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A minister from a major Asian state visiting Brussels last month said he planned to meet the "Prime Minister of Europe". Of course he could not recall the person's name -- the post does not exist. The remark shows how the European Union still struggles to find its voice in the world, decades after US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's famous question in the 1970s: "Who do I call if I want to call Europe?" The bloc now numbers 27 states and its stature has grown but it plays second fiddle to the United States in many parts of the world -- notably in Middle East diplomacy -- and its power to act remains hobbled by complex internal red tape. It was to revamp a system described as "verging on dysfunctional" by British diplomat and former EU External Relations director-general Brian Crowe that foreign policy was included in an EU reform treaty due to take effect in January. EU member states broadly agree that they can exert more influence in a globalised world collectively. But with those same states anxious to protect national interests, it remains to be seen how far-reaching the reforms will prove. Who will fill a new role of foreign policy supremo, how that person interacts with a planned new EU president, and how the diplomatic support will function have all still to be resolved. The reform will create a powerful high representative for foreign affairs -- combining the role of an existing EU foreign policy coordinator with that of the European Commissioner in charge of the EU's multi-billion euro aid budget. That person will be supported by an EU diplomatic corps of some 3,000-4,000, drawn from staff from Brussels, 130 EU delegations worldwide, and the diplomatic services of EU states. "It's hugely important, because all our challenges are now external," said Katinka Barysch deputy director of the London-based Centre for European Reform (CER) think tank. "You have climate change, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy security and how to deal with China and Russia."
TURF BATTLES Antonio Missiroli, director of the European Policy Centre think tank, said the treaty provided a good legal basis for a more coherent EU foreign policy. "But at the moment it's very difficult to predict how everybody will play this game." "There is a little bit of a worry that the whole Brussels machinery will be caught up in battles for turf." Barysch said the influence of the high representative -- a post currently held by Spanish socialist Javier Solana -- depended very much on personality. "It should be someone well known and respected by world leaders. But frequently in the EU you end up with a compromise -- someone who looks like the lowest common denominator." One EU foreign policy insider called the expected jostling for position for the jobs of president and foreign policy chief and in the new diplomatic corps "an accident waiting to happen".
FAIT ACCOMPLI Smaller states fear France and other big nations are already trying to be stitch together arrangements that will be presented as a fait accompli when Paris takes over the rotating EU presidency in July, the source said. A key question is whether the new EU president evolves as a largely ceremonial role or one with real influence. Britain's former prime Minister Tony Blair has made no secret of his desire for the job, but Missiroli said he would be "very intrusive" in the foreign policy field. EU diplomats and politicians believe Blair has little chance, as Britain is too disconnected from the EU mainstream, and he is discredited in Europe by his support for the Iraq war. The smart money is on Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. A master consensus-builder, he would steal less limelight, but would not accept a purely ceremonial role. Long a favourite as high representative is Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, a former prime minister with extensive diplomatic experience. However, some consider him too outspoken. "The rumour gaining ground is that the best personality for the high representative at the beginning is Solana himself -- to have a an old and safe pair of hands, at least for one year or two, it would be better to keep him in place," said Missiroli. | 0 |
The European Union and United States will agree at a summit on Monday that climate change is a central challenge that requires "urgent, sustained global action," according to a draft statement seen by Reuters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on her first trip to Washington since assuming the presidency of the EU, is seeking to convince the Bush administration take concrete steps to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Merkel hopes the joint statement will lay the groundwork for a broader deal on combating global warming at a June G8 summit she will host in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm. "I think on climate and energy efficiency, we've taken a step forward," she told reporters in Washington before her meeting with US President George W. Bush. "We want to use this as a foundation for a broader agreement at the summit between the G8 countries, and perhaps also India and China. The statement on energy security, efficiency and climate change will be presented alongside a broader "Transatlantic Economic Partnership" designed to cut costly non-tariff barriers to trade between the EU and United States. Under that agreement, the partners will agree to harmonize regulatory standards and cooperate in areas like intellectual property, trade security, investment and financial markets. A council led by EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen and White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard will be set up to monitor progress in aligning regulations and present annual reports to EU and US leaders. In addition to the fixed agenda, Merkel and Bush will hold talks on an array of international issues from Iran's nuclear program to Middle East peace. Russian relations have also been thrust to the forefront after a hawkish speech by President Vladimir Putin last week in which he denounced US plans to put a missile shield in central Europe and froze Moscow's commitments under a key arms treaty. Washington says the shield would counter threats from "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea, but Moscow sees it as a threat and encroachment on its former sphere of influence. "I will reiterate the need to talk with Russia about this and the NATO-Russia council is a good forum," Merkel said, denying that it would be the focus of her talks with Bush. German officials have painted the joint declaration on climate change as a rhetorical leap forward for the Bush administration, but the statement does not contain any concrete pledges to take action. The draft says the EU and US are committed to stabilizing greenhouse gases and acknowledges work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which released a report this month that said rising temperatures were changing the globe and could lead to more hunger, water shortages and extinctions. The draft urges the development and commercialization of advanced technologies to "slow, stabilize and significantly cut" global emissions and promises a joint effort to deliver results at Heiligendamm and work constructively in the run-up to a key U.N. meeting on climate change in Bali, Indonesia in December. On her fourth visit to Washington, Merkel has developed a close relationship with Bush, repairing ties which became badly strained when her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder clashed with the US president over the Iraq war. But with less than six weeks to go until Heiligendamm, she faces a daunting task in persuading Bush to agree to broader, binding international steps to fight climate change. German officials have also expressed concern the escalating Cold War-type showdown between Washington and Moscow over the missile shield and another looming battle over Kosovo independence could overshadow the June 6-8 summit. | 0 |
Arctic sea ice this summer melted to a record low extent or will come a close second, two different research institutes said on Tuesday, confirming a trend which could yield an ice-free summer within a decade. The five biggest melts in a 32-year satellite record have all happened in the past five years, likely a result of both manmade climate change and natural weather patterns. One impact of an ice-free summer may be disrupted world weather, with hints already as some scientists blame recent chill winters in Europe and North America on warmer, open Arctic seas diverting polar winds south. Researchers at the University of Bremen in Germany say that this year has already toppled 2007 after sea ice retreated to a record low on September 8. The US-based National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says this year is number two with the melt season all but over before winter returns to the high Arctic. "I'm increasingly confident it will remain number two," said Mark Serreze, head of the NSIDC. But the result may be close enough to declare a tie, he added. More important than the record was the trend, said University of Bremen's Georg Heygster, referring to how the years since 2007 had all since bigger summer melts than those before. A tie would echo the World Meteorological Organisation's view on recent rising global temperatures, after it declared 2010 a tie with 1998 and 2005 for the hottest year since such records began about a century and a half ago. Bremen and NSIDC use satellites to measure microwave radiation from the ice pack, but with slightly different methods: NSIDC can achieve a sharper image, but Bremen to a higher resolution of 6 kilometers compared with 25 km. TREND Researchers agree that summer sea ice is disappearing faster than expected. "An 'ice-free' summer Arctic is rapidly on its way. Most data indicate that the models are underestimating the rate of ice-loss," said Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute. "That means that we see more rapid change than the model scenarios have suggested. It also means that there are processes out there that influence ice that we have yet to understand." The summer ice retreat has already reached levels which were forecast three decades from now in models used in the UN climate panel's flagship report four years ago. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used models which forecasted an ice-free summer at the end of this century. But that could happen as early as 2013, according to one of the most aggressive estimates. Other experts predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer anywhere from 2020-2050. "I still see a high likelihood of a near ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer around 2016, plus or minus three years," said Wieslaw Maslowski at the California-based Naval Postgraduate School. More difficult to measure than area is ice thickness, which is also diminishing, most scientists agree. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle calculated ice volume, combining area and thickness, reached a record low last year and would do so again this year. | 0 |
Ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff placed a strong first in Brazil's presidential election on Sunday, but she will face a runoff after some voters were turned off at the last minute by a corruption scandal and her views on social issues. Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who was handpicked by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to continue the center-left economic policies that have made Brazil one of the world's hottest emerging markets, had 46.6 percent of valid votes with 98 percent of ballots counted. That result left her unable to get the 50 percent of valid votes she needed to avoid a runoff vote between the top two candidates on October 31, election regulators said. Rousseff will face her nearest rival, former Sao Paulo state governor Jose Serra, who won 32.7 percent of the votes. An unexpected late surge by a third candidate, the Green Party's Marina Silva, came largely at Rousseff's expense. Silva had 19.5 percent of valid ballots and her supporters will now be a highly prized voting bloc in the runoff. Rousseff is favored to beat Serra in the runoff and become the first woman to lead Brazil, although a first-round victory would have given her a stronger mandate to push through reforms such as changes to Brazil's onerous tax laws. Her campaign has been helped by red-hot economic growth and Lula's constant support. Neither Rousseff nor Serra is seen deviating from the mix of social programs and investor-friendly policies that have made Lula wildly popular, and confident Brazilian markets rallied in the run-up to the vote. Yet recent allegations of a kickback scheme involving a former top aide to Rousseff, plus questions among evangelical Christians about her positions on abortion and other social issues, appear to have instilled just enough doubt in voters' minds to cost her a first-round victory. Rousseff had spent the past month well above the 50 percent support level in pre-election polls, and the disappointing performance is likely to revive questions about her relative lack of charisma and thin executive experience. Valdeci Baiao da Silva, a security officer in Brasilia, said the good economic times had made him a Lula supporter -- but he voted for Serra on Sunday because Rousseff seemed unprepared and unpredictable. "I think she might even disappoint (Lula)," he said. At a church service in Brasilia on Sunday, Pastor Otaviano Miguel da Silva urged his followers not to vote for candidates from Rousseff's ruling Workers' Party because "it approves of homosexuality, lesbianism, and is in favor of abortion." Brazil is overwhelmingly Catholic, but evangelicals are growing in number and pre-election polls showed them abandoning Rousseff in significant numbers as the vote grew closer. Rousseff met with church leaders last week and affirmed her support for existing laws, but she may not have been able to overcome Internet videos showing previous statements in which she appeared to support the decriminalization of abortion. Green Party candidate Silva, herself an evangelical, appeared to be the main beneficiary of the last-minute shift. A former environment minister who quit Lula's government in 2008 after a dispute over development plans in the Amazon, Silva had previously said she would not make an endorsement in a runoff -- though her new position as a potential kingmaker could cause her to change her mind. ROUSSEFF STILL SEEN WINNING RUNOFF Serra, a former Sao Paulo governor and one of Brazil's most experienced politicians, now has an extra four weeks to chip away at Rousseff's lead. Still, political analysts say a major scandal involving Rousseff directly would be virtually the only scenario under which she could lose a runoff. Lula will spend the coming weeks touting his accomplishments -- including 20 million people lifted out of poverty since 2003 -- and telling voters that Rousseff is the best candidate for the job. Runoffs are common in Brazil -- Lula faced them in 2002 and 2006, and emerged with a strong mandate in both cases -- and Rousseff is expected to take victory. "This is an electoral climate that favors the incumbent party," political analyst Luiz Piva said. "Brazilians are generally very happy with their government." Investors have been happy too. Brazil's stock market, bonds and currency have all remained strong in the run-up to the vote -- a marked contrast to the panic that preceded the 2002 election of Lula, a former radical. Under Lula's mix of social welfare policies and generally investor-friendly economic management, Brazil has witnessed the rapid growth of a middle class that is snapping up cars, houses and other goods in record numbers. The country has also joined Russia, India and China in the "BRIC" group of emerging powers that are gaining in influence, especially as more developed economies have stagnated. Rousseff, a career civil servant who had never run for elected office, has vowed to focus on improving Brazil's woeful infrastructure -- especially as the country prepares to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. She has become more pragmatic over time since spending nearly three years in jail in the 1970s for her militancy against the dictatorship of that era. Some investors fear she could govern to the left of Lula, although Rousseff's advisers have told Reuters she is unlikely to lead a major expansion of the state apart from in some strategic areas such as the energy sector. The extension of the campaign marks a new lease on life for Serra, an accomplished former health minister who ran a lackluster campaign until mustering just enough support in the final days to force the runoff. Serra, 68, has vowed to run a centrist, pro-business government. Yet he also believes in a strong state presence in some sectors, and his administration would likely be broadly similar in practice to Rousseff's. Sunday also saw voting for local and regional races throughout Brazil that will determine the makeup of Congress. Rousseff's 10-party coalition was expected to win a clear majority. The winner of the runoff for president will take office on January 1. | 0 |
His polished leather shoes crunched on dust the miners had spilled from nylon bags stuffed with cobalt-laden rocks. The man, Albert Yuma Mulimbi, is a longtime power broker in Congo and chair of a government agency that works with international mining companies to tap the nation’s copper and cobalt reserves, used in the fight against global warming. Yuma’s professed goal is to turn Congo into a reliable supplier of cobalt, a critical metal in electric vehicles, and shed its anything-goes reputation for tolerating an underworld where children are put to work and unskilled and ill-equipped diggers of all ages get injured or killed. “We have to reorganize the country and take control of the mining sector,” said Yuma, who had pulled up to the Kasulo site in a fleet of SUVs carrying a high-level delegation to observe the challenges there. But to many in Congo and the United States, Yuma himself is a problem. As chair of Gécamines, Congo’s state-owned mining enterprise, he has been accused of helping to divert billions of dollars in revenues, according to confidential State Department legal filings reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with a dozen current and former officials in both countries. Top State Department officials have tried to force him out of the mining agency and pushed for him to be put on a sanctions list, arguing he has for years abused his position to enrich friends, family members and political allies. Yuma denies any wrongdoing and is waging an elaborate lobbying and legal campaign to clear his name in Washington and Congo’s capital of Kinshasa, all while pushing ahead with his plans to overhaul cobalt mining. Effectively operating his own foreign policy apparatus, Yuma has hired a roster of well-connected lobbyists, wired an undisclosed $1.5 million to a former White House official, offered the United States purported intelligence about Russia and critical minerals and made a visit to Trump Tower in New York, according to interviews and confidential documents. Yuma met with Donald Trump Jr there in 2018, a session the mining executive described as a quick meet-and-greet. Despite such high-level access during the Trump administration, he was barred just two months later from entering the United States. His grip on the mining industry has complicated Congo’s effort to attract new Western investors and secure its place in the clean energy revolution, which it is already helping to fuel with its vast wealth of minerals and metals like cobalt. Batteries containing cobalt reduce overheating in electric cars and extend their range, but the metal has become known as “the blood diamond of batteries” because of its high price and the perilous conditions in Congo, the largest producer of cobalt in the world. As a result, carmakers concerned about consumer blowback are rapidly moving to find alternatives to the element in electric vehicles, and they are increasingly looking to other nations with smaller reserves as possible suppliers. There is a chance that Congo’s role in the emerging economy could be diminished if it fails to confront human-rights issues in its mines. And even if Yuma works to resolve those problems, as he has pledged to do, it still may not be enough for new American investors who want to be assured the country has taken steps to curb a history of mining-industry corruption. Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, has tried to sideline Yuma by stacking Gécamines with his own appointees, but he has been unwilling to cross him further. During an interview at his hillside palace in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi said he had his own strategy for fixing the country’s dangerous mining conditions. “It is not going to be up to Mr. Yuma,” he said. “It will be the government that will decide.” The standoff between Yuma and the president echoes power struggles that have torn apart African countries rich with natural resources in the past. How this one plays out has implications that reach far beyond the continent, as the global battle against climate change calls for a stepped-up transition from gasoline-burning vehicles to battery-powered ones. For Congo, the question boils down to this: Will Yuma help the country ride the global green wave into an era of new prosperity, or will he help condemn it to more strife and turmoil? ‘TIRED OF DIGGING’ Statues greet motorists at the main roundabout in a mining hub in Congo’s Copperbelt. One depicts an industrial miner in hard hat, headlamp and boots; another a shoeless, shirtless man in ragged shorts holding a pickax. They tell the story of the country’s dual mining economies: industrial and artisanal. High-tech, industrial mines run by global corporations like China Molybdenum employ thousands of people in Congo’s cobalt sector, and while they have their own problems, they are largely not responsible for the country’s tarnished reputation abroad. It’s a different story for the artisanal sector, where Yuma plans to focus the bulk of his stated reforms. Consisting of ordinary adults with no formal training, and sometimes even children, artisanal mining is mostly unregulated and often involves trespassers scavenging on land owned by the industrial mines. Along the main highway bisecting many of the mines, steady streams of diggers on motorbikes loaded down with bags of looted cobalt — each worth about $175 — dodge checkpoints by popping out of sunflower thickets. Unable to find other jobs, thousands of parents send their children in search of cobalt. On a recent morning, a group of young boys were hunched over a road running through two industrial mines, collecting rocks that had dropped off large trucks. The work for other children is more dangerous — in makeshift mines where some have died after climbing dozens of feet into the earth through narrow tunnels that are prone to collapse. Kasulo, where Yuma is showcasing his plans, illustrates the gold-rush-like fervor that can trigger the dangerous mining practices. The mine, authorized by Gécamines, is nothing more than a series of crude gashes the size of city blocks that have been carved into the earth. Once a thriving rural village, Kasulo became a mining strip after a resident uncovered chunks of cobalt underneath a home. The discovery set off a frenzy, with hundreds of people digging up their yards. Today, a mango tree and a few purple bougainvillea bushes, leftovers of residents’ gardens, are the only remnants of village life. Orange tarps tied down with frayed ropes block rainwater from flooding the hand-dug shafts where workers lower themselves and chip at the rock to extract chunks of cobalt. Georges Punga is a regular at the mine. Now 41, Punga said he started working in diamond mines when he was 11. Ever since, he has travelled the country searching Congo’s unrivalled storehouse for treasures underfoot: first gold, then copper, and, for the past three years, cobalt. Punga paused from his digging one afternoon and tugged his dusty blue trousers away from his sneakers. Scars crisscrossed his shins from years of injuries on the job. He earns less than $10 a day — just enough, he said, to support his family and keep his children in school instead of sending them to the mines. “If I could find another job, I’d do it,” he said. “I’m tired of digging.” Officials in Congo have begun taking corrective steps, including