly in the polar areas and research there can give us decisive knowledge in the fight against global warming," he said. During the UN-backed year, about 50,000 experts will be involved in 228 projects such as studying marine life in the Antarctic, mapping how winds carry pollutants to the Arctic, or examining the health of people, polar bears or penguins. Scientists will fly planes into storms off Greenland, others will measure ice from satellites and still others will see how reindeer are faring when warmer weather damages lichen pastures. "This part of the planet has its problems and it needs to get a higher level of attention," David Carlson, director of the IPY Programme Office, told Reuters. The Norwegian Polar Institute said in a report that a melt of glaciers in Svalbard, an Arctic chain of islands about 1,000 km (620 miles) from the North Pole, was quickening. "The melting has clearly accelerated in the past five years," it said. "Therefore Svalbard ice is contributing more than before to raising world sea levels." Rising seas could end up threatening cities from Tokyo to New York. Many scientists say warming of the Arctic, where indigenous hunting cultures and animals are under threat from receding ice, may be a portent of damaging changes elsewhere linked to global warming stoked by human use of fossil fuels. Arctic temperatures are rising at about twice the global average, apparently because water or ground, once exposed, soak up more heat than reflective ice or snow. Antarctica is staying cooler because its huge volume of ice acts as a deep freeze. The world's top climate scientists said in a UN report last month that it was 'very likely' that human activities were the main cause of global warming and projected that sea levels could rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.1 to 23.2 inches) by 2100. By that time, Arctic sea ice may disappear in summers. Nordic nations, with Arctic territories, fear businesses including tourism are vulnerable. In Finland, scientists met on Thursday in Rovaniemi, a town which draws thousands of tourists every year with a claim to be the home of Santa Claus. In northern Sweden, they were releasing a giant balloon outside a hotel carved from blocks of ice. | 0 |
President Barack Obama's negotiators make their debut at UN climate talks on Sunday but US promises of tougher action are unlikely to brighten prospects for a strong treaty now overshadowed by recession. Up to 190 nations meet in Bonn from March 29-April 8 to work on plugging huge gaps in a pact due to be agreed in December. Some industrial nations -- Japan, Russia and Ukraine -- have not even set goals for key 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The U.N.'s climate chief said the mood in Bonn, the first climate negotiations since December, would be helped by U.S. plans for stronger action but cautioned against expecting too much from Obama, struggling with the economic downturn. "People are very excited to see the U.S. back," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters. Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, will head the U.S. delegation. "Of course they're not coming back with a blank check. They are coming with their own requirements in the context of the current political reality," he said. He said time was running worryingly short to work out the vastly complex deal. "There's a great deal of work still to be done," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the head of a U.N. committee who drafted a 30-page text for Bonn condensing a former 120 pages of ideas for a treaty, ranging from carbon markets to financial aid. Obama wants to cut U.S. emissions by about 15 percent back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the U.N. treaty -- far tougher than President George W. Bush who foresaw U.S. emissions peaking only in 2025. Under Bush, the U.S. was isolated in opposing the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the plan for cutting emissions backed by all his industrial allies. Delegates even booed U.S. delegates at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007. BACKTRACKING But many nations have rowed back on climate plans, focusing instead on spending trillions of dollars on rescuing banks and shoring up the sagging world economy. A G20 summit in London on April 2 will test appetite for fighting climate change. Spending on green projects, such as renewable energies or railways, accounts for about 15 percent of economic stimulus cash of $2 to $3 trillion. "The seriousness of the climate problem becomes more stark and disturbing with each passing year," Stern said in a speech on March 3. He said that Washington's policies would be guided by science, but also set clear limits. The United States could not make the deepest emissions cuts laid out by the U.N. Climate Panel, of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels, since it was now "beyond the realm of the feasible," he said. The U.N. Climate Panel projects more floods, droughts, more powerful storms, heatwaves and rising sea levels from heat-trapping gases. One big climate dispute in 2009 will be between developed nations, which have promised "comparable" efforts in cuts. The European Union has been more ambitious than Washington, promising cuts of 20 percent below 1990 levels. And developing nations led by China and India are expected to curb their rising emissions, such as by promising more efficient power plants and vehicles. The U.N. talks need to work out details of a possible registry for such actions. Poor nations say the rich should give new finance and clean technology. China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, this month rejected a U.S. idea of tariffs on some imports from countries that do not place a price on carbon. | 0 |
A US biologist who urges wider use of economic incentives to solve problems such as pollution or a rising loss of animal and plant species was awarded a $100,000 environmental prize in Norway on Tuesday. Gretchen Daily, a scientist at Stanford University, won the 11th annual Sophie Prize, set up by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy "Sophie's World". "As a scientist she has shown that there are different ways to put a value on nature," the award committee said. "She has shown us that there are also economical arguments for conserving species and eco-systems." Daily, who was born in 1964, has said New York City's investments to protect the Catskill region meant a cleaner supply of water used by millions of people, averting a need for costly purification plants. She suggests that a drive by China, for instance, to protect forests could prevent floods and safeguard animals and plants. "We're in trouble as a species and as a society," she said in a telephone call from California. "One of our best hopes is to align economic incentives with conservation." U.N. studies say the world is facing the highest number of extinctions since dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago because of habitat loss, climate change and pollution. | 0 |
Demand for food will rise rapidly over the next few decades as the world population surpasses 9 billion and increasingly wealthy people improve their diets, consuming more calories, said Hiroyuki Konuma, the assistant director-general of FAO Asia-Pacific, as the body launched a one-week regional food security conference in Ulan Bator.But as the need for more food increases, the world is spending less and less money on agricultural research, causing many scientists to doubt whether food production can keep up with demand growth."If we fail to meet our goal and a food shortage occurs, there will be a high risk of social and political unrest, civil wars and terrorism, and world security as a whole might be affected," said Konuma.The challenge is especially demanding in developing nations, which need to boost crops by a staggering 77 percent, he said.The Asia-Pacific would be left with more than half a billion chronically hungry people even if the region meets its millennium development goal of cutting that number to 12 percent of the population, he said.Despite progress made in fighting global hunger, the world still has 842 million undernourished people, according to FAO, of which nearly two thirds live in the Asia-Pacific. One in four children under five years old are stunted due to malnutrition.The UN body outlined two main options: increase arable land areas and boost productivity rates. But available arable land is almost fully exploited, and production growth rates have been lacklustre for the past two decades.During the green revolution in the 1980s, productivity rates for rice and wheat increased by 3.5 percent annually, but for the past 20 years the rate has been stuck at 0.6 to 0.8 percent.The growth rate needs to be stable at around 1 percent if the world is to have a theoretical chance to avoid serious shortages, said Konuma.
Water scarcity in big food-producing nations like China is worsening, and many farmers are increasingly tempted to shift production from food to bioenergy, a popular option to cut emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.Climate change is worsening the situation, as more frequent extreme weather events devastate crops. In the past three years, Australia, Canada, China, Russia and the United States have all suffered big harvest losses from floods and droughts.Cost is an additional threat to food security, according to the UN body. High and volatile food prices restrict poor people's access to food, while high crude oil prices inflate production costs. | 0 |
Take the October issue of GQ, which features Paul McCartney. For decades he has leaned on familiar Beatles anecdotes, presuming that decades-old chestnuts may still pass for warm. But in GQ, over the course of several long conversations, he revealed himself to be unstudied, slightly wishy-washy and much less preoccupied with the sanctity of his own image than you might think — he even offered a recollection about the Beatles’ teenage sexual adventures that led to a characteristically sweaty New York Post headline: “Beat the Meatles.” The story worked in two ways: For the reader and fan, it was appealingly revealing; for McCartney, who’s been famous so long he is more sculpture than human, it was a welcome softening. This took a willingness to answer questions, to submit to the give and take that comes with a profile of that scale. But not all big stories demand such transparency of their subjects: say, the September issue of Vogue with Beyoncé on the cover. The accompanying article is titled “Beyoncé in Her Own Words” — not a profile, but a collection of brief, only-occasionally-revealing commentaries on a range of topics: motherhood and family, body acceptance, touring. Anna Wintour refers to the story in her editor’s letter as a “powerful essay” that “Beyoncé herself writes,” as if that were an asset, not a liability. There was a journalist in the room at some point in the process — the piece has an “as told to” credit at the end — but outside perspectives have effectively been erased. For devotees of Beyoncé, this might not matter (though it should). But for devotees of celebrity journalism — the kind of work that aims to add context and depth to the fame economy, and which is predicated on the productive frisson between an interviewer and interviewee — this portends catastrophe. And it’s not an isolated event. In pop music especially, plenty of the most famous performers essentially eschew the press: Taylor Swift hasn’t given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years. For Drake, it’s been about a year (and a tumultuous one at that). Frank Ocean has all but disappeared (again). What’s replaced it isn’t satisfying: either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media. Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press. Since the 1960s, in-depth interviews have been a crucial part of the star-making process, but also a regular feature of high-level celebrity maintenance — artists didn’t abandon their obligations to the media just because they had reached the pinnacle of fame. Answering questions was part of the job. It was the way that the people making the most interesting culture explained themselves, whether it was John Lennon on the breakup of the Beatles, Tupac Shakur speaking out from jail, or Courtney Love in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death. It was illuminating to fans, but also something of a badge of honour for the famous, especially when the conversations were adversarial. Stars like Ice Cube and Madonna used to thrive in those circumstances — the interviews revealed them to be thoughtful, unafraid of being challenged and alive to the creation of their image. But that was in a climate in which print publications had a disproportionate amount of leverage, and the internet and TMZ hadn’t wrested away narrative control. When stars’ comings and goings began to be documented on a minute-by-minute basis, those changes triggered celebrity reticence. On its own, that wouldn’t signal the death knell of celebrity journalism as it’s been practiced for decades. But the pressure being applied to celebrity journalism from the top might pale in comparison to the threat surging from below, where a new generation of celebrities — YouTube stars, SoundCloud rappers, and various other earnest young people — share extensively on social media on their own terms, moving quickly and decisively (and messily) with no need for the patience and pushback they might encounter in an interview setting. This generation is one of all-access hyper-documentation, making the promise of celebrity journalism — emphasising intimate perspective and behind-the-scenes access — largely irrelevant. An emblematic example is the rapper Lil Xan, who in recent months has played out several micro-dramas online: discussing his health struggles and how they put him at odds with his management (his phone was forcibly grabbed from his hand while he was live on Instagram discussing family drama); falling for and then breaking up with Noah Cyrus, Miley’s younger sister. Traditional media might catch up to his story someday, but he’s not waiting to be asked for a comment before providing one. (He recently announced on Instagram that he was filming a series for Netflix, again bypassing old platforms.) Sometimes, social media posts take the place of what was once the preserve of the tell-all interview: Ariana Grande mourned her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, in an Instagram post; the rapper XXXTentacion replied to allegations of sexual assault on his Instagram Story; the YouTube star Logan Paul used his usual platform to apologise for a video in which he filmed a dead body. These are one-sided stories, with no scrutiny beyond the comments section. And so they’ve become highly visible safe spaces for young celebrities, especially in an era when one’s direct social media audience — via Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and more — can far exceed the reach of even the most prestigious or popular publication, and in a way that’s laser-targeted to supporters. All of which leaves celebrity journalism in a likely unsolvable conundrum. The most famous have effectively dispensed with it, and the newly famous have grown up in an age where it was largely irrelevant. Over time, the middle space may well be squeezed into nothingness. What’s more, creation of content has been diversified — for the casual consumer, it can be difficult to tell the difference between original reporting and aggregation, content created by journalistic outlets and content created by brands. This blurriness incentivises the famous away from traditional media, where they don’t control the final product. And as old-media extinction looms, the new ecosystem is often used as a corrective — or loud distraction. Selena Gomez is on the cover of Elle this month, and the accompanying story is relatively innocuous. But when it appeared online, she replied with a long Instagram post expressing frustration. “Speaking from my heart for over an hour to someone who puts those thoughts into paid words can be hard for me,” she wrote. “The older I get the more I want my voice to be mine.” She then listed the specific things she sought to promote in the interview, and lamented that other things — namely, her personal life, and her church — were given too much attention. And so as the power dynamic tilts in favour of the famous over the press, publications — weakened, desperate, financially fragile — have been forced to find ever more contorted ways to trade, at minimum, the feeling of control in exchange for precious access. Celebrities guest edit — “edit” — special issues of magazines. And while Swift did appear on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar this year, in the accompanying article, she is the interviewer, asking questions of the rock muse Pattie Boyd. In 2015, Rihanna photographed herself for the cover of The Fader. (The shoot was executed in concert with a professional photographer.) It was, yes, a meta-commentary on panoptic fame, and also the cover star taking her own photograph. If those options aren’t available, magazines can simply assign a friend of the celebrity to conduct the interview. In Elle, Jennifer Lawrence interviewed Emma Stone. Blake Lively conducted Gigi Hadid’s Harper’s Bazaar May cover interview. Katy Perry’s March Glamour cover interview was by the Instagram affirmation specialist Cleo Wade. Interview, a magazine predicated on these sorts of intra-celebrity conversations, was recently resurrected; in the comeback issue, Raf Simons talks with George Condo (a journalist chimes in occasionally) and Jennifer Jason Leigh talks to Phoebe Cates. The friend doesn’t even have to be famous. In Rolling Stone’s current feature with the press-shy pop star Sia, the author announces himself as a longtime friend of hers. And New York magazine’s recent exclusive interview with Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife, was conducted by a longtime friend of Allen, to howls of dismay on Twitter. These stories trade on the perceived intimacy of friendships as a proxy for actual insight, abdicating the role of an objective press in the process. The covenant implicit in celebrity profiles is that the journalist is a proxy for the reader, not the subject. But in the thirst for exclusive access, the old rules get tossed by the wayside — ethics become inconvenient. Friendship should be a disqualifier, not a prerequisite. That is a disservice to fans, who miss out on what happens when someone in the room is pushing back, not merely taking dictation. Imagine how wildly illuminating probing conversations with Beyoncé about “Lemonade” or Swift about “Reputation” would have been, a boon to the curious as well as an opportunity for the interview subjects to be shown in their full complexity. But rather than engage on those terms, these stars have become hermetic. It’s a shame: We’ll never know the answers to the questions that aren’t asked. © 2018 New York Times News Service | 5 |
The list, assembled annually since 2008, is intended to draw attention to the fact that researchers continue to discover new species. Nearly 18,000 were identified in 2013, adding to the 2 million known to science.An international committee of taxonomists and other experts, assembled by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, selects the top 10. The list is released in time for the May 23 birthday of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish botanist considered the founder of modern taxonomy.Scientists believe nature holds another 10 million undiscovered species, from single-celled organisms to mammals, and worry that thousands are becoming extinct faster than they are being identified, said entomologist Quentin Wheeler, president of the environmental science college, part of the State University of New York."The top 10 is designed to bring attention to the unsung heroes addressing the biodiversity crisis by working to complete an inventory of earth's plants, animals and microbes," he said in a statement.Like previous lists, this one shows that even large species can elude scientists.One top-10, for instance, is the olinguito, the cat-bear amalgam from the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. The 2-kilogram (4.5-pound) raccoon relative is the first carnivorous mammal discovered in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years.Scientists had long missed an even bigger quarry: the 12-meter (40-foot) dragon tree of Thailand, which has soft, sword-shaped leaves and cream-colored flowers with orange filaments. People living in the area knew of it but scientists didn't.
A female Tinkerbell Fairyfly (Tinkerbella nana) is shown in this undated handout photo provided by the International Institute of Species Exploration and the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry on May 21, 2014. Credit: Reuters
No one knew about some other top-10s. A submersible exploring beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf discovered a yellow 2.5-centimeter (one inch) sea anemone that burrows into the ice and dangles two dozen tentacles in the frigid water.More alarming, scientists had no idea of the existence of microbes that survived attempts to sterilise clean rooms where spacecraft are assembled - one in Florida and one in French Guiana - and which threaten to hitch a ride to other worlds.Explorers arguably get a pass for failing to discover the Tinkerbell fairyfly of Costa Rica: at 250 micrometers (0.00984 inches) across, it is one of the smallest known insects."We are very far from having exhausted the knowledge of the biodiversity on Earth," said zoologist Antonio Valdecasas of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, and chair of the top-10 committee. Without knowing what exists, humans will not know if something disappears or moves in response to climate change or other environmental disruption, the committee warned.The top-10 list is at www.esf.edu/Top10 A female Tinkerbell Fairyfly (Tinkerbella nana) is shown in this undated handout photo provided by the International Institute of Species Exploration and the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry on May 21, 2014. Credit: Reuters | 0 |
UN climate talks will "probably not" agree an ambitious deal this year unless the economy improves and voters press for action, said India's top climate official Shyam Saran. "If the economic and financial crisis continues or even worsens during the coming year then the kind of ambitious response that the world expects is probably not going to happen," said India's special envoy on climate change, on the fringes of a business and policy summit in Davos. "But if the situation improves ... if there is much more public opinion pressure on governments domestically ... that remains to be seen." The financial crisis had contributed to deadlock at last month's climate talks, by heightening concerns that climate laws would drive jobs overseas, for example to the developing world, if they faced less onerous targets, said Saran. Saran hinted at compromise, however, on a major stumbling block in Copenhagen last month -- but the United States first must agree to make its proposed targets to curb carbon emissions enforceable under international law. The United States never ratified the existing Kyoto Protocol, whose present commitments expire in 2012, and time is running out for the world to agree and then ratify a successor pact. The United States has said it will not sign up to an extended Kyoto Protocol, preferring a new agreement. India may consider a separate instrument, provided the United States agreed to make its targets binding, rather than just a binding review of these targets -- a position that the United States preferred in Copenhagen according to Saran. That is the legal format of Kyoto, which applies carbon-cutting targets to rich countries and includes legal sanctions if they fail to meet these. "If the US only has a problem with the (Kyoto) label but not with the substance then that's a different issue," he said referring to India's opposition. "If, on the other hand, it's not only a matter of the label but it is something much more fundamental ... is the US Congress in a position to accept international enforcement? If you look at legislation currently before Congress they don't have that, it is entirely domestic." "There is a lack of clarity on which way we're going." Saran rejected suggestions that developing countries such as India and China had obstructed last month's UN climate talks, which failed in their core objective to agree national and global emissions targets. Developing countries had not agreed that the final "Copenhagen Accord" should be legally binding because they feared that may have diluted the Kyoto Protocol, he said, by giving no assurance that proposed new emissions targets would be enforceable. | 0 |
Tamara looked nervous and kept glancing over her shoulder, as if to make sure no one was behind her. Then, suddenly, she ran straight for the ball, scooped it up in her arms and ran off. Amir Nizar Zuabi, a Palestinian theatre director and Tamara’s father, seemed pleased. “See, everything she does is with urgency,” he told the puppeteers in June. “Everything is life and death.” The puppeteers were watching Tamara closely in order to mimic her behaviour and create a 9-year-old Syrian refugee named Little Amal, the lead character in “The Walk,” one of the year’s most ambitious pieces of theatre — and certainly the piece of theatre with the biggest stage. The plot of “The Walk” was simple: Little Amal had lost her mother, and was looking to find her. But the logistics to pull off the almost $4 million project — a 5,000-mile journey from Turkey to England — were anything but. Throughout the trek, the 12-foot-tall puppet — which required up to four people to control — would make over 140 stops in eight countries, at venues ranging from refugee camps to the Royal Opera House in London. Those would include theatrical spectacles, including a final event in Manchester, England, as well as spontaneous encounters, with Amal (whose name means hope in Arabic) simply walking through a city or village and seeing what happens. Refugees had dominated Europe’s newspapers in 2015-16, when millions fled Syria’s civil war, but people are still crossing the continent every day. And with the coronavirus pandemic, the conditions in which refugees and migrants have been living, and the treatment they have met, has only gotten worse. David Lan, the former artistic director of London’s Young Vic Theatre and one of the project’s producers, said in a break from the rehearsals that the meaning of “The Walk” was obvious: “Don’t forget us.” But he said the team didn’t want to achieve that by only focusing on the horrors that refugees face. “She is a child, so she will have terrifying times and be lonely and frightened,” Lan said. “But our focus is on the potential, the joyfulness, that she can bring.” “The Walk” evolved out of “The Jungle,” an immersive play set in a refugee camp that had acclaimed runs on both London’s West End and at St Ann’s Warehouse in New York City. But the new show was a different proposition, mostly taking place outside traditional venues. And hard-line immigration measures were surging as the project got going. Just days before the rehearsal, Denmark passed a law allowing the nation to relocate asylum-seekers outside Europe while assessing their claims. Soon Britain, where some ministers had trumpeted a desire to create a “hostile environment” for migrants, said it wanted to do the same. In other countries, barriers were being proposed to keep migrants out. In that context, “The Walk” seemed as much a provocation as theatre. Zuabi insisted that wasn’t the case. “We’re not coming to provoke. We’re walking a 9-year-old to find her mother.” “If you don’t like it, it’s OK,” he added gently. Whether locals across Europe would agree, Zuabi would soon find out. July: Gaziantep, Turkey On a balmy evening in July, Little Amal took her first stumbling steps in the narrow alleyways of Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey just 40 miles from the Syrian border. It’s the city where many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees have settled. Excited children and adults crowded around the puppet, and raised lanterns and lights to guide her way. Designed and operated by a team that includes members of Handspring, the company best known for its work in “War Horse,” she towered above the crowds but, like a toddler, looked unnerved by them. She often hesitated as she walked, swaying slightly, her chest rising, before suddenly rushing forward with rapid, unsteady strides. The four puppeteers controlling her — one inside on stilts, two operating her hands and a fourth to steady her from behind when needed — made her turn repeatedly to look back, as if searching for her mother. Then she’d cast her eyes down in disappointment and walk on. Those involved in the project said they hoped events like this would prove that art can create a connection between Turks and Syrians, the residents and the refugees. “When people have a hard time understanding each other, culture and art have always been a very important unifying method,” said Recep Tuna, the Turkish co-producer of “The Walk.” But as Little Amal kept moving, it was already clear that the project wouldn’t convince everyone. Sherif Chinar, a barber who’d just closed his shop for the day, beamed with excitement at the procession. He immediately understood the concept, he said. “It’s someone who loses their family and is walking on foot to find them.” The project was a great idea, he added. But farther along stood Ugur Taschi, a hotel owner, complaining loudly. “I hate them,” he said, jutting his chin toward the crowd. “They make a big crush just for Syrian refugees. I don’t need the Syrians here.” Despite her height, big red boots and determined expression, Amal appeared vulnerable. Her long hair, made of ribbons, lifted in the breeze. Her upper body and arms, made of bamboo canes, looked like they could snap. Eventually, the puppeteers walked her to a park where Syrian children sang to her, in both Turkish and Arabic, and another group gave her a handmade trunk filled with gifts for the journey ahead. The next day, she was to undertake her second walk. But like a real refugee, her trip was interrupted. A Turkish soldier had been killed on operations in northern Iraq and was scheduled to be buried just outside the city. In deference to local sensibilities, “The Walk” — just one day old — came to a stop. August: Meteora, Greece From Gaziantep, Little Amal’s journey went smoothly. In Adana, Turkey, children flew flocks of homemade birds around her. In Cesme, she looked out to sea while surrounded by hundreds of empty pairs of shoes, a reminder of those who’d gone before her (and not made it). While on the Greek island of Chios, choirs sang to welcome her. But then the team — about 25 people — tried to visit the Greek World Heritage site of Meteora, known for Orthodox monasteries perched upon towering rocks. Amal was meant to have a picnic with local children, the monasteries a scenic backdrop. But the local council banned the event. Council members tried to explain the decision by saying a “Muslim doll from Syria” shouldn’t be performing in a space important to Greek Orthodox believers. (Amal’s religion, in fact, has never been specified.) But for some, the cancellation was about more than religious differences. With the escalating crisis in Afghanistan, tensions around migration were once again rising in Europe. In Greece, some feared a repeat of 2015-16, when more than 1 million refugees passed through the country, using it as a gateway to Germany, France, England or elsewhere. A heritage association in Meteora made its opposition clear on its website: “The bitter truth is those who said ‘Yes’ to Little Amal actually said ‘Yes’ to all those who come after her.” Lan, the producer, didn’t try to change the council’s mind. “If we’re not welcome, we don’t go,” he said, and the team rushed into planning a new event. But things didn’t calm down. Just days later, in Larissa, central Greece, people pelted Amal with eggs, fruit and even stones. Others thrust religious symbols at her. Fans tried to defend her. Police intervened. Then in Athens, right-wing groups said they’d protest her planned event, anti-fascists said they’d protest in support of her, and the police had to use tear gas to disperse the crowds. While the organisers downplayed the hostility, the puppeteers found it telling. “It was scary, shocking, but I think it was really important,” said puppeteer Emma Longthorne. If everyone embraced Amal and the world’s refugees, she added, the company would not need to be walking at all. September: Rome Perhaps surprisingly, resistance to Little Amal stopped as she crossed from Greece to Italy, another country where politicians have often let anti-immigrant sentiment boil. On the morning of Sept 10, she stepped into the opulence of the Vatican. Her puppeteers — whom Lan said had grown in confidence and became more playful as they knew she wasn’t suddenly going to fall over — took her on a stroll through St Peter’s Square. There, she bent down to hug a bronze statue depicting 140 migrants — that included Jews fleeing the Nazis — as if she recognised herself among them. Then she met the pope. When Pope Francis, who has long been vocal in support of refugees, saw Amal, he tried to shake her hand, settling on a finger as it was all he could grasp, smiling throughout. The encounter “was such a theatrical moment,” said Roberto Roberto, the project’s Italian co-producer. “It was all very simple and affectionate.” The next night the puppeteers took Amal to the Teatro India, one of Rome’s main theatres, where they placed her on an oversized mattress in an outside courtyard and tried to make her look as if she was sleeping. Paintings, collages and digital works by Syrian artist Tammam Azzam flashed up a wall behind the puppet. They were nightmarish visions of the war-torn home she’d left behind — bullet- and shrapnel-riddled apartment blocks, their facades blown off to reveal long-abandoned homes. Azzam, who left Syria in 2011 and now lives in Germany, called it a “moving dream” of a decidedly unsafe place. Zuabi, the project’s artistic director, said he’d chosen Rome for Amal’s nightmares because of the stark contrast between the city’s wondrous architecture and the realities that the project was trying to draw attention to. “This voyage,” he said, “is hardship and beauty combined.” October: Calais, France “The Walk” was a project whose ambitions required constant cash injections, including for regular COVID-19 tests. By the end, it would cost more than 2.8 million pounds, about $3.8 million. “We never stopped fundraising,” Lan said. They even sold T-shirts online to bring in money. The project’s most symbolic moments would occur beachside in France. Around 10 am one bright Sunday, Little Amal’s team and fans gathered in a church parking lot in Grande-Synthe, a small town near the north coast, trying not to get mixed up with two families waiting to baptise their newborns. A group of refugees and migrants was soon meant to rap for Amal, but Céline Brunelle, an artist helping with the event, said they hadn’t all turned up. “It’s early,” she said, by way of explanation. “And they might have spent the night trying to get to England.” Migrants daily try to cross the English Channel, by boat or by hiding on trucks. Brunelle said she was quite happy if the rappers missed the show if it meant they had made it. Amal eventually set off from the church but was met by a policeman blocking her way. She stamped her huge shoes at him in frustration, paced forward and back as if unable to work out what to do next, until the rappers appeared, red scarves tied round their heads, and starting calling for her to follow. They led Amal to a town square — locals leaning out of apartment windows along the route, hoping to get a better view — then performed a track in French, telling Little Amal they understood her pain but “we know you’ll make it.” As the bass pounded, the puppeteers tried their best to make Amal look like a music fan, spinning her around repeatedly. “I see myself in her, even though she’s a small girl,” José Manzambi, one of the rappers, said afterward. He’d come to France from Angola four years ago and, now 21, was hoping to stay and become an actor. But he was still waiting for a residence permit. Northern towns like Grand-Synthe and, on the coast, Calais, are divided on the issue of refugees. The political climate in France is also moving to the right ahead of presidential elections next year. Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, refused “The Walk” a permit for the day’s final event on the city’s beaches, so it had to be moved some 30 miles away to the resort of Bray-Dunes. (A spokesman for Bouchart declined to comment.) A few hours later, on the beach, Amal walked out toward the sea, her hair blowing in the cold wind. She was joined by 30 other huge puppets — some made to look like fish, others dressed like kings. Then Joyce DiDonato, an American opera singer, began serenading them all from a boat stuck on the sand. After a half-hour concert, Little Amal’s time in France was over. The lead puppeteer, with the help of several assistants, extricated himself and stepped off the stilts. Amal was packed into a crate, ready for a train trip under the sea. Unlike many refugees, hundreds of whom you can see daily seeking help around Calais, she would make it to England before morning. November: Manchester, England Little Amal’s journey was meant to end on a cold, wet Wednesday night in Manchester, with a parade through the city’s streets overseen by Simon Stone, an Australian theatre and movie director. A few hours beforehand, several of the puppeteers reflected on the experience. Fidaa Zidan, a Palestinian actor, said she felt overwhelmed but also exhausted. “Like Amal, I want to go back home,” she said. Mouaiad Roumieh, a Syrian refugee living in France, said he didn’t want the trip to end. “The group here, they are now like my family,” he said. But what had the huge theatrical project actually achieved? Were any minds changed? Little Amal had trekked up and down England, met by cheering families, but the country’s conservative press, which can be hostile to immigration, barely paid attention. In the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens, a columnist, wrote that he’d seen one of Amal’s events. “Syrian refugees are not little girls but strapping young men,” he contended. “I wonder how a huge puppet of such a person would be greeted.” Zuabi, the project’s artistic director, said that changing views wasn’t the point. “As artists we felt this is an issue we had to engage with,” he said. “If I was a cobbler, I’d be fixing shoes for her. “I’m happy we’ve touched hearts,” he said. “I hope we also touched minds.” In an outdoor arena in Manchester, as Little Amal took her final steps, she was surrounded by a flock of wooden puppet swallows. Then a burst of smoke appeared in front of her. Onto it an image of a woman’s face shone, fleetingly. Then a gentle voice could be heard from the arena’s speakers. “Daughter, you’ve got so far — so very far away from home — and it’s cold, so stay warm,” the voice said in Arabic. “I’m proud of you.” It was Little Amal’s mother, now, apparently, a ghost or a memory. “Be kind to people,” she added, “and always remember where you came from.” The 4,000-strong crowd turned toward Little Amal, who stood straight and defiant as the puppeteers pulled her up to full height. She seemed to take a deep breath, her chest rising, and exhaled. And then she strode forward, into her new city, to try to build a new home. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Dhaka, Nov 5 (bdnews24.com)—The incumbent British government is not focused enough on the issue of climate change, said Rushanara Ali, a Labour MP and junior shadow minister. "Unfortunately, the government [of Britain] is not talking about climate change as much as we would like them to," the Bangladesh-born UK MP told a press conference on Friday. Ali arrived in Dhaka on Thursday to observe the proceedings of climate change tribunal organised by Oxfam International. The tribunal, coordinated by an NGO alliance titled Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL), is scheduled to be held on Monday at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre. The 'Shadow Climate Tribunal' aims to find ways to safeguard victims of climate change in a legal context, says a statement by the organisers. The opposition MP came down hard on the incumbent UK government, saying it decided not to increase aid for the next two years. "But, the government has committed aid up to 0.7 percent of the gross national income by 2013 and said it would increase aid in the third year," she added. The shadow minister for international development told that the previous Labour-run government was a lot keener on the issue of climate change. "Britain under Labour has passed the world's first Climate Change Act, which includes legally binding carbon emission targets," she said. Touching on her role as a member of the shadow cabinet, Ali said that they would work to keep building the profile of climate change. "It's very important that climate change doesn't go off the agenda." The Labour Party will continue to support climate change adaptation programmes and push to make the funds meaningful, said Ali. "I hope to use my position to promote steps to support countries, like Bangladesh, which are affected the most by climate change." Replying to a query, Ali admitted that the international community was not "doing enough". "Developed and wealthy nations have a better role to play and they need to be encouraged to do more," she said, apparently supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's recent comment on international community not being serious enough as regards climate change. She, however, disagreed on the matter of providing opportunities to people of the country affected by climate change to migrate to developed nations. Finance minister AMA Muhith, in an interview with the Guardian, had said that the developed nations should allow victims of climate change to migrate to their countries, as they are mostly responsible for climate change. "Migration can't be the answer to climate change," Ali said adding that the priority is to make sure that "preventive measures are adopted." In May 2010, Rushanara Ali was elected a Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow, where the British-Bangladeshi community constitutes one-third of the population. She is the first person of Bangladeshi origin to have been elected to the House of Commons and jointly one of the first three Muslim women MPs elected in 2010. | 1 |