creating a subsidiary of Gécamines to try to curtail the haphazard methods used by the miners, improve safety and stop child labour, which is already illegal. Under the plan, miners at sites like Kasulo will soon be issued hard hats and boots, tunnelling will be forbidden and pit depths will be regulated to prevent collapses. Workers will also be paid more uniformly and electronically, rather than in cash, to prevent fraud. As chair of the board of directors, Yuma is at the centre of these reforms. That leaves Western investors and mining companies that are already in Congo little choice but to work with him as the growing demand for cobalt makes the small-scale mines — which account for as much as 30% of the country’s output — all the more essential. Once the cobalt is mined, a new agency will buy it from the miners and standardize pricing for diggers, ensuring the government can tax the sales. Yuma envisions a new fund to offer workers financial help if cobalt prices decline. Right now, diggers often sell the cobalt at a mile-long stretch of tin shacks where the sound of sledgehammers smashing rocks drowns out all other noise. There, international traders crudely assess the metal’s purity before buying it, and miners complain of being cheated. Yuma led journalists from the Times on a tour of Kasulo and a nearby newly constructed warehouse and laboratory complex intended to replace the buying shacks. “We are going through an economic transition, and cobalt is the key product,” said Yuma, who marched around the pristine but yet-to-be-occupied complex, showing it off like a proud father. Seeking solutions for the artisanal mining problem is a better approach than simply turning away from Congo, argues the International Energy Agency, because that would create even more hardships for impoverished miners and their families. But activists point out that Yuma’s plans, beyond spending money on new buildings, have yet to really get underway, or to substantially improve conditions for miners. And many senior government officials in both Congo and the United States question if Yuma is the right leader for the task — openly wondering if his efforts are mainly designed to enhance his reputation and further monetize the cobalt trade while doing little to curb the child labour and work hazards. MILLIONS GONE MISSING Bottles of Dom Pérignon were chilling on ice beside Yuma as he sat in his Gécamines office, where chunks of precious metals and minerals found in Congo’s soil were encased in glass. He downed an espresso before his interview with the Times, surrounded by contemporary Congolese art from his private collection. His lifestyle, on open display, was clear evidence, he said, that he need not scheme or steal to get ahead. “I was 20 years old when I drove my first BMW in Belgium, so what are we talking about?” he said of allegations that he had pilfered money from the Congolese government. Yuma is one of Congo’s richest businessmen. He secured a prime swath of riverside real estate in Kinshasa where his family set up a textile business that holds a contract to make the nation’s military uniforms. A perpetual flashy presence, he is known for his extravagance. People still talk about his daughter’s 2019 wedding, which had the aura of a Las Vegas show, with dancers wearing light-up costumes and large white giraffe statues as table centerpieces. He has served on the board of Congo’s central bank and was reelected this year as president of the country’s powerful trade association, the equivalent of the US Chamber of Commerce. The huge mining agency where he is chair was nationalized and renamed under President Mobutu Sese Seko after Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960. Gécamines once had a monopoly on copper and cobalt mining and, by the 1980s, was among the top copper producers in the world. Jobs there offered a good salary, health care and schooling for employees’ families. But Mobutu, who ruled for 32 years, raided its funds to support himself and his cronies, a pattern followed by his successors, according to anti-corruption groups. By the 1990s, production from Gécamines had declined dramatically. Money wasn’t reinvested into operations, and the agency amassed debt of more than $1 billion. Eventually, half of its workforce was laid off. To survive, Gécamines was restructured, turning to joint ventures with private, mostly foreign, investors in which the agency had a minority stake. Yuma took over in 2010, promising to return Gécamines to its former glory. But instead, according to anti-corruption groups, mining revenues soon disappeared. The Carter Centre, a nonprofit, estimated that between 2011 and 2014 alone some $750 million vanished from Gécamines’ coffers, placing the blame in part on Yuma. The winners of Gécamines’ partnership deals under Yuma included Dan Gertler, a billionaire diamond dealer from Israel. Gertler was later put under US sanctions for “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals,” according to the Treasury Department. A confidential investigative report that was submitted to the State Department and Treasury and obtained by the Times accuses Yuma of nepotism, holding stakes in textile and food-importing businesses that got funding from a government agency he helped oversee, and steering work to a mining contractor in which he was alleged to have shares. US authorities also believed that Yuma was using some of the mining-sector money to help prop up supporters of Joseph Kabila, the kleptocratic president of Congo for 18 years who had first put him in charge of Gécamines. “Suspicious financial transactions appeared to coincide with the country’s electoral cycles,” said the State Department’s 2018 annual report on human rights in Congo, crediting the Carter Centre for the research. By his own tally, Yuma has been accused of cheating Congo out of some $8.8 billion, an amount he thinks is absurd, saying he has brought in billions of dollars in revenue to the country. Yuma has launched a bombastic counterattack on watchdog groups and his critics, calling them “new colonialists.” He has claimed that they somehow conspired with mining companies to stymie his efforts to revamp the industry, which, in his assessment, has left “the Congolese population in a form of modern slavery.” Yuma also sent the Times a 33-page document outlining his defence, noting the many “veritable smear campaigns that seek to sully his reputation and blur his major role in favour of the country through the reform of its mining policy.” WASHINGTON APPEAL The room was packed. Top White House and State Department officials, mining executives, Senate staffers and other Washington elites sat rapt one day in 2018 at the DC headquarters of a foreign policy group as the microphone was handed to the guest of honour: Yuma. “We understand President Donald Trump’s desire to diversify and secure the US supply chain,” he said, speaking to the Atlantic Council. “It would be of our best interests to consider partnerships with American companies to develop projects for the supply of these minerals.” Accused at home of pillaging the country’s revenues, Yuma had taken his image-cleansing campaign abroad, seeking redemption by convincing Washington that he was a critical link to Congo’s minerals and metals. Yuma’s team of lobbyists and lawyers included Joseph Szlavik, who had served in the White House under President George Bush, and Erich Ferrari, a prominent sanctions lawyer. Lodging at the Four Seasons, he held meetings on two trips that spring with officials from the World Bank and the departments of Defence, Energy and the Interior. He also travelled to New York, where he met with Donald Trump Jr There, he was accompanied by Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge fund manager who was a major campaign fundraiser for the former president as well as a close friend and erstwhile business partner of the younger Trump. Beach has been trying to secure a mining deal in Congo, and was previously invested with Trump in a mining project there. He did not respond to requests for comment. “Someone wanted to introduce me to say hello,” Yuma said, playing down the exchange with the president’s son. Trump said he did not recall the meeting. Through all the encounters, Yuma said, he recited the same message: America needed him, and he was ready to help. In Washington, he even offered what he considered crucial intelligence about Russia’s efforts to acquire Congolese niobium, a shiny white metal that resists corrosion and can handle super-high temperatures like those found in fighter jet engines. Yuma said he had helped thwart the sale to benefit the United States, according to two US officials involved in the meeting. Signs of trouble emerged during one of the trips. A member of his lobbying team was pulled aside by a State Department official and given a stark warning. Yuma was now a target of a corruption investigation by the United States, and he was about to be punished. A few weeks later, in June 2018, the State Department formally prohibited him from returning to the United States. “Today’s actions send a strong signal that the US government is committed to fighting corruption,” the State Department said in a statement at the time that did not name Yuma, and instead said the actions involved “several senior” officials from Congo, which the Times confirmed included Yuma. A ‘FORMIDABLE PERSON’ For Yuma, the action signalled that he needed even more muscle. He would hire Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Bush, and George Denison, who had worked for President Gerald Ford. A former Congolese airline and telephone executive named Joseph Gatt, who lives in Virginia and is close to Yuma, also took up his cause. Gatt stationed a personal aide at the Fairmont, a luxury hotel about a mile from the White House, who organised meetings with the lobbyists to push for permission for Yuma to visit the United States. “He’s a very formidable person,” Gatt said of Yuma in an interview, insisting that the allegations against him were false and that he was “quite clean.” At the same time, Yuma worked on elevating his standing in Congo. He hatched a plan with the exiting president, Kabila: Yuma would act as his proxy by becoming prime minister, State Department officials told the Times. But a top US diplomat was sent to meet with Yuma at his home in Kinshasa to make clear that the United States strongly objected to the plan, according to an interview with the diplomat, J Peter Pham. After pulling out a bottle of Cristal Champagne, Yuma talked with Pham about political events in Congo, but things soon turned sour. Pham, then a special envoy to the region, told Yuma that the Americans were prepared to deport two of his daughters, who were completing graduate degrees in the United States, if he pursued Kabila’s scheme. “If we revoked your visa, we could revoke theirs,” Pham recalled telling Yuma. Yuma was undeterred, and his team recruited an aide to Rep Hank Johnson, to deliver an invitation for Yuma to visit the United States and discuss his work in Congo. The invitation was even shared with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, though the State Department shut it down. “We saw it for what it was: an attempt to get around the visa ban,” Pham said. Still determined to get his way, Yuma bolstered his collection of influencers. Denison briefly joined the Washington lobbying team with instructions to ensure that Yuma could travel to the United States and that he “not face legal sanctions,” a June 2020 email shows. The United States was considering putting Yuma on a sanctions list, according to State Department officials, a move that could freeze money he had in international banks. But a $3 million contract between the men did not mention that assignment, instead saying that Denison was to “promote the attractiveness of the business climate” in Congo, according to a copy of the document. Shortly after he started the work, Denison received $1.5 million, emails show, with instructions to transfer most of it to an account belonging to an associate of Yuma’s. The transaction drew scrutiny from the bank — and alarm bells went off for Denison, who said he was concerned that he might be unknowingly participating in a money-laundering scheme. Denison hired a lawyer, quit the job and ultimately returned all the funds. “He’s a huge crook,” Denison said. Yuma did not respond to a question on the matter. DUELING PRESIDENTS Tshisekedi and Yuma walked near a large terraced canyon at one of Glencore’s cobalt mines in the Copperbelt, a region so defined by mining that roadside markets sell steel-toed boots and hard hats alongside fresh eggs and spears of okra. The outing in May was awkward for these two political rivals. Tshisekedi, a longtime opposition member who took office in early 2019 in a disputed election, has been fully embraced by the Biden administration, which sees him as an ally in battling global warming. He is chair of the African Union and has repeatedly appeared with President Joe Biden at international events, including a meeting in Rome last month and then again a few days later in Glasgow, Scotland, at the global climate conference. Back home, Tshisekedi has announced that he intends to make Congo “the world capital for strategic minerals.” But some Congolese and US officials think that in order for that to happen, Yuma needs to be ousted. “We have continuously tried to apply pressure” to have Yuma removed, said one State Department official. Yet Yuma “retains considerable influence,” the official said, baffling the State Department. Meanwhile, Yuma is carrying on as usual, trailed by an entourage of aides who address him as President Yuma, as he is known throughout much of Congo for his business leadership. It is also a nod to his power base and ambitions. He talks of installing seven new floors and a helipad at his office building in downtown Kinshasa. He even had one of his lobbyists track down Tshisekedi in September in New York, during the United Nations General Assembly meeting, to press him to stand by Yuma. In Congo, Yuma also embarked on a nationwide tour this year that looked a lot like a campaign for public office. He set out to visit every province, strategically making his first stop in Tshisekedi’s hometown, where he met with a group of struggling pineapple juice sellers. Before leaving, he handed the group $5,000 in cash to jump-start their business. “Just to show them that I’m supportive,” he explained in an interview. Like the president, Yuma is hoping to get credit for attracting more US investors, convinced that his reform efforts will turn the tide. “I’m a friend of America,” he said in the interview. “I always work in goodwill to protect and to help the US invest in DRC [Congo]. And I told you, I love America. My children were at university there. One of these days, people will understand I’m a real good friend of America and I will continue to help.” If his success depends on transforming the mining sector, the task will be formidable. All day long on a main highway that runs through dozens of industrial mines, trucks groan with loads of copper and tubs of chemicals used to extract metals from ore. But snaking between them is motorcycle after motorcycle, with one man driving and one sitting backward, acting as a lookout, atop huge bags of stolen cobalt. ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
In broken English, he presented himself as a Syrian refugee. He said he had crossed half the continent by foot and lost his papers along the way. Officers photographed and fingerprinted him. Over the next year, he would get shelter and an asylum hearing, and would qualify for monthly benefits. His name, he offered, was David Benjamin. In reality, he was a lieutenant in the German army. He had darkened his face and hands with his mother’s makeup and applied shoe polish to his beard. Instead of walking across Europe, he had walked 10 minutes from his childhood home in the western city of Offenbach. The ruse, prosecutors say, was part of a far-right plot to carry out one or several assassinations that could be blamed on his refugee alter ego and set off enough civil unrest to bring down the Federal Republic of Germany. The officer, Franco A, as his name is rendered in court documents in keeping with German privacy laws, denies this. He says he was trying to expose flaws in the asylum system. But his elaborate double life, which lasted 16 months, unravelled only after police caught him trying to collect a loaded handgun he had hidden in an airport bathroom in Vienna. “That was really a shocking moment,” said Aydan Ozoguz, a lawmaker who was commissioner for refugees and integration at the time. “The asylum system should identify cheaters, no doubt. But the bigger story is: How could someone like this be a soldier in Germany?” The arrest of Franco A in April 2017 stunned Germany. Since then his case has mostly slipped off the radar; will likely change when he goes to trial early next year. When he does, Germany will go on trial with him — not only for the administrative failure that allowed a German officer who did not speak Arabic to pass himself off as a refugee for so long, but for its long-standing complacency in fighting far-right extremism.
A meeting of Uniter, a private network that organises tactical defence training workshops, in Paderborn, Germany, March 8, 2020. The New York Times
Franco A’s case spawned a sprawling investigation that led German authorities into a labyrinth of subterranean extremist networks at all levels of the nation’s security services — a threat that, they acknowledged only this year, was far more extensive than they had ever imagined. A meeting of Uniter, a private network that organises tactical defence training workshops, in Paderborn, Germany, March 8, 2020. The New York Times One group, run by a former soldier and police sniper in northern Germany, hoarded weapons, kept enemy lists and ordered body bags. Another, run by a special-forces soldier code-named Hannibal, put the spotlight on the KSK, Germany’s most elite force. This summer, after explosives and SS memorabilia were found on the property of a sergeant major, an entire KSK unit was disbanded. I interviewed many members of these networks over the past year, Franco A. included. But the story of his double life and evolution — from what superiors saw as a promising officer to what prosecutors describe as a would-be terrorist — is in many ways the tale of today’s two Germanys. One was born of its defeat in World War II and reared by a liberal consensus that for decades rejected nationalism and schooled its citizens in contrition. That Germany is giving way to a more unsettled nation as its wartime history recedes and a long-dormant far right rousts itself in opposition to a diversifying society. Germany’s postwar consensus teeters in the balance. When I first met Franco A more than a year ago at a restaurant in Berlin, he came equipped with documents, some of them notes, others extracts from the police file against him. He seemed confident then. A Frankfurt court had thrown out his terrorism case for lack of evidence. But several months later, the Supreme Court restored the case after prosecutors appealed. Franco A called me on my cellphone. He was shaken. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Even as his trial was pending, he agreed to a series of exclusive recorded interviews and invited me and two New York Times audio producers to his childhood home, where he still lives, to discuss his life, his views and aspects of his case. I went back several times over the next year, most recently the week before Christmas. Sometimes he’d show us videos of himself in refugee disguise. Once, he led us down a creaky stairwell, through a safe-like metal door, into his “prepper” cellar, where he had stashed ammunition and a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” before they were confiscated by the police. Franco A denies any terrorist conspiracy. He says he had posed as a refugee to blow the whistle on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than 1 million refugees to enter Germany, which he considered a threat to national security and identity. The system was so overwhelmed that anyone could come in, he said. If anything, he insisted that he was upholding the Constitution, not undermining it. He never planned to do anything violent — and he didn’t, he said. “If I had wanted it, why wouldn’t I have done it?” he would tell me later. Prosecutors would not speak on the record, but their accusations are outlined in the Supreme Court decision. They point to the loaded gun Franco A. had hidden at the Vienna airport, to an assault rifle they say he kept illegally and to a trip to the parking garage of a presumed target. Then there are the numerous voice memos and diaries Franco A. kept over many years that they have used as a road map for his prosecution. I have read those transcripts in police reports and evidence files. In them, he praises Hitler, questions Germany’s atonement for the Holocaust, indulges in global Jewish conspiracies, argues that immigration has destroyed Germany’s ethnic purity, hails President Vladimir Putin of Russia as a role model and advocates destroying the state.
Military uniforms in Franco A’s ‘‘prepper’’ basement in Offenbach, Germany, July 9, 2020. The New York Times
Franco A, now 31, says these are private thoughts that cannot be prosecuted. The most extreme views in his recording are no doubt shared by neo-Nazis and are popular in far-right circles. But his baseline grievances over immigration and national identity have become increasingly widespread in the Germany of today, as well as in much of Europe and the United States. Military uniforms in Franco A’s ‘‘prepper’’ basement in Offenbach, Germany, July 9, 2020. The New York Times In his generation, which came of age after Sept 11, 2001, during the wars that sprang from it and in an era of global economic crisis, the distrust of government, far-right messaging and the embrace of conspiracy theories not only entered pockets of the security services. They also entered the mainstream. “Far-right extremist messages have shifted increasingly into the middle of society,” Thomas Haldenwang, the president of the domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told me in an interview. They can even be heard in the halls of Parliament, where the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, leads the opposition. Haldenwang’s agency considers the AfD so dangerous that it may place the entire party under observation as early as January — even as the AfD, like Franco A., claims to be the Constitution’s true defender. Such is the tug of war over Germany’s democracy. Over the time I’ve interviewed Franco A., senior defence officials have gone from humouring my queries about extremist networks to publicly sounding the alarm. It was March 2019 when I first asked a defence ministry official how many far-right extremists had been identified in the military. “Four,” he said. Four? Yes, four. “We don’t see any networks,” he said. Until this year, German authorities had turned a blind eye to the problem. Franco A.’s superiors promoted him even after he detailed his views in a master’s thesis. He became a member of extremist networks containing dozens of soldiers and police officers. And he spoke publicly at least once at a far-right event that was on the radar of the security services. But none of that tripped him up the way a janitor at the Vienna airport would. An Obscure Plot It was the janitor who found the gun. Black, compact and loaded with six bullets, it was hidden inside a maintenance shaft in a disabled restroom in the Vienna airport. The Austrian officers had never seen a gun like it: a 7.65-caliber Unique 17 made by a now-defunct French gunmaker some time between 1928 and 1944. It turned out to be a pistol of choice for German officers during the Nazi occupation of France. To find out who had hidden it, the police set an electronic trap. Two weeks later, on Feb 3, 2017, they got their man. Within minutes of Franco A. trying to pry open the door to the wall shaft using the flat end of a tube of hair gel, a dozen police officers swarmed outside the restroom door, guns at the ready. Two officers in civilian clothes walked in and asked him what he was doing. “I said, ‘Yes, I hid a weapon here,” Franco A. recalled. He said he had come to retrieve it and take it to the police. “And I think someone started laughing,” he said. The story he told Austrian police that night as he was questioned was so implausible that he hesitated to retell it when we met. But in the end he did.
A photo of Franco A. at a ceremony at the Saint-Cyr military academy in France, at his home in Offenbach, Germany, July 9, 2020. The New York Times
It was ball season in Vienna. He had been there two weeks earlier for the annual Officer’s Ball, his story went. Barhopping with his girlfriend and fellow soldiers, he had found the gun while relieving himself in a bush. He put it into his coat pocket — only to remember it in the security line at the airport. He hid it to avoid missing his flight and then decided to return to hand it in to the police. A photo of Franco A. at a ceremony at the Saint-Cyr military academy in France, at his home in Offenbach, Germany, July 9, 2020. The New York Times “I feel so ridiculous by telling this,” he told us. “I know no one believes it." Franco A was released that night. But officers kept his phone and a USB stick they had found in his backpack. They took his fingerprints and sent them to German police for verification. The match that came back weeks later startled officers who thought they were doing a routine check on Franco’s identity. He had two. His ID had said that he was a German officer based with the Franco-German brigade in Illkirch, near Strasbourg. But his fingerprints belonged to a migrant registered near Munich. Investigators were alarmed. Had Franco A. stashed the gun to commit an attack later? He was caught the night of the annual fraternity ball, hosted by Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, which tended to attract militant counterdemonstrators. One theory was that Franco A. had planned to shoot someone that night while pretending to be a leftist. Once German authorities took over the investigation, they found two documents on his UBS stick: the “Mujahedeen Explosives Handbook” and “Total Resistance,” a Cold War-era guide for urban guerrilla warfare. His cellphone led them to a sprawling network of far-right Telegram chat groups populated by dozens of soldiers, police officers and others preparing for the collapse of the social order, what they called Day X. It also contained hours of audio memos in which Franco A. had recorded his thoughts over several years. On April 26, 2017, in the middle of a military training exercise in a Bavarian forest, Franco A. was arrested again. Ten federal police officers escorted him away. Ninety others were conducting simultaneous raids in Germany, Austria and France. In a series of raids, the police found more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. They also discovered scores of handwritten notes and a diary. When they started reading, they began to discover a man who had harboured radical thoughts from the time he was a teenager. In our interviews with Franco A., he went back further in time, recounting his childhood and a family history that grafts almost perfectly onto Germany’s own. Echoes of History Franco A was 12 or 13 when he bought his first German flag, he said. It was a small tabletop banner he picked up in a souvenir shop during a family holiday in Bavaria. The purchase would be innocuous in any other country. In postwar Germany, where national pride had long been a taboo because of the nation’s Nazi past, it was a small act of rebellion. “Germany has always been important to me,” Franco A said as he showed us photos of his childhood bedroom, the flag in the foreground. He did not see many German flags growing up in his working-class neighbourhood, which was home to successive waves of guest workers from southern Europe and Turkey who helped rebuild postwar Germany, and who transformed its society as well. Franco A’s mother, a soft-spoken woman who lives upstairs from him, recalled having only a handful of children with a migrant background in her class as a student in the 1960s. By the time Franco A went to school, she said, children with two German parents were in the minority. Franco A’s own father was an Italian guest worker who abandoned the family when he was a toddler. He refers to him only as his “producer.” “I wouldn’t say it’s my father,” he said. In one of his audio memos, from January 2016, Franco A would later describe the guest worker program as a deliberate strategy to dilute German ethnicity. He himself, he said, was “a product of this perverse racial hatred." He told me that his grandfather was born in 1919, the year of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which sealed Germany’s defeat in World War I. The treaty gave rise to the “stab in the back” legend — that Germany had won the war but was betrayed by a conspiracy of leftists and Jews in the governing elite. The propaganda helped fuel anti-democratic cells in the military that hoarded arms, plotted coups and eventually supported the rise of Nazism — much the same things prosecutors accuse Franco A of today. He said his grandparents often cared for him, serving him soup after school and telling him stories about the war. His grandfather regaled him about his adventures in the Hitler youth. The copy of “Mein Kampf” that the police confiscated once belonged to him. He said his grandmother was 20 when she and her sister fled the advance of the Red Army in what is now Poland. She told the boy a story of how their wooden cart had broken down, forcing them to rest in a field outside Dresden. That night, she said, the sisters watched the city burn in a devastating shower of bombs that killed as many as 25,000 civilians and has since become a symbolic grievance of the far right. Years later, Franco A would record himself enacting a fictional conversation in which he raises the “bomb terror in Dresden” and asks whether Jews had the right to expect Germans to feel guilty forever. His teachers encouraged him to challenge authority and think for himself. They came of age during the 1968 student movement and sought to transmit the liberal values that sprung from it — a distrust of nationalism and atonement for the war. None of his teachers that I spoke to detected any early hints of extremism but rather recalled loving his contrarian and inquisitive nature. What they didn’t know was that around that time he had entered a boundless world of online conspiracy theories that would influence him for years to come. Those views began to take shape — in the privacy of his teenage diary. Franco A described the entries as experimenting with ideas, not evidence of a hardened ideology or any intention. They included musings on the ways he could change the course of German history. “One would be to become a soldier and gain an influential position in the military so I can become the head of the German armed forces,” he wrote in January 2007. “Then a military coup would follow.” Unheeded Warnings In 2008, just as Lehman Brothers imploded and the world descended into the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Franco A joined the army. He was 19. In no time, he was selected as one of only a handful German officer cadets to attend the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy in France, founded in 1802 by Napoleon. His five years abroad included semesters at Sciences Po in Paris and King’s College London as well as at Sandhurst, one of the British army’s premier officer training schools, and a summer session at the University of Cambridge. In 2013, he wrote a master’s thesis, “Political Change and Strategy of Subversion.” Over 169 pages, Franco A argued that the downfall of great civilizations had always been immigration and the dilution of racial purity brought about by subversive minorities. Europe and the West were next in line if they did not defend themselves, he said. Ethnically diverse societies were unstable, he wrote, and nations that allow migration were committing a form of “genocide.” His final section posits that the Old Testament was the foundation of all subversion, a blueprint for Jews to gain global dominance. It might be, he said, “the biggest conspiracy in the history of humanity.” The French commander of the military academy was aghast. He immediately flagged it to Franco A’s German superiors. “If this was a French participant on the course, we would remove him,” the commander told them at the time, according to German news media reports. The German military commissioned a historian, Jörg Echternkamp, to assess the thesis. After just three days, he concluded that it was “a radical nationalist, racist appeal.” But it was also combined with “an insecurity due to globalization" that made it socially more acceptable, he said — and therefore “dangerous.” But Franco A was not removed from service. Nor was he reported to Germany’s military counterintelligence agency, whose remit is to monitor extremism in the armed forces. Instead, on Jan 22, 2014, he was summoned to a branch office of the German military in Fontainebleau, near Paris. An officer from the military’s internal disciplinary unit told him that his thesis was “not compatible” with Germany’s values, according to the minutes. Franco A defended himself by saying that as the No 2 student in his year he had felt pressure to create something “outstanding” and had gotten carried away. “I isolated myself completely in this newly created world of thoughts and no longer looked at it from the outside,” Franco A. told the interviewer. After three hours of questioning, the senior officer concluded that Franco A “had become a victim of his own intellectual abilities.” He was reprimanded and asked to submit a new thesis. When Franco A returned to Germany later in 2014, it was as if nothing had happened. His superior in Dresden described him as a model German soldier — “a citizen in uniform.” In November 2015, he received another glowing report, noting how he’d been placed in charge of ammunition, a responsibility he fulfilled with “much joy and energy.” Prepping for Action? Prominently displayed on Franco A’s bookshelf is “The Magic Eye,” a volume containing colourful images that, if stared at long enough, give way to entirely different ones. Franco A is like that. Throughout our interviews, he cast himself as a peace-loving critical thinker who had become a victim of a political climate in which dissent was punished. But records and interviews with investigators and other people familiar with his case portrayed a very different person. After he returned from France, Franco A. gravitated toward soldiers who shared his views. As it turned out, they were not hard to find. A fellow officer and friend introduced him to a countrywide online chat network of dozens of soldiers and police officers concerned about immigration. The officer who had set up the network served in Germany’s elite special forces, the KSK, based in Calw, and went by the name of Hannibal. Hannibal also ran an organisation called Uniter, which offered paramilitary training. It has since been put under surveillance by the domestic intelligence service. Franco A attended at least two Uniter meetings. Badges of the group were found among his belongings. He was “known as intelligent” on the KSK base, police interviews suggest. “Several soldiers knew him,” one soldier said in a witness statement. Many of the chat members were “preppers” anticipating what they believed would be the collapse of Germany’s social order. Franco A himself began stockpiling a “prepper” cellar with food rations and other supplies. He also began obtaining guns and ammunition illegally, prosecutors say. Russia had recently invaded Ukraine. A febrile period of Islamist terrorism had just begun in Europe. In August, Merkel welcomed hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim asylum-seekers from wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The threat of war or civil unrest within Germany felt real, Franco A recalled. At this point, prosecutors say, he began contemplating violence. The fight of the state against terrorism was a “fight against us,” he said, according to the indictment against him. But the “gift of truth” would have to be “well-packaged.” To lead people to it, a “trigger event” was necessary. That was when he started his search for a number of possible triggers, or targets, prosecutors say. He denies this. But at the end of his Christmas break in 2015 — 10 days before he would take up his first assignment in the Franco-German brigade near Strasbourg — he donned his refugee disguise. The Phony Refugee As he sat waiting at the police station for his first interview as David Benjamin, his refugee alter ego, Franco A studied a world map on the opposite wall. He was trying to decide whether Damascus or Aleppo would make a more credible birthplace. Over time, he would invent a sprawling family history. Fluent in French after his military training in France, he told his interviewers that he was a Syrian Christian of French descent. He said he had attended a French high school and then worked as a fruit farmer in Tel al-Hassel, a small village outside Aleppo. “I tried to be prepared the best I could,” Franco A recalled. “But in the end, it was not necessary at all.” He said his story was never questioned by German authorities, overwhelmed at the time. Two days after showing up at the police station, he registered as an asylum-seeker and was then bused to a series of temporary group shelters. Eventually he was assigned to a small residence in Baustarring, a Bavarian hamlet 250 miles west of his army base. Franco A filmed several videos of his shelters on his cellphone camera. He was clearly unconvinced of how needy the asylum-seekers were. Many of the Syrians, in particular, had fled formerly middle-class lives in cities destroyed by fighting. They looked “more like tourists” than refugees, he said. “I decided to take a bad telephone, because I didn’t want to stand out with a good telephone," he said. “In the end, I had the worst.” The system was overly generous and conspicuously forgiving, he said. Even as he turned down job offers, he continued to receive his monthly stipend. He showed up at the shelter perhaps once a month, and missed two dates in a row. In Franco A’s view, Merkel’s government had helped create its own humanitarian crisis by joining wars in the Middle East. It was like a case study from his disgraced master’s thesis materialising before his eyes. “Millions of people came from a destabilised region that in my eyes could have been kept stable,” he said. The Moroccan interpreter in his asylum hearing later testified that she had doubts he spoke Arabic. But because of his Jewish-sounding name she did not dare speak up. As a Muslim, she worried about sounding anti-Semitic. Franco A was ultimately granted “subsidiary protection,” a status that allows asylum-seekers with no identity papers to stay and work in Germany. Parallel to his refugee life, his reputation in far-right circles grew. Franco A said he attended debating events in bars. After one such event, he was invited to speak. On Dec 15, 2016, he said, he spoke at the “Prussian Evening,” an event organized at Hotel Regent in Munich by a publisher run by a Holocaust denier. His topic that night: “German conservatives — diaspora in their own country.” Throughout that year, his voice memos sounded increasingly urgent. Those who dared to voice dissent had always been murdered, he said in one from January 2016, three weeks after registering as a refugee. “Let’s not hesitate, not to murder but to kill,” he said. “I know you will murder me,” he added. “I will murder you first.” A Possible Target Franco A had been living his double life for almost seven months when, in the summer of 2016, he travelled to Berlin, prosecutors say. On a side street near the Jewish quarter, he went to take four photos of car license plates in a private underground parking garage, they say. Investigators later retrieved the images from his cellphone. The building housed the offices of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an organization founded and run by Anetta Kahane, a prominent Jewish activist. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she has been the target of far-right hatred for decades. Judging from notes they confiscated, prosecutors believe that Kahane, now 66, was one of several prominent targets Franco A. had identified for their pro-refugee positions. Others included Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who was justice minister at the time, and Claudia Roth, a Green lawmaker who was then Parliament’s vice president. Kahane’s name appears at least twice in the notes, once at the end of a bullet-pointed list of seemingly mundane items such as “fridge” and a reminder to call the bank where his refugee alter ego had an account. Franco A showed them to me. He said it was an ordinary to-do list. On one page, he noted Kahane’s background, age and work address. He also drew a detailed map of the location of her parking garage. On the same piece of paper, he wrote: “We are at a point where we cannot yet act like we want to.” Before the trip to Berlin and in the days after, prosecutors say, Franco bought a mounting rail for a telescopic sight and parts for a handgun, and was seen at a shooting range trying out the accessories with an assault rifle. He also travelled to Paris, where he met the head of a pro-Putin Russian think tank with links to France’s far right and is believed to have bought the French handgun that was later found in Vienna. In all, prosecutors say there is “probable cause” that Franco A was preparing a killing. Franco A disputes virtually every part of the accusations. None of what the prosecutors say amounts to an intention to harm Kahane, he said. “There are pictures on my phone, but then this doesn’t prove I was there,” he said during a tense six-hour interview one night. “I can’t talk about this at all,” he said, citing his upcoming trial. But then he did anyway, in “hypothetical terms.” If he had gone, it would have been to have a conversation, Franco A said. He would have rung the bell but found that Kahane was not there. Then he might have gone to the parking garage, thinking, “OK, maybe you can find out something out about the car.” “And then you could maybe find, through whatever lucky circumstance, find this person,” he said. Even if he had planned to kill Kahane — which he asserted was “definitely” not true — and even if he had visited the garage, “at worst it would be the preparation of an assassination” and not terrorism, he argued. How does this endanger the state? he asked. “This person’s not even a politician.” I visited Kahane to ask what she thought. The day we met, another neo-Nazi threat had just landed in her email box. She gets them all the time. “We will cut a swastika into your face with a very sharp ax,” the message read. “Then we will cut your spine and leave you to die in a side street.” But scarier almost than the threats, she said, was the naiveté of German authorities. She recalled the day the police came to tell her they had caught a neo-Nazi soldier who planned to kill her. They were referring to Franco A. and two of his associates. She had laughed and said, “So you got them all, all three of them?” “They always think it’s just one or two or three Nazis,” she said. Whose Constitution? There is a provision in the German Constitution, Article 20.4, that allows for resistance. Conceived with Hitler’s 1933 enabling act in mind, in which he abolished democracy after being elected, it empowers citizens to take action when democracy is at risk. It is popular among far-right extremists who denounce Merkel’s administration as anti-constitutional. That Constitution has pride of place in Franco A’s library. He quotes from it often. The week before Christmas, I went to see him one more time. He was upset that I had transcripts of his voice memos. I challenged him on some of the things he had said — for example, that Hitler was “above everything.” How could he explain that? He had meant it in an ironic way, he said, and played that section of the recording for me. The tone is casual and banter-like, two voices chuckle. But it is not obvious that it is all a joke. I asked him about another recording, from January 2016. Anyone who contributes to destroying the state, was doing something good, Franco A had said. Laws were null and void. How could he say that and say he defends the Constitution, too? There was a long silence. Franco A. looked at his own transcript. He leafed through his lawyer’s notes. But he did not have an answer. c.2020 The New York Times Company | 2 |
The projections, based on new computer models and reviewing what the scientists said was an "exceptional number of extreme heatwaves" in the past decade, are more alarming than the conclusions of the UN panel of climate scientists last year.That report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the UN body that collates scientific research from around the world - merely said of heatwaves: "It is very likely that the length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heatwaves will increase over most land areas" this century.Monthly heat extremes in summer - such as the heatwaves in Australia this year, parts of the United States in 2012 or Russia in 2010 - now affect five percent of the world's land area, the report said."This is projected to double by 2020 and quadruple by 2040," the scientists wrote of their new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.The tropics would be most affected by increased heatwaves, followed by areas including the Mediterranean, Middle East, parts of western Europe, central Asia and the United States."In many regions, the coldest summer months by the end of the century will be hotter than the hottest experienced today," unless emissions of greenhouse gases are curbed, said Dim Coumou, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.The IPCC says heat-trapping gases, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are nudging up temperatures, and are likely to cause more severe downpours, heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels.Almost 200 governments have agreed to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times and plan to agree, by the end of 2015, a deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.Global average surface temperatures have risen by 0.8C (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution. | 6 |
Climate change may pose a much more serious threat to the world's poor than existing research has suggested because of spikes in food prices as extreme weather becomes more common, Oxfam said on Wednesday. More frequent extreme weather events will create shortages, destabilise markets and precipitate price spikes on top of projected structural price rises of about 100 percent for staples such as maize over the next 20 years, the charity said in a report. Droughts in the US Midwest and Russia this year have helped to propel prices for maize and soybeans to record highs and United Nations food agencies this week said that world leaders must take swift action to ensure that food-price shocks do not turn into a catastrophe that could hurt tens of millions of people. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that the 2007/08 price spike contributed to an 8 percent rise in the number of undernourished people in Africa. "For vulnerable people, sudden and extreme price hikes can be more devastating than gradual long-term rises to which they may have more chance of adjusting," Oxfam said in a report. "Though the price spike and coping strategies may be short-term, the impacts are often felt across generations. An increase in malnutrition can cause stunting and reduce developmental potential in young children." Oxfam added that existing research, which considers the gradual effects of climate change but not extreme weather, significantly underestimates the implications of changing weather patterns. The charity insisted there is an "urgent need for a full stress test of our fragile and dysfunctional food system" and called for a reversal of decades of underinvestment in small-scale sustainable and resilient agriculture, as well as urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "Climate change could lead to a permanent increase in yield variability and excessive food price volatility, however, which could leave many poor countries with potentially insuperable food security challenges," Oxfam said. | 0 |
DEFIANCE, Ohio, Fri Oct 31, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Republican John McCain has been called a maverick, a hero and a survivor. But the title the longtime Arizona senator wants most is US president. The prize has long eluded him. At 72, McCain would be the oldest president to begin a first term in the White House and he has struggled hard to get this close. In the heated final days of the campaign before Tuesday's election, opinion polls show McCain trailing Democrat Barack Obama nationally and in once-secure Republican states. Being down has not stopped McCain before. He endured more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, made his name in Congress with skirmishes over policy that often put him at odds with his party and fought a bruising battle for the Republican nomination in 2000 that he lost to George W Bush, then the governor of Texas. McCain's campaign has woven his story into a narrative of courage, honor and experience to contrast with Obama, a 47-year-old first-term US senator from Illinois. "The next president won't have time to get used to the office," McCain said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio. "I have been tested. Senator Obama has not." McCain's critics highlight a lurking temper, a largely conservative voting record and a political brand damaged by his admitted weakness on economic issues and his association with Bush as the US financial crisis roils the global economy and Washington fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If McCain wins, it will be thanks partly to a lifelong streak of rebelliousness. The man whose mother plunged him into a tub of cold water to cool his temper as a 2-year-old went on to lead what he called a group of troublemakers while a student at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The son and grandson of US admirals, McCain graduated in 1958 in the bottom of his class and entered the Navy. By 1967, McCain was a pilot aboard the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam when he had a close brush with death. TORTURE, HONOR While preparing to take off on a bombing run over North Vietnam, a missile fired accidentally from another plane hit McCain's fuel tanks, triggering explosions and fire. McCain escaped by crawling onto the nose of his plane and diving onto the ship's fiery deck. The incident, called the worst non-combat accident in U.S. naval history, killed 134 men and wounded hundreds. Three months later, McCain's life changed forever. On a bombing mission over Hanoi, a missile hit his plane, forcing him to eject. The maneuver knocked him unconscious and broke his arms and a leg. He plunged into a Hanoi lake. An angry mob dragged him from the water, broke his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. His captors imprisoned him at the infamous Hanoi Hilton. Tortured and in solitary confinement for more than two of his 5 1/2 years as a POW, McCain turned down a chance to leave prison before comrades who had entered earlier. "That is a defining moment in his life, and it speaks volumes about who he is to the American people," said Steve Schmidt, a top McCain aide. Despite its significance in his life, McCain was not always comfortable making his prison experience part of the argument for his advancement to the White House. Encouragement from supporters changed that and he made his trying times in Vietnam a larger part of his campaign story, drawing criticism that included former President Jimmy Carter accusing McCain of milking his past. Supporters say McCain's biography gives weight to his presidential bid. "I've been a John McCain fan since he stepped off the plane from Vietnam," Sandy Torbett, 66, said at a rally in Washington, Missouri, earlier this year. "I think it does help him and, of course, I think him becoming a senator -- that helps him more." MAVERICK McCain's Senate career solidified his reputation as a maverick. He clashed with Republican colleagues over immigration, climate change and campaign finance reform. He supported Bush's plan to go to war in Iraq but later lambasted the administration for its handling of the conflict and for a permissive attitude to torturing prisoners, a sensitive subject for a former POW. This presidential campaign has had massive ups and downs. A year ago it nearly crumbled, forcing McCain to shed staff and fight suggestions that his White House hopes were over. The opposite occurred. More comfortable as an underdog than the frontrunner, McCain cut costs, regrouped and took another gamble with his strong support for Bush's "surge" strategy of sending more US troops into Iraq. Saying he said would rather lose a campaign than lose a war, McCain won his bet as security in Iraq improved and he locked up his party's nomination. "When the war in Iraq was going badly and the public lost confidence, John stood up and called for more troops. And now we're winning," said Fred Thompson, a former senator and presidential contender, at the Republican convention. But the job losses, home foreclosures and recession threats of the economic crisis have trumped the war for voters and McCain's efforts at economic fluency have largely fallen flat. His comment that US economic fundamentals were strong dogged him for weeks and a gamble to suspend his campaign to help broker a Wall Street bailout in Washington backfired. So, in the final days before Americans vote on Tuesday, McCain has embraced the underdog role again and proclaimed confidence despite being behind in the polls. "We've got 'em right where we want 'em," he has said to applause at rally after rally. "Let's go win this election and get this country moving again." | 0 |
The island, part of the nation of the Comoros off the East African coast, receives more annual rainfall than most of Europe. But a combination of deforestation and climate change has caused at least half of its permanent rivers to stop flowing in the dry season. Since the 1950s, the island has been clearing forests to make way for farmland and in the process disrupted a delicate ecosystem. With so many trees and plants cut down, the water they would normally collect and feed back into the ground and rivers is disappearing. Families in parts of the island now struggle to meet their domestic needs, and farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to irrigate their fields. “We’ve lost 40 permanent rivers in the last 50 years,” said Mohamed Misbahou, the technical director of Dahari, a nonprofit focused on reforesting land in some of the hardest-hit areas on the island. “In some parts of the country, there’s now a big problem getting water.” The drying rivers of Anjouan are part of a web of environmental problems on the island and a potent example of how developing nations with ever more mouths to feed are struggling in the face of climate change, deforestation and population growth. The challenges it is seeing now are likely to become more acute in other parts of the developing world in years to come, experts warn. “We’re faced with increasing temperatures over time, so we know different crops will respond differently, as well as more extreme weather events, and that makes it harder for farmers,” said Alex Forbes, a manager for the United Nations Environment Program’s work on adapting to climate change. “There’s a recognition that we need to collectively improve on land management in order to sustain livelihoods and production.” With dwindling crop returns and farms being divided into smaller and smaller plots with each generation, tens of thousands of people have left their villages in the Comoros to look for work elsewhere. Anjouan, in particular, has become a major departure point for migrants in the archipelago trying to reach the nearby French island territory of Mayotte. The population of the Comoros has more than doubled since 1980, to just under 1 million people, putting pressure on its forests. After gaining independence from France in 1975, the country experienced one of the world’s fastest rates of deforestation. Lost were vast tracts of “cloud forests,” filled with lichens, mosses and trees designed to act like sponges — soaking up thick condensation in the air and releasing it down to the forest floor, where the water found its way into rivers. “Anjouan is a small island,” said Arnaud Charmoille, the author of a 2012 study into the disappearance of the island’s waterways. “There’s a lot of rain. But if you cut down even a small amount of cloud forest it will have a serious impact.” In less than two decades, between 1995 and 2014, some 80% of the country’s remaining forest cover was cut down, disrupting waterways and leaving once-fertile soil exposed to erosion and the leaching of vital nutrients. Crops have declined noticeably, farmers and agricultural charities say, a major problem in a place where more than three-quarters of the population is involved in agriculture. Farmers have turned to ever greater quantities of chemical fertilizers as a result. “There’s been a big reduction in agricultural production, and that leads to food insecurity,” said Ahmed Ali Gamao, a contractor for the Comoros environment ministry, who oversees a project funded by the United Nations to restore forest cover and aid farmers. The project has helped improve the harvesting of rainwater and planted over 1 million trees in the past four years, focusing on species able to withstand climate changes. “There are certain species that we used to grow that we can no longer grow in our fields,” Gamao said. “The agricultural seasons are changing a lot. In some places it’s raining all the time, and in other places it’s always dry.” In the village of Adda-Doueni, Sumaila Youssouf Abdullah, a 45-year-old farmer, was packing soil into small plastic seedling bags as part of a reforestation effort run by Dahari. “When I was young, there was a river down there, and another over there, and another just over that point there,” he said. Restoring forests is a challenge, and cloud forest can be particularly difficult. “It’s almost impossible to replace it,” said Aida Cuní Sanchez, a cloud forest specialist at the University of York in England. “You need to save them before they’re gone.” Cuní Sanchez has been conducting research in northern Kenya, where she says the loss of cloud forest is having a similar impact on rivers and streams. A 2019 report by one intergovernmental think tank predicts that global crop yields could fall by up to 10% by 2050 as a result of land degradation and climate change. The United Nations estimates that just 13% of the population in the Comoros now has access to the quality water it needs. In the farming village of Mnadzishumwé, which sits amid groves of banana and clove trees on the southern end of Anjouan, water was once plentiful. But these days, just getting enough for domestic use is a struggle. A village water committee has been created to manage what little remains, and a system of rationing has been introduced: The communal taps are opened only once every two or three days, depending on the season. “Usually we can get two 20-liter jerrycans for two or three days,” said Sandia Halifa, a 45-year-old clove farmer with four children. “It’s not enough. We need to wash, we need to cook, we need to wash our clothes.” In comparison, the average US household uses more than 1,000 liters of water per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The scarcity of water in parts of the island is exacerbated by an antiquated distribution system which, if fixed, might take off some of the pressure. But as the population grows and the climate continues to heat up, that would only go so far. Growing up, Halifa remembers doing laundry in a river in the next village. For much of the year, that river no longer exists, so every Sunday she joins the flow of women from rural villages who travel to the Jomani River to wash their clothes. The Jomani is one of only a handful of rivers on the island that still flow year round. Halifa says the journey costs her 1,000 Comorian francs (about $2.20) each way, a significant expense in a country with a per capital annual GNP of less than $1,400. For day-to-day use, the family has resorted to buying water from entrepreneurs who have started driving from village to village selling supplies. “They know we’re desperate,” said Sumailan Mshinda, a village elder in Mnadzishumwé. “They sell us 20 liters for 250 Comorian francs,” or about 55 cents. In nearby Adda-Doueni, Abdullah recalled farming in bygone days. “There was no difference between the dry season and the rainy season,” he said. “They were big rivers, and there was always a lot of water.” Now, he added, “when the rainy season is over, there’s no more water.” © 2020 New York Times News Service | 0 |
By Julian Hunt and Charles Kennel - Julian Hunt is former director general of the UK meteorological office. Charles Kennel is distinguished professor of atmospheric science, emeritus and senior advisor to the sustainability solutions institute, UCSD. The opinions expressed are their own. - Dec 23 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)—Climate specialists see the need for a shift from a "top-down" to a "bottom-up" approach for climate change action, in light of the Copenhagen outcome.