The issue of immigration is dominating political debate in the country five months before presidential elections, as candidates on the right as well as the left harden their positions. The drowning last week of 27 migrants off France’s northern coast has only added to the argument that migration must be checked. Despite the fierce words on the campaign trail, the reality is far different: Nearly all of France’s neighbours have a greater proportion of immigrants in their populations. In the past decade, immigration has grown less in France than in the rest of Europe or in other rich nations worldwide. The figures show that the migration situation in France is “rather ordinary, rather moderate,’’ said François Héran, a leading expert on migration who teaches at Collège de France. “We’re really not a country overrun by immigration.’’ That has not stopped pledges by politicians to impose a moratorium on immigration, hold a referendum on the issue or simply close the borders — in contrast to moves by other wealthy nations, like Germany and Australia, to attract migrant workers to fill labour shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. As French restaurants, hotels, construction companies and other services face a shortage of workers, politicians across the ideological spectrum have proposed raising wages — but not the number of immigrants allowed into the country. “In France, we never talk about the economy when we talk about immigration,’’ said Emmanuelle Auriol, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics and the co-author of a recent government-sponsored report that described how France’s growth has been hampered by its immigration policies. “All the talk is about national identity.’’ Fears that traditional French identity is threatened by Muslim immigrants from Africa — fanned for decades, either openly by the extreme right or with winks and dog whistles by others — have long consumed discussions about immigration. A series of terrorist attacks in recent years, some perpetrated by children of immigrants who grew up in France, have heightened those fears. These concerns have had a cumulative effect in France — making any embrace of immigration political suicide, obstructing badly needed reforms to attract qualified workers from abroad and pushing inward a country once known as a global crossroads. “We’re in a new phase,’’ said Philippe Corcuff, an expert on the far right who teaches at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. “What we’re seeing is the result of what has been happening in France for the past 15 years: the collapse of the left, which is now silent on immigration, and the rise of the extreme right, which ultimately may not win the elections but is setting the terms of the debate.” Candidates among the Republicans, the main party of the centre right, are agreed on the need to “retake control” of the borders and to tighten immigrants’ eligibility for social benefits. One candidate, Michel Barnier, who served as the European Union’s negotiator with Britain during the Brexit talks, even proposed changing France’s constitution to be able to impose a “moratorium on immigration” for three to five years. On the left, while most candidates have chosen to remain silent, a former economy minister pledged to block remittances sent home by migrants via Western Union to countries that he said refused to repatriate citizens who are in France illegally. The proposal followed President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement that he would tackle the problem by slashing the number of visas issued to citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. On the far right, Éric Zemmour, the writer and TV personality who Tuesday announced a run for the presidency in next year’s elections, has said France’s very survival is at stake because immigration from Muslim nations threatens its Christian heritage. “We won’t allow ourselves to be dominated, turned into vassals, conquered, colonized,” Zemmour said in a video announcing his candidacy. “We won’t allow ourselves to be replaced.” With Zemmour’s candidacy, the previously taboo topic of the “great replacement” — a conspiracy theory accusing politicians like Macron of using immigration to replace white, Christian people — has become part of the election discourse. Zemmour accused successive French governments of hiding “the reality of our replacement’’ and has said that Macron “wants to dissolve France in Europe and Africa.’’ During a recent prime-time debate, while centre-right candidates hesitated to embrace the expression — which has been cited by white supremacists in mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas — they indicated that the threat of replacement represented a real problem facing France. According to a recent poll, 61% of French respondents said they believed that Europe’s white and Christian population would be subjected to a “great replacement’’ by Muslim immigrants. The intensity of the election rhetoric stands in contrast to the recent elections in Germany, where immigration was not an issue — even though Germany has led Europe in accepting refugees in recent years. “Immigration was missing from the campaign in Germany,’’ said Jean-Christophe Dumont, the head of international migration research for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. “There is a French obsession with immigration issues,’’ Dumont said. “In reality, France is not a major country for immigration.’’ In 2020, France’s share of immigrants in its population — 13% — was below the average of OECD nations. That proportion grew 16% between 2010 and 2020. By contrast, immigrants made up 16% of Germany’s population — a 30% increase during the same period. France stopped taking in huge numbers of workers from its former colonies in northern Africa as a long period of economic growth came to an end in the mid-1970s — a few years before the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front, now known as the National Rally, which helped make immigration a radioactive subject in French politics. Since then, migrant workers have accounted for only a small share of new immigration, which has been dominated by foreign students and family-linked arrivals. “We take in immigrants, not to work, but to join their spouses,’’ said Auriol, the economist. The result is that France’s immigration population is much less diversified than in other rich nations. In 2019, more than 40% of all arrivals came from Africa, especially Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, according to government data. That lack of diversity — coupled with the concentration of new immigrants in urban areas like Paris — fuels anxieties related to immigration, said Patrick Weil, a historian of immigration who teaches at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris and at Yale. While anti-immigrant sentiments played a role in former President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, immigration in France — closely linked to its colonial history, especially in Algeria and other Muslim nations — makes it an even more combustible topic, Weil said. “In France, there is a link between immigration and religion, whereas in the United States, they are separate,” Weil said. Fanned by the right, the fears surrounding immigration and a supposed threat to France’s Christian heritage make it extremely difficult to hold any discussions about reforming to attract qualified foreign immigrants, said Auriol, the economist. Current immigration policies, she added, stifle economic growth and the economic recovery from the pandemic. Modest changes have been carried out in recent years. But they are insufficient to attract the kind of motivated, skilled immigrants that France desperately needs to bring innovation and fresh thinking, Auriol said. Given the anti-immigrant climate, France also attracts relatively few citizens of other European Union nations, who can move freely to France, and suffers from a low retention of foreign students after graduation, she said. “In the 20th century, all the world’s talented people came to Paris,’’ she added. “Immigrants who contributed to France’s economic greatness, its scientific greatness and its cultural greatness. We were an open country. What happened to us?” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
According to the study, led by archaeologist David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, nearly all sediment layers purported to be from the Ice Age at 29 sites in North America and on three other continents are actually either much younger or much older.Meltzer and his co-authors found that only three of 29 sites commonly referenced to support the cosmic-impact theory actually date to the window of time for the Ice Age.“The supposed impact markers are undated or significantly older or younger than 12,800 years ago. Either there were many more impacts than supposed, including one as recently as five centuries ago, or, far more likely, these are not extraterrestrial impact markers,” Meltzer noted.Scientists agree that the brief episode at the end of the Ice Age - officially known as the Younger Dryas for a flower that flourished at that time - sparked widespread cooling of the earth 12,800 years ago and that this cool period lasted for 1,000 years.But theories about the cause of this abrupt climate change are numerous.They range from changes in ocean circulation patterns caused by glacial meltwater entering the ocean to the cosmic-impact theory.Meltzer and his colleagues sorted the 29 sites by the availability of radiometric or numeric ages and then the type of age control, if available, and whether the age control is secure.The researchers found that three sites lack absolute age control.“The remaining 26 sites have radiometric or other potential numeric ages, but only three date to the Younger Dryas boundary layer,” Meltzer added.The findings were reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | 0 |
While many countries opt for national day parades of pomp and power, Australians prefer a barbequed sausage and a beer -- and don't forget the fireworks. But as millions flocked to beaches, backyards, parks and harbourfronts on Friday for the annual drinking and eating fest known as Australia Day, a new wave of patriotic flag-fervour was sweeping the country 219 years after British settlement. With around a quarter of the 20 million population born overseas, Australians are rarely hand-on-heart about their nation's history or their blue flag with its sprinkling of southern stars and Britain's banner, a colonial legacy. But after a furore this week over the barring of the flag at the country's biggest rock concert due to concerns about race clashes, the at-times unloved banner is back, bigger than ever. This year it has been fashioned into bandannas, bikinis, boob-tubes and singlets, adorning sunburned holiday faces and plastered onto flip-flops, worn by young and old alike. At crocodile and kangaroo barbeques in the tropics, cockroach races in Brisbane, beer-keg lifting competitions and fish-tossing contests, the banner was ever-present. Even the new Australian of the Year, environment scientist and climate change warrior Tim Flannery, felt compelled to don a flag-adorned hat after his award. "Flying the flag of music, freedom," one major Sydney newspaper headline said, as other papers cheered troops overseas in Iraq and closer-to-home bushfire fighters as national heroes. The turnaround, and a backdown by concert organisers who had feared the flag's use as "gang colours" by racists, transformed Australia Day into a field of red, white and blue from backyard cricket games to ferry races on Sydney's sweeping harbour. Australians more than ever before are wrestling with what it means to be Australian, with the conservative government calling for new migrants to adopt vague national values like "mateship". "Australia Day provides us with an opportunity to reflect on our common values and our responsibilities," Prime Minister John Howard said in his Australia Day message to the nation. Howard, perhaps the flag's biggest fan, has also clashed with Australia's small Muslim community, calling for its more extreme members to be muzzled. His message seemed to have been heard at Sydney's largest mosque where a public barbeque was held as a symbol of national solidarity, despite its cleric who publicly criticised non-Muslim Australians and compared unveiled women to uncovered meat. Warren Pearson, the director of the National Australia Day Council, said national pride was on the rise Down Under. "Australia Day is growing in importance and we've seen a real groundswell in participation since about 2000," he said. Far from being the banner of racism that has been creeping into suburbs since 2005 race-based riots on Sydney's beaches, Pearson said nobody should feel ashamed to wear the flag. "People are doing it naturally (and) young people turning up dripping in the flag is great to see," he said. | 0 |
HARARE, Sun Jun 22,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off election against President Robert Mugabe on Sunday, saying a free and fair poll was impossible in the current climate of violence. Speaking only hours after his opposition Movement for Democratic Change reported its rally had been broken up by pro-Mugabe youth militia, Tsvangirai called on the United Nations and the African Union to intervene to stop "genocide" in the former British colony. "We in the MDC have resolved that we will no longer participate in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process," he told reporters in Harare. The MDC and Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in a March 29 vote but failed to win the absolute majority needed to avoid a second ballot, have repeatedly accused government security forces and militia of intimidation and strong-arm tactics to ensure a Mugabe victory in the June 27 poll. Tsvangirai repeated this on Sunday, saying there was a state-sponsored plot to keep the 84-year-old Mugabe in power. "We in the MDC cannot ask them (the voters) to cast their vote on June 27, when that vote could cost them their lives," he said. Tsvangirai, who himself had been detained by police five times while campaigning, said 86 MDC supporters had been killed and 200,000 displaced from their homes. Mugabe has repeatedly vowed never to turn over power to the opposition, which he brands a puppet of Britain and the United States. Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, has blamed the political violence on the opposition and denies security forces have been responsible for brutal actions. The veteran leader has presided over a ruinous slide in a once prosperous economy. Millions have fled the political and economic crisis to neighboring states. The MDC earlier said that thousands of youth militia loyal to Mugabe poured into an MDC rally in Harare on Sunday armed with iron bars and sticks, beating journalists and forcing election observers to flee. Police had banned the rally, which was to be the highlight of Tsvangirai's stormy election campaign, but a high court in Harare overturned the police ban on Saturday. INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE Tsvangirai said he won the March vote outright and only reluctantly agreed to a run-off. The state-run media has refused to run the opposition's political ads and police have blocked some of its rallies. Tendai Biti, a top MDC official and lieutenant to Tsvangirai, is in custody on a treason charge and other offences that carry a possible death penalty. A magistrate has ordered him held until at least July 7. There is, however, pressure on Mugabe's government to put an end to the violence. A growing chorus of African leaders added their voices to concerns that the election will be illegitimate. Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, a longtime Mugabe ally, on Friday urged the Zimbabwean leader to allow the election to proceed in a spirit of tolerance and with respect to democratic norms. | 1 |
US environmental groups see Barack Obama's presidential victory as a chance to undo the Bush legacy on global warming, and one idea they are discussing is the possibility of a White House "climate czar". Members of the environmental community in and around Washington say such a post could oversee various government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, to focus on tackling global warming and fostering clean energy to jump-start the flagging economy. "For the first time, candidates and voters are really connecting the dots between energy, the environment and the economy," said Cathy Duvall, Sierra Club's political director. She said at a news briefing that Obama had made it clear that investing in cleaner energy would be a top priority in his plan for economic recovery. One way to coordinate these interrelated issues would be to have one person in charge, based at the White House, according to sources in the environmental community familiar with the idea. They said this could be part of a White House special council on energy and environment, analogous to the National Security Council. This kind of organization could be more effective than the Environmental Protection Agency has been under President George W. Bush, one source said. Obama made clear in his acceptance speech on Tuesday that he sees climate change as a critical problem, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the wilting economy. "For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century," the Illinois Democratic senator said in Chicago. Obama also has articulated that the economy, energy and climate change are inter-related problems. The Bush administration has been accused by environmental groups of politicizing decision-making and failing to act on U.S. government scientists' recommendations to curb greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Bush accepts that human activities spur climate change, but has rejected mandatory across-the-board limits on global warming emissions, maintaining that this would hurt the U.S. economy. The United States is alone among major industrialized nations in staying out of the carbon-curbing Kyoto Protocol. SOMEONE WITH THE PRESIDENT'S TRUST There is now a White House Council on Environmental Quality that is the Bush administration's policy voice on climate change, but its staff is small and it might not have the resources to do the wide-ranging job some environmental experts see as necessary. "What Obama understands is that dealing with the transition to a new energy economy is the centerpiece for getting the economy moving again," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Meyer said this needs to be approached in a strategic and integrated way. "I think they need to make clear who's running the show on these issues," Meyer said by telephone. "It's got to be someone who has the trust and ear of the president, someone who's positioned in the White House and someone who has the authority to get the agencies to cooperate on running the agenda. That's a heavy lift." With such a wide-ranging position still in the discussion stage, speculation has centered on likely candidates for Environmental Protection Agency administrator. These include Democratic Governors Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas, both of whom have pushed to limit greenhouse emissions. Carol Browner, who is part of the Obama transition team, is a former EPA chief and could conceivably be offered an environment post in the new administration. Mary Nichols, now head of California's Air Resources Board, has been active in opposing a state ballot proposition that she maintains would increase greenhouse emissions. As a member of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, she is seen as having the ability to work across party lines. Kathleen McGinty, Pennsylvania's former Environment Secretary, has also been mentioned as a possible EPA chief. Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, which does policy research on environment and sustainability, is also considered a potential candidate. | 0 |
Rafiq, a player of Pakistani descent and a former captain of the England Under-19s, said last year he was made to feel like an outsider at Yorkshire and contemplated taking his own life. "There has been constant unwillingness from the executive members of the (Yorkshire) board and senior management at the club to apologise and to accept racism and to look forward," Hutton wrote in his resignation letter. "For much of my time at the club, I experienced a culture that refuses to accept change or challenge." Hutton, who joined the board 18 months after Rafiq left the club, also took the opportunity to "apologise unreservedly" to the 30-year-old. "The club should have recognised at the time the serious allegations of racism," he said. "I am sorry that we could not persuade executive members of the board to recognise the gravity of the situation and show care and contrition." England's cricket board (ECB) on Thursday suspended Yorkshire EB from hosting international or major matches but Hutton said the ECB had also been reluctant to act when approached. "I want to be clear that when I was made aware of Azeem Rafiq's allegations, I immediately reached out to the ECB to ask for their help and intervention to support a robust inquiry," Hutton said. "I was saddened when they declined to help as I felt it was a matter of great importance for the game as a whole. It is a matter of record that I have continually expressed my frustration at the ECB's reluctance to act." The chief executive officer of the ECB, Tom Harrison, said the ECB was asked to join a Yorkshire panel of inquiry - something they could not do as the regulator. "We were asked to join the Yorkshire panel, to be part of the investigation, which clearly we cannot do. We are the regulator," Harrison told reporters. "A quasi kind of involvement, being regulator and part of the membership of an investigation is completely against the role that we play. I'm afraid that I disagree entirely with that characterisation of that statement," he said, referring to Hutton's suggestion the ECB had declined to help. The ECB had said it would hold Yorkshire to account over the handling of the matter and consider sanctions. Rafiq and senior Yorkshire executives have been called to give evidence before a parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) panel on Nov 16. | 5 |
Lasers beamed from space have detected what researchers have long suspected: big sloshing lakes of water underneath Antarctic ice. These lakes, some stretching across hundreds of square miles (km), fill and drain so dramatically that the movement can be seen by a satellite looking at the icy surface of the southern continent, glaciologists reported in Thursday's editions of the journal Science. Global warming did not create these big pockets of water -- they lie beneath some 2,300 feet (700 metres) of compressed snow and ice, too deep to be affected by temperature changes on the surface -- but knowing how they behave is important to understanding the impact of climate change on the Antarctic ice sheet, study author Helen Fricker said by telephone. About 90 percent of the world's fresh water is locked in the thick ice cap that covers Antarctica; if it all melts, scientists estimate it could cause a 23-foot (7-metre) rise in world sea levels. Even a 39-inch (1-metre) sea level rise could cause havoc in coastal and low-lying areas around the globe, according to a World Bank study released this week. "Because climate is changing, we need to be able to predict what's going to happen to the Antarctic ice sheet," said Fricker, of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego. NEW COMPUTER MODELS "We need computer models to be faithful to the processes that are actually going on the ice sheet," she said. At this point, computer models do not show how the subglacial water is moving around. To detect the subglacial lakes, Fricker and her colleagues used data from NASA's ICESat, which sends laser pulses down from space to the Antarctic surface and back, much as sonar uses sound pulses to determine underwater features. The satellite detected dips in the surface that moved around as the hidden lakes drained and filled beneath the surface glaciers, which are moving rivers of ice. "The parts that are changing are changing so rapidly that they can't be anything else but (sub-surface) water," she said. "It's such a quick thing." 'Quick' can be a relative term when talking about the movement around glaciers, which tend to move very slowly. But one lake that measured around 19 miles by 6 miles (30 km by 10 km) caused a 30-foot (9 metre) change in elevation at the surface when it drained over a period of about 30 months, Fricker said. The project took observations from 2003 through 2006 of the Whillans and Mercer Ice Streams, two of the fast-moving glaciers that carry ice from the Antarctic interior to the floating ice sheet that covers parts of the Ross Sea. | 0 |
President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to compel BP Plc to pay the price for its "recklessness" in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and sought to harness public outrage over the disaster for a "national mission" to cut US dependence on fossil fuels. "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused," Obama said in a televised address aimed at restoring confidence in his handling of the crisis before it further tarnishes his presidency. Obama's stern message for BP, delivered in a solemn tone, was a centerpiece of his high-stakes speech on the oil spill, which threatens to distract from his domestic agenda of reducing nearly double-digit US unemployment and reforming Wall Street. How forcefully Obama responds to America's worst ecological disaster will have implications not only for the British energy giant but for the future of US offshore drilling and for any hopes he has for rejuvenating climate change legislation stalled in Congress. While urging Americans to "seize the moment" to break their addiction to fossil fuels, Obama's appeal offered no detailed prescription for getting there and lacked a timetable for passing comprehensive energy legislation. "Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny." Obama has made clear he supports a comprehensive energy bill that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and a senior administration official said the president still believes that putting a price on carbon pollution is essential. But Obama stopped short of talking specifically about the climate change component in his speech, perhaps mindful of the steep political obstacles during a stuttering economic recovery. He said he was open to ideas from Democrats and Republicans alike for reducing America's addiction to oil, but insisted, "The one approach I will not accept is inaction." Obama's choice of the Oval Office setting underscored the gravity of the situation. Presidents in the past have used it to respond to national tragedies, as Ronald Reagan did after the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and George W. Bush did after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
ELECTION YEAR Another crucial question is whether Obama can placate angry voters in a congressional election year when his Democratic party's grip on legislative power is at risk. Opinion polls show most Americans believe Obama has been too detached in dealing with the crisis and has not been tough enough in dealing with BP. Seeking to counter criticism that he has not shown enough leadership in the nearly two-month-old crisis, Obama took a hard line with BP but did not go as far as reiterating an earlier assertion that he was looking for "ass to kick." "Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness," he said. "And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party." Ahead of the televised speech, major oil company executives told a US congressional hearing that BP had not adhered to industry standards in building its deep-sea well that blew out on April 20, unleashing a torrent of crude that has caused the biggest environmental disaster in US history. But their efforts to distance themselves from BP did not stop Democratic lawmakers from criticizing as "virtually worthless" industry plans to handle deepwater oil disasters. Investors were also looking for Obama to jump-start alternative energy initiatives such as solar, wind and geothermal that are now stalled in Congress. Shares in US solar companies rose ahead of the speech. In his first nationally televised address from the Oval Office, Obama sought to show he was on top of the oil spill crisis that has tested his presidency and overshadowed his efforts to reduce US unemployment and reform Wall Street. Public opinion polls show a majority of Americans believe Obama has been too detached in his handling of the spill, and he has come under intense pressure to show more leadership. Adding a fresh sense of urgency, a team of US scientists on Tuesday upped their high-end estimate of the amount of crude oil flowing from the well by 50 percent, to a range of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels (1.47 million to 2.52 million gallons/5.57 million to 9.54 million litres) per day. | 1 |
The likelihood that any bid to exclude Russia outright would be vetoed by others in the club - which includes China, India, Saudi Arabia and others - raised the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings this year, the sources said. The G20 along with the smaller Group of Seven - comprising just the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Britain - is a key international platform for coordinating everything from climate change action to cross-border debt. Russia is facing an onslaught of international sanctions led by Western nations aiming to isolate it from the global economy, including notably shutting it out of the SWIFT global bank messaging system and restricting dealings by its central bank. "There have been discussions about whether it’s appropriate for Russia to be part of the G20," said a senior G7 source. "If Russia remains a member, it will become a less useful organization." Asked whether US President Joe Biden would move to push Russia out of the G20 when he meets with allies in Brussels this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House Tuesday: "We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community." However, the United States plans to consult with its allies before any other pronouncements are made, he said. A European Union source separately confirmed the discussions about Russia's status at forthcoming meetings of the G20, whose rotating chair is currently held by Indonesia. "It has been made very clear to Indonesia that Russia’s presence at forthcoming ministerial meetings would be highly problematic for European countries," said the source, adding there was however no clear process for excluding a country. The G7 was expanded to a new "G8" format including Russia during a period of warmer ties in the early 2000s. But Moscow was indefinitely suspended from that club after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Earlier on Tuesday, Poland said it had suggested to US commerce officials that it replace Russia within the G20 group and that the suggestion had received a "positive response." A US Commerce Department spokesperson said that a "good meeting" had been held last week between Polish Economic Development and Technology Minister Piotr Nowak and US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo but added: "She (Raimondo) welcomed hearing Poland’s views on a number of topics, including the operation of the G20, but did not express a position on behalf of the US Government with respect to the Polish G20 proposal.” The G7 source said it was seen as unlikely that Indonesia, currently heading the G20, or members like India, Brazil, South Africa and China would agree to remove Russia from the group. "It's impossible to remove Russia from G20" unless Moscow makes such a decision on its own, said an official of a G20 member country in Asia. "There's simply no procedure to deprive Russia of G20 membership." If G7 countries instead were to skip this year’s G20 meetings, that could be a powerful signal to India, the source said. It has drawn the ire of some Western nations over its failure to condemn the Russian invasion and support Western measures against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Indonesia's foreign ministry declined to comment on calls for Russia to be excluded. Deputy central bank governor Dody Budi Waluyo on Monday said at a seminar Indonesia's position was always one of neutrality, but noting the risk of divisions over the issue said it would use its G20 leadership to try to resolve any problems. Russia had a "strong commitment" to attend G20 meetings and other members could not forbid them from attending, he added. Russia's status at other multilateral agencies is also being questioned. In Geneva, World Trade Organization officials said numerous delegations there were refusing to meet their Russian counterparts in various formats. "Many governments have raised objections to what is happening there and these objections have manifested themselves in a lack of engagement with the member concerned," WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell said. One source from a Western country said those not engaging with Russia at the WTO included the European Union, the United States, Canada and Britain. No confirmation from those delegations was immediately available. | 0 |
“We are now facing a perfect storm that
threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries,” said
Antonio Guterres, the secretary general of the UN. In its first official report on the war’s impact,
the UN said the war in Ukraine was having “alarming cascading effects” on a
global economy already “battered” by the COVID-19 crisis and climate change. The report said that up to 1.7 billion
people — one-third of whom are already living in poverty — now face food,
energy and finance disruptions. With energy prices rising by as much as 50% for
natural gas in recent months, inflation growing and development stalled, many
countries risk defaulting on their debts, according to the report. “These are countries where people struggle
to afford healthy diets, where imports are essential to satisfy the food and
energy needs of their populations, where debt burdens and tightening resources
limit government’s ability to cope with the vagaries of global financial
conditions,” the report said. It said that 107 countries have severe
exposure to at least one of the three dimensions of the crisis, and that of
those nations, 69 have severe exposure to all three dimensions. Ukraine and Russia provide about 30% of the
world’s wheat and barley, according to the report. The war has sent commodity prices to record
highs — with food prices 34% higher than this time last year, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and crude oil prices up by
around 60%. “Vulnerable populations in developing
countries are particularly exposed to these price swings,” the report said,
adding that “the rise in food prices threatens knock-on effects of social
unrest.” But the report said that swift action,
coupled with political will and existing resources, could soften the blow —
recommending that countries not hoard food supplies, offer help to small
farmers, keep freight costs stable and lift restrictions on exports, among
other things. The report called on governments to make
strategic fuel reserves available to the global market and reduce the use of
wheat for fuel. © The New York Times Company | 1 |