The outcome has been criticised on numerous grounds and, in U.S. President Barack Obama's own words, "We have much further to go". In effect, the agreement may ultimately amount to no more than a long-term climate change dialogue between Washington and Beijing. While global action to tackle emissions of carbon dioxide must remain a priority, the fact remains that we may be heading towards a future in which no long-term, comprehensive successor to the Kyoto regime is politically possible. One of the chief flaws in the Copenhagen negotiations was the fact that the overly-ambitious political deals being discussed were not realistic, nor framed to inspire people to act and collaborate with each other across the world on both a local and regional level. Going forwards, national governments will need to be more honest about future likely emissions and also of future temperature changes. In this crucial debate, scientists must be free to state their estimates without political bias. In the absence of a new global deal, it is now crucial that the centre of gravity of decision-making on how we respond to climate change moves towards the sub-national level. This may also have the effect of re-energising future global climate change talks as environment diplomacy could certainly be furthered by policies decided at the local and regional level. The need for such a paradigm shift from a "top-down" to a "bottom-up" approach is becoming clearer by the day. Over the last decade, records of weather and climate trends have revealed larger and more unusual regional and local variations — some unprecedented since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Among such warning signs are the disappearing ice fields around the poles and on all mountain ranges, more frequent droughts in Africa and now in wet regions (such as the 2006 drought in Assam India, previously one of the wettest places in the world), floods in dry regions (as recently, the worst floods in 50 years in northwest India), and ice storms in sub-tropical China in 2008 (for the first time in 150 years). Such extreme events threaten sustainable development around the world, natural environments are destroyed irreversibly, and economic growth is slowed. One of the most compelling advocates this month at Copenhagen for sub-national solutions for tackling climate change was California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As the state of California, and legislators in Globe and city governments are putting into practice, adaptation needs to build on existing knowledge and infrastructures in local settings. Forming loose collaborative networks will enable regional facilitation centres, their experts and decision makers to learn from one another and also draw upon the resources of existing national and international databases and programmes, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and the growing number of consortia linking major cities, local governments, and the private sector. Experience shows that this 'bottom-up' approach works very effectively as it is only generally when sub-national areas learn how they will be specifically affected by climate change that widespread, grassroots political action can be aroused. Although regional variations in climate change are approximately predicted by IPCC global climate models, more local measurements and studies are needed for sub-national governments, industry and agriculture to better understand their local climatic situation and develop reliable and effective strategies to deal with all the ways that climate change affects their activities and well being. Hence, the increasing numbers of regional monitoring centres which, by communicating and interpreting these predictions and uncertainties, are contributing towards local adaptation plans: • In China, where provinces require targets for power station construction, regional environmental and climate change centres are now well developed.
• In the United States, a recent report has highlighted the value of non-official centres, such as a severe storm centre in Oklahoma, which gives independent advice to communities and businesses, while relying on government programmes for much of the data.
• In Brazil, a regional data centre is providing data and predictions about agriculture and deforestation and informs legislation about policy options. What this activity points to is the need for a global network of such centres to support national climate initiatives, and to facilitate international funding and technical cooperation in delivering the right information to the right place, at the right time. Local actions can only be effective if measurements of climate and environment are made regularly and are publicised as well as information about targets, and projections of emissions. Experience shows that full exposure is needed about what is happening, what is planned, and how every individual can be involved (as the Danes show by their community investment in wind power). Historically, it is cities that have helped lead the vanguard towards tackling major environmental challenges. It is therefore unsurprising that it is individual cities that are seeking to adopt some of the most innovative ways of adapting to worsening climate hazards, including showing how to integrate these measures with considerable savings in costs — such as putting windmills on dykes as in Rotterdam. For instance, a recent "civic exchange" meeting in Hong Kong considered solutions for how major cities in China will strive to reach targets for reductions in emissions as stringent as those in developed countries. This is a very ambitious objective, since in China the carbon emission per person per year is 6 tons, compared with 10 tons in the EU, and 25 tons in the United States. Taken overall, the cumulative effect of such sub-national actions may well determine the speed and effectiveness of global responses to climate change. The message is clear. 'Localisation of action and data' must be the post-Copenhagen priority if we are to tackle the global warming menace. | 0 |
Environmental groups urged the Inter-American Development Bank on Saturday to stop lending money to big companies piling into the booming ethanol business that some critics say is partly to blame for soaring food prices. As riots over the cost of living broke out in impoverished Haiti, the IADB prepared to announce increased funding of ports, sugarcane mills and other biofuel ventures throughout Latin America, citing plant-based fuels as a crucial counterweight to climate change and rising energy prices. "The bank's aggressive promotion of biofuels may be good for corporations, but it's a bad deal for farmers, indigenous people and the environment in Latin America," Kate Horner of Friends of the Earth-U.S., said at the bank's annual meeting in Miami. World food prices have jumped due to what the U.N.'s World Food Program says is a mixture of high energy prices, which are boosting transportation costs, increased demand for food by developing countries, erratic weather and competition between biofuels and food for land and investment. The cost of food is threatening millions of people with hunger and raising the risk of political instability. Four people were killed when crowds ransacked and burned stores in the southwestern Haitian town of Les Cayes on Thursday night and looted food containers at a U.N. compound. DIETARY SHIFT CITED Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups say a U.S. law that aims to almost quintuple the amount of biofuel used in the United States by 2022 has led to a spike in production and investment in the Americas. Some grains production in the United States has been diverted into ethanol and the United States is also importing large amounts of sugarcane ethanol from the world's biggest and most efficient producer, Brazil, despite steep tariffs. Gregory Manuel, an adviser to the U.S. government on alternative energy, said biofuels were a marginal contributor to rising food prices. "The No. 1 issue is the emerging market's dietary shift towards higher protein diets. That is the No. 1 issue," he said at the IADB meeting. High fertilizer and transportation costs and "a crash in wheat stocks" due to a two-year drought in Australia are also to blame, Manuel said. Environmentalists, however, say there is a measurable impact on food supply in places like Brazil. Spurred by the possibility of a rich market for ethanol in the United States, investors -- many of them foreign -- have been buying tracts of land in Brazil, pushing up prices and driving away the small-scale family-based farms that supply up to 60 percent of the country's food, said Lucia Schild Ortiz of Friends of the Earth Brazil. Doubts have also arisen about how environmentally friendly ethanol really is if it results in forests or savannah being cleared for sugarcane or palm oil and does nothing to reduce the world's dependency on the internal combustion engine. "There was a time when the environmental movement took for granted that anything that came from a plant was good. So (ethanol) got lumped with renewables," said Horner. Not any more. CULTIVATING JATROPHA IADB President Luis Alberto Moreno said he believes Latin America has a bright future in "green energy," or biofuels. The bank has around $3 billion in private-sector loan projects under consideration. Critics say the vast majority do not promote rural development in Latin America but are aimed at supporting large exporters satisfying U.S. demands for energy. In Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, organizations like the IADB are eager to promote projects that cultivate jatropha, a plant capable of surviving in the country's denuded wastelands and also of producing an oil in its nuts that can be used as fuel. The projects would involve some irrigation. "Why don't they use it to produce more food?" said Aldrin Calixte of the activist group Haiti Survie. | 0 |
Britain is pushing the UN security council to discuss climate change in an attempt to highlight its potential threat to global stability, government officials said on Thursday. Britain takes over the presidency of the United Nations in April and ministers believe the time is right, with the topic already top of the agenda at European Union and G8 summits, to take it to the highest level of the international forum. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, both keen advocates of action on climate change, are pushing the initiative. "Climate change is one of the Prime Minister's top priorities," a Downing Street spokeswoman said. A Foreign Office official added: "We want to embed climate security as a foreign policy issue. We believe that climate change has the potential to exacerbate many of the global insecurities that underlie global tension and conflict." The official declined to comment on newspaper reports that Britain, currently sounding out other member states on the idea, had met resistance from the United States and South Africa. Many government ministers are encouraged by the way climate change's potential impact is becoming "the received wisdom" and by the intended aims of this week's EU summit, where leaders aim to set ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, a former environment minister, has repeatedly said countries must tackle climate change or risk famine, water shortages and failing energy infrastructures thereby threatening global security. In a speech to the UN general assembly last September, Beckett said the next 10 years would be crucial for developed countries to take action. Experts warn that by drastically diminishing resources in some of the most volatile parts of the world, climate change risks creating potentially catastrophic tensions in regions already at breaking point such as the Middle East. International Alert, a leading conflict resolution charity, warned last month that global warming could tip whole regions of the world into conflict. "Various habitats are going to become unviable for people and they are going to move," IA head Dan Smith said. "If the places they are going to move to are already suffering inadequate resources...that will put pressure on an already fragile situation," he added. There has already been fighting in Kenya's Rift Valley over water rights as the arid area dries further. Deforestation has led to conflicts in several regions including South East Asia. | 1 |
Nearly three-fourths of oil from the BP spill is gone from the Gulf of Mexico, with 26 percent remaining as a sheen or tarballs, buried in sediment or washed ashore, US scientists said on Wednesday. "It is estimated that burning, skimming and direct recovery from the wellhead removed one quarter (25 percent) of the oil released from the wellhead," the scientists said in the report "BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget : What Happened to the Oil?" Another 25 percent naturally evaporated or dissolved and 24 percent was dispersed, either naturally or "as the result of operations," into small droplets, the report said. The rest of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude spilled into the Gulf after the April 20 rig explosion that triggered the leak is either on or just beneath the water's surface as "light sheen or weathered tarballs," has washed ashore where it may have been collected, or is buried in sand and sediments at the sea bottom. The report found 33 percent of the oil has been dealt with by the Unified Command, which includes government and private efforts. "This includes oil that was captured directly from the wellhead by the riser pipe insertion tube and top hat systems (17 percent), burning (5 percent), skimming (3 percent) and chemical dispersion (8 percent)," the report found. The rest of the 74 percent that has been removed by natural processes. "The good news is that the vast majority of the oil appears to be gone," Carol Browner, energy and climate change adviser to President Barack Obama, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" show. "That's what the initial assessment of our scientists is telling us."
"We do feel like this is an important turning point," she said. | 6 |
Martin Kropff, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), said he expects the newly-developed high-zinc wheat to make up at least 80% of varieties distributed worldwide over the next ten years, up from about 9% currently. The Mexico-based institute's research focuses on boosting yields, and livelihoods, of the world's poorest farmers while also addressing specific challenges posed by climate change, including higher temperatures, less rainfall and constantly mutating plant diseases. The improved varieties of so-called biofortified wheat are being rolled out with the help of seed company partners in countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico and Bolivia. Kropff said Asian giant China may also begin adopting the fortified wheat varieties this year. Over the next decade, he said he expects nearly all newly deployed wheat varieties to be nutritionally improved, noting that the high-zinc varieties were developed by traditional breeding techniques instead of research based on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). "This is something that is really starting in a big way this year," said Kropff, who also pointed to CIMMYT-developed zinc-enhanced corn that was introduced in Colombia over the past two years. "I'm super proud of this," he added, touting the seeds ability to dent malnutrition via one of the world's grains staples. The dramatic expansion of the new wheat varieties, which has not been previously reported, holds the promise of improving diets that lack essential minerals like zinc and iron, used to fight off viruses and move oxygen throughout the body. Zinc deficiency, in particular, is one of the main causes of malnutrition globally and estimated to afflict more than 2 billion people. CIMMYT scientists, with a research budget last year of $120 million, have developed about 70% of wheat varieties currently planted globally as well as about half of the world's corn, or maize, varieties. The vast majority of CIMMYT's research is non-GMO. The institute was founded by 1970 Nobel peace prize winner Norman Borlaug and runs research projects in some 50 countries. It has attracted funding from the US and British governments, among others, as well as billionaires like Bill Gates and Carlos Slim. 'FIRST OF ITS KIND' CORN Kropff also cited three recently-developed CIMMYT corn varieties that are resistant to Fall Armyworm (FAW), an insect that has caused major damage to crops in both Africa and Asia, that were bred in Kenya with the help of CIMMYT's maize seed bank in Mexico, the world's largest. "Like people, (the worms) like maize as well, but they eat the leaves and also the grains and it's really terrible," said Kropff. The new varieties will be distributed over the next few months for performance trials in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to CIMMYT officials. Kropff, a 64-year-old Dutch scientist, said the FAW-resistant corn varieties are the first of their kind and have already been picked for trials in east African nations ahead of similar trails expected in southern Africa later in the year. He said CIMMYT, which in a typical year develops and deploys some 35 improved wheat varieties globally, fills a space that the biggest profit-maximising seed companies like Germany's Bayer AG or US-based Corteva Inc tend to avoid. "We specifically breed varieties for those environments where the private sector cannot make much money," he said, explaining that the poorest farmers must also regularly adopt new varieties that can thrive in a world where pests and disease are constantly evolving too. "The small-holder farmers rely on us." | 0 |
The International
Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) global carbon offseting system, the first
such scheme for a single industry, is expected to slow the growth of emissions
from commercial flights, costing the industry less than 2 percent of revenues.
Governments from individual countries must still act on their own to put the
agreement's limits into effect. The system will be
voluntary from 2021 to 2026 and mandatory from 2027 for states with larger
aviation industries. Airlines will have to buy carbon credits from designated
environmental projects around the world to offset growth in emissions. "It's a document
arising from compromises and consensus," said Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu,
president of ICAO's governing council at a press conference. Aliu said objections
by a small number of countries would not derail the plan. With 65 countries
covering more than 80 percent of aviation activity in the voluntary first
phases, participation surpassed the agency's expectations, he said, and will
continue growing. Tensions were centered
around developed nations, responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions in the
past, and emerging and developing countries that fear added costs could curb
growth. Russia and India have
said they will not participate in the voluntary phases, and said Thursday the
deal puts an unfair burden on emerging countries. China has said it plans to
join the voluntary phase. Brazil, which had
previously expressed concerns, voiced support for the deal, but did not say
whether it would join the first phases. Citing ICAO figures,
industry estimates the deal will cost airlines between $1.5 billion and $6.2
billion in 2025, depending on future carbon prices, and no more than 1.8
percent of industry revenues by 2035. Airlines' margins are
slim and the average for the past decade was 4 percent, according to figures
from the International Air Transport Association, an industry trade group.