But what if theatre owners and operators, mindful of this year’s roiling reconsideration of racial injustice, wanted to present more work by Black artists? Interviews with artists and producers suggest that there are more than a dozen plays and musicals with Black writers circling Broadway — meaning, in most cases, that the shows have been written, have had promising productions elsewhere, and have support from commercial producers or non-profit presenters. But bringing these shows to Broadway would mean making room for producers and artists who often have less experience in commercial theatre than the powerful industry regulars who most often get theatres. “My hope is that when theatre reopens, Broadway is going to look very different than it did when it closed in March,” said Lynn Nottage, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose own path to Broadway was difficult — her first Pulitzer winner, “Ruined,” famously never transferred despite several extensions off-Broadway; she finally arrived in 2017 with “Sweat,” and she is now working on three shows with Broadway aspirations. “It would be very exciting for me to return to a space that felt more like the world that I want to live in,” she said, “and less like the world that I’m living in now.” Three-quarters of the 41 Broadway theatres are controlled by the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organisations. To present a show on Broadway, producers generally must rent a theatre and agree to share box office revenue with one of the landlords; over the past few years, availability has been limited because Broadway has been booming, but industry leaders expect that to change next year, given the uncertainty over the pandemic. The Shuberts, who have the most playhouses, plan to return with a diverse slate of shows. “We always have booked, and always will be booking, plays with Black writers and Black directors and Black subject matters,” said Robert E Wankel, the chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization. Among the shows seeking theatres when Broadway opens next spring: a well-received revival of Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem, “For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” as well as a revival of Charles Randolph-Wright’s “Blue” and a new play, “Thoughts of a Coloured Man,” by Keenan Scott II. “I think it would kill on Broadway,” Stephanie Ybarra, the artistic director of Baltimore Centre Stage, said of “Thoughts of a Coloured Man,” which was co-commissioned by the Baltimore theatre and Syracuse Stage and follows seven Black men through a day in the Brooklyn neighbourhood Bedford-Stuyvesant. Several musicals are poised as well. The most obvious is “A Strange Loop,” by Michael R Jackson, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama after an off-Broadway run. But that show, which the Pulitzers called “a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities,” is not headed directly to Broadway. Its commercial producer, Barbara Whitman, tried unsuccessfully to get a Broadway house last year; when she was unable to land a theatre, she committed to a second non-profit run — delayed by the pandemic but now expected to take place next summer, at Woolly Mammoth in Washington — and is planning then to try again in New York. Two musicals with Black writers are hoping for theatres next spring: “Born for This,” about the life and career of gospel singer BeBe Winans, and “Paradise Square,” about Irish-Black relations in 19th-century New York. “Born for This,” which has already had productions in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, is being produced by Ron Gillyard, a music executive; “Paradise Square,” which had a production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, includes Marcus Gardley among its book writers, and is led by the storied Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky, who is seeking to make a comeback after serving time in prison for fraud. “The death of any industry is saying, ‘But we’ve done it this way,’” said Gillyard, who has brought on a longtime theatre industry player, Jenny Gersten, to help him navigate Broadway. “Give us a chance.” Nonprofit theatres control six of the 41 Broadway houses, and two of them have plays by Black writers planned for 2021-22. The Roundabout Theatre Company has announced that it will stage a production of “Trouble in Mind,” a 1955 play by Alice Childress that is in part about racism in theatre, that winter. The Roundabout artistic director, Todd Haimes, said the show is the result of a concerted effort to explore less well-known classics by artists of colour. “It’s an extraordinary play,” he said. “And it’s not an undiscovered masterpiece — it’s a semi-discovered masterpiece that never got its due because people were afraid of it.” Second Stage Theatre plans in the fall of 2021 to stage a new comedic play by Nottage about a sandwich shop that employs the formerly incarcerated; the play had a production last summer at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis with the title “Floyd’s,” but Nottage is planning to rename it so audiences don’t think it’s about George Floyd, the Minneapolis man killed in police custody earlier this year. A more diverse Broadway is a priority for theatre artists for very basic reasons — say what you will about Broadway, but it is the segment of the theatrical landscape where artists make the best salaries, and it not only boosts the careers of those who work there, but it also reliably increases the longevity and reach of their work. Playwright Jocelyn Bioh had an off-Broadway and regional hit with “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play.” She is now writing the book for a new Afrobeat musical, “Goddess,” which is adapted from a Kenyan myth and slated to have an initial production at Berkeley Rep, supported by a commercial producer, Christine Schwarzman, who wants to bring it to Broadway. “I don’t know how to solve the diversity issue on Broadway,” Bioh said, “other than calling attention to it, and cultivating a generation of producers who are not afraid.” The three jukebox musicals with Black writers already expected next year include two that opened in 2019 and were paused by the pandemic: “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the Temptations, with a book by Dominique Morisseau, and “Tina,” about Tina Turner, with a book by Katori Hall. The newcomer is “MJ,” about Michael Jackson, which has a book by Nottage and is aiming to open next April. Each of those musicals is, to a degree, presold based on a popular song catalogue. But for plays in today’s Broadway economy, marquee casting often calls the shots. For example: Producer Robyn Goodman is looking to bring Cheryl L West’s “Jar the Floor,” a 1991 play about four generations of Black women, to Broadway, but said, “for Broadway you have to have a star or two, and we were close to that, but now nobody knows their schedule, and we just have to wait a couple months until people start planning.” “Blue,” a 2000 play by Charles Randolph-Wright about a successful family of funeral home operators, is being produced by Brian Moreland, who is also producing “Thoughts of a Coloured Man.” Moreland tried to get a Broadway theatre for “Blue,” directed by Phylicia Rashad, co-produced by John Legend, and starring Leslie Uggams and Lynn Whitfield, before the pandemic. When he couldn’t, he booked it into the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, which is not a Broadway venue (although there is discussion about reconsidering that). Sensing that the climate is shifting, he is again hopeful. “If they could shake loose a Broadway house,” he said, “we would take it.” Ron Simons, the lead producer of “For Coloured Girls,” has partnered with a veteran Broadway producer, Nelle Nugent, hoping that her experience will help the show win a theatre. The show, which first opened on Broadway in 1976, was revived at the Public Theatre last year. Camille A. Brown, the choreographer, will also direct on Broadway, succeeding Leah C Gardiner, who directed the production downtown. There are producers hoping for Broadway runs of several other shows with Black writers working their way through nonprofit theaters, including the plays “Pass Over,” a charged riff on “Waiting for Godot” by Antoinette Nwandu and “Toni Stone,” about a female Negro leagues baseball player, by Lydia Diamond, as well as the musical “Gun & Powder,” by Angelica Chéri and Ross Baum, about a pair of Black twin sisters who passed as white in the 19th century and became bank-robbing outlaws. Even earlier in the developmental process is “Dreaming Zenzile,” about Miriam Makeba, written and performed by Somi Kakoma with Mara Isaacs of “Hadestown” attached as a producer; the show is being developed in association with the National Black Theatre, and a first production is expected at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis. A few projects have powerhouse producers behind them. Disney Theatrical Productions, the biggest company producing on Broadway, is working on a musical adaptation of “Hidden Figures,” which it has been exploring since 2018 with film critic Elvis Mitchell as creative consultant. And Scott Rudin, the prolific independent producer, wants to revive August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” and is also considering a commercial production of “The Black Clown,” a musical adapted by Davóne Tines and Michael Schachter from a Langston Hughes poem. Some of the Broadway newcomers bring experience from other sectors of the entertainment industry. Film producer Lauren Shuler Donner (“X-Men”) is shepherding Nottage’s stage adaptation of “The Secret Life of Bees,” which is likely to have a second nonprofit production before attempting a commercial run. And film and television producer Lee Daniels (“Precious”) is ready to bring Jordan E Cooper’s “Ain’t No Mo’” to Broadway. “Resistance is an understatement,” Daniels said of the reaction when he began talking with Broadway producers about the show, a no-holds-barred comic fantasia, first staged at the Public Theatre, which imagines a moment in which the American government offers to relocate Black Americans to Africa. “They looked at me like I had four heads.” Daniels, collaborating with the British power producer Sonia Friedman, said he still hopes to bring it to Broadway after the pandemic eases. “It’s the epicentre of New York City,” he said, “and we should exist in the middle of New York City.” c.2020 The New York Times Company | 1 |
Forecasters urged the oil industry this summer to stockpile supplies away from the US Gulf Coast, which they predict will be hit by hurricane-force winds, potentially sending sky-high gas prices even higher, according to hazard models released on Wednesday. "It is almost certain there is going to be significant production disruption in the Gulf of Mexico this year. That's not good," said storm tracker Chuck Watson. "We're really urging the oil industry to keep the stocks outside the Southeast as high as you can because otherwise you risk disrupting the whole country if there is a storm impact." Energy companies struggled for months to restore operations after hurricanes pummeled oil and natural gas platforms and shut coastal refineries in the Gulf of Mexico 2005. US gasoline prices are already at record levels this year and the six-month hurricane season will start on June 1. Much of the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines face "substantially higher than normal risks" for a hurricane strike in 2007 as a result of continuing warm ocean temperatures and expected La Nina conditions, Watson and fellow storm tracker Mark Johnson said in their forecast. Watson, founder of Kinetic Analysis Corp of Silver Spring, Maryland, and Johnson, statistics professor at the University of Central Florida, collaborate on hazard forecasting for Florida, Caribbean nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their data is at http://hurricane.methaz.org/. Of 852 coastal counties included in their analysis, they said Carteret County in North Carolina has the highest probability of getting hit with hurricane-force winds in 2007 at 22.4 percent. Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish followed in second place at 21.2 percent, while Florida's Atlantic coastal St Lucie and Martin counties were in third and fourth place. Charleston County, South Carolina, and Indian River County, Florida, tied for fifth. Sixty one US counties had a 15 percent or greater chance of getting hit with hurricane force winds of 74 mph (119 kph) or more this year, compared with only six counties in an average year. Watson said the warm ocean temperatures and La Nina effects that are driving increased hurricane activity are parts of weather cycles as old as the last Ice Age. But the increased intensity and duration of individual storms in recent years may be influenced by global warming, a theory that he said should be resolved within three to four years with current modeling techniques. La Nina, which means "little girl" in Spanish, is a cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific and is associated with wind patterns that allow hurricanes to flourish in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. El Nino, or "little boy," has the opposite effect and tends to discourage hurricane formation in the Atlantic-Caribbean region. | 0 |
The year was 1989, and the idea from that chairman, former Sen David Pryor of Arkansas, touched off a drive for government drug-price negotiations that has been embraced by two generations of Democrats and one Republican president, Donald Trump — but now appears at risk of being left out of a sprawling domestic policy bill taking shape in Congress. Senior Democrats insist that they have not given up the push to grant Medicare broad powers to negotiate lower drug prices as part of a once-ambitious climate change and social safety net bill that is slowly shrinking in scope. They know that the loss of the provision, promoted by President Joe Biden on the campaign trail and in the White House, could be a particularly embarrassing defeat for the package, since it has been central to Democratic congressional campaigns for nearly three decades. “Senate Democrats understand that after all the pledges, you’ve got to deliver,” said Sen Ron Wyden, D-Ore, the chairman of the Finance Committee. “It’s not dead,” declared Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. But with at least three House Democrats opposing the toughest version of the measure, and at least one Senate Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, against it, government negotiating power appears almost certain to be curtailed, if not jettisoned. The loss would be akin to Republicans’ failure under Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, after solemn pledges for eight years to dismantle the health law “root and branch.” And after so many campaign-trail promises, Democrats could be left next year with a lot of explaining to do. “It would mean that the pharmaceutical industry, which has 1,500 paid lobbyists, the pharmaceutical industry, which made $50 billion in profits last year, the pharmaceutical industry, which pays its executives huge compensation packages, and which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat this legislation, will have won,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, said Wednesday. “And I intend to not allow that to happen.” It is not clear how Sanders can pull that off. The length of the fight speaks to the durability and popularity of the issue, but also the power of the pharmaceutical industry. Pryor teed it up in the late 1980s, hoping to muscle through lower prices for Medicaid, with an eye on the bigger prize, Medicare. President Bill Clinton included government price negotiations in his universal health care plan in 1993, and throughout the 1990s, as Democrats pressed to add a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, government negotiations were central to holding the cost down. Then in 2003, a Republican Congress and president, George W. Bush, secured passage of that drug benefit — but with an explicit prohibition on the government negotiating the price of medicines older Americans would purchase. Repealing that so-called noninterference provision has been a centrepiece of Democratic campaigns ever since. Sen Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a former head of House Democrats’ campaign arm, recalled that “Medicare shall negotiate drug prices” was one of the six planks in the “Six for ’06” platform that helped the Democrats win control of the House in 2006. It has passed the House numerous times, including in 2019 with yes votes from the three House members now opposing it — Reps Kathleen Rice of New York, Scott Peters of California and Kurt Schrader of Oregon — only to die in the Senate. Even Trump adopted the effort in his 2016 campaign, only to see it go nowhere. That futility is why Schrader said he opposed it: “Why do the same thing again and again and expect to have a different result?” he asked. To proponents, defeat after defeat speaks solely to the power of the pharmaceutical industry and its attendant lobbyists. But opponents say it reflects the complexity of the issue. Once lawmakers realise they could actually secure government price negotiations, they see how problematic that could be. “If anyone thinks this is the easy political route for me, that’s just laughable,” said Peters, who has endured scorn and pressure from his Democratic colleagues but whose San Diego district includes almost 1,000 biotechnology companies and 68,000 jobs directly tied to pharmaceutical work. Schrader and Peters said the House version of prescription drug price controls, tucked into the broader social policy legislation, would stifle innovation in one of the country’s most profitable global industries. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, also maintains that government negotiations would severely limit the types of prescription drugs that would be available to Medicare beneficiaries as companies withdraw their products from the program. With the goodwill the industry has accrued with its coronavirus vaccines and treatments, drug companies have pressed their case with key lawmakers, and roped in the larger business community. American Action Network, a conservative group with business money, unveiled a new set of ads Wednesday targeting vulnerable Democrats such as Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia and decrying “another socialist health care plan to control what medicines you can get.” “We are taking on the greed and the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry — I know their power, believe me, I know their power,” Sanders said. “But this is a fight we’ve got to win.” Wyden insisted that any legislative effort to tackle rising drug costs must include government negotiating power, but alternatives are emerging. Some simpler solutions would change the formula of the existing Medicare prescription drug benefit to limit out-of-pocket costs, especially in the event of a catastrophic health event. Wyden is also pressing to enact legislation he drafted with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that would force drugmakers to offer rebates to consumers on products whose prices rise faster than inflation. Grassley said he still supports the measure, as does Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, a traditional ally of the pharmaceutical industry in his state. Schrader and Peters said negotiations were progressing around their proposal, which would grant the government power to negotiate prices under Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient services and some of the most costly medications, once outpatient drugs like chemotherapy have outlived their patent exclusivity. Their bill would also force rebates for drug prices rising faster than inflation, and limit out-of-pocket medication expenses for older Americans. That is projected to save the government $300 billion over 10 years, about half what the broader measure would save. “Frankly, based on discussions we’ve had with the White House, senators and other members in our party, this could get done,” Schrader said. “That’d be huge.” Ultimately, if any significant price controls survive, it will be the logic of the policy overcoming the power over the lobby, said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., whose district is being hit with pharmaceutical industry advertising. Kind, an influential centrist, said he has been speaking with like-minded Democrats, trying to buck them up against the onslaught. “Obviously, there’s some advertising,” he said. “But boy, public sentiment is overwhelming. They just don’t understand why the pharmaceutical industry is the only private industry the federal government’s refused to even discuss prices with.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
LIMA Fri May 16, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Political differences loomed over a summit of European and Latin American leaders in Peru on Friday, threatening to undermine their efforts to fight poverty and global warming. Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales differed with his regional counterparts over free trade in the run-up to the meeting, while Venezuela's Hugo Chavez ratcheted up tensions in a conflict with neighboring Colombia. Free trade proponents like Peru are losing patience with skeptics like Bolivia's Morales, who accused Peru and Colombia this week of trying to exclude his nation from talks between the European Union and Andean countries. "We can advance at different speeds, but let's advance," Peruvian President Alan Garcia said on Thursday, saying his country should be allowed to move faster with the EU. Morales, a former coca grower, fears free trade deals could hurt peasant farmers in his impoverished country. "We want trade, but fair trade," he told reporters in Lima. The EU is also holding negotiations with Mercosur, led by Brazil and Argentina, and Central American countries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the first leaders to arrive for the summit, said after meeting Garcia that the EU was "open, and willing to make the path easier" on trade. Merkel made no mention of a spat with Chavez, who this week called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler for implying he had damaged relations between Europe and Latin America. Chavez frequently insults conservative leaders, especially U.S. President George W. Bush. At a summit in Chile last year, Spain's king told him to "shut up."
Chavez is also embroiled in a dispute with Colombia that raised the specter of war in the Andean region in March. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accuses him of supporting the leftist FARC guerrillas, and soon before leaving for Lima, Chavez said he was reviewing diplomatic ties with Bogota. Such feuds could dominate the fifth such gathering of leaders from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. They may also struggle to find common ground on how to fight cocaine trafficking, as well as the use of food crops to make renewable biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels. Brazil is an advocate of the so-called greener fuels, but many poor countries blame them for pushing up food price. However, the poor nations are increasingly worried about climate change and say rich states must cut carbon emissions. Peru created an environment ministry this week to help it cope with the impact of rising global temperatures, which are melting its Andean glaciers. Peruvian delegates to the summit will push for more concrete measures to combat climate change. "Lots of governments have paid lip service to addressing the threat climate changes poses. We want to urge those governments to take real action," British junior Foreign Office minister Kim Howells told Reuters. | 0 |
The 84-year-old pontiff left Rome's Gemelli hospital unannounced, leaving by a side door and travelling through Rome in a simple blue car with a small retinue of Vatican and Italian security. Photographers saw the pope leave the hospital in the car with darkened windows after staff had put a wheelchair in the trunk of a secondary vehicle. The Vatican did not officially announce that he had been discharged until he was back in the Vatican. When the pope entered the hospital in Rome's northern outskirts on July 4, the Vatican announced it after he had been admitted. From the hospital, Francis first stopped to pray at the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Francis normally does this at the end of each foreign trip to give thanks to the Madonna. Once at the Vatican's Perugino Gate, the closest to his residence in the Santa Marta guest house, the pope got out of his car and stood to thank his Italian police escort while still on Italian territory. He then got back into the front seat of the car and entered the Vatican, a tiny sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome. He appeared to be in good overall condition. Francis made only one public appearance during his hospital stay in a 10th floor suite reserved for popes in the Catholic-run hospital. On Sunday, he stood unassisted for about 10 minutes while speaking from a balcony for his regular Sunday prayer and message. After he returned home, the pope wrote on Twitter: "I thank all those who have been close to me with prayer and affection during my hospital stay. Let us not forget to pray for the sick and for those who assist them." The Vatican said the pope suffered from a severe case of symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon, a condition in which sac-like pouches protrude from the muscular layer of the colon, leading it to become narrow. The condition, more common in older people, can lead to pain, bloating, inflammation and difficulty in bowel movement. It was the first time Francis has been hospitalised since his election as pope in 2013. Francis timed the surgery to coincide with the month of July, when he traditionally stays in the Vatican but has no other commitments apart from the Sunday prayer. He is scheduled to resume public and private audience on Aug. 4. The Vatican is proceeding with plans for a papal trip to Slovakia and the Hungarian capital Budapest in mid-September. Scotland's bishops announced on Monday that the pope will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November, health permitting. He is also expected to visit Malta and Cyprus later the same month. | 0 |
The demonstrations began earlier this week as a campaign by high school students, who jumped subway turnstiles to protest the second fare increase this year. But Friday night, demonstrators set fire to a dozen subway stations, several banks, buses and the headquarters of the country’s largest electricity provider, Enel Looters stormed into supermarkets, stores and pharmacies. One student was reported to have been killed by the police and another was wounded by rubber bullets during the demonstrations, which rattled one of Latin America’s most prosperous and orderly capitals. The state of emergency declared by Piñera imposes restrictions on citizens’ right to move about and assemble freely, and it gives the army authority over internal security. Speaking from the presidential palace around midnight, he said the measure was needed to restore order after the chaos caused by protesters, whom he called “delinquents.” The fare increase unleashed fury when it was announced Oct 6, coming at a time when the cost of living for poor and middle-class families has been rising while wages remain stagnant. “Everything that is going on is so unfair, because everything is going up: transportation fares, electricity, gas, everything, and salaries are so low,” said Isabel Mora, an 82-year-old retiree who receives a monthly pension of about $62. Piñera had announced earlier in the week that he would try to find ways to mitigate rising transportation costs. With the fare hike, rush hour rides now cost about $1.20. On Friday afternoon, as hundreds of people stormed into subway stations without paying, the protests spilled into the streets. Special police units barged into stations and deployed tear gas, beat up demonstrators and violently dragged people from subway cars to take them into custody. The subway system suspended service for several lines, and by nighttime it had been forced to shut down the entire network. Hundreds if not thousands of people were left stranded on the streets. Unable to board overflowing buses, many had to walk for hours to get home. Government officials called the demonstrators “organised vandals” and “criminals” and announced that they would enforce an internal security law that gives the state the authority to impose higher penalties for crimes. Residents in the capital banged pots and pans throughout the city Friday night. As people looted supermarkets and set up barricades, the police appeared to have retreated to their stations. The protests occurred as Chile prepares to host two major international conferences: an APEC summit meeting in mid-November and the UN Climate Change Conference in December. © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Indigenous people already struggling to cope with a warming world risk losing their homes under rich-world schemes to tackle climate change by using forests as carbon sinks, activists said on Thursday. Groups that have been custodians of forests for generations fear projects will undermine their ownership of traditional areas, enforce land-grabs by corrupt regimes, encourage more theft, undermine biodiversity and exclude them from management. And with U.N. talks in Bali close to agreeing guidelines for a pay-and-preserve scheme to tackle deforestation, they warned they are not strong enough to fight the financial interests of the multi-billion dollar carbon trading industry. "There is concern about the developed world stealing our forests," Fiu Elisana Mata'ese, head of Samoan group the O'le Siosiomaga Society, told Reuters. "This is an attempt to globally own the resources that are ours. We are concerned indigenous people who have managed forests for generations will not have a say in how they are run." Under the scheme, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), preservation of forests could become a tradeable commodity with the potential to earn poor nations billions of dollars from trading carbon credits. Scientists say deforestation in the tropics and sub-tropics is responsible for about 20 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and preserving what is left of them is crucial because they soak up enormous amounts of the gas. Many environmentalists hope it could also create refuges for threatened animals and plants. But indigenous groups fear that they will be shut out from ancestral lands by the strict regulations and monitoring needed to earn credits. Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of Global Forest Coalition, said small projects following a similar model to generate credits for people and firms looking to voluntarily offset emissions have already highlighted problems. They have cemented indigenous groups' exclusion from the lands taken by force and sold on for REDD programmes, she said. They have also encouraged new land grabs by groups looking to cash in on healthy forests and hit diversity because companies wanting a quick buck create vast single-species plantations of fast-growing trees. "Indigenous people are victims of climate change and now they are going to become victims of climate change mitigation," she said. WORLD BANK CONCERNS The World Bank on Tuesday launched plans for a $300 million fund to help create pilot projects for a wider REDD scheme. But Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told the ceremony that indigenous people who had fought to protect the Amazon from ranchers, the Congo Basin from loggers and Indonesian forests from oil palm plantations, had to be included in the process and were still waiting for guarantees they would be. "We, the indigenous peoples, are the ones who sacrificed life and limb to save these forests that are vital for our survival as distinct peoples and cultures," she said. "There is a moral and legal imperative that indigenous peoples be truly involved in designing, implementing and evaluating initiatives," she added. World Bank President Robert Zoellick defended the bank's record, as the noise of protestors outside briefly broke through to the secluded hall, and said the urgent challenge of climate change meant it was important to launch the project now. | 0 |
Myanmar's government signed a cease-fire with ethnic Karen rebels Thursday to try to end one of the world's longest-running insurgencies, part of its efforts to resolve all conflicts with separatist groups. The government and the 19-member Karen National Union (KNU) delegation agreed in principle to 11 points and signed two broad agreements to end hostilities between the military and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and start dialogue toward a political settlement to a 62-year conflict. The cease-fire could be a small step toward the lifting of two decades of sanctions imposed on Myanmar by the European Union and the United States, which have made peace with ethnic militias a pre-requisite for a review of the embargoes. Peace talks have been held on six occasions since 1949, but no lasting agreement has been reached. The deputy leader of the KNU delegation, Saw David Htaw, said the climate of change in Myanmar under its new reform-minded government made dialogue inevitable. "We have never been more confident in our talks. According to the changing situation everywhere, peace talks are unavoidable now, this is something we have to pass through without fail," he told Reuters. "The people have experienced the horrors of war a long time. I'm sure they'll be very glad to hear this news. I hope they'll be able to fully enjoy the sweet taste of peace this time." Through the KNLA, its military wing, the KNU has fought successive governments for greater autonomy since 1949, a year after Myanmar gained independence from Britain. Saw David Htaw praised the government's peace negotiators as "honest and sincere." As well as the sanctions issue, peace with the KNU is vital for Myanmar's economic interests. SECURITY THREAT If the conflict resurfaces, it presents a security threat that could disrupt construction of the $50 billion Dawei Special Industrial Zone, which will be Southeast Asia's biggest industrial estate when completed and a major source of income for the impoverished country. Past offensives by government troops have driven hundreds of thousands of Karens from villages, many into camps in neighboring Thailand, which has struggled to cope with the flood of refugees. Myanmar's army has been accused of oppressing the Karens and other ethnic minorities by committing human rights abuses ranging from rape and forced labor to torture and murder. The West has responded by maintaining tight sanctions. According to the agreements reached in Pa-an in eastern Kayin State, all efforts would be made to resettle and rehabilitate the displaced. Arms would be permitted in certain areas, landmines cleared and liaison offices set up to facilitate dialogue. The talks were the latest in a series of dialogues between the government and rebel groups along Myanmar's borders with Thailand and China. An agreement has also been reached with Shan State Army (South), but initial talks with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have been derailed by persistent fighting, despite an order last month by President Thein Sein for the military to end its operations. U.S. officials have said the peace process might prove the toughest challenge for civilian leaders who are eager to bring the nation in from the cold after five decades of army rule. The rebels hold deep distrust toward Thein Sein's government, which is comprised of the same people as the old military regime, but they are broadly behind Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's vision of federalism within Myanmar's republic, a plan supported by her late father, Aung San. | 2 |
Australian bushfires have killed 65 people and burned hundreds of homes in the worst fire disaster in three decades, as a heat and strong winds sent sheets of flame racing through towns and farmland near Melbourne. Police expect the death toll, already the worst since 75 people died in "Ash Wednesday" fires in 1983, could climb further as they search the ruins of wild fires that flared on Saturday and that continued to burn north of the city on Sunday. "We are just picking them up (bodies) as we go through, a police spokesman told Reuters. The government put the army on standby and set up emergency relief funds, but also faced some pressure from Greens lawmakers who have been urging it to stiffen its climate-change policies to reduce the risk of more such summer disasters. Thousands of firefighters battled for a second straight day on Sunday to contain the blazes, which witnesses said reached four storeys high, raced across the land like speeding trains and spewed hot embers as far as the horizon. "It went through like a bullet," Darren Webb-Johnson, a resident of the small rural town of Kinglake, told Sky TV. "The service station went, the take-away store across the road went, cylinders (exploded) left, right and center, and 80 percent of the town burned down to the ground." Many of those confirmed dead were trapped in cars trying to flee one of the infernos. State broadcaster ABC showed pictures of a small town, Marysville, razed to the ground. "Hell and its fury have visited the good people of Victoria," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, visiting the burned-out region. "The nation grieves with Victoria." Firefighters say 640 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 -- and also raised pressure on the government's climate-change policy. "SOBERING REMINDER" Greens leader Bob Brown, who has condemned the government's recently announced plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions as ineffectual, said summer fires would only worsen unless Australia and other nations showed more leadership on climate change. "It's a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change," Senator Brown said on Sunday. The fires are around towns about 80 km (50 miles) north of Melbourne, hitting both semi-urban and rural areas. More than 20 people are being treated for serious burns, local officials said. "These fires won't be out for some days," said a tearful John Brumby, premier of southern Victoria state, appealing for blood donors to assist medical teams aiding the burns victims. "It's about as horrific as it could get," he added. 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 survivor, 65-year-old Rosaleen Dove, said she had fought successfully for seven hours with her husband to defend her home on Saturday. "We made it! I never thought I could jump fences so quickly," she said. All of the deaths, confirmed and suspected, are believed by police to have been suffered on Saturday. Police say 12 were killed around Kinglake, the worst-affected area so far known. The main Victorian bushfire had burned some 3,000 hectares of mainly national park on Saturday when temperatures soared close to 50 degrees Celcius (122 Fahrenheit). Within hours, the fire had burned some 30,000 hectares after the wind changed direction. Overall, fires were still burning across about 2,000 square km (770 sq miles) in areas north of Melbourne in Sunday, with a few towns still under threat, the ABC said on its Website. "These fires are not finished, they will continue to burn for days," said Victoria state premier John Brumby, adding 26 fires remained out of control in the state. | 0 |
A "silent tsunami" unleashed by costlier food threatens 100 million people, the United Nations said on Tuesday, and aid groups said producers would make things worse if they curbed exports. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would seek changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices -- a day after the bloc stood by its plans to boost biofuel use. The World Food Programme (WFP), whose head Josette Sheeran took part in a meeting of experts Brown called on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, said a "silent tsunami" threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. "This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said ahead of the meeting. Riots in poor Asian and African countries have followed steep rises in food prices caused by many factors -- dearer fuel, bad weather, rising disposable incomes boosting demand and the conversion of land to grow crops for biofuel. Rice from Thailand, the world's top exporter, has more than doubled in price this year. Major food exporters including Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Cambodia have imposed curbs on food exports to secure supplies. Sheeran said artificially created shortages aggravated the problem: "The world has been consuming more than it has been producing for the past three years, so stocks have been drawn down." Rising prices meant the WFP was running short of money to buy food for its programmes and had already curtailed school feeding plans in Tajikistan, Kenya and Cambodia. Sheeran said the WFP, which last year estimated it would need $2.9 billion in 2008 to cover its needs, now calculated it would have to raise that figure by a quarter because of the surge in prices of staples like wheat, maize and rice.
END OF AN ERA Britain pledged $900 million to help the WFP alleviate immediate problems and Brown raised further doubts about the wisdom of using crops to help produce fuel. "If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets," he said a day after the EU stood by its target of getting a tenth of road transport fuel from crops and agricultural waste by 2020. Japanese Agriculture Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi said Tokyo would propose the World Trade Organisation set clear rules for food export restrictions imposed by producer countries. Tokyo wanted a WTO mechanism for food importers such as Japan to be able to give an opinion when notified about restrictions by an exporting country, Wakabayashi said, according to the text of a news conference published on the ministry's website. Rajat Nag, managing director general of the Asian Development Bank, said the era of cheap food was over and urged Asian governments not to distort markets with export curbs but use fiscal measures to help the poor. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said dearer food risked wiping out progress on cutting poverty. His predecessor Kofi Annan said climate change was aggravating the global food crisis and many poor countries could be facing the start of "major hunger disasters". "The poor are bearing the brunt and they contributed the least to climate change. The polluter must pay," he said. "Climate change is an all-encompassing threat -- a threat to our health, security, political stability and social cohesion." | 0 |
Obama and Mitch McConnell, who will become majority leader when Republicans take charge in the Senate in January, signaled they hoped to get past a previously frosty relationship to pass legislation on priorities on which they can both agree.Republicans swept elections on Tuesday, capturing their biggest majority in the House of Representatives in more than 60 years and gaining a majority in the Senate for the first time since 2006. The election result limits what Obama can achieve without bipartisan support during his final two years in office."As president, I have a unique responsibility to try and make this town work," Obama, a Democrat, said at a White House news conference. "So, to everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you."Obama lauded McConnell, with whom he said he hoped to share some Kentucky bourbon, and House Speaker John Boehner for expressing the wish to seek common ground after the elections. He spoke to both men earlier in the day.McConnell said he believed Obama was interested in moving forward on trade agreements and tax reform, two issues at a standstill in Washington because of political differences."This gridlock and dysfunction can be ended. It can be ended by having a Senate that actually works," McConnell told reporters in his home state Kentucky.But the words of reconciliation only went so far.Obama said he intended to go ahead with plans to implement executive actions by the end of this year that could remove the threat of deportation from millions of undocumented immigrants.McConnell said it would be like "waving a red flag in front of a bull" for Obama to take unilateral action on immigration. The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bill on the issue last year but House Republicans did not support it."We're going to take whatever lawful actions that I can take that I believe will improve the functioning of our immigration system," Obama said. "If they want to get a bill done ... I'm eager to see what they have to offer. But what I’m not going to do is just wait."Obama conceded that Republicans "had a good night" on Tuesday but shied away from more descriptive language of the sort he used in 2010, when he described Republican victories as a "shellacking."The president, whose unpopularity made him unwelcome to many Democrats running for office, plans to meet congressional leaders from both parties at the White House on Friday to take stock of the new political landscape.ENERGY, KEYSTONE, TAXESDespite the Republican gains, the election was not necessarily an endorsement of Republican policies. Initiatives championed by Democrats to raise the minimum wage and legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana succeeded in a handful of states where they were on the ballot.With the bulk of election results in, the dollar surged to a seven-year high against the yen and the Dow and S&P 500 finished at record closing highs, reflecting optimism about pro-energy and other business policies.Obama said he would like to work with Republicans on a deal to pay for repairs to roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure. He said a tax reform package might be one way of paying for the infrastructure projects.The new power structure will test Obama's ability to compromise with newly empowered political opponents who have been resisting his legislative agenda since he was first elected in 2008. Americans elected him to a second and final four-year term in 2012.One of the first tests could be a bill to approve the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline from Canada, a project about which Obama has voiced reservations. Republican Senator John Hoeven said in an interview on Wednesday that he has enough votes to pass a bill early in 2015 that would approve TransCanada's long-languishing $8 billion pipeline project.Obama said at the news conference he would let the State Department-run process on Keystone play out, but said his criteria for approving it or not would be based on whether it helped Americans' pocket books."Is it going to actually create jobs? Is it actually going to reduce gas prices that have been coming down? And is it going to be, on net, something that doesn’t increase climate change that we’re going to have to grapple with?" he said.Energy markets hope Republican control of the Senate will lead to reform of crude and natural gas export laws and motivate the Obama administration to include those energy exports in new, or broader, trade agreements. | 0 |
APIA, Samoa, Jul 26,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Fiji in a meeting of Pacific foreign ministers in Samoa on Saturday to ensure the country's military rulers held elections as promised in March 2009. Rice arrived in Samoa from Auckland for a three-hour stop-over where she joined more than a dozen ministers from the Pacific Forum to discuss Fiji, maritime security and climate change, among other issues, said a senior US official. A Pacific diplomat who attended the talks but asked not to be named, said Rice raised the issue of elections with Fiji's interim foreign minister Brigadier General Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, who arrived late for the meeting at a holiday resort near the airport. Rice had said beforehand she would use the occasion to deliver a strong message to Fiji. "There is especially hard work to do concerning Fiji where a return to democracy is an absolute necessity," Rice said in Auckland late on Saturday before leaving for Apia. "Those elections should not be based on any other conditions but the ability to hold an election, something that the government of Fiji has promised to do and has promised to do next year and should do forthright," added Rice, who also visited Singapore and Australia on an eight-day trip that ends on Monday. It was the first visit to Samoa by a U.S. Secretary of State for 20 years and Rice was joined on her plane by New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who has taken a leading role among Pacific countries to get Fiji's military to restore democracy. Fiji's military strongman Frank Bainimarama originally promised elections for March 2009, but he said in June this was now unlikely because reforms were needed to the electoral system. Bainimarama staged a bloodless coup in December 2006, claiming the then government of Laisenia Qarase was corrupt and soft on those behind an earlier 2000 coup. Fiji has been hit by four coups and a military mutiny since 1987. Sanctions have been applied by Australia, New Zealand and the European Union on Fiji, including the suspension of aid and travel bans on Fijian military and political officials. The United States also canceled military aid to Fiji after the coup. The senior US official traveling with Rice said she did not plan to meet separately with the Fijian minister, who went to Apia along with more than a dozen other ministers from the Pacific. Ministers and officials from Australia, Fiji, Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu, Guam, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Palau and Papua New Guinea were among those at the meeting, hosted by Samoa's prime minister. | 0 |
Five data sets currently place 2020, a year characterised by heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and raging hurricanes, as the second warmest since records began in 1850. "2020 is very likely to be one of the three warmest years on record globally," the Geneva-based UN agency said in its State of the Global Climate in 2020 report. Stoked by extreme heat, wildfires flared across Australia, Siberia and the United States this year, sending smoke plumes around the globe. Less visible was a surge in marine heat to record levels, with more than 80% of the global ocean experiencing a marine heatwave, the WMO said. "2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, urging more efforts to curb the emissions that are fuelling climate change. Greenhouse gas concentrations climbed to a new record in 2019 and have risen so far this year despite an expected drop in emissions due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the WMO said last month. The latest WMO report said the global mean temperature was around 1.2 degrees above the 1850-1900 baseline between January and October this year, placing it second behind 2016 and marginally ahead of 2019. Hot years have typically been associated with El Niño, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean. However, this year coincides with La Niña which has the opposite effect and cools temperatures. The WMO will confirm the data in March 2021. A climate pact agreed in Paris five years ago compels countries to make efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, above which scientists warn of catastrophic climate change. While it is not the same as crossing that long-term warming threshold, the WMO says there is at least a one in five chance of temperatures temporarily, on an annual basis, exceeding that level by 2024. | 0 |
Britons on Sunday faced little respite from the Arctic conditions that have disrupted travel and shopping plans on the last weekend before Christmas, normally one of the busiest times of the year. Treacherous icy conditions were forecast to replace the blizzards which forced many airports to close, trains to be delayed and motorists to become stranded in their vehicles. Britain's busiest airport London Heathrow, which was closed on Saturday, may re-open on Sunday, but operator BAA did not give a specific time. The Met Office said the snow would gradually ease in southern England, but heavy snow would still sweep in to northeast England and eastern Scotland, with up to 20 cm of fresh snow possible. Temperatures could hit minus 15 Celsius in western Scotland. Britain traditionally experiences mild winters, but last year's was the coldest for 30 years and the latest big dump of snow is the second to smother the country and cause widespread disruption in the space of just three weeks. Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government's chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a "step change" in weather patterns due to climate change and whether it needed to spend more money on winter preparations. Some passengers at Heathrow were reported to have been stuck on the runway for a number of hours, while in the terminals they complained of pregnant women having to sleep on the floor and baggage strewn everywhere. "We are totally abandoned," one caller told BBC television. Hammond said the government needed to keep under review the balance between what could be afforded on snow-clearing equipment and the level of disruption. Many Premier League soccer fixtures have been called off, including Sunday's top of the table clash between Chelsea and Manchester United. This December is likely to be Britain's coldest since 1910 if temperatures in the second half of the month are as low as they have been in the first, while media reports said Northern Ireland was suffering its worst weather in 25 years. | 0 |
China accused US President Barack Obama of "seriously damaging" ties between the two powers by meeting the Dalai Lama and said it was now up to Washington to put relations back on course. Obama held a low-key meeting in the White House on Thursday with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader, in the face of wider tensions with Beijing over US weapons sales Taiwan, China's currency policies, trade disputes and Internet censorship. Beijing responded with predictable vehemence. "The US act amounted to serious interference in Chinese domestic affairs, and has seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and seriously damaged China-US relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement on the ministry website (www.mfa.gov.cn). The United States should "immediately take effective steps to eradicate the malign effects" of the meeting, said Ma. "Use concrete actions to promote the healthy and stable development of Sino-US relations," he said. Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cui Tiankui "lodged solemn representations" with US Ambassador Jon Huntsman, the official Xinhua news agency said. Chinese Communist troops marched into Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and has since campaigned for self-rule from exile. Beijing accuses the Dala Lama of fomenting unrest and seeking to split Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama says he is merely seeking greater autonomy. Beijing did not threaten retaliation, and its angry words echoed many past statements about the Dalai Lama meetings with foreign political leaders. But the dispute could complicate Obama's efforts to secure China's help on key issues such as imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and forging a new global accord on climate change. "This certainly isn't the first meeting between a US president and the Dalai Lama, and so both sides knew what was coming and China's response reflected that," said Jin Canrong, an expert on China-US ties at Renmin University in Beijing. "But I think it's too early to say tensions have passed. There's still the US arms sales to Taiwan, and there are also disputes over trade and the currency that could escalate." Washington has complained that China has skewed trade flows in its favour by holding down the value of its yuan currency. China regards self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province. In the predominantly Tibetan region of Tongren in northwest China's Qinghai province, monks expressed their support for the Obama meeting, saying they celebrated the event with a large firework display. "This is great news for the Tibetans," said Jokhar, a local monk. "We don't care that it makes the government angry. It makes us very happy that Obama met him." Tsering, a Tibetan celebrating the lunar new year on Thursday, smiled when he heard the meeting was about to take place. "It lets us know we have not been forgotten," he said. Obama encouraged China and the Dalai Lama's envoys to keep up efforts to resolve their differences through negotiations, despite recent talks having yielded little progress. | 0 |
SINGAPORE, Aug 28,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Small changes in the energy output of the sun can have a major impact on global weather patterns, such as the intensity of the Indian monsoon, that could be predicted years in advance, a team of scientists said. The sun swings through an 11-year cycle measured in the number of sun spots on the surface that emit bursts of energy. The difference in energy is only about 0.1 percent between a solar maximum and minimum and determining just how that small variation affects the world's climate has been one of the great challenges facing meteorologists. Using a century of weather observations and complex computer models, the international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the United States showed that even a small increase in the sun's energy can intensify wind and rainfall patterns. "Small changes in the sun's output over the 11-year solar cycle have long been known to have impacts on the global climate system," said Julie Arblaster, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, a co-author of the study published in the latest issue of the journal Science. "Here we reconcile for the first time the mechanisms by which these small variations get amplified, resulting in cooler sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and enhancing off-equatorial rainfall." The researchers found that during periods of strong solar activity the air in the upper atmosphere, in a layer called the stratosphere, heats up. This occurs over the tropics, where sunlight is typically most intense. The extra warming alters wind patterns in the upper atmosphere, which in turn increases tropical rainfall. Increased sunlight at solar maximum also causes a slight warming of ocean surface waters across the subtropical Pacific, where clouds are normally scarce, says the study. This extra heat leads to more evaporation, producing additional water vapour. The extra moisture is carried by trade winds to the normally rainy areas of the western tropical Pacific, driving more rain. PREDICTIONS In the tropical eastern Pacific, sea surface temperatures cool a little, creating conditions similar to a La Nina event. La Nina is the opposite phenomenon to El Nino, producing wetter weather in the western Pacific and drier weather in parts of South America. The Indian monsoon and many other regional climate patterns are largely driven by rising and sinking air in the tropics and subtropics. Solar-cycle predictions could help meteorologists estimate how those circulation patterns, changes in sea surface temperatures and regional weather patterns might vary. "The sun, the stratosphere, and the oceans are connected in ways that can influence events such as winter rainfall in North America," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study. "Understanding the role of the solar cycle can provide added insight as scientists work toward predicting regional weather patterns for the next couple of decades." The sun is presently in a calm period after reaching a solar minimum at the end of last year, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States. The next solar peak is expected in May 2013. (For more details, see: www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/) "This paper represents a useful step forward in understanding how solar activity may lead to modest but detectable climatic effects," said Brad Carter, senior lecturer in physics at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. "It is a good reminder that solar activity is not an explanation of global warming over recent decades." | 6 |
Alok Sharma, the conference chairman, was visibly emotional before banging down his gavel in relief to signal that there were no vetoes from the almost 200 national delegations present in Glasgow, ranging from coal- and gas-fuelled superpowers to oil producers and Pacific islands being swallowed by the rise in sea levels. The two-week conference in Glasgow, extended into an extra day of tortuous negotiations, was the 26th of its kind but the first to call for a reduction in fossil fuels, which not only power much of the world's economy but are also the main cause of manmade global warming. But there was last-minute drama as India, whose energy needs are hugely dependent on the coal it has in abundance - raised last-minute objections to this part of the agreement. The clause was hurriedly amended to accelerating "efforts to phase down unabated coal power, and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies", weakening what had been "efforts to phase out". The change was met with dismay by the rich economies of the European Union and Switzerland as well as the Marshall Islands, one of the small Pacific island states whose existence is under threat from rising sea levels. But all said they would let it stand for the sake of an overall agreement. "The approved texts are a compromise. They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions." 'DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT' Sharma had had the onerous task of balancing the demands of nations, big industrial powers, and those like India and China whose consumption or exports of fossil fuels are vital to their economic development. His voice broke with emotion after he heard vulnerable nations express their anger over the last-minute changes. "May I just say to all delegates I apologise for the way this process has unfolded and I am deeply sorry," he told the assembled delegates. "I also understand the deep disappointment but I think, as you have noted, it's also vital that we protect this package." The overarching aim that he set before the conference was one that climate campaigners and vulnerable countries had found far too modest - namely, to "keep alive" the 2015 Paris Agreement's target to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The agreement in effect acknowledged that commitments made so far to cut emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases are nowhere near enough, and asked nations to set tougher climate pledges next year, rather than every five years, as they are currently required to do. Scientists say that to go beyond a rise of 1.5C would unleash extreme sea level rise and catastrophes including crippling droughts, monstrous storms and wildfires far worse than those the world is already suffering. But national pledges made so far to cut greenhouse emissions - mostly carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and gas - would only cap the average global temperature rise at 2.4 Celsius. 'THE ERA OF COAL IS ENDING' Jennifer Morgan, executive director of the campaign group Greenpeace, saw the glass as half-full. "They changed a word but they can’t change the signal coming out of this COP, that the era of coal is ending," she said. "If you’re a coal company executive, this COP saw a bad outcome." Developing countries argue that rich nations, whose historical emissions are largely responsible for heating up the planet, must pay more to help them adapt to its consequences as well as reducing their carbon footprints. The deal gave the poorest nations more promises, but no guarantees, that they would finally get more of the financial help they have long been told they will get. It urged rich countries to double finance for climate adaptation by 2025 from 2019 levels, offering funding that has been a key demand of small island nations at the conference. Adaptation funds primarily go to the very poorest countries and currently take up only a small fraction of climate funding. A UN committee will also report next year on progress towards delivering the $100 billion per year in overall annual climate funding that rich nations had promised by 2020 but failed to deliver. And governments will be summoned to meet in 2022, 2024 and 2026 to discuss climate finance. Yet even $100 billion a year is far short of poorer countries' actual needs, which could hit $300 billion by 2030 in adaptation costs alone, according to the United Nations, in addition to economic losses from crop failure or climate-related disasters. | 0 |
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-defence 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' favourite 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. 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 jeopardising the animals' existence and environmentalists say it would spur debate about tougher U.S. 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 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." | 0 |
At least 14 people died as waters rose in basements. A tornado in southern New Jersey levelled a stretch of houses. Some drivers have reportedly been stranded since Wednesday night, more than 200,000 homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania remain without power, and states of emergency have been declared across the region. The rain Wednesday — more than half a foot in just a few hours — turned streets and subway platforms into rivers and sent emergency responders in boats rescuing people from the rooftops of cars and from flooded homes. Hundreds of people on trains and subways were evacuated. The rain broke records set just 11 days before by Tropical Storm Henri, underscoring warnings from climate scientists that the storms herald a new normal on a warmed planet where hotter air holds more water and allows storms to gather strength more quickly and grow ever larger. Though skies are clearing, more than a dozen of the city’s subway lines remain at least partly suspended, along with commuter rail service across the region. Airports were open, but hundreds of flights were cancelled. Rescues continued Thursday morning, and some rivers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were still rising. In New York City, the dead ranged in age from a 2-year-old boy to an 86-year-old woman, police said. Some drowned in basement apartments in Queens, where a system of makeshift and mostly illegally converted living spaces has sprung up. Five people were found dead in an apartment complex in Elizabeth, New Jersey, city officials said Thursday. Another death occurred in Passaic, New Jersey, where the Passaic River breached its banks and fish flopped in the streets. The 3.15 inches of rain that fell in Central Park in one hour Wednesday eclipsed the record-breaking one-hour rainfall of 1.94 inches on Aug. 21. The National Weather Service, struggling to depict the level of danger, declared a flash flood emergency in New York City for the first time. In Bergen County, New Jersey’s most populous county, County Executive James Tedesco, a former firefighter, said Thursday, “We have not complete devastation but close to it. This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it.” The remnants of Ida swept across parts of southern New England on Thursday. As of 5 a.m. Thursday, the system was located near eastern Long Island, New York, moving northeast at 28 mph and accelerating toward Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with maximum sustained winds of 28 mph. After heavy rain overnight, more rain was expected across parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where flash flood warnings were in effect, the weather service said. “This will bring the potential for rare high impact type of flooding to southern New England,” the weather service said. The rain had already caused flash flooding of “small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other poor drainage and low-lying areas,” according to the weather service. Although the rainfall was beginning to move out of the area, there were still many flooded roads throughout southern New England. “It will take time for the water to recede in these areas,’’ the Weather Service in Boston said. “Do not attempt to cross any flooded roads this morning. Turn around don’t drown!” Rhode Island has already seen two tropical storms make landfall this hurricane season: Henri last month, and Elsa in July. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 6 |
Climate change will have potentially devastating consequences for human health, outweighing global economic impacts, researchers said on Friday, calling for urgent action to protect the world's population. "While we embark on more rapid reduction of emissions to avert future climate change, we must also manage the now unavoidable health risks from current and pending climate change," said Australian researcher Tony McMichael, who co-authored a study in the British Medical Journal. "This will have adverse health effects in all populations, particularly in geographically vulnerable and resource-poor regions," he said. McMichael, from Australia's Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, said increased wildfires, droughts, flooding and disease stemming from climate change posed a much more fundamental threat to human wellbeing than economic impacts. A 2006 report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said climate change had the potential to shrink the global economy by between 5 and 20 percent, causing a similar impact to the Great Depression. But McMichael said climate shift would bring changes to the pattern of infectious diseases, the effect of worsening food yields and loss of people's livelihoods. While it was unlikely to spawn entirely new types of diseases, it would impact on the frequency, range and season patterns of many existing disorders, with between 20 and 70 million more people living in malarial regions by 2080, he said. And the impact would be hardest in poor countries, said the researchers, including co-author Sharon Friel from the Australian National University, Tony Nyong from Nigeria's Jos University and Carlos Corvalan of the World Health Organization. "Infectious diseases cannot be stabilised in circumstances of climatic instability, refugee flows and impoverishment," McMichael said. "Poverty cannot be eliminated while environmental degradation exacerbates malnutrition, disease and injury." McMichael said immediate decision-making was needed to involve health professionals in planning for the impact of climate change. Kevin Parton, from Australia's Charles Sturt University, said the report was a wake-up call that the world needed to be doing more to eradicate diseases such as malaria. "The health risks are massive, and the best way to mitigate them is to minimise the extent of climate change. Global community health is the climate change issue," he said. | 0 |
The trend started on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with users including celebrities Jennifer Lopez and Ellen DeGeneres posting their current profile pictures next to one from 10 years ago. But users quickly flipped the theme to photos spotlighting global concerns including climate change and the destruction wreaked by war in countries including Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Others took to social media to post side-by-side photos of melted glaciers and changes from the ocean floor, highlighting the impacts of climate change. One user posted photos purporting to show Syria in 2009 and 2019 to illustrate the impact of the nearly eight-year-old civil war that has killed half a million people and forced more than half the country's population from their homes. "While the internet is bombarded with celebrities posting #10yearchallenge pictures, they seems to ignore the fact that their own elected govt has destroyed, cultural & residential areas of great value in past 10 years," posted the user. Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian actress and human rights activist who has fought against her country's ban on women attending soccer games, posted images of her fight for human rights in Iran. "My kinda #10yearchallenge. Still at it and I don't plan to stop. #Humanrights #Iran," she wrote. Some members of the LGBT+ community used the hashtag to speak about their personal challenges and struggles in society over the years, among them the trans campaigner and filmmaker Fox Fisher. "Look at this sad face 10 years ago. Shows how lost I was," Fisher posted. "So happy that life got better. Trans people never stop being trans so please support them. #10YearChallenge #DecadeChallenge." | 0 |
The subject of their disagreement was journalistic “objectivity,” a notion that goes back at least to the 1920s, when some of the more high-minded newspapers and magazines were trying to distinguish themselves from the scandal sheets and publications led by partisan and sometimes warmongering publishers. In one corner, Alan Berger. In 1979, he was a 41-year-old media columnist for the Real Paper, an alternative weekly that had emerged from a rift at its predecessor, Boston Phoenix. Before he started watch-dogging the press, Berger had grown up in the Bronx, attended Harvard University and taught a class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in French, on the poet Charles Baudelaire. His target in the debate over objectivity — which has come roaring back to life in the political storminess of recent years — was Tom Palmer. Back then, Palmer was a 31-year-old assistant national editor of The Boston Globe, meaning he belonged to the establishment and was thus a ripe target for the Real Paper. Palmer had grown up in a newspaper family in Kansas City, but dreamed of being a farmer before he struggled in organic chemistry and ended up in his father’s trade. The particular topic of Berger’s column, which ran Apr 21, 1979, with a teaser on the Real Paper’s front page, was how the media was covering the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. The underlying subject was something larger — the debate, within the news media industry, over when and whether reporters should tell readers what they really think about the issues and events they are writing about. To make his point, Berger went after Palmer by name, describing him as “thoughtful, honest and entirely conventional.” Berger wrote that he was particularly struck by something the Globe editor had told him in defence of the paper’s coverage of Three Mile Island: that it was his job “to not make the situation sound any worse than it was.” In a recent interview, Berger recalled that his view of the issue was influenced by the news media’s deferential coverage of the Vietnam War. The “excessive fealty to its own traditional notions of balance and objectivity,” he wrote in his column, had actually distorted reality — and Palmer’s earnest dedication to the old values, Berger wrote, was exactly what was so dangerous about him. “By the end of this millennium, the objectivity of some very decent people in the media will make them, too, look like irresponsible fanatics,” the columnist wrote of Palmer and others like him. The particulars have changed in the decades since, but much of Berger’s column could have been written yesterday. (And alt-weeklies did prefigure the style and tone of online journalism.) The rise of Donald Trump, and the media’s growing realization that a studied neutrality often conceals a single, dominant perspective has shaken many of the industry’s traditional assumptions. A diverse new generation of reporters has sought to dismantle the old order, and much of the conflict was playing out, in recent years, at The Washington Post, whose top editor at the time, Martin Baron, had won Pulitzers and challenged presidents by making use of the traditional tools of newspaper journalism. But Baron also bridled at his employees expressing opinions on Twitter about the subjects they covered. His former protégé, national correspondent Wesley Lowery, argued in a widely circulated New York Times opinion essay that objectivity mirrored the worldview of white reporters and editors, whose “selective truths have been calibrated to avoid offending the sensibilities of white readers.” Lowery, who ended up leaving The Post for CBS News, suggested that news organizations “abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard, and for reporters instead to focus on being fair and telling the truth, as best as one can, based on the given context and available facts.”