However, IATA has said the deal is far less costly than a patchwork of national
and regional climate deals. "Even though it's
a cost and the industry doesn't like additional costs, we believe it's a
manageable cost," said Paul Steele, an IATA vice president. The US Department of
State, which long pushed for a deal, said it "puts the industry on a path
toward sustainable, carbon-neutral growth." But because of the
voluntary phase and exceptions protecting smaller markets, environmentalists
argued the scheme would not meet its own goals. The International
Council on Clean Transportation estimated the agreement would require airlines
to offset only about three-quarters of growth after 2021, or one-quarter of
total international traffic. Others were critical of
the deal's reliance on offsets. "Taking a plane
is the fastest and cheapest way to fry the planet and this deal won't reduce
demand for jet fuel one drop," said Transport and Environment director
Bill Hemmings. Talks will now
continue on the technical details of the deal, especially what types of offset
credits will be considered acceptable. A Montreal assembly of
ICAO's 191 member states approved the deal, which will apply to international
passenger and cargo flights, and business jets that generate more than 10,000
tonnes of emissions annually. Previous negotiations
came close to provoking a trade war ahead of the 2013 ICAO assembly as the
European Union, which was frustrated with slow progress, ordered foreign
airlines to buy credits under its scheme. China and other countries said that
violated their sovereignty. The deal comes a day
after the Paris accord to fight climate change entered into force. Aviation was
excluded from that accord, though the industry produces about 2 percent of
carbon dioxide emissions, an amount larger than generated by some
industrialized nations. With industry
expecting passenger numbers to double to 7 billion by 2034, rising aircraft
pollution must be curbed to achieve Paris's temperature targets, said Lou
Leonard, a World Wildlife Fund vice president. | 3 |
President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, arrived in Dhaka on Friday to attend a symposium on "Climate Change and Food Security in South Asia." The Iceland president landed at Zia International Airport at 8:15pm and was greeted by President Iajuddin Ahmed. President Grímsson will attend the concluding ceremony of the symposium at Hotel Sonargaon on Saturday. The six-day international symposium began Monday. The University of Dhaka and the Ohio State University of the USA have jointly organised the symposium in cooperation with World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP). The Icelandic president was to arrive in Dhaka Tuesday, but his trip was deferred. | 2 |
China will complete a new research station in the interior of Antarctica next year, state media said on Sunday, expanding its presence on the continent. The official Xinhua news agency cited Sun Bo, head of the Chinese Antarctic expedition team, as saying that an expedition to start in November would build the main structure of the new station situated on Dome A, the highest point on the continent at 4,093 metres above sea level. The country's third scientific research station on the continent, it is expected to be finished by next January, Xinhua cited Sun as saying after returning from the country's 24th scientific expedition there. "Scientists will ... search for the ice core dating from 1.2 million years ago on Dome A, and study the geological evolution under the icecap, the global climate changes and astronomy there," Sun said. Several nations claiming a part of Antarctica have been outlining their case before the United Nations in what some experts are describing as the last big carve-up of territory in history. Some areas of the continent are disputed by Chile, Argentina and Britain. The claims come amid growing interest in the potential for mineral exploitation at both the North and South Poles. For now, though, all such claims are theoretical because Antarctica is protected by a 1959 treaty which prevents mineral exploitation of the continent except for scientific research. | 6 |
China wants rich economies to back a fund to speed the spread of greenhouse gas-cutting technology in poor nations as it seeks to persuade delegates at global warming talks the focus of responsibility belongs on the West. At talks in Bali to start crafting an international agreement to fight climate change after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, some rich countries have said a new pact must spell out greenhouse gas goals for all big emitters. China is emerging as the planet's biggest source of carbon dioxide from industry, vehicles and farms that is trapping more atmospheric heat and threatening disastrous climate change. Under Kyoto, it and other poor countries do not shoulder fixed goals to control such pollution. While Beijing fends off calls for targets, it will press its own demands, especially that rich nations back a big boost in funds to encourage the spread of clean technology, Chinese climate policy advisers told Reuters. "We want to see a substantial fund for technology transfers and development," said Zou Ji of the People's University of China in Beijing, a member of his country's delegation to Bali. "There's been a lot of talk about developing and spreading clean coal-power and other emissions-cutting technology, but the results have been puny, and we want the new negotiations to show that developed countries are now serious about it." That fund could come under a "new body to promote technology transfers," he said, adding that it would take some time for negotiations to settle on specifics. China's demand for clear vows on technology, as well as a big boost in funds for adaptation to droughts, floods and rising sea levels caused by global warming, is real enough. It also part of Beijing's effort to keep a united front with other developing countries and shine the spotlight back on rich nations, especially the United States, the world's biggest emitter, which has refused to ratify Kyoto. "The real obstacle is the United States," said Hu Tao of Beijing Normal University, who previously worked in a state environmental think tank. "China must surely be part of any solution. But the answer has to start what the developed countries do to cut their own emissions and help us cut ours." China says it is unfair to demand that it accept emissions limits when global warming has been caused by wealthy countries' long-accumulated pollution. CLEAN POWER TECHNOLOGY The United Nations recently issued data showing that Americans produced an average 20.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide each in 2004, versus 3.8 tonnes each for Chinese people. A senior Chinese climate change policy-maker, Gao Guangsheng, last week told Reuters that China's hopes to obtain clean power-generation equipment had been frustrated by foreign politicians' and companies' worries about intellectual property theft, foregone profits and sensitive technology. The adviser Zou said a technology transfer body could pair government support with private investors, easing worries about commercial returns and intellectual property safeguards. China has set itself ambitious domestic targets to increase energy efficiency and replace carbon-belching coal with renewable energy sources, but it failed to meet its efficiency target in 2006. An influx of funds could underwrite joint research projects and help developing countries create their own energy-saving devices, said Zhang Haibin, an expert on climate change negotiations at Peking University. "The point is that we don't just want to buy fish. We want to learn how to fish for ourselves," Zhang said. "But if you want to keep selling fish for high prices, you won't teach me." | 1 |
In the French capital, where demonstrations were banned by the authorities after attacks by Islamic State militants killed 130 people on Nov 13, activists laid out more than 20,000 shoes in the Place de la Republique to symbolize absent marchers on the eve of the summit. Among the high heels and sandals were a pair of plain black shoes sent by Pope Francis, who has been a vocal advocate for action to prevent dangerous climate change, and jogging shoes from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. One activist, dressed in white as an angel with large wings, held a sign saying "coal kills". About 10,000 people joined arms to form a human chain through Paris along the 3-km (2-mile) route of the banned march, organizers said.
More than 2,000 events were held in cities including London, Sao Paulo, New York and Asuncion, Paraguay, on the eve of the Paris summit which runs from Nov. 30-Dec. 11 and will be attended by about 150 heads of government. "Over 570,000 people called with one voice for global leaders to deliver a 100 percent clean energy future at the Paris summit," said Emma Ruby-Sachs, campaign director of Avaaz, one of the organizers. Around the world, activists marched, dressed as polar bears or penguins at risk from melting ice, or chanted slogans such as "climate justice". Organizers said that 570,000 people so far had taken part in rallies worldwide and that they expected demonstrations including in Ottawa and Mexico City later in the day to push the count above 600,000. "These are the biggest set of global marches in history," said Sam Barratt at Avaaz. There was no independent verification of the numbers, although none of the individual marches rivalled one in New York last year that drew an estimated 310,000 people. Clashes in Paris In Sydney, about 45,000 people are estimated to have marched through the central business district toward the Opera House. Protesters held placards reading: “There is no Planet B,” and “Say no to burning national forests for electricity”.
In London, organizers said 50,000 marchers were joined by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, actress Emma Thompson and opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said the turnout was especially impressive for a wet November Sunday. Almost all the demonstrations were peaceful, but riot police fired tear gas and clashed with about 200 protesters in Paris, some wearing masks, in the Place de la Republique. Police detained 149 people for questioning. French President Francois Hollande criticized the protests as scandalous amid the candles and flowers left on the square in memory of the 130 killed on Nov 13. The demonstrators had carried banners calling for the defence of the climate and democracy. US President Barack Obama and China's Xi Jinping will be among the leaders attending the start of the summit, which organizers hope will produce a legally binding agreement to commit both rich and developing nations to curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, blamed for warming the planet, beyond 2020. Hopes are high that the Paris summit will not fail like the previous such meeting six years ago in Copenhagen. Popular and political momentum for tougher action on carbon emissions has accelerated in recent years, with 2015 set to be the warmest on record. Activists are seeking to combat everything from Beijing’s smoggy skies to Canada’s Keystone oil pipeline. Saiba Suso, a 26-year-old demonstrator in Paris, said the poor were most at risk: "We are paying the price and we are not the cause. The industrialized countries owe us a lot." Still, all sides say pledges made in Paris will be insufficient to limit a rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, widely viewed as a threshold for dangerous changes in the planet's climate system.
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Environment ministers from rich countries and other major greenhouse gas emitters gathered in western Japan from Saturday for talks on ways to curb emissions, save species from extinction and cut back on trash. The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight and rapidly growing economies such as China and India comes as pressure grows for both developed and developing countries to tackle climate change, blamed for droughts, rising seas and more intense storms. Delegates meeting in the port city of Kobe will be tasked with building momentum for talks on setting long-term targets to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, an issue to be taken up at a leaders' summit in July. G8 leaders agreed last year in Germany to consider seriously a goal to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a proposal backed by Japan, the European Union and Canada. But developing countries, keen to put economic growth first, have balked at signing up on the goal without the United States doing more to cut emissions and insist rich countries help poorer ones pay for clean technology. "We need to send a message that we will make it easier for emerging countries to act, with financial mechanisms and technological cooperation," Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita told reporters before the meeting kicked off. "At the same time, the G8 must make clear their stance that they will act firmly," he said. South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said it was vital for the G8 to show leadership. "In Kobe, we expect our partners in the G8 to champion the developing countries' cause by explicitly addressing the means of implementation (technology transfer and financing) that will enable and support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries at the scale required," he told Reuters in an email. "If they do so, they will be surprised by the goodwill, trust and action that it will unlock," he said. In a move that could boost pressure on rich countries to set bold targets, Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said on Friday that Jakarta planned to cut greenhouse gas emissions from its energy sector by 17 percent by 2025. NO JACKETS, NO TIES The United Nation's top climate change official urged the G8 nations to show leadership and set shorter-term goals than 2050 to help guide billions of dollars of investment. Many countries favor new targets for 2020 after the first period of the U.N. Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. "I think the private sector is crying out for an investment perspective," Yvo de Boer told Reuters before heading to Kobe. Eager to show off its green credentials at the meeting, Japan has sent fuel-cell and hybrid cars from its world-class carmakers to pick up delegates from the airport, and has called on participants to bring their own cups and chopsticks to cut trash. The dress code will be "cool biz" -- a Japanese campaign every summer for office workers to take off jackets and ties to minimize air conditioning and reduce emissions. Japan is debating its own long-term reduction target and domestic media have urged the government to also set a mid-term goal to show Tokyo can take the lead on climate change at the G8 and in U.N.-led efforts for a new framework after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto pact, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. But countries are divided on how to shape the new framework and Japan may see limited support this weekend for its proposal for emissions curbs for particular industries, such as steel or cement, that could be added up to a national target. Many developing nations worry that sector-based targets will throttle their energy-intensive growth. The Kobe meeting will kick off with a session on biodiversity, which will review steps being taken for a U.N. goal set in 2002 to slow the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010. Most experts say that target is nowhere near being met. Those discussions, which coincide with a UN conference in Germany, will include ways to combat illegal logging and reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. Ministers will also talk about how to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. | 0 |
Extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves bring rising risks of infectious diseases, poor nutrition and stress, the specialists said, while polluted cities where people work long hours and have no time or space to walk, cycle or relax are bad for the heart as well as respiratory and mental health. Almost 200 countries have set a 2 degrees C global average temperature rise above pre-industrial times as a ceiling to limit climate change, but scientists say the current trajectory could lead to around a 4 degrees C rise in average temperatures, risking droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels. "That has very serious and potentially catastrophic effects for human health and human survival," said Anthony Costello, director of University College London's (UCL) Institute for Global Health, who co-led the report. "We see climate change as a major health issue, and that's often neglected in policy debates," he told reporters at a briefing in London. The report, commissioned and published by The Lancet medical journal, was compiled by a panel of specialists including European and Chinese climate scientists and geographers, social, environmental and energy scientists, biodiversity experts and health professionals. It said that because responses to mitigate climate change have direct and indirect health benefits - from reducing air pollution to improving diet - a concerted effort would also provide a great opportunity to improve global health. The report said direct health impacts of climate change come from more frequent and intense extreme weather events, while indirect impacts come from changes in infectious disease patterns, air pollution, food insecurity and malnutrition, displacement and conflicts. "Climate Change is a medical emergency," said Hugh Montgomery, director of UCL's institute for human health and performance and a co-author on the report. "It demands an emergency response using technologies available right now." The panel said there were already numerous ways to bring about immediate health gains with action on climate change. Burning fewer fossil fuels reduces respiratory diseases, for example, and getting people walking and cycling more cuts pollution, road accidents and rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Cardiovascular disease is the world's number one killer, leading to some 17 million deaths a year, according to World Health Organization data. "There's a big (energy) saving in people using calories to get around, and there are some immediate gains from more active lifestyles," Montgomery said. | 0 |
KAMPALA, Wed Nov 21,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A summit of the 53-nation Commonwealth this weekend will be dominated by a decision on whether to suspend Pakistan for a second time because of President Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule. Nine days ago, the club of mostly former British colonies threatened suspension unless Musharraf lifted the state of emergency and restored democracy by November 22. Suspension will be discussed by the Commonwealth ministerial action group (CMAG) which meets on Thursday, the eve of a three-day summit of leaders representing 1.8 billion people, more than a quarter of the world's population. Musharraf, who will not be in Kampala, has begun easing the state of emergency but he is unlikely to have done enough to meet the Commonwealth's demands by the time the summit starts. Pakistan asked on Wednesday for a delay in the decision and urged a CMAG delegation to visit the country. Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon said Pakistan was "perilously close" to suspension. "Pakistan is going to be a major issue... leaders told Musharraf you cannot be wearing military uniform and maintain Commonwealth good principles," he told reporters on Wednesday. Suspension has few practical implications but is designed to send a message to a country that its conduct is unacceptable to a body that prides itself on championing democracy. Pakistan was first suspended in 1999 when Musharraf seized power in a coup, and reinstated in 2004. If it is barred again, it will join Fiji, which was suspended last December after a coup by military chief Frank Bainimarama. CMAG will also discuss Fiji which has promised elections by early 2009 although critics say little progress has been made towards democracy. CLIMATE AND TRADE The Commonwealth leaders, eager to show their relevance as a unique body cutting across traditional regional groupings, will also discuss climate change and trade. There are potential divisions on both issues. Officials say the summit has the opportunity to issue a statement pushing for action on climate change before a meeting of world environment ministers in Bali next month that will launch talks on a new deal to succeed the U.N's Kyoto protocol. Many Commonwealth island nations face threats from rising sea levels and some in the Pacific are furious with Australia, a major greenhouse gas emitter, for refusing to ratify Kyoto. Experts say Africa has been largely ignored in the debate on climate which is likely to have a major impact on the continent. Trade could divide Commonwealth members, with South Africa leading the charge against farm subsidies in Western industrial nations. McKinnon said the summit would push for an end to market-distorting subsidies that amounted to three times all the aid going to the developing world. Uganda's political opposition has denounced the Commonwealth for easing pressure on President Yoweri Museveni over his iron-fisted treatment of political dissent after the previous summit two years ago when it was a focus of attention. It plans demonstrations on Friday when the summit opens. | 0 |
Like Trump did when he came to Davos last year, Bolsonaro tried to smooth the edges of the insurgent message that vaulted him into the presidency last fall. He pitched Brazil to the well-heeled audience gathered in this Alpine ski resort as a good place to do business — a country committed to rooting out rampant corruption and rolling back regulations. But Bolsonaro also said Brazil would purge left-wing ideology from its politics and society, and he made no apologies for emphasising economic growth, something his critics say will come at the cost of protecting Brazil’s environment. “We represent a turning point in the eyes of the Brazilian people — a turning point in which ideological bias will no longer take place,” Bolsonaro said in a brief address to a packed room, which was greeted with perfunctory applause. “Our motto is, ‘God above all things.'” Bolsonaro’s keynote address set the tone for a Davos gathering shorn of its usual retinue of American and European leaders, wrestling with political forces, from Latin America to Europe, that are starkly at odds with this conference’s ethos of global cooperation and a liberal world order. With his nationalist instincts, strongman style, and history of making crude statements about women, gay people and indigenous groups, Bolsonaro is in many ways the very antithesis of a “Davos Man” — the term once used to describe the type of person who attends the annual conference. A 63-year-old former Army officer whose victory symbolised the frustration of Brazilians with their corrupt governing elite, he has acted swiftly since taking power to loosen restrictions on guns, curb lesbian and gay rights, and put civil-society groups under tighter control. In November, at the behest of Bolsonaro, Brazil withdrew its pledge to host the 2019 United Nations global summit meeting on climate change. During the election campaign, many people feared he would pull out of the Paris climate accord, which he has not yet done. On Tuesday, Bolsonaro insisted that Brazil would “work in harmony with the world, in sync with the world” to reduce carbon emissions, though he did not mention the accord. “Those who criticize us have a great deal to learn with us,” he added. Bolsonaro and Trump have cultivated each other assiduously, and the parallels between them are at times striking. Bolsonaro boasted of winning “despite having been unfairly attacked all the time,” echoing Trump’s vilification of the news media. Though he was speaking in a heated room, Bolsonaro wore a long winter coat. Trump is partial to these as well: He was photographed wearing one recently in the State Dining Room as he posed with a spread of fast food laid out for the Clemson University football team. After Bolsonaro took office, Trump tweeted, “Congratulations to President @JairBolsonaro who just made a great inauguration speech — the USA is with you!” Bolsonaro quickly replied, “Together, under God’s protection, we shall bring prosperity and progress to our people!” Trump, whose presence dominated last year’s meeting, cancelled his visit this year because of the government shutdown. He pulled the plug on the rest of the American delegation a few days later, after he denied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers the right to use a military aircraft to fly to Afghanistan and Brussels. Those who wanted to hear from the Trump administration had to make do with a video appearance by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke from the balcony of the State Department, with the Lincoln Memorial over his left shoulder. Pompeo delivered a faithful summary of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, with harsh words for Iran and China. He told the audience that Trump’s brand of disruption was a healthy response to voters who had tuned out more traditional politicians, and mirrored political upheavals in Britain, France, Italy and Brazil. Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, who is dealing with the chaos over Britain’s exit from the European Union, and President Emmanuel Macron of France, who is facing a wave of unrest from “Yellow Vest” protesters, both skipped this year’s meeting. Pompeo said that critics of the Trump administration were not ready to face the challenge of reforming international institutions like the United Nations. “But President Trump is,” he said. Asked if the United States was isolated, Pompeo said, “I don’t think we’re remotely isolated.” Still, the signposts of a changing world order were evident throughout the snow-covered streets of Davos. While Silicon Valley stalwarts like Facebook and Salesforce still put up gleaming pavilions to promote their presence, the biggest billboard belonged to Saudi Arabia, which took up the side of a hotel to encourage visitors to invest in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s own investor conference, known as Davos in the Desert, was hit by a wave of cancellations in October after intelligence reports linked the conference’s patron, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to the killing of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Along the streets were advertisements for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s answer to Davos. Though few Chinese officials turned up here, the sessions devoted to China’s economy, like the Belt and Road Initiative, drew by far the largest audiences. Although the United States kept a lower profile this year, it continued to cast a long shadow over the gathering. Economic analysts cited Trump’s trade war with China as a culprit for cutting their forecasts of global economic growth. And foreign policy analysts said Trump’s erratic style remained the greatest single source of risk in the world. “If you are challenging the international system, you need something to put in its place,” said Karin von Hippel, a former State Department official who is director-general of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “There doesn’t seem to be a plan.” c.2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking at a high-level UN conference in Geneva convened to address the crisis, said that since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the nation’s poverty rate is soaring, basic public services are close to collapse, and, in the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have been made homeless after being forced to flee fighting. “After decades of war, suffering and insecurity, they face perhaps their most perilous hour,” Guterres said, adding that 1 in 3 Afghans do not know where they will get their next meal. Speaking to the news media Monday afternoon, Guterres said more than $1 billion in aid pledges had been made at the meeting by the international community. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, America’s ambassador to the United Nations, promised $64 million in new funding for food and medical aid. With the prospect of humanitarian catastrophe long looming over the nation like the sword of Damocles, it now poses an immediate threat to the nation’s children. “Nearly 10 million girls and boys depend on humanitarian assistance just to survive,” Henrietta H. Fore, executive director of UNICEF, said at the conference. “At least 1 million children will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year and could die without treatment.” Even before the Taliban swept across the country and took control of the government, Afghanistan was confronting a dire food crisis as drought enveloped the nation. The World Food Program estimates that 40% of crops are lost. The price of wheat has gone up by 25%, and the aid agency’s own food stock is expected to run out by the end of September. The suffering wrought by conflict and made worse by climate change has been compounded by the uncertainty that has accompanied the Taliban’s ascent, with many international aid workers having fled the country out of safety concerns. Those who remain are unsure if they will be able to continue their work. During the conference, the UN said it needed $606 million in emergency funding to address the immediate crisis, while acknowledging that money alone will not be enough. The organisation has pressed the Taliban to provide assurances that aid workers can go about their business safely. By the end of the gathering, international pledges had surpassed the amount requested. But even as the Taliban sought to make that pledge, the UN’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, also speaking in Geneva, said Afghanistan was in a “new and perilous phase” since the militant Islamist group seized power.