Tom Palmer, a former editor and reporter at The Boston Globe, who said the arguments against journalistic objectivity “were dead wrong back then and I believe are dead wrong even more so today,” in Natick, Mass., Oct 9, 2021. In 1979, two journalists got into an argument — more than four decades later, they haven’t settled it. Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times
That same argument has found an embrace at some of America’s leading journalism schools, as well. Tom Palmer, a former editor and reporter at The Boston Globe, who said the arguments against journalistic objectivity “were dead wrong back then and I believe are dead wrong even more so today,” in Natick, Mass., Oct 9, 2021. In 1979, two journalists got into an argument — more than four decades later, they haven’t settled it. Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times “We focus on fairness and fact-checking and accuracy, and we don’t try to suggest to our students that opinions they have should be hidden,” said Sarah Bartlett, the dean of the City University of New York Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. “We embrace transparency.” Steve Coll, her counterpart at Columbia Journalism School, who announced Thursday that he was stepping down in June after nine years as dean, said that Columbia tries to teach fairness and intellectual honesty — adding that the old way of thinking has morphed into something new. “The church is gone, and there’s no orthodoxy left,” he said. “There’s many journalisms, and that’s kind of liberating.” Much of the shift has to do with the changing nature of the news business, and the decline of local newspapers, whose business often depended on taking an establishment position. The internet has also blurred for readers the lines between news and opinion, which were clear in a print newspaper. The Globe’s liberal opinion page, in fact, hired Berger in 1982, a few years after he scolded Palmer. The two men sometimes sat down to lunch together in the cafeteria on the Globe’s top floor. The room had a view of downtown and, in those glory days of newspapers, was the frequent site of Olympian debates over the role of the press, another colleague, columnist Ellen Goodman, recalled. Both men had the sort of long, varied careers that used to be common at big metro newspapers. Berger wrote editorials about foreign policy and a column about the foreign media before retiring in 2011. Palmer toggled between editing and reporting, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall (he brought back a chunk of it for Goodman) and the notorious Boston traffic project known as the Big Dig before a new editor, Baron, moved him to his final beat, real estate. He left The Globe in 2008 and went into public relations. Palmer also never quite let the argument go. He appointed himself a kind of genial industry watchdog, eventually known for his persistent emails to reporters and editors he thought had allowed their liberal views to infiltrate their copy. He still sends a lot of emails, including to me. When he sent me Berger’s old column, it stuck with me, because it felt so utterly contemporary. Needless to say, Palmer remains unpersuaded by the arguments against his cherished ideal. They “were dead wrong back then,” he emailed me, “and I believe are dead wrong even more so today.” “Journalists are simply not smart enough and educated enough to change the world,” he continued. “They should damn well just inform the public to the best of their abilities and let the public decide.” He also said, ruefully, that he believed his side was losing. The notion of objectivity “was declining before Trump, and that era removed it from the table completely,” he wrote. “I have doubts it will ever come back.” Berger, in an interview, allowed that he had “to some extent” won the argument. Palmer’s conventional position, in the Trump era, “begins to look like a radical view,” he said. This decadeslong argument doesn’t fit neatly onto some of the most important questions of the moment, the ones faced by the journalists who won the Nobel Peace Prize this past week, Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia. They have been persecuted, at heart, not because their governments don’t like their style of journalism, but because their governments won’t tolerate the notion of independent, truth-seeking journalism. The original idea around the much-misused notion of objectivity, when it was introduced in the 1920s, had to do with making journalism “scientific” — that is, with the idea that reporters could test hypotheses against reality and prove their claims right. In the most generous interpretation, it was about establishing a shared public space in which facts could be arbitrated and knowing that you could also be wrong. Indeed, one of the easiest ways to know whether you can trust a journalist, I’ve always found, is to check whether the person is capable of admitting they’ve been wrong — something that applies to just-the-facts newspaper editors and moralizing columnists alike. People love to mock corrections, but they’re actually a badge of integrity. Which brings me back to Berger’s 1979 column. Its headline, which would have done well on Twitter had it existed then, was “How the Press Blew Three Mile Island.” Its thrust was that the journalists — “privately anti-nuke,” he wrote — were keeping from their readers their own view that nuclear power was too dangerous to use. He quoted Palmer saying that “it’s not clear yet who is right” on the big policy questions around nuclear power. “If not now, when?” Berger asked. “Does there have to be a body count in this war, too?” That line, so soon after Vietnam, stung. The arguments about journalistic objectivity won’t be resolved any time soon, and you can look forward to my final column in 2061 featuring Baron, 107 and Lowery, 71. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Berger’s side won the battle over nuclear power. The American nuclear industry never recovered from Three Mile Island, as political factors slowed and then largely stopped the construction of new reactors. It was a liberal triumph of the 1970s that is largely forgotten today. And yet: Berger now believes he was wrong about that. The American left of that era hadn’t understood the risks of carbon emissions. “You have to reevaluate all values, because you have to see all the particular questions in light of the danger of drastic climate change,” he told me. Nuclear power, whatever its dangers, doesn’t emit carbon. And journalists, whichever sect we belong to, should keep in mind our potential to get it wrong. ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
This is, in effect, the money humans don’t have to spend on
services that nature supplies for free – such as crop pollination, water
purification, and coastal protection by wetlands, sandbanks and reefs. And one high value transaction supplied gratis by nature is
groundwater. For farmers, water in subterranean aquifers represents money in
the bank, as groundwater underwrites 40 percent of world food production. Eli Fenichel, assistant professor at the Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies, and colleagues looked at withdrawals from
the Kansas High Plains Aquifer and report in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences that between 1996 and 2005, Kansas lost approximately $110
million a year. Food production The losses represented the depletion of the aquifer as
farmers withdraw this ultimate natural capital to support food production. And
the total for the decade was $1.1 billion. This is roughly equal to Kansas State’s 2005 budget surplus.
It is, the scientists say, substantially more than the sums invested in schools
over the same period. It isn’t often that economists can place any direct value on
a natural resource. Farming and industry evolved as they did because the
natural resources were there in the first place. Conservationists sometimes pose the question: if plants had
not evolved alkaloids that could be exploited as pharmaceutical drugs, or if
there were no bees to pollinate fruit blossom, what would humans have to pay to
get someone else to do these things? And if forests failed to absorb humans’ carbon emissions
from fossil fuel combustion and greenhouse gas release, how bad could global
warming get? But such questions are rhetorical, part of persuasive
argument for conserving forests or using pesticides sparingly. City planners, geophysicists and climate scientists alike
call reefs natural capital because living reefs help protect maritime cities
from the worst storm surges, and they try to arrive at a value based on the
cost of storm damage to those cities. That, too, is a complicated argument. But the latest study delivers a relatively sure balance
sheet of costs and rewards, profits and losses. The scientists used economic principles to value traditional
assets, and then factored in ecosystem changes and human behaviour that might
make such assets increase or reduce in value. This could help governments and
business redefine spending on nature conservation as investment. “The idea that we can actually measure changes in the value
of natural capital is really important,” Dr Fenichel says. “It shows that in
places like Kansas, where groundwater is a critically important asset, there is
a way to measure and keep tabs on these resources as part of a larger
portfolio. “And in a world where data is more and more available, it
should be possible to do this more often. I think that bodes well for guiding
policies aimed at maintaining all of society’s wealth.” For a business to be sustainable, its reserve capital must
not decline with time. The new approach means that the natural capital
represented by groundwater can be turned into a set of figures on a balance
sheet. Asset management Its steady, year-on-year depletion doesn’t look like good
asset management. And it doesn’t look sustainable. But the Kansas study could
help as a template for other such valuations. “Without an apples-to-apples valuation approach, the value
of natural capital cannot be measured against other assets and expenses,” says
Joshua Abbott, associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of
Sustainability, and one of the authors of the report. “Our work can help governments and businesses track the
sustainable use of natural resources. Without a calculation like ours,
policymakers would lack critical information about how food production impacts
our water wealth.” And Dr Fenichel adds: “I’m not saying it will be easy, or
that we are going to measure natural capital prices for everything, everywhere
in the world. But I think we are showing that it is feasible. “I think we are laying the foundations for others to go out,
collect data, and do the calculations to measure wealth stored in other natural
capital assets.” | 0 |
Such shifts have cheered critics concerned about his campaign positions while angering some supporters. But Trump also sometimes modified positions during the campaign, so the Republican president-elect could change stances again before or after he takes office on Jan 20. The following are some of his changing positions: Prosecuting Hillary Clinton To chants from crowds of "Lock her up," Trump said during the campaign that if he won the election, his administration would prosecute his Democratic rival over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and over what he said were abuses of her position with regard to her family's charitable foundation. During the second presidential debate on Oct 9, he said he would appoint a special prosecutor and seek to jail Clinton if he won. Asked during a New York Times interview on Nov 22 about reports that he no longer wanted to prosecute Clinton, Trump said, "I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t." However, he said "no" when asked if he was definitively taking the idea of investigating Clinton off the table. Climate change Trump has called global warming a hoax and during the campaign he said he wanted to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations, which came into effect on Nov 4. Instead, he said he would push ahead and develop cheap coal, shale and oil. On Nov 12, a source on his transition team said Trump's advisers were considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the climate accord. Asked in the Times interview on Nov 22 if he was going to take America out of the world's lead of confronting climate change, Trump said, "I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully." Asked if he believed human activity causes climate change, he said, "I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much." Healthcare During the campaign, Trump said he would repeal President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act. He called Obamacare a "disaster" and said he would replace it with a plan that would give states more control over the Medicaid health plan for the poor and allow insurers to sell plans nationally. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Nov 11, Trump said he was considering keeping parts of the law, including provisions letting parents keep adult children up to age 26 on insurance policies and barring insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. "Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced," Trump told the Journal. Immigration On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to build a wall along the US-Mexican border to curb illegal immigration and that Mexico would pay for it. He also said he would deport millions of illegal immigrants and proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country as a means of countering terrorism. He never retracted this but in the later stages of the campaign, rephrased it as a proposal to temporarily suspend immigration from regions deemed as exporting terrorism and where safe vetting cannot be ensured. In an interview with CBS program "60 Minutes" that aired on Nov 13, Trump said he really planned to build a wall. However, asked if this could be a fence, he said it could be part wall, part fence. "For certain areas I would (have a fence) but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this - it’s called construction," he said. Asked about deporting illegal immigrants, he told CBS that the initial focus would be on those immigrants who are "criminal and have criminal records," who he said probably numbered 2 million and possibly even 3 million. Waterboarding During the campaign, Trump said the United States should revive use of waterboarding and "a lot more" when questioning terrorism suspects. Waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that simulates drowning, is widely regarded as torture and was banned under President Barack Obama. In the Nov 22 Times interview, Trump said he had been impressed when he asked Marine General James Mattis, a potential pick for defense secretary, about waterboarding and Mattis replied, "I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture." While the response had not made him change his mind, Trump said, it had impressed him that the use of waterboarding was "not going to make the kind of a difference that maybe a lot of people think." | 0 |
The fallout may take months to assess. But the impact on the US economy is bound to be considerable, especially in Texas and other states where oil drives much of the job market. With the coronavirus outbreak slowing trade, transportation and other energy-intensive economic activities, demand is likely to remain weak. Even if Russia and Saudi Arabia resolve their differences — which led the Saudis to slash prices after Russia refused to join in production cuts — a global oil glut could keep prices low for years. Many smaller US oil companies could face bankruptcy if the price pressure goes on for more than a few weeks, while larger ones will be challenged to protect their dividend payments. Thousands of oil workers are about to receive pink slips. The battle will impose intense hardship on many other oil-producing countries as well, especially Venezuela, Iran and several African nations, with political implications that are difficult to predict. The only winners may be drivers paying less for gasoline — particularly those with older, less fuel-efficient cars, who tend to have lower incomes. “What a day, what a time,” said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and author of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.” “This is a clash of oil, geopolitics and the virus that together have sent the markets spiralling down. The decline in demand for oil will march across the globe as the virus advances.” Saudi Arabia and Russia are hurt by low prices and have reasons to compromise, but both have a cushion to absorb financial losses for a few months at least. Saudi Arabia depends on high oil prices to fund its ample social programs, but it has the lowest production costs of any producer, so it can operate profitably even at lower prices. Russia has sufficient financial reserves and can devalue its currency, the ruble, to sustain the flow of money through its economy even when prices decline. That leaves the higher-cost producers, and the service companies that drill for them, most immediately vulnerable. Diamondback Energy, a medium-size company based in Texas, slashed its 2020 production plans, cutting the number of hydraulic-fracturing crews to six from nine. Other companies are expected to follow suit in the coming days. The operations in greatest jeopardy are small, private ones with large debts, impatient investors and less productive wells. Small companies — those with a couple of hundred wells or fewer — account for as much as 15% of US output, which has more than doubled over the last decade to roughly 13 million barrels a day. But medium-size companies are also imperilled, including Chesapeake Energy, according to Morgan Stanley. Chesapeake, a major Oklahoma oil and gas company, has $9 billion in debt and little cash because of persistently low commodity prices. Chesapeake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In an investment note Monday, Goldman Sachs said that large companies like Chevron and ConocoPhillips would be prepared to handle the shock, but that Exxon Mobil could be forced to cut spending on exploration and new production, which has recently been focused on West Texas, New Mexico and the waters off Guyana. Shares of Occidental Petroleum, deeply in debt from its acquisition of Anadarko last year, declined by more than 50% over concern that it would need to slash its dividend. Halliburton and other service companies — the ones that do the drilling and hydraulic fracturing that blasts through shale rock — are exposed because explorers and producers frequently cut their services first during downturns. On the other hand, refiners like Valero may benefit from increased supplies of cheap oil, according to Goldman Sachs. And there may be an upside for natural gas producers, because a reduction in oil production will mean less gas bubbling up from oil wells, bolstering prices. American oil executives put the best face on the situation, noting that many reduced their risks over the last six months by hedging with sales contracts at $50 a barrel or higher. But they said layoffs were inevitable, as when oil prices plunged in late 2014 and 2015 and more than 170,000 oil and oil-service workers lost their jobs. Companies can adjust their spending by drilling but not finishing their wells with hydraulic fracturing, leaving them ready to ramp up when prices recover. Still, oil analysts note that even a sharp decline in new wells would not reduce American oil production by more than a couple of million barrels a day over the next year or two. Scott D Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the biggest Texas oil companies, predicted that Russia and Saudi Arabia would be hurt far more than US oil producers. “We will all adjust our capital and employee work force to preserve balance sheets,” Sheffield said. “Many companies will go bankrupt, but new shareholders will own the drilling locations.” The oil industry has dealt with sharp price declines several times in recent decades. Big oil companies invested through those cycles, especially with long-term projects such as deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off Brazil and Africa. Some analysts say the global industry may not be as well prepared for the latest challenge. Increased concerns about climate change and the growing reluctance of investors to pour money into a sector that has strained to make profits in recent years hobbled the industry even before the virus hit. “In many respects, this time will be different, but not in a good way,” said David L Goldwyn, the top energy diplomat in the State Department during the first Obama administration. “Low oil prices will not necessarily result in increased demand due to the firm commitment of many countries to decarbonisation. The uncertain trend line for coronavirus suggests demand recovery will be slow in coming.” The stock market plunge that has accompanied the drop in oil prices will hurt many Americans, but at least they will be paying less at the gasoline pump. The average regular gasoline price has declined by 5 cents over the last week, to $2.38 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, and is 9 cents below a year ago. Every penny drop means a roughly $4 million a day savings for US drivers, energy economists say. President Donald Trump grasped at the silver lining. “Good for consumer, gasoline prices coming down!” he declared Monday on Twitter. But Yergin, the energy historian, noted that “low gasoline prices don’t do much for you if schools are closed, you cancel your trip or you’re working from home because of the virus.” And oil-producing states will suffer. Texas lost as many as 100,000 oil jobs the last time prices collapsed in 2014 and 2015, and some companies never replaced all their workers. The state has diversified its economy since the 1990s, but restaurants, hotels and shopping malls in Houston and across the state still rely on the energy economy. Oil companies have already been laying off employees in recent months as crude prices sagged. Internationally, the price drop will reverberate differently from country to country. China and India, as huge importers of oil, stand to gain. But it’s a different story for Venezuela, a Russian ally that depends on its dwindling oil exports. The country is short of food and medicine, prompting many Venezuelans to leave for neighbouring countries and the United States. Iran, already under pressure from tightening American oil sanctions, will also be hurt by lower prices, adding to an economic burden that has led to growing discontent. Saudi Arabia may also be hurt, even though it precipitated the crisis. Saudi government finances and social programmes are based on oil sales, which are also meant to help diversify the economy. Twenty percent of the Saudi population is invested in the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, after its initial public offering last year. With the prospect of reduced earnings, Aramco shares have fallen below their IPO price. “There could be a large number of disgruntled citizens,” said Ellen Wald, a Middle East historian and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Centre. Lower oil prices have a mixed impact on the environment. Drilling goes down, as do releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas connected with climate change. But if prices stay low for a while, gas-guzzling cars and trucks may find more buyers. And as with any cycle, the question is how long it will last. “What goes down will go up,” said Dan Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign. c.2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
German Chancellor Angela Merkel won support on Friday for backing a climate change proposal that would eventually allot equal emissions rights to individuals, wherever they lived in the world. Negotiators are struggling to agree emissions-cutting guidelines in Vienna in long-running talks to agree a global climate change deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. Merkel said developing countries should be allowed to increase their emissions per capita while industrialised nations cut theirs, until both sides reached the same level. "Once (developing countries) reach the level of industrialised countries, the reduction begins," she said on Friday in the Japanese city of Kyoto. Aubrey Meyer, a climate expert at the Britain-based Global Commons Institute, is credited with bringing into common currency in 1995 the notion of per capita quotas. He welcomed Merkel's proposal. "People have rained abuses on it but they can't knock it down, it's bullet-proof in its methodology," he told Reuters on Friday of the idea, which he terms contraction and convergence. "It's a constitutional standard. All social revolutions have committed to straight equity: one person, one right." Merkel has focused on climate change while Germany chairs the G8 group of leading industrialised countries, brokering a statement in June calling for substantial emissions cuts. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh raised the issue of per capita targets at that G8 summit. India and China are fuelling their rapid economic growth by burning fossil fuels, especially coal, causing ballooning emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide as a result. But they are reluctant to accept emissions limits because they blame the problem of climate change on the rich, who have benefited from more than two centuries of industrialisation. Global carbon emissions are growing at nearly 3 percent annually. A panel of UN scientists said in May these must peak within eight years to keep the world on a course which the European Union says would avoid dangerous climate change. Merkel's suggestion received a cautious welcome on Friday from the UN's top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, who is leading this week's talks in Vienna. "It's probably the only equitable, ultimate solution," he said. "The question, though, is over what time frame could you get there and is a short time frame realistic? "You'd have to do a lot... to get to the same point by the middle of the century." Meyer wants to see tough action soon, entailing US citizens, for example, cutting their per capita emissions to one fifth of their present levels by 2020. Other climate experts are worried such a plan would put people off because it appears an impossible task. "You are not going to achieve climate goals by selling them as an austerity programme," said John Ashton, special representative for climate change at the British Foreign Office. Setting quotas per person smacked of rationing, he said. Meyer envisaged a system with some in-built flexibility, where everyone in the world would get the same quota of emissions permits, but people who couldn't meet that level could buy from others who did not use theirs. | 0 |
Hollande declared a state of emergency, ordering police and troops into the streets, and set three days of official mourning as a stunned nation sought to comprehend the simultaneous assault on restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium on a busy Friday evening. As a cross-border investigation gathered pace, prosecutors said the slaughter - claimed by Islamic State as revenge for French military action in Syria and Iraq - appeared to involve a multinational team with links to the Middle East, Belgium and possibly Germany as well as home-grown French roots. Ominously, Greek officials said one and perhaps two of the assailants had passed through Greece from Turkey alongside Syrian refugees fleeing violence in their homeland. In coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies, US Justice Department attorneys are working with French authorities to obtain further information that may be relevant to the Paris attacks, a Justice Department official said on Saturday. The worst carnage was unleashed as three gunmen systematically killed at least 89 people at a rock concert by an American band at the Bataclan theater before detonating explosive belts as anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault, officials said. Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, including a double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a soccer international. By Saturdaynight, 99 people were still in critical condition.
People gather around candles during a ceremony for the victims the day after a series of deadly attacks in the French capital of Paris, in Lausanne, Switzerland November 14, 2015. The banner reads : 'No to terrorism' and the candles reads : Solidarity Paris Beyrouth Ankara'
The bloodshed came as France, a founder member of the US-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State, was already on high alert for terrorist attacks, raising questions about how such a complex conspiracy could go undetected. People gather around candles during a ceremony for the victims the day after a series of deadly attacks in the French capital of Paris, in Lausanne, Switzerland November 14, 2015. The banner reads : 'No to terrorism' and the candles reads : Solidarity Paris Beyrouth Ankara' It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which Islamists killed 191 people. Arrests In Belgium Hollande said the attacks had been organized from abroad by Islamic State, with internal help. Three people were arrested in Belgium as part of an anti-terrorism probe centered on a Belgian hired car found near the site of one of the Paris attacks, Belgian prosecutors said. It was one of two vehicles used in a string of attacks in central Paris within the space of less than an hour. Sources close to the inquiry said one of the dead gunmen was French with ties to Islamist militants and had been under surveillance by the security services. French media said the man's brother and father had been were arrested on Saturday. A man arrested in Germany's southern state of Bavaria this month after guns and explosives were found in his car may also be linked to the Paris attacks, Bavaria's state premier said. The holder of a Syrian passport found near the body of one of the suicide bombers outside the soccer stadium passed though the Greek island of Leros in October, a Greek minister said. A Greek police source said the man had arrived in Leros with 69 refugees, where he was registered and had his fingerprints taken. Police declined to give his name. A Greek government source later said that a second suspected Paris attacker was also very likely to have passed through Greece. If confirmed, the infiltration of militants into the flow of refugees to carry out attacks in Europe could have far-reaching political consequences. The attacks fueled a debate raging in Europe about how to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and other migrants propelled by civil war in Syria, Iraq and Libya. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Commission have been pressing EU partners to ease Berlin's burden by taking in quotas of refugees. However, in a sign of potential divisions ahead, Poland said that the attacks meant it could not now take its share of migrants under the European Union relocation plan. Attacks Linked To Syria The carnage on the streets of the French capital followed recent attacks claimed by Islamic State: the apparent downing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt, where 224 people died, and bombings in Lebanon in which 43 died. Turkey has also pointed the finger at Islamic State over a bomb attack on a rally in Ankara last month in which more than 100 people were killed. All the attacks were linked to the war in Syria. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France had no intention of halting its air strikes. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged world leaders gathered for a summit in Turkey starting on Sunday to prioritize the fight against terrorism, saying the Paris attacks showed the time for words was now over.
Bullet impacts are seen in the window of the Le Carillon restaurant the morning after a series of deadly attacks in Paris , November 14, 2015. Reuters
Hollande pulled out of the G20 summit after declaring the first nationwide state of emergency since 1961. France will be represented by its foreign and finance ministers. Bullet impacts are seen in the window of the Le Carillon restaurant the morning after a series of deadly attacks in Paris , November 14, 2015. Reuters "Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action," the president said in a solemn address after meeting security chiefs. "France will be merciless towards these barbarians from Daesh," Hollande said, using an Arab acronym for Islamic State. Flags flew at half-mast and cinemas, theaters and other places of entertainment were closed, although schools and universities will reopen as normal on Monday. With the capital on edge, armed police rushed to a luxury hotel near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday evening, evacuated the building, sealed off a wide perimeter and closed nearby metro stations, only to say it had been a false alarm. Speaking after peace talks on Syria in Vienna, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: "We are witnessing a kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same time". In its claim of responsibility, Islamic State said the attacks were a response to France's military campaign. It also distributed an undated video in which a bearded militant warned in Arabic: "As long as you keep bombing, you will not live in peace. You will even fear traveling to the market." Searching For The Missing Updating the casualty toll, the Paris prosecutor said 129 people had been killed and 352 wounded, of whom 99 remained critical. Six attackers blew themselves up and one was shot by police. There may have been an eighth attacker, but this was not confirmed. The dead included one US citizen, one Swede, one Briton, two Belgians, two Romanians and two Mexicans, their governments said. Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, a junior at California State University, Long Beach, who was studying design in France was among those killed in the attacks, school officials said on Saturday. Nick Alexander, a member of the entourage of California-based rock band Eagles of Death Metal, was identified in a statement from his family as one of at least 89 people who died when gunmen stormed the Bataclan music hall in the midst ofFriday night's show.
A rose is pictured on a sign depicting the flag of France next to candles during a ceremony for the victims the day after a series of deadly attacks in the French capital of Paris, in Lausanne, Switzerland November 14, 2015. Reuters
Relatives and friends scoured Paris hospitals in search of people missing since Friday evening and believed to have gone to the Bataclan concert hall. Some anguished next of kin said their relatives were neither on the confirmed death toll nor among the wounded registered in hospitals. A rose is pictured on a sign depicting the flag of France next to candles during a ceremony for the victims the day after a series of deadly attacks in the French capital of Paris, in Lausanne, Switzerland November 14, 2015. Reuters Sylvestre, a young man who was at the Stade de France when bombs went off there, said he had been saved by his cellphone, which he was holding to his ear when a metal bolt hit it. Hollande temporarily reimposed border controls as part of the state of emergency to stop perpetrators escaping or new attackers entering the country. Local sports events in Paris were suspended, stores closed, the rock band U2 canceled a concert, and schools, universities and municipal buildings stayed shut. Emergency services were mobilized, police leave was canceled, 1,500 army reinforcements were drafted into the Paris region and hospitals recalled staff to cope with casualties. However, France said a global climate change summit in Paris at the end of the month would go ahead, amid heightened security. France has been on high alert since Islamist gunmen attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in January, killing 18 people. Those attacks briefly united France in defense of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But that unity has since broken down, with far-right populist Marine Le Pen gaining on both mainstream parties by blaming France's security problems on immigration and Islam. World leaders responded to the attacks in Paris with defiant pledges of solidarity. From Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin and across Europe and the Middle East, leaders offered their condolences. France ordered increased security at its missions abroad. Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands all tightened security measures. British police said the evacuation of London's Gatwick Airport on Saturday was connected to the discovery of a possible firearm in a bin, and that a 41-year-old man from France had been arrested. | 0 |
"Ride on a tiger and it's hard to climb down," goes a Chinese saying that is proving apt for Beijing's quarrels with Washington this year, when swollen ambitions at home are driving China on a harder tack abroad. China's outrage over US arms sales to Taiwan and President Barack Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama has shown that, in the wake of the global financial crisis, Beijing is growing pushier in public. In past decades, a poorer, more cautious China greeted US weapons sales to the disputed island with angry words and little else. Not now, as China enters the Year of the Tiger in its traditional lunar calendar cycle of talismanic animals. The Obama administration last week announced plans to ship $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and weapons control systems to the self-ruled island Beijing calls its own. China threatened to downgrade cooperation with Washington and for the first time sanction companies involved in such sales. Beijing this week also condemned Obama's plan to meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by China. China's loud ire adds to signs the country is becoming surer about throwing around its political weight, growing along with an economy soon likely to whir past Japan's as the world's second biggest, though it will still trail far behind the United States. Behind this assertiveness are domestic pressures likely to make it harder work for China's leaders to cool disputes with Washington and other Western capitals. "There is this paradox of increasing confidence externally and lack of confidence domestically," said Susan Shirk, a professor specialising in Chinese foreign policy at the University of California, San Diego. "There's also what I consider a serious misperception of the country's economic strength and how that translates in power." RESPECT AND REACH Chinese citizens and powerful constituencies, including the military, have been told through state media and leader's speeches that the nation's rising power would bring the nation greater international respect and reach. "Staunch and cool-headed, battling the roaring waves," said one headline in the People's Daily, celebrating President Hu Jintao's role in fighting the financial crisis. Having pulled through the global downturn with 8.7 percent growth in 2009, China's leaders face pressure to meet those expectations, or risk seeing their authority eroded. Well-placed analysts do not expect Sino-American friction to spiral into full-blown confrontation. Both sides have too much at stake, economically and politically. But China's stirring home-grown pressures will discourage Beijing from quietly stepping down over Taiwan and Tibet, and could encourage harder positions over trade disputes, exchange rate shifts and climate change policy, where national pride and prosperity are seen by many as threatened. "These perceptions of strength create expectations on the part of the Chinese public of how their leaders will behave internationally," said Shirk, who served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "It's too early to say there's been a strategic shift," she added. "But clearly it's going to be a difficult period for relations with the United States." NOT A PASSING SQUALL China's top-down political system gives the ruling Communist Party immense power to drive foreign policy. But that power is not unconditional. As revolutionary Communist ideology has sputtered, and social controls loosened by market reform, appeals to patriotic pride and national revival -- "prosperity and power" -- have become pillars of Party authority. China's leaders must in turn heed public reactions in crafting foreign policy, especially dealing with volatile subjects such as Taiwan and Tibet, seen by most Chinese as unquestionably parts of their country. "It's almost like a positive feed-back loop that puts China in a position where it can't be seen as weak or compromising, because people have had it drummed into them that China can't be weak or compromising," said Drew Thompson, director of China Studies at the Nixon Center, an institute in Washington, D.C. With China boasting robust growth while Western economies floundered, those public expectations have swelled. In a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (pewglobal.org) last year, 41 percent of Chinese respondents said the United States was the world's leading economic power. The same number, 41 percent, named their own country, China -- almost double the number who named it in 2008. The US gross domestic product was actually worth $14.2 trillion in 2008, while China's was worth $4.6 trillion -- for a much bigger population -- according to the respective statistics of each country. PRESSURE FROM THE INTERNET The domestic pressures bearing on China's leaders are clearest and loudest on the Internet, which the government says has 384 million users. Nationalist calls for tough steps against the United States, Japan or other countries echo online at times of tension, and can reach beyond what officials deem acceptable. "The Chinese government does pay careful attention to opinion on the Internet, and these troubles with the United States will affect that public opinion," said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. A Chinese public opinion poll last year organised by the Sydney-based Low Institute for International Policy found 50 percent of respondents thought the United States was a threat to their nation's security. Younger Chinese citizens were more likely to support that view. "The US view that this will all be a passing squall could be out of date," said Liu, who formerly worked as a government adviser. "China's expectations for itself are changing." Powerful arms of China's state could also bolster a harder stance against the West. China's Communist Party leaders keep a tight leash on the country's military. But after over two decades of near unbroken double-digit percentage growth in the official defence budget, People's Liberation Army officers have become more public about their expectations, including for a tough stand on Taiwan. Major-General Jin Yinan of China's National Defence University said in a Communist Party newspaper last month his government would have to punish the United States if it went ahead with selling new arms to Taiwan. "Our only choice is vigorous retaliation," he wrote in the Study Times, the newspaper of the Central Party School. Whether China really does take counter-steps awaits to be seen. The government has so far not specified any penalties on the U.S. companies selling the arms. Nor have officials even hinted at broader trade and economic hits at the United States, steps that could maul China's own economic health, alarm international investors, and turn public feeling against the government. But abandoning the threats of sanctions could also prove humiliating at home and abroad. "China has few palatable options for economic coercion," wrote Thompson in a comment on the arms sale dispute. | 0 |
The European Union is on the verge of a deal to boost renewable energy after resolving a battle over the controversial issue of biofuels on Thursday, but Italy's demand for a review in 2014 prevented a final agreement. "We have agreement on everything except the deletion of the review clause," the European Parliament's lead negotiator Claude Turmes told Reuters after closed-door negotiations. The European Commission, which originates EU law, proposed in January that 10 percent of all road transport fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020, mindful of climate change and the violent storms and rising sea levels it is expected to bring. Much of that 10 percent would come from biofuels, creating a huge potential market that is coveted by exporters such as Brazil and Indonesia, as well as EU farming nations. But environmentalists charged that biofuels made from grains and oilseeds were pushing up food prices and forcing subsistence farmers to expand agricultural land by hacking into rainforests and draining wetlands -- known as "indirect land-use change". The stand-off over biofuels ended with an agreement that up to almost a third of the EU's 10 percent goal would be met through electric cars and trains. The European Commission will come forward with proposals in 2010 to limit indirect land-use change, and biofuels from non-food sources will be promoted with a "double bonus" scheme. The provisional deal will need approval by the European Parliament and all 27 European Union nations before becoming law, but is not expected to change much. | 0 |
US President George W Bush is under pressure from European allies to give ground on climate change at next week's meeting of the world's richest countries, but policy experts say prospects for a breakthrough are slim. The sticking point is Bush's longstanding opposition to measurable goals for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that spur global warming. Bush enjoys a strong rapport with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is hosting the Group of Eight summit in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm on June 6-8 and has made fighting climate change the top issue at the summit. Combating global warming is also a concern for new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom Bush wants to forge a good relationship, and for outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a close friend to Bush and an ally in the Iraq war. As negotiators try to hammer out the final language in a communique, the United States has blocked an emerging consensus in favor of firm targets. It is unclear whether a last-minute compromise can be reached. "I think that there is considerable pressure coming from the Europeans for some type of American concessions on the issue of climate change," said Charles Kupchan, professor of international relations at Georgetown University. "Setting aside Iraq, if there is one issue that creates resentment, it is the sense that the United States is contributing callously, more than any other country, to global warming," Kupchan said. White House spokesman Tony Snow said he expected the United States to play a leadership role and emphasised initiatives Bush has already unveiled, including his goal of reducing US gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next decade. Acknowledging that climate change exists and must be addressed, Snow told reporters, "We believe the most effective way is to go aggressively after technologies that are going to mitigate the problem." Grant Aldonas, former undersecretary for international trade at the US Commerce Department and now with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Bush is likely to urge building on earlier initiatives, such as encouraging the development of biofuels and energy-efficient technology. Washington is seen as the summit's "odd man out" on global warming, but Aldonas said Bush is used to that: "I don't think at this stage, having taken the sort of opprobrium of the international community over Kyoto, that the president is going agree to numerical targets at all." The Kyoto Protocol is an international pact to cut climate warming emissions, which the Bush administration rejects as a threat to the US economy. But there has been a clear rhetorical shift at the White House which now acknowledges that climate change is a concern. Meeting this month with Britain's Blair, Bush went out of his way to mention that they spent "a lot of time" discussing climate change. He said the United States wanted to help solve what he called a serious issue. "I think the president actually has been convinced by the science," Aldonas said. He and other analysts said Bush is now facing new domestic pressures to act on climate change. Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the green group Environmental Defense said G8 negotiators were emerging from a "fog of diplomacy" to realise that the White House position on climate change was not necessarily shared by Congress, the US courts or the American people. "The fact that Congress is now moving ahead to consider cap and trade legislation (to curb climate-warming emissions) and the US states ... have taken the lead on this issue, they are showing the rest of the world that there is more to America's position on global warming than the administration's 'Just say no' approach," Petsonk said. | 0 |
After a lightning visit to Iraq, US President George W Bush arrives in Australia on Tuesday where he can expect anti-Iraq war protests as he attends an Asia-Pacific leaders' summit in Sydney. The majority of Australians are opposed to the US-led Iraq war, despite their government's full support and Australian troops serving in Iraq. Bush is due to arrive in Sydney on Tuesday night, a few hours after a "Stop Bush 2007" rally in front of the city's main railway station. Several protests are planned for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC) week, culminating in a major march by the "Stop Bush Coalition" on Saturday, when the 21 Asia-Pacific leaders hold a summit at the Sydney Opera House. "We are here today on the eve of APEC to tell George Bush that he is not welcome, wherever he and his architects of death may travel," said US Iraq veteran Matt Howard in Sydney. Police have refused to grant a march permit for Saturday's demonstration and say they expect violent protests at APEC, launching the nation's biggest ever security operation. "Police will not tolerate unlawful, illegal or dangerous behaviour and we will take swift action. We cannot make it any clearer," police said after agreeing to Tuesday's rally. COURT ACTION Police took court action on Tuesday to stop the major APEC protest, but the court adjourned the case until Wednesday, saying protesters had insufficient time to prepare for the case. Police say they are not opposed to a march but have rejected the protesters' planned route, which passes the US Consulate in Sydney, but is several city blocks from the summit venue. Authorities have erected a 5-km (3-mile) security fence across the central business district to isolate the leaders in the Sydney Opera House and nearby hotels. A total of 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the city centre. "We need to recognise that there will be many thousands of Australians peacefully protesting against Bush during APEC and they are in the majority," said New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy. But he said the anti-Bush sentiment did not mean Australians were anti-US "As Australians we still believe strongly in the US alliance but most of us think that it would be better served without President Bush, said council president Cameron Murphy. An opinion poll released on Tuesday and commissioned by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War found 52 percent of Australians believed Bush was the worst president in US history. Just 32 percent said he was not, while the remainder were undecided. "There is a clear majority of Australians who believe George Bush is the worst ... and that is based primarily on his Iraq war policy," said association spokesman Robert Marr. GLOBAL WARMING PROTESTS Protesters also plan to demonstrate against global warming, human rights abuses in China and nuclear proliferation. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has made climate change a major issue at APEC, but has said there will be no binding greenhouse gas emission targets, while the United States is pushing for a strong statement from the leaders towards a world trade pact. Green protesters chained themselves on Tuesday to equipment in the Australian port of Newcastle in the third APEC protest this week. Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter. APEC's economies -- which include the United States, Japan, China and Russia -- account for nearly half of global trade and 56 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Asia-Pacific leaders will pledge to ensure that the Doha round of global trade talks "enter their final phase this year", according to a draft APEC leaders' statement obtained by Reuters. World Trade Organisation talks resumed on Monday in Geneva to discuss draft texts aimed at breaking the deadlock between developed and developing nations in global trade talks. The first leader to arrive in Australia was Chinese President Hu Jintao, who landed in Western Australia state on Monday, where he was greeted by a Falun Gong candlelight protest against human rights abuses in China. Hu will visit an iron-making plant on Tuesday in the state, which is a major exporter of commodities fuelling China's booming economy, then fly to the Australian capital Canberra, before landing in Sydney later in the week. Falun Gong plan protests in Sydney during Hu's visit. | 0 |
While the vaccines remain remarkably protective against COVID-19, especially against serious illness, headlines about breakthrough infections and new recommendations that vaccinated people should sometimes wear masks have left many people confused and worried. While new research shows vaccinated people can become infected and carry high levels of the coronavirus, it’s important to remember that those cases are rare, and it’s primarily the unvaccinated who get infected and spread the virus. “If you’re vaccinated, you’ve done the most important thing for you and your family and friends to keep everyone safe,” Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said. “There’s substantially more freedom for people who are vaccinated, but the idea that everything is the same as the summer of 2019 is not the case.” If I’m vaccinated, why do I need to worry about Delta? No vaccine offers 100 percent protection. Think of vaccine antibodies like a sea wall designed to protect a town from a storm surge, says Erin Bromage, a comparative immunologist and biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Most of the time, the wall stands up to the pounding waves, but a hurricane might be forceful enough to allow some water to get through. Compared with earlier forms of the virus, Delta is like a viral hurricane; it’s far more infectious and presents a bigger challenge to even a vaccinated immune system. “Vaccinations give you that extra protection you wouldn’t normally have,” Bromage said. “But when you hit a big challenge, like getting near an unvaccinated person who has a high viral load, that wall is not always going to hold.” The good news is the current crop of vaccines available in the United States is doing a remarkable job of protecting people from serious illness, hospitalization and death. More than 97 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated. And new data from Singapore shows that even when vaccinated patients are hospitalized with delta breakthrough infections, they are far less likely to need supplemental oxygen, and they clear the virus faster compared with unvaccinated patients. What’s the real risk of a breakthrough infection after vaccination? Breakthrough infections make headlines, but they remain uncommon. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped tracking all breakthrough cases in May, about half of all states report at least some data on breakthrough events. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently analyzed much of the state-reported data and found that breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths are extremely rare events among those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The rate of breakthrough cases reported among those fully vaccinated is “well below 1 percent in all reporting states, ranging from 0.01% in Connecticut to 0.29 percent in Alaska,” according to the Kaiser analysis. But many breakthrough infections are probably never reported because people who are infected don’t have symptoms or have mild symptoms that end before the person even thinks about being tested. “Breakthrough infections are pretty rare, but unless we have a population-based sample we don’t know the level of rarity,” said Dr. Asaf Bitton, executive director of Ariadne Labs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “A lot of people with mild scratchy throat for a couple days may have had them, but we don’t know. It’s not a failure of the vaccine that we’re having breakthrough cases. It’s been estimated that we’ve staved off 100,000 to 200,000 deaths since the vaccine campaign started.” What is clear is that the risk of a breakthrough infection increases the more opportunities you give delta to challenge the wall of protection conferred by your vaccine. Big crowded events — like a July 4 celebration in Provincetown, Massachusetts, or the packed Lollapalooza concert in Chicago — pose a much greater risk that a vaccinated person will cross paths with an infected person carrying a high viral load. “The more people you put yourself in contact with, the more risk you have, but it also depends on the local climate of risk,” Gonsalves said. “Soon we’ll probably see a Lollapalooza outbreak. All these people crushed together is an ideal situation for the spread of delta.” When should I wear a mask? The CDC has a color-coded map of COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States. Blue and yellow zones show relatively low levels of infections, while orange and red zones indicate areas where cases in the past week were above 50 cases per 100,000 people. The agency advises people to wear masks if they live in an orange or red zone — which now accounts for about 80 percent of the counties in the United States. Infection numbers remain relatively low in much of the Northeast and Upper Midwest, while delta has caused huge spikes in cases in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida. The problem with the map is that case counts are changing rapidly and may surge in your local community before the map has changed colors. Even if you’re certain you’re living in a highly vaccinated community with very low case counts, it makes sense to consider the case counts and vaccination rates in nearby communities as well, because people — and viruses — cross state and county boundaries all the time. Most experts agree that you don’t need to wear a mask outdoors if you’re not in a crowd and have plenty of distance (at least 6 feet) from people whose vaccination status isn’t known. It’s still risky to attend a packed outdoor concert, but if you do, wear a mask. “I would still suggest wearing a mask if you are indoors with people whose vaccination status you don’t know, especially if you will be within a few feet of them for any amount of time, or if you will be in the room for a long period of time with those people,” said J Alex Huffman, an aerosol scientist and associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Denver. “I don’t wear a mask indoors in all situations now, because I’m fully vaccinated, but I put my N95 mask on whenever I go into indoor public spaces.” Should I upgrade my mask? You will get the most protection from a high-quality medical mask like an N95 or a KN95, although you want to be sure you have the real thing. A KF94 is a high-quality medical mask made in Korea, where counterfeits are less likely. If you don’t have a medical mask, you still get strong protection from double masking with a simple surgical mask under a cloth mask. A mask with an exhale valve should never be worn, since it allows plumes of viral particles to escape, and counterfeit masks may have faulty valves that let germs in. You may want to pick your mask based on the setting. A cloth mask may be adequate for a quick trip into an empty convenience store in an area with high vaccination rates. But a higher-quality mask makes sense during air travel or in a crowded grocery store, especially in communities where vaccination rates are low and case counts are high. Masks with straps or ties around the back of the head seal more tightly than masks with ear loops. “All the mitigation efforts we used before need to be better to hold off the delta variant, and this includes masks,” Huffman said. “I strongly encourage people to upgrade their mask to something with high filter quality and something that fits tightly to their face. The No. 1 factor, in my opinion, is to make sure the mask is sealed well all around the edges — over the nose bridge, by the cheeks and under the chin. So any mask that fits tightly is better than almost any loosefitting mask.” What’s the risk of hanging out with my vaccinated friends and family? Vaccinated people are at very low risk when they spend time, unmasked, with their vaccinated friends and family members. “I don’t think mask-wearing is critical,” Huffman said. “If you are indoors with a small number of people you know are vaccinated, wearing a mask is low on my list of worries.” But some circumstances might require extra precautions. While it’s unusual for a vaccinated person to spread the virus to another vaccinated person, it’s theoretically possible. A vaccinated friend who is going to crowded bars, packed concerts or traveling to a COVID hot spot is a bigger risk than someone who avoids crowds and spends most of their time with vaccinated people. With the delta variant spreading, Bitton suggests an “outdoor first” strategy, particularly for families with unvaccinated children or family members at high risk. If you can take your event outside to a backyard or patio this summer and minimize your time indoors, you lower your risk. Spending time with smaller groups of vaccinated friends has less risk than attending a big party, even if you believe everyone at the party is vaccinated. If you’re indoors, open the windows to improve ventilation. If someone in the group is at very high risk because of age or because they are immunocompromised, it’s reasonable to ask even vaccinated people to be tested before a visit. A simple rapid home test can even be offered to guests to be sure everyone is COVID-free. Can I still dine at restaurants? The answer depends on local conditions, your tolerance for risk and the personal health of those around you. Risk is lowest in communities with high vaccination rates and very low case counts. A restaurant meal in Vermont, where two-thirds of the population is vaccinated, poses less risk than an indoor meal in Alabama or Mississippi, where just one-third of the residents are vaccinated. Parents of unvaccinated children and people with compromised immune systems, who studies show may get less protection from vaccines, may want to order takeout or dine outdoors as an added precaution. Is it safe to travel? Should I skip the peanuts and water and keep my mask on? Airplanes are typically well ventilated and not a major source of outbreaks, but taking precautions is still a good idea. The potential for exposure to an infected person may be even higher in the terminal, sitting in airport restaurants and bars, or going through the security line. In airplanes, air is refreshed roughly every two to three minutes — a higher rate than in grocery stores and other indoor spaces. While airlines still require passengers to wear masks, people are allowed to remove them to drink water or eat. To prevent air from circulating to everyone throughout the cabin, airplane ventilation systems keep airflow contained to a few rows. As a result, an infected passenger poses the most risk to those sitting in the seats in the immediate area. Most experts say that they use a high-quality medical mask, like an N95 or KF94, when they fly. If you don’t have one, double masking is advised. For a vaccinated person, the risk of removing a mask briefly to eat or drink during a flight is low, but it’s better to keep it on as much as possible. The CDC says it’s best for unvaccinated people, including children, to avoid flying. Bromage said he recently traveled by air and took his mask off briefly to drink a beverage, but kept it on for most of the flight. He said he would be more comfortable removing his mask to eat if he knew the people next to him were vaccinated. He said he would be more concerned if the person next to him didn’t seem to care about COVID precautions or wore the mask under the nose. “If you’ve got a random person next to you, especially a chatty person, I’d keep the mask on,” he said. How safe are buses, subways and trains for vaccinated people? Most buses, trains and subways still require everyone to wear a mask, which lowers risk. While vaccinated people are well protected, the risk of viral exposure increases the longer the ride and the more crowded the train car or bus. For many people, riding public transit is essential for getting to work or school, and wearing a well-fitted medical mask or double mask is recommended. When public transit is optional, the decision about whether to ride should factor in local vaccination rates and whether case counts are rising. Can I hug and visit older relatives? What about unvaccinated children? While it’s generally considered safe for vaccinated people to hug and spend time together unmasked, parents of unvaccinated children have more risks to consider, particularly when visiting older relatives. In communities with low case counts and high vaccination rates, it’s generally considered safe for unvaccinated children from a single household to spend time with vaccinated grandparents. But as the delta variant spreads and children return to school, the risks of close contact also increase for older or immune-compromised people who are more vulnerable to complications from COVID-19, even if they’re vaccinated. When families plan a visit to a high-risk relative, it’s a good idea to minimize other exposures, avoiding restaurant dining or working out at the gym in the week leading up to the visit. Even though the risk of a vaccinated person spreading COVID-19 remains low, vaccinated grandparents should also reduce their personal exposure when they spend time with unvaccinated children. “I have not been masking up indoors with my octogenarian parents at this point, because I am still very careful in the way I wear masks in public settings,” Huffman, the aerosol scientist, said. “But if I had more interactions that increased my overall risk of exposure, I would strongly consider masking up when indoors with vulnerable individuals.” Rapid home tests are an added precaution when visiting grandparents or an immune-compromised family member. Take a test a few days before the visit as well as the day of the visit. Home tests are “a wonderful option for people with a little more anxiety right now in regards to the virus,” Bromage said. “What we’re doing is buying those, and each and everyone tests before they come together — literally right before we’re together. When everyone is clear, you can enjoy that time together.” How do I know if I have the delta variant? If you’re diagnosed in the US with COVID-19, the odds are overwhelming that you have the delta variant. The CDC now estimates that delta accounts for more than 82 percent of cases in the United States. The delta variant has become dominant in other countries as well. In late July the World Health Organization said delta accounted for 75 percent or more of the cases in many countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and the UK. That said, standard COVID tests won’t tell you if your infection was caused by the delta variant or another variant of the virus. While health departments may use genomic sequencing to identify levels of different variants in a community, this information typically isn’t shared with individuals. You still need to isolate and seek medical advice if you have low blood oxygen levels, have trouble breathing or have other worrisome symptoms. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
Hundreds of people posed naked on Switzerland's shrinking Aletsch glacier on Saturday for US photographer Spencer Tunick as part of a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming. Tunick, perched on a ladder and using a megaphone, directed nearly 600 volunteers from all over Europe and photographed them on a rocky outcrop overlooking the glacier, which is the largest in the Alps. Later he took pictures of them standing in groups on the mass of ice and lying down. Camera crews were staged at five different points on the glacier to take photographs. Glaciers are sensitive to climate change and have been receding since the start of the industrial age but the pace of shrinkage has accelerated in recent years. The environmental group Greenpeace, which organised the shoot, said the aim was to "establish a symbolic relationship between the vulnerability of the melting glacier and the human body." The Aletsch descends around the south side of the Jungfrau mountain in the Upper Rhone Valley. Alpine glaciers have lost about one-third of their length and half their volume over the past 150 years. The Aletsch ice mass has retreated by 115 metres (377 ft) in the last two years alone, said Greenpeace. Tunick has staged mass nude photo shoots in cities across the world, from Newcastle, Britain, to Mexico City, where a record 18,000 people took off their clothes in the Mexican capital's Zocalo square in May. Speaking to Geneva's Le Temps newspaper in an interview published before the shoot on Saturday, Tunick said his photographs were both works of art and political statements. "I will try to treat the body on two levels. On an abstract level, as if they were flowers or stones. And on a more social level, to represent their vulnerability and humanity with regard to nature and the city and to remind people where we come from." Switzerland has about 1,800 glaciers and almost of them are losing ground. Greenpeace said if global warming continues unabated, most glaciers will disappear from the Earth by 2080. | 0 |
Soaring food and energy prices could trigger political upheaval and riots in developing countries, the United Nations world food body chief Jacques Diouf said on Wednesday. Food prices are booming: the Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index in July stood at its highest level since its inception in 1990, and was almost 70 percent higher than in 2000, the Rome-based FAO director-general said. "There will be very serious strain on the little resources they (developing countries) have and a risk of social and political conflicts," Diouf said in a an interview for Reuters Television. "If food prices continue to be high, there are risks of riots." "If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food prices, then you have the elements of a very serious crisis in the future," he added. Protests over food prices have already taken place in some African countries, including Niger, Guinea and Burkina Faso, and in Yemen and Mexico. Food costs account for the bulk of people's incomes in the world's poorest countries. More than 2 billion people live on $2 a day, according to Diouf. Many of the poorest countries depend on imported crude oil, which is now trading at near record high prices. The world's poorest people are the most vulnerable to the impact of surging cereals, vegetable oils and dairy prices. Food prices are soaring because of falling stocks, rising production costs due to higher energy prices, adverse weather, faster economic growth and rising biofuels demand.