Houses in a poorer neighbourhood of Kabul Afghanistan on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. The plight of the Afghan people came into stark relief on Monday when top United Nations officials warned that millions of people could run out of food before the arrival of winter and one million children could die if their immediate needs are not met. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)
“In contradiction to assurances that the Taliban would uphold women’s rights, over the past three weeks, women have instead been progressively excluded from the public sphere,” she told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, a warning that the Taliban would need to use more than words to demonstrate their commitment to aid workers’ safety. Houses in a poorer neighbourhood of Kabul Afghanistan on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. The plight of the Afghan people came into stark relief on Monday when top United Nations officials warned that millions of people could run out of food before the arrival of winter and one million children could die if their immediate needs are not met. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times) Monday’s conference was also intended to drive home the enormity of the crisis and offer some reassurance to Western governments hesitant to provide assistance that could legitimise the authority of a Taliban government that includes leaders identified by the UN as international terrorists with links to al-Qaida. Martin Griffiths, the UN’s director of humanitarian and emergency relief operations, visited Kabul last week and said Taliban authorities had promised to facilitate the delivery of aid. “We assure you that we will remove previous and current impediments in front of your assistance and all related projects working under supervision of UN and other international organisations in Afghanistan,” the Taliban said in verbal and later written commitments that Griffiths read out to the conference. The Taliban also promised to protect the life and property of humanitarian workers and safeguard their compounds. On Sunday, Taliban authorities sent assurances that they would facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries by road, he added. Despite the risks, UN relief organisations are still working in the country and are perhaps one of the last international lifelines for hundreds of thousands in need. “In the last two weeks, we have provided 170,000 people affected by drought with safe drinking water and deployed mobile health teams in 14 provinces to continue delivering basic health services for children and women,” Fore said. “During the last week of August, UNICEF provided 4,000 severely malnourished children under 5 with lifesaving therapeutic treatment, and road missions have begun.” Since coming to power, the Taliban have been largely isolated — both politically and economically — from the rest of the world. The World Bank halted funding for new projects, the International Monetary Fund suspended payments to Afghanistan, and the Biden administration has frozen the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank that are held in the United States.
A camp for displaced people at Shar-e-Naw park in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. The needs of the hundreds of thousands displaced by fighting are immediate and growing more acute by the day. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)
While China has made friendly overtures to the Taliban and offered some $30 million in assistance, that is a fraction of the aid the country was slated to receive before the Taliban takeover. A camp for displaced people at Shar-e-Naw park in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. The needs of the hundreds of thousands displaced by fighting are immediate and growing more acute by the day. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times) At a gathering in November 2020, donor nations committed some $12 billion in assistance to Afghanistan over four years. The Taliban did not have a representative in Geneva for the meeting. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s deputy information and culture minister, said the government welcomed all humanitarian efforts by any nation, including the United States. He also acknowledged that not even the Taliban expected to be in control of the country so quickly. “It was a surprise for us how the former administration abandoned the government,” he said. “We were not fully prepared for that and are still trying to figure things out to manage the crisis and try to help people in any way possible.” Most banks in the country remain closed, and Mujahid said there were no immediate plans to reopen them, citing the risk that people would storm them. He called on the United States to unfreeze Afghanistan’s funds. For hundreds of thousands displaced by fighting, their needs are immediate and growing more acute by the day. More than half a million Afghans were driven from their homes by fighting and insecurity this year, bringing the total number of people displaced within the country to 3.5 million, Filippo Grandi, the UN refugee chief, said. The danger of economic collapse raised the possibility of stoking an outflow of refugees to neighboring countries. Said, 33, lived in Kunduz before fleeing to Kabul, where he now lives in a tent inside a park. He has been there with his wife and three children for a month. “It’s cold here; we have no food, no shelter; and we can’t find a job in this city,” he said. “We all have children, and they need food and shelter, and it’s not easy to live here.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
In the United States for what will be Trump's first meeting with a foreign leader since he took office last week, May signaled a shift in foreign policy, bringing her position more in line with that of Trump. She urged the two countries and their leaders to stand united and confront new challenges, including the rise of economies in Asia that people fear could "eclipse the West," the threat of Islamic extremism and a resurgent Russia. "So we - our two countries together - have a responsibility to lead. Because when others step up as we step back, it is bad for America, for Britain and the world," May told members of Republican Party at their retreat in a speech often punctuated by applause from an enthusiastic crowd. "This cannot mean a return to the failed policies of the past. The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over. But nor can we afford to stand idly by." Her break with the interventionism that launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan underscores a change in global politics. It also fits with Trump's move to put "America first" and scores well with voters in Britain whose feeling of being left behind by globalization helped fuel Britain's vote to leave the EU last year that propelled May to power. Aware that Brexit will shape her legacy, May welcomed her early visit to the United States, a boost to her attempts to show that Britain can prosper outside the European Union despite criticism at home for cozying up to Trump. On her US-bound flight, May concentrated on similarities with the US leader, who some reporters suggested had a style in stark contrast to her more cautious, restrained approach. "Haven't you ever noticed ... sometimes opposites attract?" she answered with a laugh. Eager to win favor -- and a trade deal -- with the new US president to bolster her hand in the divorce talks with the European Union, May said both countries shared many values and that, contrary to his statements that NATO was "obsolete," Trump had told her he was committed to the US-led military alliance. May said she supported Trump's "reform agenda" to make NATO and the United Nations "more relevant and purposeful than they are today," and "many of the priorities your government has laid out for America's engagement with the world." But there may be sticking points in Friday's talks - May said she condemned the use of torture and would stick to UK policy, suggesting Britain may not accept intelligence that could have come from such methods that Trump could reintroduce. "We condemn torture and my view on that won't change – whether I'm talking to you or talking to the president," she said when asked what impact it would have if Trump brought back a CIA program for holding terrorism suspects in secret prisons. May will have navigate the middle ground carefully, wary of being criticized as too pro-Trump or alternatively as too negative toward a future trading partner. British lawmakers urge May to tackle Trump on climate change. She has threatened to walk away from the EU if she fails to get a good deal, and some critics say that could give other countries, like the United States, the upper hand in any talks. And the EU might not take kindly to any overly friendly overtures to a president some of the bloc's main leaders have voiced concern about. Some kind of trade agreement, though, is high on her list of priorities, despite Britain and the United States being at odds over genetically modified organisms, meat production and public procurement and May unable to sign deals until after Brexit. May says she will launch the divorce talks by the end of March by triggering Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which gives up to two years to negotiate an exit deal. Only then can she agree with third countries. Both leaders should use the time to find areas where they could remove trade barriers, May said. "We're both very clear that we want a trade deal." | 0 |
It was too dark to see what had happened, but when she opened the curtains in the morning she saw that the street on the other side of the canal had been cordoned off. A large sinkhole had appeared, and an antique lamppost next to it had fallen down. A shopping cart, devoured by the gaping pit, glittered in the hole. Had it happened during the day, she said, “someone could easily have fallen in.” That’s when Pinksterboer started worrying about the 17th-century canal house she lived in. “Will that one day come crashing down,” she wondered, half serious, while standing on one of the ancient brick and mortar walls that line the canals in her neighbourhood of Groenburgwal, one of the oldest areas of Amsterdam. The danger is certainly not exaggerated. Amsterdam, with its scenic canals lined with picturesque, 17th- and 18th-century buildings, a major European tourist destination, is slowly crumbling. Sinkholes are appearing in its small streets, and nearly half its 1,700 bridges are rickety and need repairs, frequently requiring trams to cross at a snail’s pace. As a huge project to shore up the canal walls gets underway, the city is beginning to look like one gigantic construction site.
For the next two decades, the scenic city and tourist magnet is going to look more like one gigantic construction site.
The fundamental problem is the state of the walls: About 125 miles of them are so dilapidated that they are in danger of collapsing into the canals, potentially taking buildings and people with them. For the next two decades, the scenic city and tourist magnet is going to look more like one gigantic construction site. Last year a canal wall near the University of Amsterdam came crashing down without warning, leaving sewer pipes dangling and disoriented fish jumping out of the water. Fortunately no one was walking by just then, but one of the tourist boats that constantly ply the canals had just passed. Like much of the Netherlands, Amsterdam lies below sea level. Built on a swamp and heavily expanded in the 17th century, the city sits atop millions of wood pilings that serve as foundations. The Royal Palace on the Dam, for example, rests on 13,659 of them. Virtually everything in central Amsterdam is supported by these pilings. Perhaps surprisingly, the pilings are still in relatively good shape, but they were engineered for a different age. “At the time these were built to carry the weight of horses and carriages, not of 40-ton cement trucks and other heavy equipment,” said Egbert de Vries, the alderman in charge of what promises to be an enormous rebuilding project. As modern life changed the city, many houses were fortified with cement and concrete, but the underpinnings of streets and canal walls were ignored. Many of the wood pilings have shifted, cracked or collapsed under the pressure, causing the bridges and canal side walls to sag and crack. Water then seeps in, cleaning out mortar, further hollowing out the infrastructure and creating sinkholes. Add to this all the traffic happily cruising the 17th-century canal rings where centuries earlier Rembrandt would walk to his studio and Spinoza debated religion. SUVs park right on the edges of the canals, while garbage trucks have displaced the boats that used to collect the waste. Before the pandemic, a flotilla of tourist boats swept through the canals, making sharp turns that created propeller turbulence, further eating away at the foundations. Something had to be done, and soon. “If we would have continued like this we would have headed straight for a catastrophe,” De Vries said. The reconstruction will take at least 20 years and cost 2 billion euros, about $2.5 billion, and perhaps even more, experts have calculated. “These are big numbers, and work needs to take place in a very busy, closely populated area,” De Vries said. “People live here and work here, and we usually have many tourists.” In the centre of the city, in the Grachtengordel, 15 bridges are currently under repair. Some are closed, like the Bullebak, an iconic bridge and critical part of the city’s infrastructure. Engineers are trying to prevent the collapse of the canal walls the bridge is connected to, while at the same time disentangling a web of electricity and internet cables, phone lines and other services that use the bridge.
Tour boats, like these docked in Amsterdam on Jan. 8, 2021, can no longer ply their normal routes, as many canals are blocked by construction or closed to them. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/The New York Times)
“It’s a very complex intervention,” said Dave Kaandorp, a building contractor working on the renovations. He did see one upside, as the canals were suddenly being used for what they were intended for. “We bring a lot of the building materials over the water now.” Tour boats, like these docked in Amsterdam on Jan. 8, 2021, can no longer ply their normal routes, as many canals are blocked by construction or closed to them. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/The New York Times) Still, many mainly see the downside of all the work. Along several of the city’s most beautiful canals, historic trees have been cut down to ease pressure on the canal walls. Steel sheet piles shore up walls deemed to be in danger of imminent collapse. Divers and technicians with remotely operated underwater cameras search for the worst cracks. “One would have hoped the municipality would have dealt with this earlier,” said Kadir van Lohuizen, a well-known Dutch photographer who focuses on climate change. He lives on one of the 2,500 houseboats in Amsterdam. “Instead they spent all their money on the new metro line.” That line, the North-South Line, about 7 miles long, cost more than 3 billion euros and took 15 years to build. Van Lohuizen and the 24 other boat owners along the Waalseilandsgracht have recently been told they will have to relocate temporarily from spots where they have moored for decades so that repairs can be made to the canal walls. “Some houseboats will be temporarily placed right in the middle of the canal. For others there is a chance that their boats won’t fit anymore after support systems for the walls are placed,” he said. “It’s a gigantic mess. Right now they are building at 2 kilometres a year, and 200 kilometres need to be repaired. This could take a century.” The alderman, De Vries, acknowledged that Amsterdam in the coming years would look different from its usual postcard self. Still, he insisted that tourists should not be discouraged from visiting. “We invite everyone to come and see what we are doing,” he said. “We want visitors to realize that such a magnificent city needs maintenance.” Pinksterboer, the jewellery designer, stood next to the closed-off bridge by the sinkhole. Small red plates have been connected to the base of the bridge and to the canal walls. “They use those to measure with lasers if the sagging is increasing,” she said. “It’s a warning system.” She burst out singing a popular Dutch children’s song: "Amsterdam, big city/ It is built on piles/ If the city would collapse/ Who would pay for that?" “I guess we are,” Pinksterboer said. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
That does not mean the world would be
crossing the long-term warming threshold of 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),
which scientists have set as the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate
change. But a year of warming at 1.5C could offer a
taste of what crossing that long-term threshold would be like. "We are getting measurably closer to
temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement," said WMO
Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, referring to climate accords adopted in 2015. The likelihood of exceeding 1.5C for a
short period has been rising since 2015, with scientists in 2020 estimating a
20% chance and revising that last year up to 40%. Even one year at 1.5C of warming
can have dire impacts, such as killing many of the world's coral reefs and
shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. In terms of the long-term average, the
average global temperature is now about 1.1C warmer than the pre-industrial
average. "Loss and damage associated with, or
exacerbated by, climate change is already occurring, some of it likely
irreversible for the foreseeable future," said Maxx Dilley, deputy
director of climate at the WMO. World leaders pledged under the 2015 Paris
Agreement to prevent crossing the long-term 1.5C threshold – measured as a
multi-decadal average – but so far have fallen short on cutting climate-warming
emissions. Today's activities and current policies have the world on track to
warm by about 3.2C by the end of the century. "It's important to remember that once
we hit 1.5C, the lack of science-based emissions policies mean that we will
suffer worsening impacts as we approach 1.6C, 1.7C, and every increment of
warming thereafter," said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia
Institute of Technology. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Apr 27(bdnews24.com/Reuters)- US President Barack Obama on Monday launched an effort to get voters who propelled him to victory in 2008 to rally behind Democrats and help turn back Republicans in November congressional elections. Obama, in a video message distributed to his supporters, formally leaped into the election campaigns for November in which Democrats are trying to protect their strong majorities in the US House of Representatives and the Senate. Democratic fortunes have sagged in recent months and most political analysts believe Republicans are poised to make major gains in November. Obama rode to victory in 2008 with the benefit of millions of first-time voters who had not been involved in politics. He is seeking to recapture that grassroots appeal for his party this year, specifically reaching out to young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women. Energizing voters is a potentially difficult step because Obama's name is not on the ballot in November and voter turnout in non-presidential election years is typically much lower than in years when a presidential election is held. In the video message distributed to 13 million supporters by email, Obama said party loyalists were asked a few months ago to help set priorities for 2010 and provide advice on how best to win elections in November. "You told us your first priority was to make sure the same people who were inspired to vote for the first time in 2008 go back to the polls in 2010. So that's what we're going to do," Obama said. He added: "If you help us do that-- if you help us make sure that first-time voters in 2008 make their voices heard again in November, then together we will deliver on the promise of change, and hope, and prosperity for generations to come." Obama has already done several fundraisers for Democratic candidates and is expected to do more in the months ahead as well as stump for individual candidates as is traditional. In Los Angeles last week raising money for endangered Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, he acknowledged that Democrats face a hard fight in November, citing the struggling U.S. economy. 'TOUGH RACE' "It is always a tough race if you're the incumbent in this kind of economic environment," he said. Many Americans are in a restive mood over the 9.7 percent unemployment rate, are dubious about a healthcare overhaul Obama pushed through Congress and are concerned about the size and cost of the federal government. "The fundamental problem facing President Obama and the Democrats isn't that they haven't tried hard to sell their agenda, it's that voters in increasing numbers, and particularly independents, just aren't buying it," said Brian Walsh, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. All 435 House seats are up for grabs in November as well as more than a third of the Senate's 100 seats. Experts believe Republicans could threaten Democratic control of the House and make gains in the Senate. More Republicans in Congress would make it more difficult for Democrats to carry out Obama's ambitious agenda. Democrats would like to push through an overhaul of US financial regulations, climate change legislation and immigration reform while they still have strong control of Congress. | 0 |
Russian voters have dealt Vladimir Putin's ruling party a heavy blow by cutting its parliamentary majority in an election that showed growing unease with his domination of the country as he prepares to reclaim the presidency. Incomplete results showed Putin's United Russia was struggling even to win 50 percent of the votes in Sunday's election, compared with more than 64 percent four years ago. Opposition parties said even that outcome was inflated by fraud. Although Putin is still likely to win a presidential election in March, Sunday's result could dent the authority of the man who has ruled for almost 12 years with a mixture of hardline security policies, political acumen and showmanship but was booed and jeered after a martial arts bout last month. United Russia had 49.94 percent of the votes after results were counted in 70 percent of voting districts for the election to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. Exit polls had also put United Russia below 50 percent. "These elections are unprecedented because they were carried out against the background of a collapse in trust in Putin, (President Dmitry) Medvedev and the ruling party," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal opposition leader barred from running. "I think that the March (presidential) election will turn into an even bigger political crisis; disappointment, frustration, with even more dirt and disenchantment, and an even bigger protest vote." Putin made his mark restoring order in a country suffering from a decade of chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He moved quickly to crush a separatist rebellion in the southern Muslim Chechen region, restored Kremlin control over wayward regions and presided over an economic revival. He has maintained a tough man image with stunts such as riding a horse bare chested, tracking tigers and flying a fighter plane. But the public appears to have wearied of the antics and his popularity, while still high, has fallen. Many voters, fed up with widespread corruption, refer to United Russia as the party of swindlers and thieves and resent the huge gap between the rich and poor. Some fear Putin's return to the presidency may herald economic and political stagnation. PUTIN SAYS OPTIMAL RESULT Putin and Medvedev, who took up the presidency in 2008 when Putin was forced to step down after serving a maximum two consecutive terms, made a brief appearance at a subdued meeting at United Russia headquarters. Medvedev said United Russia, which had previously held a two thirds majority allowing it to change the constitution without opposition support, was prepared to forge alliances on certain issues to secure backing for legislation. "This is an optimal result which reflects the real situation in the country," Putin, 59, said. "Based on this result we can guarantee stable development of our country." But there was little to cheer for the man who has dominated Russian politics since he became acting president when Boris Yeltsin quit at the end of 1999 and was elected head of state months later. His path back to the presidency may now be a little more complicated, with signs growing that voters feel cheated by his decision to swap jobs with Medvedev next year and dismayed by the prospect of more than a decade more of one man at the helm. "It's the beginning of the end," political analysts Andrei Piontkovsky said. "It (the result) shows a loss of prestige for the party and the country's leaders." COMMUNIST GAINS Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communists were the main beneficiaries, their vote almost doubling to around 20 percent, according to the partial results. "Russia has a new political reality even if they rewrite everything," said Sergei Obukhov, a communist parliamentarian. Many of the votes were cast in protest against United Russia rather than in support of communist ideals because the Party is seen by some Russians as the only credible opposition force. "With sadness I remember how I passionately vowed to my grandfather I would never vote for the Communists," Yulia Serpikova, 27, a freelance location manager in the film industry, said. "It's sad that with the ballot in hand I had to tick the box for them to vote against it all." Opposition parties complained of election irregularities in parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles) and a Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations. The sites of Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m. even though Medvedev had dismissed talk of electoral fraud. Police said 70 people were detained in the second city of St Petersburg and dozens were held in Moscow in a series of protests against alleged fraud. Opposition parties say the election was unfair from the start because of authorities' support for United Russia with cash and television air time. Independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said a separate analysis showed that United Russia fell even further in cities -- where it had between 30-35 percent of the votes and the Communist have 20-25 percent. "This is a bad climate for Putin. He has got used to the fact that he controls everything, but now how can he go into a presidential campaign when United Russia has embittered people against their leader?" he asked. Putin has as yet no serious personal rivals as Russia's leader. He remains the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer. The result is a blow also for Medvedev, who led United Russia into the election. His legitimacy as the next prime minister could now be in question. ($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles) | 1 |