BOOST OUTPUT Diouf, who was on an official visit to London to meet foreign office and aid officials, said African countries needed to boost food output to counter the upward pressure on local food prices and to produce their own biofuels. "We have to take into consideration the great potential of natural resources, of water, soil and also people that exists in developing countries in general, and in Africa," the veteran Senegalese food agency chief said. Diouf said soaring food prices would make it tougher in the short term for the international community to move closer to its millennium development goal to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. But he said that if the right policies were adopted in developing countries -- investments in rural infrastructure and in water control -- prospects should improve. Diouf estimated that some 854 million people are severely malnourished, the vast majority in Africa and Asia. He said a major conference to be hosted by FAO was planned for June 2008 in Rome to discuss linkages between food prices, green fuel and climate change. Several heads of state are expected to attend. | 0 |
The singer recorded a video message, with "The Office" actor Rainn Wilson, explorer Levison Wood and Robert Irwin, son of the late Australian conservationist Steve Irwin, also lending their voices to the project in conjunction with Britain's University of Exeter. The global climate summit, hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, kicks off in Glasgow on Oct 31. "This year our leaders are deciding the global actions required on the environment climate emergency in a critical decade for our planet," Eilish said. "We must stand together and speak up to save our planet, not just for us, but for our future generations, and we need urgent, urgent action now and to work together as one. Britain has cast the summit as the last big chance for countries to commit to steps to slow rising temperatures. "Courage. That's what our world’s leaders need more than anything. The decisions that they make about the climate crisis in the next decade are the most important decisions in our planet’s history," Wilson said. Arctic Basecamp was founded by Gail Whiteman, a social scientist who studies how decision makers make sense of environmental threats such as climate change. The group has set up a tent camp for scientists at the World Economic Forum in Davos and will be attending the COP26 summit. "This is a crisis and the Arctic is sounding the alarm. It is time that world leaders come together to create real change that ensures a safe future for humanity," Whiteman said in a statement. | 0 |
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi warned on Tuesday that 10 other EU nations backed his efforts to block an EU climate plan, prompting further doubts over European action on global warming. Berlusconi shocked other European Union leaders at a summit last week by threatening to veto an EU proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2020 unless it was adapted to protect Italian industry. The move added Italy's weight to a group of former communist nations that believe the curbs will make their coal-powered industry uncompetitive, particularly with economists now predicting a sharp slow-down in the world economy. "It cannot be us, who have the biggest manufacturing economy in Europe along with Germany, to take on the costs that would depress our economy, our automotive sector, compared with other economies, in a moment of crisis," Berlusconi said, winning applause from business people at a conference in Naples. He compared the EU -- which sees itself as at the vanguard of moves to tackle climate change -- to the naive fictional character Don Quixote for acting without similar commitments from other big emitters like Russia and India, China and the United States. "I've always admired Don Quixote," he said. "Absolutely! Let's go on the attack! But let's go on the attack with rationality. And above all... in a balanced and just way." Eight countries -- Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia -- last week urged the rest of the EU to recognise their economic difficulties. It was not clear what other two countries Berlusconi was referring to. HARDBALL But analysts and environmentalists say Italy's unexpected change of stance has caught the EU off-guard and threatens the bloc's ability to meet its own climate goals. "Nobody really envisaged a west European state playing hardball," said analyst Simon Tilford at London's Centre for European Reform. "It won't dilute the target, but it might make it harder to meet it," he added. "And this is all before the economic crisis has really started to make itself felt." Italy's Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo told reporters at a meeting of ecology ministers this week that she would push for a commitment to review climate targets, but other ministers said she did not raise the subject in their talks. That led to accusations that leaders from Italy and eastern Europe were playing to voters and business audiences at home. New green technologies for energy efficiency and renewable energy could create 120,000 jobs in Italy, said Greenpeace spokesman Mark Breddy. "Mr Berlusconi is prepared to ignore the interests of his people for the sake of another fortnight in Europe's political limelight," he added. "But the EU is not the Roman Empire and he's certainly not the emperor." Italy and east European nations last week won increased influence over the detail of the legislation to be agreed at a December summit, prompting angry protest from the European Parliament, which fears being sidelined. The Parliament has equal powers of so-called "co-decision" on the matter and has so far favoured tough moves regardless of the impact on traditional industries like steel and cement. "We still have grave differences on the 'hows' of European democracy, and the environmental substance of Europe," said German Green lawmaker Daniel Cohn-Bendit. | 0 |
Japan's top business lobby could spark policy change on global warming by sending a strong message to its counterparts in the United States, former US Vice President Al Gore said in a speech in Tokyo on Monday. Gore was speaking to executives at the Keidanren (Japanese Business Federation) as part of a campaign to promote his award-winning documentary film 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which opens in Japan this week. "The Japanese business community, because of the respect with which you are regarded, can have a powerful influence on the shaping of opinions within the US business community," Gore said. "When that changes, then US policy will change," he said, urging the members of Keidanren to send the strongest possible message to big business in the United States. The United States withdrew from the Kyoto protocol, which mandates cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the 2008-2012 period, saying the agreement would be harmful to the US economy. As host of the 1997 talks that forged the protocol, the Japanese government has urged major polluters including the United States, China and India to work harder to combat climate change, most recently during a visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Europe last week. Japan's own emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to 1.36 billion tonnes in the year to March 2006, up 0.6 percent on the previous year and 14.1 percent adrift of its objective to cut emissions to 6 percent below their 1990 level. But Gore said that corporate Japan had a special role to play. "The business leadership of Japan can lead the way and lead the business community of the world," Gore said. "Your determination to be a part of the solution can be the key to the world successfully solving this crisis." More than 330 US cities have endorsed the Kyoto protocol, in a sign of grass roots support for its aims, Gore said. The one-time presidential candidate did not answer questions from the media on Monday. None of the business executives at the event asked him about rumours that he might build on the higher profile created by his environmental campaign to stand for the presidency again. | 2 |
Bureaucracy and a blizzard of information requests have stalled applications to the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) over projects to cope with climate change in a country that faces typhoons, droughts and rising sea levels, said Mark Joven, undersecretary at the Philippines finance department. It can take as many as four years for projects to get going - too long for urgent needs, such as flood defences. "By then the city applying for a flood facility would already have sunk under the flood it wanted to solve," Joven said. GCF, created to help developing nations cut carbon emissions and adapt to a warmer world, said it had helped the Philippines build know-how but its work faced challenges over permits and Manila's moves to change which entity dealt with the fund. Yet the Philippines is not alone in raising complaints. Government and development officials from seven countries said their GCF applications faced bottlenecks, with several asking not to be named to avoid harming relations with the fund. Meanwhile, efforts to adjust GCF policies to ease access to funding have been hindered by wrangling on the board between rich and poor nations over how it should approach climate finance, a board member and a German climate finance official said. "We allowed it to become too political," said board member Victor Vinas, saying national rivalries on the board unrelated to climate politics also sometimes hindered these efforts. A GCF spokesperson did not comment on board issues or complaints over bureaucracy but said the fund was accelerating its work. Helping developing nations secure funds to cope with climate change is a central issue at the UN COP26 conference in Glasgow this month, but funds offered so far have not come near the $1.3 trillion some developing states say they need each year by 2030. APPLICATIONS SWELL The GCF, the largest intergovernmental fund to address climate change, is part of that financing infrastructure. Governments have pledged $17.3 billion to the fund since its launch in 2014, of which the fund has received $11.5 billion. Applications to the fund swelled to $22.4 billion by October, a GCF document showed. The GCF says no project approval has faced any delay so far because of a lack of funds. The fund has committed $10 billion to 190 projects, yet only $2.1 billion has been paid out so far, the GCF website says. The GCF spokesperson said disbursement lagged as funds were paid over a project's lifetime and many were at an early stage. The pandemic had also slowed progress, the spokesperson added. But some blame other factors for slow approvals. Pierre Daniel-Telep, a former GCF official and now a climate finance consultant, said the fund's conditions and milestones attached to payouts were often unrealistic or too difficult for poorly-resourced governments to meet. The fund also aims to draw in private cash, but a report by the GCF's independent evaluation unit said in February the fund attracted just 18 cents in private cash for each dollar it invested on projects focused on adapting to climate change, citing "insufficiently predictable" decision-making. The GCF said its portfolio of approved projects had grown by 40 percent since that February report and that it attracted about $2.70 for every $1 dollar invested on average across its portfolio. FACING HURDLES GCF Executive Director Yannick Glemarec said that processing project proposals had often taken a long time in the past but the fund had now built up its operational capacity and improved governance to speed up. He said the GCF approved projects worth $2.5 billion every year and had cut the time between proposal review and first pay out to an average of 12-17 months, from 26-28 months in 2018. He also said the fund was hiring five people a month to manage its portfolio. Some projects have moved fast. A solar plant in Mongolia was operating just over a year after GCF approval, the fund said. But Glemarec said progress was at risk, with the possibility approvals could be delayed next year due to insufficient funds. Joe Thwaites, a climate finance expert at US-based think tank the World Resources Institute, said the GCF was operating in line with or slightly behind other climate finance institutions in the first four years of their lives. He said two other UN-backed funds, the Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility, had more streamlined processes because they had been around longer, starting around 2007 and 1992, respectively. But he said the GCF needed to rethink some demands it put on developing countries. As an example, he cited GCF requests in some cases for 30 years of weather data from countries where this didn't exist because of conflict. "That's a good example of where very, very well-meaning requirements ... can put up hurdles particularly for smaller entities," Thwaites said. The GCF spokesperson said it had a flexible approach about data and was working to ease challenges around data requests. | 0 |
Three days after polls closed, Biden has a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to Edison Research. Winning Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes would put the former vice president over the 270 he needs to secure the presidency. Biden would also win the election if he prevails in two of the three other key states where he held narrow leads on Friday: Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Like Pennsylvania, all three were still processing ballots on Friday. In both Pennsylvania and Georgia, Biden overtook Trump on the strength of mail-in ballots that were cast in urban Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia and Atlanta. With his re-election chances fading, Trump escalated his baseless attacks on the results, appearing at the White House on Thursday evening to falsely claim the election was being "stolen" from him. His campaign is pursuing a series of lawsuits across battleground states that legal experts described as unlikely to succeed in altering the election outcome. The campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, asserted in a statement on Friday that the elections in Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania all suffered from improprieties and that Trump would eventually prevail in Arizona. "This election is not over," he said. "Biden is relying on these states for his phony claim on the White House, but once the election is final, President Trump will be re-elected." Election officials in those states have said they are unaware of any irregularities. In Pennsylvania, Biden moved ahead of Trump by 5,587 votes on Friday morning, while in Georgia, he opened up a 1,097-vote lead. Both margins were expected to grow as additional ballots were tallied. Biden, 77, would be the first Democrat to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992. In Arizona, Biden's lead had narrowed on Thursday to about 47,000 votes, and in Nevada he was ahead by about 11,500. Pennsylvania, one of three traditionally Democratic states along with Michigan and Wisconsin that handed Trump his 2016 victory, had long been seen as crucial to the 2020 race, and both candidates lavished enormous sums of money and time on the state. As the country held its breath for a result in the White House race, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to complete their vote totals. TRUMP'S DIMINISHING LEADS Trump, 74, has sought to portray as fraudulent the slow counting of mail-in ballots, which surged in popularity due to fears of exposure to the coronavirus through in-person voting. States have historically taken time after Election Day to tally all votes. The close election has underscored the nation's deep political divides, and if he wins Biden will likely face a difficult task governing in a deeply polarised Washington. Republicans could keep control of the US Senate pending the outcome of four undecided Senate races, including two in Georgia, and they would likely block large parts of his legislative agenda, including expanding healthcare and fighting climate change. The winner will have to tackle a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 people in the United States and left millions more out of work, even as the country still grapples with the aftermath of months of unrest over race relations and police brutality.
Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden makes a statement on the 2020 US presidential election results during a brief appearance before reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, Nov 5, 2020. REUTERS
Trump fired off several tweets in the early morning hours on Friday, and repeated some of the complaints he aired earlier at the White House. "I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST," he said on Twitter, without offering any evidence that any illegal votes have been cast. Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden makes a statement on the 2020 US presidential election results during a brief appearance before reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, US, Nov 5, 2020. REUTERS Twitter flagged the post as possibly misleading, something it has done to numerous posts by Trump since Election Day. In an extraordinary assault on the democratic process, Trump appeared in the White House briefing room on Thursday evening and baselessly alleged the election was being "stolen" from him. Offering no evidence, Trump lambasted election workers and sharply criticised polling before the election that he said was designed to suppress the vote because it favoured Biden. Trump's campaign, meanwhile, has filed lawsuits in several states, though judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly rejected challenges there. Biden campaign senior legal adviser Bob Bauer called them part of a "broader misinformation campaign." 'RIG AN ELECTION' "They're trying to rig an election, and we can't let that happen," said Trump, who spoke in the White House briefing room but took no questions. Several TV networks cut away during his remarks, with anchors saying they needed to correct his statements. Biden, who earlier in the day urged patience as votes were counted, responded on Twitter: "No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever." Trump supporters, some carrying guns, ramped up their demonstrations against the process on Thursday night. In Arizona, Trump and Biden supporters briefly scuffled outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix. In Philadelphia, police said they arrested one man and seized a weapon as part of an investigation into a purported plot to attack the city's Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted. | 0 |
The International Monetary Fund's largest-ever distribution of monetary reserves will provide additional liquidity for the global economy, supplementing member countries’ foreign exchange reserves and reducing their reliance on more expensive domestic or external debt, Georgieva said in a statement. "The allocation is a significant shot in the arm for the world and, if used wisely, a unique opportunity to combat this unprecedented crisis," she said. Countries can use the SDR allocation to support their economies and step up their fight against the coronavirus crisis, but should not use the fiscal space to delay needed economic reforms or debt restructuring, the IMF said in separate guidance document. IMF member countries will receive SDRs -- the fund's unit of exchange backed by dollars, euros, yen, sterling and yuan -- in proportion with their existing quota shareholdings in the fund. Georgieva said about $275 billion of the allocation will go to emerging market and developing countries, with some $21 billion to flow to low-income countries. Georgieva said the IMF was encouraging rich countries that receive SDRs to channel them to poorer countries that need them more. One key option is for wealthier countries to contribute SDRs to the IMF's existing Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust for low-income countries, she said. The IMF was also continuing to work on a possible Resilience and Sustainability Trust that could use channeled SDRs to help the most vulnerable countries with structural transformation, including dealing with climate change, she said. Another possibility, she said, could be to channel SDRs to support lending by multilateral development banks. The IMF's last SDR distribution came in 2009 when member countries received $250 billion in SDR reserves to help ease the global financial crisis. To spend their SDRs, countries would first have to exchange them for underlying hard currencies, requiring them to find a willing exchange partner country. | 0 |
Her parents, both university lecturers, didn’t approve, but she was determined to try to make a difference — all the more challenging in China, where people trying to make a difference often evoke suspicion. Or worse. In the two years since, she has waged a lonely, often frustrating campaign to raise awareness of the perils of a warming planet. She has joined international “climate strikes,” planted trees in her hometown in southern China, Guilin, and mounted a flurry of one-woman protests. She has been called the Greta Thunberg of China, a nod to the Swedish activist who is only a few weeks younger. Thunberg, though, has been feted for her activism. She speaks at Davos and the United Nations. Time magazine named her its person of the year in 2019. In China, where any kind of activism amounts to a challenge to the ruling Communist Party, Ou has been ignored, ridiculed and ostracised as well as harassed by school officials and the police. When she joined the Global Climate Strike on Sept 25 in Shanghai, an international event that attracted thousands of protesters at more than 3,500 locations, she was detained and questioned for several hours by the police. The officers scolded her. “They thought what we were doing was meaningless,” she said. China has had a poor environmental record, prioritising its breakneck economic transformation over the past four decades. Now there are signs it has begun to consider the consequences of unchecked development like choking pollution, contaminated waterways and unusually heavy flooding that was attributed to climate change. The country’s leader, Xi Jinping, recently committed to making the sort of bold steps that activists like Ou have been calling for. He pledged that China’s emissions would peak by 2030 and that the country would reach “carbon neutrality” — the point where emissions are balanced with carbon offsets or removal — by 2060. Xi’s promises have been welcomed by many but also greeted with wary skepticism, since meeting those goals will require significant changes to economic policy. Ou, who does not consider herself a critic of the government, demurred when asked about the goals. “It is for scientists to assess how strong it is,” she said. She then cited a recent report by three prominent climate researchers warning that China needed to meet those targets much sooner — peak emissions by 2025 and carbon neutrality by 2050 — if the world hoped to avoid catastrophic damage from global warming. “Everyone should realise that the climate crisis is already the biggest existential crisis facing mankind,” she said. People needed to read about the crisis, to understand it and talk to their friends and family about it. “When they really read and understand it, they will know what they should do,” Ou said. Ou, who turns 18 on Dec 11, was born in Guilin and grew up on a college campus in a city renowned for its natural beauty. In one of several telephone interviews, she described hikes in the parks and mountains that surround the city. Nature was, she felt, “injected into my blood and bone.” She liked school. She played soccer, although few other girls did. As a hobby, she drew and painted watercolors and later comics. Now she feels hobbies are indulgences. “In the face of such a big problem at this moment, at every moment, when life is being maimed and tortured, what excuses do we have to entertain for our own desires?” she said. Her ecological awakening, she said, began with a dream she had in January 2018. In it, she went to a restaurant where customers were presented with a bucket of fish and a knife. Each patron had to catch and kill a fish or not eat. When she was about to kill hers, “the fish turned to look at me,” she said. “I still remember the extremely fearful look in its eyes,” she said. “I haven’t eaten any meat since then.” Soon after, she read an article in a National Geographic magazine borrowed from the library. It detailed the devastating effects that the excessive use of plastics was having on marine life. Her first direct action was a failed effort to persuade her school cafeteria’s director to stop using plastic utensils. “He thought that plastic disposable tableware was very hygienic,” she said. “I think his reason was that the cost would increase.” At first, watching Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” convinced her that she should attend Harvard as he did. She decided instead to postpone the idea of college altogether and has devoted herself to independently studying the science of climate change. When she heard of Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement in 2019, she was chagrined to learn there were none of the same sort of protests in China to draw attention to the issue of climate change. In May of that year, she held China’s first, standing alone with a picket in front of the Guilin municipal government building for six days. On the sixth, the police took her in for questioning, calling in her parents and asking them to make her stop. “Not everyone’s feedback is positive,” she said. Still, the map of strikes around the world on Fridays for Future’s website now has a dot for Guilin. And a handful of new ones have spread to cities like Nanjing and Shanghai, perhaps inspired by her example. Ou brushes off comparisons to her more famous climate counterpart. “I feel that Greta’s knowledge of the climate crisis and her deep understanding and care for the world is something that I do not have yet,” she said. Ou said her activism has strained her relationship with her parents, who still hope to see her attend college. Yet they became vegetarians, too, and still provide material and moral support. She spent much of the past two years trying — unsuccessfully — to build alliances with other activists in China. China has environmental organisations, though they, like all nongovernmental groups, are under strict scrutiny from authorities and generally shy away from direct protest or criticism. When she tried to volunteer at the annual summit of the China Youth Climate Action Network in Shenzhen last year, organizers turned her away. Hu Jingwei, an officer with the network, expressed admiration for Ou’s devotion, calling her “quite active and quite courageous.” She also said she was not sure that Ou “meets the qualification standards” to join the organisation but declined to explain why. Ou’s latest protest happened spontaneously, during a trip with her parents to Guangzhou, a booming southern city near Hong Kong. Her parents had booked her a hotel room, which she felt was wasteful. Angry with her parents, she decided to hold an overnight vigil outside the hotel. “All of us know that in the hotel industry, the bedding for guests and other disposable items the hotel provides waste a lot of water resources and emit a lot of carbon dioxide,” she said. She huddled inside her hooded sweatshirt through the cold night, surrounded by hastily made flyers with messages like “Vigil for Climate.” She has also posted messages on social media, including Twitter, where she uses her English name, Howey. “Wake people’s conscience through noncooperation with hotel industry capitalism,” she wrote in red ink in one of the several manifestoes “Challenge the system in an open, pleasant and fair way.” Hotel workers invited her inside to warm up. Delivery drivers brought takeout food. “I also told them why I do this,” she explained. By morning, office workers were passing by, although few paid any attention to her signs. She ended her vigil just before 9 am, after more than 10 hours, undaunted. “It’s like a lonesome spiritual exercise every single time,” she said. © 2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
More than 1,000 residents scrambled up 32 feet (9.75 m) of slippery soil and limestone to take refuge inside the Tinabanan Cave, known for providing shelter since colonial times. Lorna dela Pena, 66, was alone when the super-typhoon landed on Nov 8, killing more than 6,000 people nationwide and forcing about 4 million from their homes. She remembered how everything was "washed out" by the storm, but despite being "lost in a daze", she managed to evacuate. "There still weren't stairs to comfortably climb up to the cave. My grandfather's dream was for it to have stairs," she said, noting they were finally put in after the Haiyan disaster. While serving hot porridge to evacuees, dela Pena grasped how important local organisations are to helping communities become more resilient to fiercer weather, as the planet warms. “It’s stronger when more people unite to help. What one can’t do is possible when everyone unites,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Following that experience, she worked with others in Marabut to build up women's groups focused on different issues. Now they take the lead in organising workshops on organic farming, hold discussions on violence against women, and educate and encourage other women to adopt renewable energy. Azucena Bagunas, 47, and dela Pena are among “solar scholars” trained by the Philippines-based Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), an international nonprofit that promotes low-carbon development and climate resilience. In an effort to prepare better for disasters after Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, the women learned to operate portable solar-powered generators called TekPaks, which they use during evacuations. LIFE-SAVING TECHNOLOGY The TekPaks light up the dark Tinabanan cave, making it easier to count the number of people seeking shelter there, and charge mobile devices to keep communication lines open. For Bagunas, the most memorable use of the technology was when it helped save a life. “We were able to use this TekPak to power a nebuliser when someone had an asthma attack,” she recalled. Bagunas and dela Pena share their knowledge by teaching other women to operate TekPaks and making them aware of the benefits of renewable energy. Now, whenever a storm is coming, women in Marabut ensure their solar-powered equipment is charged so they are ready to move their communities to safety. Bagunas said harnessing solar energy was also cheaper than relying on coal-fired electricity from the grid. “If we use (solar) as our main source of power in our homes, then we don’t even have to pay for electricity," she said. "As long as you have a panel, you’ll have affordable and reliable power." Bagunas also prefers solar as a safer option. In June, her brother's house next-door went up in flames when a live electricity wire hit his roof, with the fire reaching some parts of her own house. WOMEN'S WORK According to 2020 data from the Department of Energy, about 60% of the Philippines' energy still comes from coal and oil, with only about 34% from renewable sources. But under a 2020-2040 plan, the government aims to shift the country onto a larger share of renewable energy such as solar, rising to half of power generation by the end of that period. Chuck Baclagon, Asia regional campaigner for 350.org, an international group that backs grassroots climate action, said the ICSC's efforts to bring solar power to communities would help expand clean energy at the local level. Today's model of a centralised power system reliant on fossil fuels does little to address energy poverty in remote island areas far from commercial centres, he added. “The shift to solar energy dispels the myth that we can’t afford to transition," he said. "The reason why fossil fuel is expensive is that it’s imported so it’s volatile in the market." Renewable energy sources like solar, however, are easier to build locally because they harness what is available and has the highest potential in particular locations, he added. Leah Payud, resilience portfolio manager at Oxfam Philippines, said her aid agency supported initiatives to introduce solar energy in poor rural communities, especially because it helps women and children who are among the most vulnerable to climate change. "During disasters, the unpaid care work and domestic work of women doubles," she said, adding their burden is made heavier by having to find an energy source to carry out those jobs. "Women don’t have access to a clean kitchen to cook their meals, and there is no electricity to lighten their tasks, for example when breastfeeding or sanitising equipment,” she said. The direct benefits women can gain from clean, cheap and easily available energy mean they should be involved in expanding its adoption, she added. “They are the mainstream users and energy producers - and without their involvement, renewable energy initiatives can become inappropriate," she added. “There is no climate justice without gender justice." One good way to introduce women to renewable energy is by asking them to draw a 24-hour clock of their chores at home and identifying the energy they use to do them, Payud said. They then consult with Oxfam staff on how switching energy sources could lighten their responsibilities, making it "very relatable", she added. The exercise has revealed that many women spend at least 13 hours a day doing unpaid family care work, a load that has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to home-schooling. QUICK AND SAFE On Suluan Island, a three to four-hour boat ride from the mainland, women are tasked with collecting water in energy-deprived areas, putting them at risk when they have to go out after dark. They have found solar lights more reliable than oil lamps because they do not have to cross the sea to buy fuel for them. Payud said solar was the best energy source during a disaster, especially when the mains power supply is cut and it is impossible to travel between islands. After Haiyan, it took half a year to restore grid power in far-flung communities, but that would not have been the case had women had access to alternative energy such as solar, she said. For dela Pena and Bagunas, women should be at the forefront of tackling climate change and energy poverty because they act as "shock absorbers". "Women oversee the whole family, and whenever there are problems, they are the ones who try to address it first,” said Bagunas. | 0 |
Toilets that take on a life of their own, eco-cars coming sooner than you might think and security on Segways have cast this year's G8 summit in a decidedly green hue. Japan has made climate change awareness the overarching theme of this year's meeting of rich nations and reminders to be environmentally aware are everywhere, down to the summit logo depicting a sprouting plant. LET'S CARBON OFFSET! Environment-related booths dominate the entrance to the international media centre, including a bank of computer screens headlined "Let's carbon offset!" With a few keystrokes, you can calculate your emissions from attending this week's summit in northern Japan, then choose a project to contribute to in order to stay "carbon neutral". A reporter coming from Singapore, flying from Tokyo to Hokkaido and staying in a hotel for five nights, for example, needs to offset 2.72 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. A little more than $250 of investment in an afforestation project in Hokkaido will pay for three carbon offsets, in this case three trees that will reduce three tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 30 years. "Not so many" people have stopped by to erase their carbon footprint, admitted Ai Kimura of KPMG AZSA Sustainability, which is running the project on the Japanese government's behalf. She said Japan plans to offset the entire summit once all the emissions are calculated, with preliminary estimates at around 25,000 tonnes of CO2. BIRTHDAY BOY US President George W Bush, who was initially sceptical of the link between human activity and global warming, arrived in Hokkaido on Sunday. White House staff gathered in the conference room on Air Force One just before arrival to celebrate his birthday -- Bush turned 62 on Sunday -- with a coconut cake carrying one candle. "We all said 'surprise' and he dutifully pretended to be surprised," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. Senior staff gave Bush a wooden box made from a scarlet oak that fell on White House grounds in October 2007, Perino said. EASY SEGWAY RIDER With as many as 22 world leaders due to attend different days of this year's G8, security has been no joke and 21,000 police have been deployed in Hokkaido alone. But even security guards got into the spirit at the press centre, riding around the sprawling complex on two-wheel scooter Segways. "We are using this because it's environmentally friendly," said security man Mitsugu Kubo, though how a scooter could be better for the environment than two feet was not so clear. The true reason may well have been more pedestrian. "Usually, we have to walk, so we get tired, but we don't get tired with this," said Kubo, an employee of Rising Sun Security Service. ECO-FRIENDLY AUTOS A fleet of electric plug-ins, hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars await those attending the summit for use or test drives, supplied by Japan's top seven car makers. Many fuel cell cars are still prototypes available only for lease, but commercial sales of some other summit autos, like Mitsubishi Motors' pure electric i-MiEV or Subaru's plug-in Stella, are coming as soon as 2009. Honda FCX Clarity sedans are ferrying summit delegates after the hydrogen fuel cell sedan's debut this week ahead of a programme to lease a fleet of the cars in the United States starting this month, mainly in California. But the water-emitting cars face the reality of only about 60 U.S. hydrogen stations, compared with about 180,000 gas stands. Even in Toyako, the closest hydrogen stand is about 20 km away, due to safety concerns. MORE SURPRISES, IN THE TOILETS Japanese toilet technology is always a marvel to the uninitiated, with its rows of incomprehensible buttons and artificial flushing sounds and heated seats. But even by local standards, the Toyako summit toilets ("designed exclusively for this site") are special and sure to give you a start when they pop open at the wave of a hand. Aside from its futuristic look, this "hybird ecology system" promises water savings of up to 31 percent compared to a conventional toilet, employing a combination of "tornado" and "jet" flushing systems. Just watch out for that bidet -- but that's another story. | 0 |