Thunberg, 18, whose activism has inspired a global movement, testified virtually to a House of Representatives panel on the day President Joe Biden began a virtual two-day Earth Day summit pledging to slash US greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. "The simple fact, and uncomfortable fact, is that if we are to live up to our promises and commitments in Paris, we have to end fossil fuel subsidies ... now," Thunberg said, referring to the international 2016 Paris Climate Change Agreement. The United States under Biden rejoined the Paris agreement in February, after former President Donald Trump pulled out. "The fact that we are still having this discussion, and even more that we are still subsidising fossil fuels, directly or indirectly, using taxpayer money is a disgrace," Thunberg told the House Oversight Committee's environmental subcommittee. Thunberg, whose activism began at age 15 when she started skipping school on Fridays to protest outside the Swedish parliament for climate change, voiced pessimism. The subcommittee chairman, Representative Ro Khanna, is pressuring Biden, a fellow Democrat, to keep a campaign promise to end fossil fuel subsidies such as tax breaks and regulatory loopholes. Khanna asked Thunberg if it would be a "gut punch" to environmentalists if fossil fuel subsidies were not eliminated in Biden's current $2.3 plan to overhaul US infrastructure. "Yes, pretty much," Thunberg replied. But Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president for policy at the American Petroleum Institute, argued for keeping tax policies that promote energy investment in the United States. He told lawmakers the United States was already the global leader in carbon dioxide emissions reductions in recent years. The subcommittee's senior Republican, Representative Ralph Norman, rejected "doomsday scenarios" about climate. He said children had been greatly affected by the fear of climate change, and asked Thunberg why she had said previously that she wanted people to "panic" about it. "I want people to step out of their comfort zones, and not just see the climate crisis as a distant threat, but rather as something that is impacting people already today," Thunberg said. Biden has called for replacing fossil fuel subsidies with incentives for clean energy production as part of his infrastructure plan, but the plan has not specified which tax breaks for fossil fuel companies would be targeted. Khanna listed some tax breaks he wants repealed, including one called intangible drilling costs, which allows producers to deduct most costs from drilling new wells. | 0 |
With exhausts that belch out dark clouds of fumes, drivers who arrogantly break road rules and sardine-can-like interiors, "jeepney" mini-buses are an unlikely source of pride in the Philippines. The iconic vehicles with their flamboyant paint designs are much loved as a symbol of national ingenuity because Filipinos created them from surplus US military jeeps after American forces left at the end of World War II. However, six decades later, they are also becoming known as environmental vandals because their huge diesel-powered motors are one of the major contributors to air pollution and ensuing health problems in Philippine cities. "Because the old jeepneys are all diesel fed and so inefficient, they produce a lot of pollution," said Red Constantino, director of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, a Manila-based non-government organisation. Constantino, along with a small collection of politicians, business groups and other NGOs, has embarked on a campaign to turn the Philippines' main form of public transport green by replacing them with so-called "e-jeepneys". The e-jeepneys look like little more than glorified golf carts, but they are an emissions-free form of transport powered by electricity that carry a dozen people each. After charging for between six and eight hours, the e-jeepneys can travel about 70 kilometres (45 miles) at speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour, according to their manufacturer, Philippine Utility Vehicle. Makati, Metro Manila's financial district and arguably its most orderly city, introduced the e-jeepneys on two so-called "green routes" late last year. "Because of the e-jeepney we were able to reduce smoke-belching problems... and that was able to give an answer to our problems of air pollution," Makati mayor Jejomar Binay told AFP on board one of the mini-buses recently. With only 15 servicing Makati, compared with 60,000 licensed traditional jeepneys across all of Metro Manila, Binay may have been overstating the environmental benefits in his enthusiasm for the project. Nevertheless, Constantino, a former climate change campaigner for Greenpeace, said the Makati project was crucial in offering a showcase for the future. "It's very important to have solutions on the ground to show people that these types of things are viable," he said. "Our goal is to eventually replace all public utility vehicles with appropriate electric ones." Constantino said momentum was starting to build, with a third green route to be opened in Makati next month and other city governments in Metro Manila placing orders to buy e-jeepneys. Meanwhile, Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan island in the southwest of the archipelago, is developing as a second flagship city for the planned e-transport revolution. Puerto Princesa authorities are aiming to introduce an e-jeepney fleet, but their major ambition is to replace the city's 4,000 gasoline-powered tricycles with electric "e-trikes", Constantino said. A big next step for Puerto Princesa and Makati is to build biogas plants to power the e-vehicles with organic waste from local markets and households, rather than using fossil-fuel derived electricity as is currently the case. Puerto Princesa began construction of a one-megawatt biogas plant, costing 2.4 million dollars, in February to fuel its electric public transport fleet. Tropical storm Ketsana, which submerged vast parts of Manila in October last year, delayed a similar project for Makati but Constantino said that would also soon get underway. Amid the hype for the e-jeepneys -- they have won a plethora of positive reports in the local media -- traditional jeepney drivers remain skeptical. "We are not against e-jeeps, we know they are for our common good but they only work in Makati where roads are smooth," said Federation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Association of the Philippines president Zeny Maranan. "I also want to see how long e-jeeps will last for. And I see maintenance as a problem... our current jeepneys have durable chassis and bodies that can withstand collisions. How about an e-jeep, how sturdy is it?" Nevertheless, Maranan conceded that old jeepneys -- with powerful engines and bodies originally designed for battle rather than city traffic -- had serious environmental flaws. "It is difficult to deny the fact about the black smoke emissions and poor performances of our jeepneys," she said. Maranan said the jeepney industry was exploring ways of switching the vehicles' fuel source from diesel to natural gas. However few conversions have taken place and Maranan said a green revolution would not happen without massive state funding. "The government should take the initiative to save our environment. If it will provide the budget, we are willing to take part and have the e-jeep system implemented," she said. Constantino and the others involved in the e-jeepney are refusing to wait for such an unlikely scenario to occur. "We are trying to make the solutions of tomorrow available today," he said. | 0 |
More than 200 homes have been destroyed in New South Wales (NSW) state since last Thursday, when bushfires tore through Sydney's outskirts, razing entire streets. One man died from a heart attack while trying to save his home.Wednesday's fire conditions were shaping up as the worst so far, prompting authorities to warn of more property losses and advise residents of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to abandon their homes."If you don't have a plan, let me give you one," NSW Emergency Minister Michael Gallacher said. "Get into the car, drive down to the city metropolitan area and let the firefighters do what they can do to protect the community, should this turn for the worse."Temperatures in the Blue Mountains, a popular weekend getaway for Sydneysiders, are expected to reach up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). In Sydney itself they could hit 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).There were 59 fires burning across the state on Wednesday, with 19 out of control, according to the RFS. Over 2,000 firefighters were battling the blazes across a vast area, backed by 95 helicopters and reinforcements from other states.Hot, dry winds gusting up to 80 kmph (48 mph) forced water bombing helicopters to suspend operations just as the danger reached its peak on Wednesday afternoon. Light rain overnight had hampered efforts to backburn and create fire-breaks."We are entering what is typically the hottest and driest period of any given day," Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said."The temperatures are climbing and are expected to climb and maintain their peak throughout the coming hours. The worse of the weather is still to come."Authorities ordered all schools in the Blue Mountains to be closed, evacuated nursing homes and advised people living in the area to leave before conditions deteriorated."It's very quiet up here. A lot of people we know have already left to stay with families down in western Sydney," Blue Mountains resident Rebecca Southern told Reuters by telephone.The Blue Mountains, whose foothills extend down to western Sydney suburbs like Penrith, are populated with a mix of farmers, small business owners and white-collar commuters who make the trip into the city every day. Their spectacular escarpments, dense eucalyptus forests and scattered towns are popular with tourists but a nightmare for firefighters.The NSW government has declared a state of emergency enabling it to order evacuations, hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2009 "Black Saturday" fires in Victoria state that killed 173 people and caused $4.4 billion worth of damage.The insurance council of Australia said claims of more than A$93 million ($90 million) were expected to grow as wildfires - stretching across 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of Australia's most populous state - ran their course.Police have arrested several children suspected of starting a number of different fires. Other fires were sparked by power lines arcing in strong winds, according to the fire service.CLIMATE CHANGERecord hot and dry weather across the continent and an early start to the fire season in the Southern Hemisphere spring have revived arguments about mankind's impact on climate change.Climate scientists say Australia is one of the countries most at risk from global warming, with fires, floods and droughts that are already a feature of the continent likely to get worse.But Prime Minister Tony Abbott has rejected any link between the Sydney fires and rising carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, a major Australian export."Climate change is real and we should take strong action against it," Abbott told local radio."But these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia."Elected in September, Abbott plans to repeal the carbon tax installed by former prime minister Julia Gillard and replace it with a "Direct Action" scheme involving things like reforestation and financial incentives to business to cut pollution.UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres this week accused Abbott's government of abandoning Australia's commitment to emissions reductions. | 0 |
What it found was astonishing in its scope. Journalists from countries as tiny as Guinea-Bissau had been invited to sign agreements with their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese government was distributing versions of its propaganda newspaper China Daily in English — and also Serbian. A Filipino journalist estimated that more than half of the stories on a Philippines newswire came from the Chinese state agency Xinhua. A Kenyan media group raised money from Chinese investors, then fired a columnist who wrote about China’s suppression of its Uyghur minority. Journalists in Peru faced intense social media criticism from combative Chinese government officials. What seemed, in each country, like an odd local anomaly looked, all told, like a vast, if patchwork, strategy to create an alternative to a global news media dominated by outlets like the BBC and CNN, and to insert Chinese money, power and perspective into the media in almost every country in the world. But the study raised an obvious question: What is China planning to do with this new power? The answer comes in a second report, which is set to be released Wednesday by the International Federation of Journalists, a Brussels-based union of journalism unions whose mission gives it a global bird's-eye view into news media almost everywhere. The group, which shared a copy with me, hired an author of the first report, Louisa Lim, to canvass journalists in 54 countries. The interviews “reveal an activation of the existing media infrastructure China has put in place globally,” Lim, a former NPR bureau chief in Beijing who is now a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, wrote in the report: “As the pandemic started to spread, Beijing used its media infrastructure globally to seed positive narratives about China in national media, as well as mobilising more novel tactics such as disinformation.” The report, which was also written by Julia Bergin and Johan Lidberg, an associated professor at Monash University in Australia, may read to an American audience as a warning of what we have missed as our attention has increasingly shifted inward. But it is less the exposure of a secret plot than it is documentation of a continuing global power shift. China’s media strategy is no secret, and the Chinese government says its campaign is no different from what powerful global players have done for more than a century. “The accusation on China is what the US has been doing all along,” a deputy director general of the Information Department at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, told me in a WeChat message after I described the international journalists’ report to him. The report found that a new media push accompanied the intense round of Chinese diplomacy in the pandemic, providing protective equipment initially and then vaccines to countries around the world, all the while scrambling to ensure that things as varied as the pandemic’s origin and China’s diplomacy was portrayed in the best possible light. Italian journalists said they’d been pressed to run President Xi Jinping’s Christmas speech and were provided with a version translated into Italian. In Tunisia, the Chinese embassy offered hand sanitiser and masks to the journalists’ union, and expensive television equipment and free, pro-China content to the state broadcaster. A pro-government tabloid in Serbia sponsored a billboard with an image of the Chinese leader and the words, “Thank you, brother Xi.” Both the media and vaccine campaigns are intertwined with China’s “Belt and Road” global investment campaign, in which Chinese support comes with strings attached, including debt and expectations of support in key votes at the United Nations. China is fighting what is in some ways an uphill battle. Its growing authoritarianism, its treatment of the Uyghurs and its crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong damaged global views of China, according to other surveys, even before the pandemic began in Wuhan. And some governments have begun to make it harder for Chinese state media to function in their countries, with Britain’s media regulator revoking the license of the main Chinese state broadcaster. But much of China’s diplomacy is focused on places that, while they may not have the cultural or financial power of European countries, do have a vote at the UN And while they appear often to be improvisational and run out of local embassies, China’s efforts are having a global impact. “Beijing is steadily reshaping the global media landscape nation by nation,” Lim found. Along with two other New York Times reporters, Lima-based Mitra Taj and Emma Bubola in Rome, I spoke to journalists on five continents who participated in the report. Their attitudes ranged from alarm at overt Chinese government pressure to confidence that they could handle what amounted to one more interest group in a messy and complex media landscape. In Peru, where the government is friendly to China and powerful political figures got early access to a Chinese-made vaccine, “what really stands out is such a frequent presence in state media,” said Zuliana Lainez, the secretary-general of the National Association of Journalists of Peru. She said that the Peruvian state news agency and the state-controlled newspaper El Peruano are “like stenographers of the Chinese embassy.” Meanwhile, she said, China’s embassy has paid to modernise some newsrooms’ technology. “Those kinds of things need to be looked at with worry,” she said. “They’re not free.” Not all the journalists watching China’s growing interest in global media find it so sinister. The deputy director of the Italian news service ANSA, Stefano Polli, said he has seen China increasingly use media to “have greater influence in the new geopolitical balance.” But he defended his service’s contract to translate and distribute Xinhua — criticised in the international journalists report — as an ordinary commercial arrangement. China has also cracked down on foreign correspondents inside its borders, making international outlets increasingly dependent on official accounts and denying visas to American reporters, including most of the New York Times bureau. Luca Rigoni, a prominent anchor at a TV channel owned by the Italian company Mediaset, said his news organisation had no correspondent of its own in the country but a formal contract with Chinese state media for reporting from China. The cooperation dried up, though, after he reported on the theory that the virus had leaked from a Chinese lab. But Rigoni, whose company is owned by Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said he didn’t think China’s mix of media and state power was unique. “It’s not the only country where the main TV and radio programs are controlled by the government or the parliament,” he said. And the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Anthony Bellanger, said in an email that his view of the report is that while “China is a growing force in the information war, it is also vital to resist such pressures exerted by the US, Russia and other governments around the world.” But there’s little question of which government is more committed to this campaign right now. A report last year by Sarah Cook for the Freedom House, an American nonprofit group that advocates political freedom, found that Beijing was spending “hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread their messages to audiences around the world.” The United States may have pioneered the tools of covert and overt influence during the Cold War, but the government’s official channels have withered. The swaggering CIA influence operations of the early Cold War, in which the agency secretly funded influential journals like Encounter, gave way to American outlets like Voice of America and Radio Liberty, which sought to extend American influence by broadcasting uncensored local news into authoritarian countries. After the Cold War, those turned into softer tools of American power. But more recently, President Donald Trump sought to turn those outlets into blunter propaganda tools, and Democrats and their own journalists resisted. That lack of an American domestic consensus on how to use its own media outlets has left the American government unable to project much of anything. Instead, the cultural power represented by companies like Netflix and Disney — vastly more powerful and better funded than any government effort — has been doing the work. And journalists around the world expressed scepticism of the effectiveness of often ham-handed Chinese government propaganda, a scepticism I certainly shared when I recycled a week’s worth of unread editions of China Daily sent to my home last week. The kind of propaganda that can work inside China, without any real journalistic answer, is largely failing to compete in the intense open market for people’s attention. “China is trying to push its content in Kenyan media, but it’s not yet that influential,” said Eric Oduor, the secretary-general of the Kenya Union of Journalists. Others argue that what journalists dismiss as amateurish or obvious propaganda still has an impact. Erin Baggott Carter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California, said her research has found that American news organisations whose journalists accepted official trips to China subsequently “made a pivot from covering military competition to covering economic cooperation.” In talking to journalists around the world last week about Chinese influence, I was also struck by what they didn’t talk about: the United States. Here, when we write and talk about Chinese influence, it’s often in the context of an imagined titanic global struggle between two great nations and two systems of government. But from Indonesia to Peru to Kenya, journalists described something much more one-sided: a determined Chinese effort to build influence and tell China’s story. “Americans are quite insular and always think everything is about the US,” Lim said. “Americans and the Western world are often not looking at what is happening in other languages outside English, and tend to believe that these Western-centric values apply everywhere.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
Britain wants to launch a major international clean energy project with other European countries, Japan and the United States in a drive to combat climate change, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday. Blair said the project could focus on carbon capture and storage -- where carbon dioxide produced from burning coal is buried under the ground or the seabed instead of being released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. But he indicated the goals of the project had not yet been finalized. "We have an idea ... of a major project, which we will try and agree internationally, for one particular type of energy to be dealt with in a different way and it may well be that carbon capture and storage is where we go with it," he said. "I think there is a real possibility of getting ourselves and the other Europeans and the Americans and Japanese and others into a major project which will allow us -- in relation to a particular form of new energy source -- to make the investment in the research and technology necessary to deliver it," he told a parliamentary committee. Britain is discussing this and other ideas on countering climate change with other countries, he said. "The thing that will make the biggest difference is if you get the investment in the science and technology that will allow us to develop, for example, fuel cells for the motor vehicle (and) carbon capture and storage," he said. Environmentalists have criticised Blair in the past for putting his faith in technological solutions to climate change. The European Union and Norway said last Friday they would cooperate in developing carbon capture and storage technologies, seen as key to meeting the bloc's ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Blair repeated his view that an international agreement to combat climate change was "the single biggest thing that will make a difference on this issue". He said he would be holding further talks on climate change with the United States and other countries in the next few weeks. Blair wants a binding international agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which runs to 2012. The Kyoto Protocol aims to slash greenhouse gases but does not include countries including India, China and the United States, responsible for a quarter of the world's industrial greenhouse gas emissions. It obliges 35 developed nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Blair has said any new agreement must include the United States, China and India. "I think there is a changing mood in America as well which is very positive," Blair said. "That's why I think it is possible, I don't say it's yet probable ... that we would get an agreement at least to the principles that should govern the Kyoto framework after 2012." A new agreement must include a goal to stabilise climate change, an agreement to set a carbon price and technology transfer to poorer countries, Blair said. President Bush last month recognized climate change as a challenge and asked Americans to cut gasoline usage. | 0 |