Emission cuts pledges made by 60 countries will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius or less, modelling released on Tuesday by the United Nations says. Scientists say temperatures should be limited to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times if devastating climate change is to be avoided. Yearly greenhouse gas emissions should not be more than 40 and 48.3 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2020 and should peak between 2015 and 2021, according to new modeling released on Tuesday by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Keeping within that range and cutting global emissions by between 48 percent and 72 percent between 2020 and 2050 will give the planet a "medium" or 50-50 chance of staying within the 2 degree limit, said the report, which was based on modelling by nine research centres. However, the same study found that the world is likely to go over those targets. The pledges were made by nations that signed up to the Copenhagen Accord. "The expected emissions for 2020 range between 48.8 to 51.2 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent, based on whether high or low pledges will be fulfilled," the report said. In other words, even in a best-case scenario where all countries implement their promised cuts, the total amount of emissions produced would still be between 0.5 and 8.8 gigatonnes over what scientists see as tolerable. Greenhouse gas levels are rising, particularly for carbon dioxide, because more is remaining in the atmosphere than natural processes can deal with. Carbon dioxide is naturally taken up and released by plants and the oceans but mankind's burning of fossil fuels such as coal for power and destruction of forests means the planet's annual "carbon budget" is being exceeded. OTHER OPTIONS UNEP's executive director Achim Steiner said the bleak prediction should motivate countries to make more ambitious cuts. "The message is not to sit back and resign and say we will never make it," he told reporters in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali, which is hosting a major U.N. environment meeting. "But it's not enough at the moment and there are other options that can be mobilised." Steiner said one such option was more investment in a scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), in which poor countries are paid to preserve and enhance their forests. A state of the environment assessment released by UNEP on Tuesday, the UNEP Year Book 2010, also advocated more investment in REDD. "It has been estimated that putting $22 billion to $29 billion into REDD would cut global deforestation by 25 percent by 2015," the report said. Forests soak up large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Cutting them down and burning the remains releases vast amounts of the gas, exacerbating global warming, scientists say. REDD is not yet part of a broader climate pact that the UN hopes to seal by the end of year at major climate talks in Mexico. Steiner told reporters a day earlier he expected talks this year to be a tough slog. The Copenhagen climate summit last December ended with a political accord that was not formally adopted and no clarity on the shape of a new climate pact to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol. "A deal has become more difficult than in Copenhagen. Let's be very frank. The world has moved away, rather than closer, to a deal," he told reporters. "The politics of international negotiation and the economics, the momentum that built up towards Copenhagen will not be there for Mexico. | 0 |
- to the annual rise in global sea levels of 0.1 of an inch (2.54 mm). A third Science article maintained that predicting what will happen to the big ice sheets is difficult because scientists are only now learning what is going on underneath the surface. The focus on polar research in this edition of the journal was a nod to International Polar Year. That is actually a two-year period beginning this month with study focused on the poles, including the disproportionate impact global warming has on the polar regions. "By now, most people know that the poles are the ideal places to study the effects of global climate change," Science's executive publisher, Alan Leshner, wrote in an editorial. "Indeed, some have called polar glaciers and ice sheets the 'canaries in the mine' of climate change." | 0 |
A short drive away, Ismokoweni, who leads 'Aisyiyah's local environmental chapter and goes by one name, picks her way past painted gravestones towards an area of damaged forest where the group has also planted seedlings. After a drought dried up wells here, members purchased gallons of water from the local utility for affected households, Ismokoweni told the Thomson Reuters Foundation shortly before Eid-ul-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. “We are creative women,” said Hening Purwati Parlan, national head of 'Aisyiyah's environment wing, the LLHPB. “We are not rich, but we have solutions.” 'Aisyiyah was founded in 1917 to advocate for education at a time when girls did not receive formal schooling. Today 'Aisyiyah, part of Indonesia's larger Muhammadiyah organisation, has at least 4 million members with branches throughout the world's largest Muslim-majority country, where more than 80% of the population of about 270 million identify as Muslim. 'Aisyiyah has drawn on its national network to advocate for reproductive rights and prevent child marriage. It also operates thousands of schools and runs diverse social programmes to promote breast-feeding and improve child and maternal nutrition, among other things. Alimatul Qibtiyah, a professor who sits on the National Commission on Violence against Women and is an 'Aisyiyah member, said the group cooperates with the national government as well as many other organisations, including from different faiths. In recent years, it has increasingly turned its attention to the environment. “We bring the Hadith (teachings of the prophet Muhammad) to explain why the impact of climate change is important,” said Hening. In 2015, 'Aisyiyah's leadership set up its LLHPB environment wing to increase women’s capacity to respond to climate change and natural disasters. 'Aisyiyah also runs a “Green Ramadan” programme, holding evening talks on how families can reduce waste and the use of plastics during the Islamic fasting month. “It is explained in the Koran that it is important to do good in the month of Ramadan,” Rahma Susanti, head of the LLHPB in West Kalimantan province, said in an online interview. “Protecting our ecosystem and environment is one of these good things.” ECO-JIHAD Last month, in the run-up to Ramadan, Hening a former journalist who now works as an environmental consultant, called for Muslim women to observe an “eco-jihad”. “Jihad is an Arabic word that literally means striving or struggling, especially with a praiseworthy aim,” Hening told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “So eco-jihad means striving to protect our ecosystem.” 'Aisyiyah volunteers said the term resonated among women who see stewardship of the environment as elemental to their faith. “We have to consider that all the damage we do now will have a fatal impact in the future,” said Rahma in West Kalimantan. In Sumatra’s Riau province, the LLHPB is preparing to work with the national peatland and mangrove restoration agency to rehabilitate degraded forests and land. Women volunteers in Kalimantan, meanwhile, are helping with wildfire prevention efforts. Teaching of environmental principles is nothing new in the world's second-largest religion, which says humans are guardians of the natural environment. A 2013 study in West Sumatra province by British and Indonesian researchers found that environmental awareness increased when the message was delivered in Islamic talks and lessons, especially among women. The Indonesian Ulema Council, established in 1975 as the country's main clerical body, has issued a series of environmental edicts against the burning of land and illegal logging since 2010. ROOT AND BRANCH REFORM Forestry experts say reforestation initiatives have faced numerous challenges in Indonesia, such as weak seedlings and poor maintenance once the trees have been planted. “Increasingly, communities are being expected to have greater roles in tree-planting initiatives," said Ani Adiwinata Nawir, a scientist with the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research. The peatland and mangrove restoration agency plans to work with community groups and businesses to meet a national target of replanting 600,000 hectares of mangrove forests by 2024. Most of Indonesia’s planet-heating emissions stem from land conversion and the government has pledged to reduce emissions by at least 29% by 2030 from a business-as-usual scenario, requiring radical reforms to how land and forests are treated. Indonesia’s environment ministry has prioritised almost 4 million hectares for rehabilitation by 2030, which it expects will require billions of trees to be planted this decade. The trees along the road in Sukoharjo are a fraction of the 4,700 seedlings planted by 'Aisyiyah volunteers since the end of last year. In March, 'Aisyiyah announced plans to plant 5 million fruit trees in homes and gardens, partly to boost food security during the coronavirus pandemic. Volunteers said the environmental work would continue to be funded mainly by donations and their own fundraising activities. | 0 |
Huge profits made by London-based brokers who arrange emissions-cutting projects in developing countries contrast with little benefit for the world's poorest nations, company and United Nations data shows. The Kyoto Protocol on global warming allows rich countries to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets by paying poor nations to cut emissions on their behalf, using the so-called clean development mechanism (CDM). But evidence is emerging that while brokers stand to make enormous profits, least developed nations, especially in Africa, will get next to nothing -- raising questions over whether Kyoto is fulfilling its social as well as environmental goals. "We're either going to have bend the rules and be softer with CDM in Africa or forget it and give them more aid," said Mike Bess, an Africa specialist working for London-based project developer Camco. The text of the Kyoto Protocol calls for its carbon trading scheme to assist poor countries in achieving sustainable development. The text of Kyoto's umbrella treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, says that action to combat climate change should help economic development, too. But action so far has seen the biggest potential profits going to London-based project developers, instead of projects on the ground, most of which are based in China and India. Africa has seen just 21 out of a total of 751 CDM projects officially registered with the U.N. climate change secretariat. A common argument is that Africa has a tiny fraction of the world's carbon emissions, that these emissions are widely dispersed and so difficult to bundle into profitable projects, and that the continent has high investment risk. But projects are slowly emerging. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation formally launches later this month an initiative called "Lighting the Bottom of the Pyramid", which aims to supply low-carbon lighting to some of the 500 million Africans who have no electricity access. It aims to apply for carbon finance through the CDM, because solar power would replace higher carbon kerosene lamps used now. "Ten years ago you'd say there was no market for mobile phones in Africa, that people couldn't afford it," said Fabio Nehme, IFC team leader for the project, who estimated that there were now over 100 million mobile phone users on the continent. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan launched last November in Kenya an initiative called the "Nairobi Framework" to try and increase the number of CDM projects in Africa. Since then just 10 new projects have been registered in Africa, versus 348 extra elsewhere, U.N. data show, but the U.N. official leading the project defended progress so far. "Let's give it some time," said Daniele Violetti. UN agencies, the World Bank and the African Development Bank will pool resources for a joint CDM project, with details likely in October following a meeting in Ethiopia, he said. Western project developers are under no obligation to show that their projects contribute to sustainable development. "The investors should be proud," said Michael Wara, research fellow at Stanford University. "You want the market to work and find the low-hanging fruit, but you want to be able to modify the system when people start extracting these kinds of profits." In one of the biggest money-spinning projects yet, 10 investors including London-based Climate Change Capital and New York-based Natsource bought 129 million tonnes of carbon credits for 6.2 euros ($8.49) per tonne from two projects in China. The price of such carbon credits for guaranteed delivery closed last week at some 16 euros per tonne, implying potential profits for these investors of well over 1 billion euros. Climate Change Capital said last week it had a carbon credit portfolio of over 65 million tonnes, more than double Africa's entire registered portfolio of 32 million tonnes, Reuters data shows (http://www.reutersinteractive.com/CarbonNews/67999). Climate Change Capital also told Reuters that it had no registered projects in Africa, but had at least one in the pipeline. While China levies a tax of up to 65 percent on CDM profits made by local companies -- to invest in Chinese renewable energy projects -- no such tax is levied on these potentially much bigger margins made by western brokers. "The (profit) margin isn't going into sustainable development. A lot of the money is staying in London," Wara said. | 0 |
She said all polls held in different tiers during the five years of her rule had been fair and neutral, and there would be no departure from the trend in the upcoming one either.The Prime Minister said this while visiting the Senior Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, Sayeeda Warsi, at her office here on Thursday morning.The PM's Press Secretary, Abul Kalam Azad, briefed the press after the meeting.The two leaders had discussed matters of bilateral interests, he said.
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File Photo Sheikh Hasina expressed happiness over the historic and traditional links and the partnership between Bangladesh and the UK.She hoped the relationship between the two countries would deepen with time.Sheikh Hasina recalled the invaluable support the British people and the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath had extended during the War of Liberation in 1971.Earlier, a delegation led by Policy Advisor for Asian Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China, Ambassador Luo Zhaohui also met the Prime Minister at her office.During the meeting, the Prime Minister reiterated Bangladesh’s position on One China Policy, and sought more Chinese investment in various sectors, including infrastructure.Hasina said Bangladesh wanted greater transfer of Chinese technology as well as green technology to combat climate change.Stressing regional connectivity, the Prime minister said, it would enhance trade and commerce between the two countries.She also emphasized the need to cut the trade deficit between the two friendly nations.Ambassador-At-Large M Ziauddin, Principal Secretary Shaikh Md Wahid-Uz-Zaman and PMO secretary Mollah Waheeduzzaman, among others, were present.Later on the day, Warsi also met the Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury. | 1 |
Italy must invest billions of euros in improving water management to prevent disasters caused by climate change, instead of mopping up after floods and landslides, farmers' groups said on Monday. Italy, where about 70 percent of towns are at high risk of floods or landslides, invested 1.4 billion euros ($2.1 billion) to prevent land erosion between 1998-2005, said Massimo Gargano chairman of the national farmers' water management body ANBI. Rome has also spent nearly 1.5 billion euros to repair damage caused by floods and landslides over 1999-2005, Gargano told a news conference, citing government figures. "We have a culture of emergency... We need a civil pact, an economic accord to turn the culture of emergency into a culture of prevention," Gargano said, flanked by representatives of regional farmers' and water management associations. Italy has been hit by 5,400 floods and 11,000 landslides over the past 80 years, Gargano said, citing Italy's environment protection agency APAT. The figures were set to rise as global warming and rapid urbanisation put the water management system under increasing pressure, ANBI officials said. The system is based on a network of reservoirs and canals, many of them centuries old. In 2003, Italy's Environment Ministry estimated investment needed to guarantee soil protection from floods, drought and landslides at 39.1 billion euros, but only just under 3 billion euros have been spent, the officials said. "We talk about water only when there is an emergency -- flood or drought. But it is an everyday problem," said Nino Andena, head of Italy's biggest farming group Coldiretti in the Lombardy region. Italian farmers and power utilities lock horns over use of water every time there is a spell of dry weather. Farmers in northern Italy, where most rice is grown, have cut the use of irrigation water by about a third over past two years, farmers' officials said. | 0 |
Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi edged past Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday in results from Iraq's fragmented March 7 vote that may lead to months of political bargaining and create a risky power vacuum. The new initial results, reversing the lead that Maliki had taken in earlier counts over the past week, came on a day when twin bomb attacks in the town of Mussayab, 60 km (40 miles) south of the capital, killed eight people. The bombs went off within minutes of one another after attackers attached two bombs to passengers cars, underscoring Iraq's vulnerability as it confronts the possibility of major political change and US troops prepare to withdraw. The blasts, a day after seven people were killed by a car bomb in western Anbar province, raised doubts about how Iraq's fragile security will stand up during what likely will be long, divisive talks among leading politicians to form a government. Allawi's narrow lead in the national vote count over Maliki's mainly Shi'ite State of Law bloc, which is ahead in seven of 18 provinces but has barely made a dent in Sunni areas, underlines Iraq's polarisation after years of sectarian war. Allawi, a secular Shi'ite whose cross-sectarian, secularist Iraqiya list is now ahead in five provinces, has galvanised support among minority Sunnis eager to reclaim the influence they lost when Saddam Hussein's long rule ended in 2003. With about 80 percent of an estimated 12 million votes counted, only about 9,000 votes separate Maliki's and Allawi's coalitions. Definitive final results could take weeks. One or the other bloc is likely to ally with the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a largely Shi'ite bloc made up of Maliki's estranged allies, running third, or with a partnership of Kurdish parties which dominated Iraq's Kurdish north. CONFIDENT While Maliki, who has built his reputation on pulling Iraq back from the brink of civil war, has wide support, allies of Allawi, an urbane physician and critic of the Shi'ite religious parties dominating Iraq since 2003, were feeling confident. Thaer al-Naqeeb, a close aide to Allawi, said he expected the final results would show Allawi ahead of Maliki, even though the prime minister is now ahead in Baghdad, the biggest electoral prize with 68 seats in Iraq's 325-member parliament. "The results are really close and positive (for us) ... How can Maliki beat us?" he asked. Joost Hiltermann, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, suggested that defeat may not be accepted gracefully in a post-election climate already marked by allegations of fraud. "This is not over till it's over, and I'm not just talking about the final tally but the attempts by the loser, whoever it may be, to leapfrog over the winner after the count," he said. How Iraq forms a government agreeable to mutually suspicious rivals like Maliki and Allawi, plus all the country's other rival factions, will be key to maintaining security as Washington looks towards an end-2011 deadline for withdrawal. An alliance of the country's two main Kurdish parties has the lead in three Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq. It trails close behind Allawi's bloc in Kirkuk, the oil-producing province at the heart of a bitter struggle between Arabs and Kurds. Allawi now leads the Kurd bloc there by a handful of votes. Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London, said influence from Iraq's fellow Shi'ite-majority neighbour Iran could be instrumental in producing another government alliance between Maliki, the INA and the Kurds. "To some extent this would be a reconstitution of the coalition that governed Iraq so ineptly from 2006 to 2010," he said. The Iranian government, eager to see someone representing Shi'ite interests leading Iraq, praised the elections. "All international supervision has confirmed the soundness of the Iraqi elections. This is a success and we congratulate Iraqis," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. | 1 |
That’s where the melting face emoji comes in. The face, fixed with a content half-smile even as it dissolves into a puddle, is one of 37 new emojis approved this year by the Unicode Consortium, the organization that maintains the standards for digital text. Other emojis that made the cut include saluting face, dotted line face and a disco ball. These new emojis will roll out over the course of the next year. But already the melting face has found fans on social media, who see it as a clear representation of the coronavirus pandemic’s vast psychological toll. “This melting smiley face is quite the pandemic mood,” one Twitter user said. Others viewed the new emoji as a visual proxy for climate anxiety. “Something tells me that in this climate change apocalypse era, we’re going to be using the new melting face emoji a lot,” another user wrote. The melting face was conceived in 2019 by Jennifer Daniel and Neil Cohn, who connected over their mutual appreciation for visual language. Daniel, who uses the pronouns they and them, is an emoji subcommittee chair for Unicode and a creative director at Google; Cohn, an associate professor of cognition and communication at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Cohn had published some work on representations of emotion in Japanese Visual Language that caught the eye of Daniel. In Cohn’s research was “paperification,” which, according to him, is “what happens in a manga sometimes when people become embarrassed, they will turn into a piece of paper and flutter away.” He and Daniel realised there wasn’t an existing emoji that evoked that visual convention, so they decided to pursue one and eventually landed on the melting face, which Daniel described as “more visceral” than turning into paper. The same idea is also sometimes depicted as a solid becoming liquid, they added. Many of the best face emojis “rely on conventions that already exist in other places in visual culture, and one of the main drivers of this is comics or manga,” said Cohn. He also noted that many of the face emojis from the original emoji set use expressions from manga. In 1999, the first emojis were created by a Japanese artist named Shigetaka Kurita, who found inspiration in manga. They were designed to facilitate text-based communication; NTT Docomo, a Japanese mobile phone company, had a 250-character limit on messages sent through its mobile internet service, so shorthand was key to getting one’s point across. The original set of 176 emojis designed by Kurita is now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, even without character restrictions, emojis can still communicate emotions with greater ease, speed and flexibility than words can. The melting face is no exception. On the more literal side, it can be a way of expressing, say, the sensation caused by a broken air conditioner. Figuratively, it can be used to convey how one feels after an embarrassing interaction with a crush, the exhaustion of living through a pandemic and, of course, sarcasm. “It evokes a metaphoric frame or metaphoric knowledge base that should be relatively accessible to people — the notion of melting,” Cohn said. That concept can then be applied to all kinds of emotions. All emojis “are usually designed with the intention that they can be used in flexible, multifaceted ways, in the same way that many words can be flexibly used,” Cohn added. And visual language, of course, can be even more elastic than words. “Illustration can do things that reality can’t,” Daniel said. Case in point: “melting face” and its myriad interpretations, many of them quite affecting. “Emojis aren’t inherently deep,” said Erik Carter, a graphic designer who created the sample image for the melting face. “It’s how people use them that makes them profound.” He offered a reading of his own. Many of us, Carter said, may feel hopeless because of things like climate change or “our government’s inaction.” “Sometimes,” he said, “it does feel as though the best we can do is smile as we melt away.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
The sixth annual Low Carbon Economy Index report from professional services firm PwC looked at the progress of major developed and emerging economies towards reducing their carbon intensity, or emissions per unit of gross domestic product. "The gap between what we are achieving and what we need to do is growing wider every year," PwC's Jonathan Grant said. He said governments were increasingly detached from reality in addressing the 2 degree goal. "Current pledges really put us on track for 3 degrees. This is a long way from what governments are talking about." Almost 200 countries agreed at United Nations climate talks to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times to limit heat waves, floods, storms and rising seas from climate change. Temperatures have already risen by about 0.85 degrees Celsius. Carbon intensity will have to be cut by 6.2 percent a year to achieve that goal, the study said. That compares with an annual rate of 1.2 percent from 2012 to 2013. Grant said that to achieve the 6.2 percent annual cut would require changes of an even greater magnitude than those achieved by recent major shifts in energy production in some countries. France's shift to nuclear power in the 1980s delivered a 4 percent cut, Britain's "dash for gas" in the 1990s resulted in a 3 percent cut and the United States shale gas boom in 2012 led to a 3.5 percent cut. GLIMMER OF HOPE PwC said one glimmer of hope was that for the first time in six years emerging economies such as China, India and Mexico had cut their carbon intensity at a faster rate than industrialised countries such as the United States, Japan and the European Union. As the manufacturing hubs of the world, the seven biggest emerging nations have emissions 1.5-times larger than those of the seven biggest developed economies and the decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions in those nations is seen as vital. Australia had the highest rate of decarbonisation for the second year in a row, cutting its carbon intensity by 7.2 percent over 2013. Coal producer Australia has one of the world's highest rates of emissions per person but its efforts to rein in the heat-trapping discharges have shown signs of stalling since the government in July repealed a tax on emissions. Britain, Italy and China each achieved a decarbonisation rate of 4-5 percent, while five countries increased their carbon intensity: France, the United States, India, Germany and Brazil. | 0 |
But a jolt of electricity passed through the crowd when a slight woman — younger, smaller and more vulnerable looking than anyone else — stepped up to the mic. She carried no notes. She wore a bandage on her forehead. Her arm was in a cast. “Many people ask me whether I’m scared,” she began. “And I tell them: How can I be scared?” People nodded their heads, seeming to follow her words carefully. She wasn’t frightened of Amit Shah, the home minister, she said, or Narendra Modi, the domineering prime minister who has sent India down a Hindu nationalist path. “Even if you beat us, we won’t step back,” she thundered. “Long live the revolution!” The crowd roared. The biggest and most energized protests India has witnessed in a generation are sweeping the country, and one young woman has been thrust to the fore: Aishe Ghosh.
Aishe Ghosh, president of the student body at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. Since being attacked by Hindu nationalists at her New Delhi campus, Ghosh has become an icon in India’s growing protest movement. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times)
Earlier this month, while leading a peaceful demonstration on her university campus, Ghosh was attacked by Hindu nationalist goons. After they cracked her in the head with an iron bar and thrashed her body, images of her blood-smeared face were instantly beamed nationwide. Aishe Ghosh, president of the student body at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. Since being attacked by Hindu nationalists at her New Delhi campus, Ghosh has become an icon in India’s growing protest movement. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times) But it was the photograph made two days later that etched her into the Indian psyche: It showed Ghosh, 25, staring straight into the camera, her head wrapped in a doughnut of white medical tape, her hair wild and her eyes radiating a resolve that seemed indestructible. “Every protest has a face,” said Vidit Panchal, a young doctor who travelled across India this week to meet her. Ghosh is that face. The product of politically active parents from West Bengal, Ghosh was a talented painting student before entering university to study politics. Last fall she was elected president of the student body at one of India’s liveliest and most prestigious schools, Jawaharlal Nehru University, a bastion of anti-Modi dissent. Even in the weeks before she was attacked by the gang of Modi’s supporters, Ghosh was marching in protests, coordinating strikes and recruiting followers — in essence, galvanising the resistance. Now, she is being invited everywhere to speak. To be a student leader in India, it’s a thrilling time. “Professors have been writing mails to us saying that you should be going to the protests, because protests teach you more than I can teach you in the four walls of the classroom,” Ghosh said, clearly excited by all this. “We have politicised so many people. It gives me so much pride.” Ever since modern India was envisioned, a fundamental question has been how Hindu-oriented should it be, given that the population, about 80% Hindu, has long hosted a dizzying array of different cultures, including a Muslim minority that today, at 200 million people, would on its own be one of the largest Muslim nations in the world. Modi has taken a clear position, pushing a slate of divisive Hindu nationalist policies that play quite well with a large segment of society but have deeply worried minorities and progressives. “A Germany in the making,” Ghosh calls it.
Demonstrators carry placards and shout slogans during a protest march against the attacks on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, India, January 9, 2020. Reuters
Since Modi’s reelection in May, his government has ploughed ahead with a contentious citizenship review in northeastern India widely seen as a test run for a nationwide attempt to identify and marginalize Muslim families. In August he summarily deleted the statehood of Kashmir, which had been India’s only Muslim-majority state. Demonstrators carry placards and shout slogans during a protest march against the attacks on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, India, January 9, 2020. Reuters These moves raised some eyebrows, especially in rival Pakistan, which also claims Kashmir. But the issue that sent millions of Indians over the edge was Modi’s new citizenship law, which creates a special path to Indian citizenship for migrants from all major South Asian religions bar one: Islam. Modi has insisted that the law is intended to protect persecuted migrants from neighbouring countries, but many Indians see it as blatantly anti-Muslim and discriminatory. As soon as it passed in December, universities across the country exploded in protest. Jawaharlal Nehru University, in central New Delhi, where Ghosh is working on a master’s degree on climate change, has been one of India’s most reliable incubators of dissent. It’s a big leafy campus, known for its liberal arts programs, and on a recent day professors and students mingled in a sun-dappled courtyard between hulking brick buildings painted with images of Mandela, Gandhi and Guevara.
Aishe Ghosh, center, who was attacked by Hindu nationalist goons earlier this month, speaks at a rally in New Delhi on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. Since being attacked by Hindu nationalists at her New Delhi campus, Ghosh has become an icon in India’s growing protest movement. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times)
These days, Ghosh has trouble making it across campus because she is stopped so often. Aishe Ghosh, center, who was attacked by Hindu nationalist goons earlier this month, speaks at a rally in New Delhi on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. Since being attacked by Hindu nationalists at her New Delhi campus, Ghosh has become an icon in India’s growing protest movement. (Rebecca Conway/The New York Times) “Are you OK?” one young woman asked. “You have amazing energy and stamina,” said another. “Please don’t get beaten up again!” a friend laughed.
Aishe Ghosh, president of the JNU students' union, joins a protest march against the attacks on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, India, January 9, 2020. Reuters
It was a chilly day under a thick grey sky, and Ghosh, in bare sleeves with an anaconda-size scarf cinched around her neck and a permanent smile on her face, was hard to miss. Aishe Ghosh, president of the JNU students' union, joins a protest march against the attacks on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in New Delhi, India, January 9, 2020. Reuters She seems to have natural political skills. She lets people finish before she starts talking; she speaks well in public; and she constantly absorbs digs, like body shaming. “Some people are like: You don’t look like a president, because you are so thin,” she said. “So I ask them: How much do I need to weigh to look like a president?” For a long time, Hindu extremists have hated this school, and Jan 5, the shock troops arrived. That evening, Ghosh was speaking at a protest against a fee increase at her university.
Masked persons with sticks are seen at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India January 5, 2020, in this still image obtained from a social media video. Jyoti Kumar/via REUTERS
Witnesses said the attackers were a mix of students and outsiders from pro-Modi groups that targeted liberal leaders at the university and those who had been vocal about their opposition to Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies. A Hindu extremist group later admitted to participating in the melee, saying it had armed followers in self-defence. Masked persons with sticks are seen at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India January 5, 2020, in this still image obtained from a social media video. Jyoti Kumar/via REUTERS The attackers carried iron bars, pipes and sledgehammers, and they knocked Ghosh to the ground and kept hitting her and hitting her. “I thought I was going to die,” she said. There’s a grim, new joke in India: There may be freedom of speech, but there’s no freedom after speech. After speaking out about her beating, Ghosh became the victim of a vicious disinformation campaign. Hindu extremists spread fake pictures of her, showing her cast on the other arm and saying she was lying. They even said that she had smashed her own head with an iron bar. Police officials then accused her and other leftist students of instigating the violence, which she denies. “I don’t care if they name me in 70 cases,” she said. “I’m not quitting.” Ghosh grew up in Durgapur, near Kolkata, a hotbed for India’s communists. Her father works as an operations manager at a thermal plant and has joined many labour strikes. Her mother is a housewife. She has one younger sister, and during teatime, the Ghosh family sat in their two bedroom apartment and dissected politics. An old college friend, Yashvi Pandit, laughed about when she first met Ghosh, seven years ago. “She would be going on and on about this joint secretary appointment or that,” she recalled, “and we were all like: Why do you care?” “And now look: She’s gotten a blue tick!”(Ghosh recently received a coveted blue check, or tick, on Twitter next to her name, signifying that she is a person of interest who has been verified as genuine.) Ghosh has not seen her parents since she was attacked, even though they wanted to visit. She has barely spent time with her boyfriend (another student activist) either. She is in the middle of a moment — and she seems well aware of it. “With all that’s going on,” she said as she hurried off to another protest, “I’m busy.” ©2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The international community's "patience is running out" with military-ruled Myanmar and foot-dragging over its moves towards democracy, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said on Monday. "I hope the Myanmar authorities will take it very seriously," Ban said during a visit to Thailand, where he urged the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which the former Burma is a member, to play a "special political role". "The people of Myanmar have suffered from isolation for such a long time and it is high time now for the Myanmar authorities and people to be able to enjoy genuine democracy and genuine integration in the international community," Ban said. En route to a climate change conference in Bali, Ban said he would continue with the mission of his special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to bring the generals to the negotiating table with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Gambari has visited twice since September's bloody crackdown against major pro-democracy protests in which the UN says up to 4,000 people were arrested and at least 31 killed -- more than three times the junta's official toll. He has held meetings with Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi and junta supremo Than Shwe, although so far the only concrete result of his visits has been the appointment of another general to act as go-between for the pair. Western governments have called on Myanmar's Asian neighbours -- ASEAN, India and China -- to put pressure on the generals, although Beijing has made it clear it will not allow the United Nations to impose multilateral sanctions. Myanmar has been under military control since a 1962 coup. The army held elections in 1990, but refused to hand over power after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. | 0 |
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