In 2017, the latest figures available, funding commitments for clean cooking in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia with the largest needs plummeted by 73%, to $32 million, from the average in the previous two years, found a report tracking finance towards global goals on energy. An annual investment of $4.4 billion is required to move to modern cooking methods the nearly 40% of the world's people who still use traditional fuels such as wood, charcoal, dung or kerosene, often in smoky indoor environments, researchers said. The World Health Organisation estimates that household air pollution kills about 4 million people each year, many of them women and children, through ailments such as heart and lung disease and cancer. Olivia Coldrey, lead finance specialist with Sustainable Energy for All, a UN-linked body that co-produced the report, highlighted a "continued lack of global effort" to tackle low access to less-polluting fuels and more efficient stoves. "This is really an environmental and public health emergency," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, noting that investment in cleaner cooking was "orders of magnitude away from what it needs to be". International donor projects to boost clean cooking were fragmented, often short-term and tended to focus on single countries and technologies, she added. Barbara Buchner, executive director of climate finance at the Climate Policy Initiative, a think tank that partnered on the annual report, called for "a paradigm shift" in thinking, to focus on ensuring new fuel supplies as well as cleaner stoves. Governments need to set stronger targets, and allocate large budgets to help poor households afford the upfront costs of moving to improved cooking methods, she added. Riccardo Puliti, global director for energy and extractive industries at the World Bank, said clean cooking should be "a political, economic and environmental priority" because, without urgent action, other global goals on health, gender and climate change would be missed. Last month, at a UN climate summit, the bank unveiled plans for a $500-million "Clean Cooking Fund", supported by the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Britain. It aims to increase investment and back businesses delivering solutions. The report said more efficient stoves that use wood and other biomass received the greatest amount of finance in 2017. Private-sector finance for clean cooking showed "green shoots", with investment rising to about $21 million in 2017 and accounting for two-thirds of all funding. Kenya grabbed the lion's share, at more than 60%, of all commitments for clean cooking that year. The report noted that, due to the difficulty of monitoring domestic public spending, its analysis likely under-represented financing in some developing states that have prioritised clean cooking, such as India and Indonesia. Coldrey and Buchner urged development banks to work on strategies for large-scale programmes needed to close the clean cooking gap. That will require a different type of support from traditional backing for big energy infrastructure projects, they noted. A similar push is needed to ramp up backing for off-grid renewable power and mini-grid systems that target the poorest among the 840 million people still living without electricity, they added. The data for 2017 showed that investment in these solutions was still a tiny proportion - just 1.2% - of total finance for electricity access and stood at $430 million in 2017, with Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda garnering 56% of that. While innovative models for providing off-grid power have proliferated, they are not yet being implemented widely enough as the market is still learning what works, said Buchner. The World Bank's Puliti said its off-grid portfolio was growing rapidly, with the bank putting $600 million into mini-grids and solar home systems in the 2018 fiscal year. It supports the largest off-grid programme in the world in Bangladesh, he noted, powering 2.5 million households through 1.2 million solar home systems, as well as solar irrigation pumps and mini-grids, and 1.4 million efficient cookstoves. Overall, finance to boost electricity access in the 20 countries where nearly four-fifths of those who lack a modern energy supply live increased to $36 billion in 2017, after stagnating at $30 billion in 2015 and 2016. But only an estimated one-third of that spending went to provide electric power in homes. 'UNACCEPTABLE' COAL Some of the funding to boost electricity access paid for grid-connected fossil fuel plants, mostly coal-powered, although such funding dropped by about a fifth from the two previous years, to $6.6 billion in 2017. The money financed four coal plants in Bangladesh and the Philippines, with 60% of all coal money that year coming from the export-import banks of India and China, the report said. Given scientific evidence that carbon emissions must be cut further and faster to curb the accelerating impacts of climate change, it is "unacceptable" for any money to be going into that sector, said Coldrey. She also noted that four out of the 13 sub-Saharan African countries that have high levels of people living without electric power had seen commitments to provide it decline in 2017, while 10 countries got less than $300 million each. The delay in boosting electrification rates in the region will hold back economic growth, an effect that will become more pronounced as populations expand, she said. "The longer we leave this hole financially, the bigger it's going to be to fix later," she said. | 0 |
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has one ace up his sleeve in his bid to woo disgruntled conservative Christians: his unflinching opposition to abortion rights. His likely Democratic opponent in the November White House election, Barack Obama, firmly supports abortion rights. Few other big issues cut so clearly across partisan lines in the United States, a point underscored by McCain and Obama's positions on it. And analysts say while both candidates must be careful they may need the issue to stir their party's bases. In McCain's case that would be the evangelical Christians who account for one in four US adults and comprise a key base of support for the Republican Party -- to such an extent that few analysts think he can win the presidency without them. "Religious conservatives may not be wildly enthusiastic about McCain but they can point to his pro-life stance as reason to stay on board," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The Arizona senator's position on the issue distinguished him in the early stages of the Republican contest from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose support for abortion rights dismayed conservative Christians and led to threats to form a third party if he had secured the nomination. That signaled abortion was a line in the sand that this vital wing of the Republican Party would not cross and secured endorsements for McCain from leading conservative Christians such as Republican Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, whose own run for the nomination faltered. Influential evangelicals like Focus on the Family's James Dobson, whose radio show reaches millions, have expressed their displeasure at McCain's past support for stem cell research and his failure to back a federal ban on gay marriage. COMPARED TO SLAVERY But nothing unites evangelicals like their opposition to abortion, which many compare to the anti-slavery movements of the past -- a comparison that raises the moral stakes and suggests they will not back down on it. Polls suggest the issue is becoming even more entrenched in conservative Christian culture. An analysis of surveys from 2001 to 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that young white evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29 were even more conservative on the issue than their elders. It found 70 percent said they were in favor of making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion compared with 55 percent of older white evangelicals and 39 percent of young Americans overall. McCain's stance also appeals to centrist evangelicals, who have been attracted to him by his opposition to abortion combined with his call for action on climate change and his resolute condemnation of the use of torture by U.S. forces. But his trump card with evangelicals could be a joker if he plays it badly in his bid to woo centrists and independents. "For the Republicans it is a wedge issue because their right wing is very vocal on it. To bring it up at all you either risk the wrath of the right or you risk sounding too extremist to the middle," said David Epstein, a political scientist at Columbia University. OBAMA'S HAND? Is this an advantage for Obama? "The Democrats can take a pro-choice position and ... appeal to their base and to the middle," said Epstein. Allen Hertzke, director of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, said it could help Obama secure support from some of the white women who voted in droves in the Democratic nominating contests for Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is running behind Obama for the party's presidential nomination. But the issue is not a clear-cut one along gender lines. "Some of the white working class women especially Catholics who supported Clinton are also pro-life and if abortion becomes salient it could hurt Obama among this group," he said. Hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage were important in 2004 when President George W Bush got close to 80 percent of the votes cast by white evangelical Protestants. However, white Catholic women who oppose abortion but voted for Clinton may well be focused on the dire state of the U.S. economy, which Hertzke said was a clear plus for Obama. Analysts said both sides could also pitch the issue to their bases as a struggle over the composition of the US Supreme Court whose justices are appointed by the president. The anti-abortion rights movement has long had its eye on the big prize -- a decisive conservative majority which would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision granting women the right to an abortion. McCain has reiterated that he would appoint such justices; for the Democratic base it is seen as vital that the tide of conservative appointees on the bench be rolled back. Opinion polls consistently show that the parties' starkly different opinions on the issue are not held by large swathes of the middle in America. They show most Americans broadly support abortion rights but are less comfortable with the procedure in the later stages of pregnancy. | 0 |
POZNAN, Poland, Fri Dec 12,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Host Poland stuck to a proposal to agree a 'Solidarity Partnership' at the end of UN climate talks on Friday despite criticism by many nations that progress was too scant to merit a sweeping title. The Dec 1-12 meeting, including 145 environment ministers on Friday, has been overshadowed by fears of economic recession and few nations have been willing to unveil ambitious new plans to combat global warming. "The 'Poznan Solidarity Partnership' is a proposal for the final declaration of the conference, which would sum up all the achievements of this meeting," Poland's Deputy Environment Minister Janusz Zaleski told Reuters. "But it's only a proposal for now and it had provoked various opinions at the ministerial meeting," he said. "Solidarity" resonates as the name of the Polish trade union that helped end the communist rule in 1989. Many delegates said the 189-nation talks, reviewing progress toward a UN climate treaty due to be agreed at the end of 2009, had achieved too little on issues such as safeguarding forests or helping the poor to justify the title. One Chinese delegate denounced the proposal in a meeting of ministers with Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki on Thursday night as "an empty bag of garbage," delegates said. The United States and developing nations also criticized the plan. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that the economic slowdown was no excuse for "backsliding" on commitments to fight warming and called for massive investments in new green jobs. A European Union summit in Brussels has also distracted attention. EU leaders were set to back a 200-billion-euro ($264 billion) economic stimulus pact and a climate change plan amended to ease its impact on industry and poorer EU states, according to a draft text. BALI Still, most UN climate meetings in recent years have ended with declaration linked to the host city. Last year ministers agreed a "Bali Roadmap" that laid out a two-year plan to work out a new climate deal in Copenhagen by the end of 2009. "There is nothing new, there is nothing extra that can be called a deal," Quamrul Islam Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi delegate who leads negotiations for the least developed countries, said of the proposed "Solidarity Partnership." "If you want something concrete, something positive to share with the world, it is not here," he said. Among remaining disputes, ministers in Poznan on Friday would try to break deadlock on the launch of a fund meant to help poor nations adapt to the impacts of climate change such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, disease and rising seas. The Adaptation Fund could reach $300 million a year by 2012 to help countries build coastal defenses or develop drought-resistant crops. Developing nations want easier access to the funds than donor nations are willing to give. The fund is tiny but could be a model for future climate funds, so delegates say the mechanisms for payouts must be right. The United Nations projects that tens of billions of dollars a year will be needed by 2030 to help adaptation. The UN Climate Change Secretariat said the Polish talks had achieved its main goals of agreeing a plan of work toward Copenhagen and helped narrow down options in a 100-page document summing up thousands of pages of ideas. The hard decisions -- led by how far each nation will curb emissions of greenhouse gases -- were left as planned for 2009. | 0 |
World soccer's governing body FIFA lags behind other international sports organisations when it comes to protecting the environment at major tournaments, the head of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) says. FIFA "should take a leaf out of the International Olympic Committee's well-established policy of including the environment in the bidding applications" of countries wanting to host the World Cup, UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told a media conference in Lausanne on Friday. Presenting an independent report on the 'greenness' of this year's World Cup in Germany, UNEP praised the local organising committee's Green Goal project, saying it had helped to produce the first 'climate neutral' World Cup. The UN body said it was now down to FIFA to ensure that Germany's efforts were used to form a benchmark for future tournaments. "Unlike the Olympics, the environment has been something of an outsider at World Cups but this has now changed and to my mind there is no going back," Steiner said. "Organisers of future FIFA World Cup events will now have to consider playing the environment up front as one of the leading strikers in their planning and policy strategies. Otherwise they risk own goals and off-sides from domestic and international public opinion." The UNEP report said Germany 2006 had successfully offset carbon dioxide emissions both through local measures and through the funding of clean energy schemes in India and South Africa. Targets for public transport usage were surpassed, with 57 per cent of journeys at the World Cup taking place on public transport. A 17 percent reduction in waste was recorded, narrowly missing out on the 20 percent target set by the Organisers. Energy reduction of 13 percent also fell short of a 20 percent target, but UNEP said solar power installations at several World Cup stadiums would help to balance out the tournament's energy usage within five years. | 0 |
LORETO, Italy, Sept. 2 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Pope Benedict, leading the Catholic Church's first 'eco-friendly' youth rally, on Sunday told up to half a million people that world leaders must make courageous decisions to save the planet "before it is too late". "A decisive 'yes' is needed in decisions to safeguard creation as well as a strong commitment to reverse tendencies that risk leading to irreversible situations of degradation," the 80-year old Pope said in his homily. Intentionally wearing green vestments, he spoke to a vast crowd of mostly young people sprawled over a massive hillside near the Adriatic city of Loreto on the day Italy's Catholic Church marks it annual Save Creation Day. More than 300,000 of them had slept on blankets and in tents or prayed during the night. Organizers said they were joined by some 200,000 more people who arrived from throughout Italy on Sunday morning. "New generations will be entrusted with the future of the planet, which bears clear signs of a type of development that has not always protected nature's delicate equilibriums," the Pope said, speaking to the crowd from a massive white stage. Making one of his strongest environmental appeals to date Benedict said: "Courageous choices that can re-create a strong alliance between man and earth must be made before it is too late." The two-day rally the Pope closed with a Sunday morning mass was the first environmentally friendly youth rally, a break from past gatherings that left tonnes of garbage and scars on the earth.
VOICE OF THE EARTH A participants' kit included backpacks made of recyclable material, a flashlight operated by a crank instead of batteries, and colour-coded trash bags so their personal garbage could be easily recycled. Meals were served on biodegradable plates. Tens of thousands of prayer books for Sunday's mass were printed on recycled paper and an adequate number of trees would be planted to compensate for the carbon produced at the event, many in areas of southern Italy devastated by recent brushfires. Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively "green". It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change. Last month Benedict said the human race must listen to "the voice of the Earth" or risk destroying its very existence. Loreto is famous in the Catholic world for the "holy house of the Madonna" a small stone structure purported to be where Mary grew up in the Holy Land and where she was told by an angel she would give birth to Jesus although a virgin. According to popular legend, it was "flown" by angels from the Holy Land in the 13th century to save it from Muslim armies. Modern scholars have said parts of the walls may have been brought in pieces from the Middle East by defeated Crusaders or that the entire structure may have been built on the site where it now stands in order to draw pilgrims to the city. | 0 |
Andres
Marcoleta, a researcher from the University of Chile who headed the study
published in the Science of the Total Environment journal in March, said that
these "superpowers" which evolved to resist extreme conditions are
contained in mobile DNA fragments that can easily be transferred to other
bacteria. "We
know that the soils of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the polar areas most
impacted by melting ice, host a great diversity of bacteria," Marcoleta
said. "And that some of them constitute a potential source of ancestral
genes that confer resistance to antibiotics." Scientists
from the University of Chile collected several samples from the Antarctic
Peninsula from 2017 to 2019. "It is
worth asking whether climate change could have an impact on the occurrence of
infectious diseases," Marcoleta said. "In a
possible scenario, these genes could leave this reservoir and promote the
emergence and proliferation of infectious diseases." Researchers
found that the Pseudomonas bacteria, one of the predominant bacteria groups in
the Antarctic Peninsula, are not pathogenic but can be a source of 'resistance
genes', which are not stopped by common disinfectants such as copper, chlorine
or quaternary ammonium. However, the
other kind of bacteria they researched, Polaromonas bacteria, does have the
"potential to inactivate beta-lactam type antibiotics, which are essential
for the treatment of different infections," said Marcoleta. | 0 |
- US President Barack Obama has backed a plan by the host of next month's climate change talks in Copenhagen to seek a political deal and leave legally binding decisions for later, a U.S. official said on Sunday. "There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days," a top U.S. negotiator, Michael Froman, told reporters. With Kyoto's first phase set to run out in 2012, the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen talks are seen as the last chance for all countries to agree on painful measures needed to ease the pace of climate change. The aim of the U.N. meeting is to set ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gases, but also to raise funds to help poor countries tackle global warming.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, host of the Copenhagen talks, told Reuters earlier this month he was hoping for a political deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol and had invited top world leaders to the meeting to agree it. However, he said final, legally binding decisions would have to be taken later. Froman was speaking after a breakfast meeting of leaders at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Singapore, the last major gathering of global decision-makers before Copenhagen. "There was widespread support among the leaders that it was important that Copenhagen be a success, that there be the achievement of real concrete progress in Copenhagen with operational impact," Froman said. | 0 |
The Tigrayans, who have been fighting the government for the past year, have joined forces with another rebel group as they advance on the capital, Addis Ababa. Foreign officials monitoring the fighting said there were signs that several Ethiopian army units had collapsed or retreated. The state of emergency reflected the rapidly changing tide in a metastasizing war that threatens to tear apart Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country. It also marked another dismal turn in the fortunes of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose international reputation has been battered by a war that has led to reports of human rights violations, massacres and famine. One year ago, in the early hours of Nov 4, Abiy launched a military campaign in the northern Tigray region, hoping to vanquish the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, his most troublesome political foe. But after promising a swift, even bloodless campaign, Abiy was quickly drawn into a military quagmire. The Ethiopian military suffered a major defeat in June when it was forced to withdraw from Tigray, and several thousand of its soldiers were taken captive. Now the fighting is rapidly moving toward Abiy. In recent days, Tigrayan rebels took the towns of Dessie and Kombolcha, just 160 miles to the northeast of the capital. A United Nations official said the Tigrayan forces were seen moving farther south from Kombolcha on Tuesday. Under the state of emergency, Abiy has sweeping powers to arrest and detain critics, impose curfews and restrict the news media. Any citizen over 18 could be called into the fight, Justice Minister Gedion Timothewos told a news conference. “Those who own weapons will be obliged to hand them over to the government,” he said. The state of emergency will last six months, the government said. Hours earlier, the city administration in Addis Ababa had called on citizens to use their weapons to defend their neighbourhoods. House-to-house searches were being conducted in search of Tigrayan sympathizers, it said in a statement. The announcements added to a growing sense of trepidation in the city, where tensions have been building for days as news filtered in of Tigrayan military advances. A taxi driver named Dereje, who in the capital's tense climate refused to give his second name, said he intended to join in the fight. “I am not going to sit in my house and wait for the enemy,” he said. “I will fight for my kids and my country.” But a teacher, who declined to give his name, said he had lost faith in the Ethiopian government. “They lied to us that TPLF have been defeated,” he said, referring to the Tigray People's Liberation Front. “I am terribly worried about what is going to happen. May God help us.” President Joe Biden, who has threatened to impose sanctions on Ethiopia unless it moves toward peace talks, said Tuesday he would revoke trade privileges for Ethiopia, including duty-free access to the United States because of “gross violations of internationally recognised human rights.” In a separate briefing, Jeffrey Feltman, the Biden administration’s envoy to the Horn of Africa, told reporters that the deepening conflict could have “disastrous consequences” for Ethiopia’s unity and its ties to the United States.
Defeated Ethiopian soldiers are marched through Mekelle after the regional capital fell to the Tigray Defence Forces, June 25, 2021. The New York Times
Billene Seyoum, a spokesperson for Abiy, did not respond to a request for comment. Defeated Ethiopian soldiers are marched through Mekelle after the regional capital fell to the Tigray Defence Forces, June 25, 2021. The New York Times Ethiopia’s Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration said in a statement that the decision to revoke trade privileges would reverse economic gains in Ethiopia “and unfairly impact and harm women and children.” Ethiopia is committed to bringing perpetrators of serious rights abuses to justice, it added. The deteriorating situation in Ethiopia has sent alarm across the region, with fears that the fighting could spill into neighbouring countries such as Kenya, or send waves of refugees across borders. A darling of the West after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, Abiy has grown increasingly defensive in the past year as the war spilled out of Tigray, and once-close allies have subjected him to withering criticism. That criticism has recently focused on Ethiopia’s punishing blockade of Tigray, which has prevented most supplies of food and medicine from reaching a region where the United Nations estimates that 5.2 million people urgently need help and 400,000 are living in famine-like conditions. After the United States threatened Abiy’s government with sanctions in September, he accused the West of neocolonial bias and expelled seven senior UN officials, including a humanitarian aid coordinator in Tigray. Last month, the Ethiopian military launched an offensive against Tigrayan forces that expanded to include airstrikes against the region’s besieged capital, Mekelle. In recent days, Abiy has blamed his losses on unidentified foreigners he says are fighting alongside the Tigrayans. “Black and white nationals of non-Ethiopian descent have participated in the war,” he said. In Addis Ababa, the security forces started a new roundup of ethnic Tigrayans, stoking fears of ethnically based reprisals in the capital as the rebels draw near. International efforts to coax the sides to the negotiating table have come to nothing. Abiy has pushed ahead with military operations, despite mounting evidence that his army has come under crushing strain. The Tigrayans, for their part, say they are fighting to break a siege that is strangling their region and starving their people. Western pressure on Abiy has amounted to little more than “drips,” Gen Tsadkan Gebretensae, the rebels’ top strategist, told The New York Times last month. “We need more than drips.” Human rights groups have also accused Tigrayan fighters of abuses, including the killing of Eritrean refugees, although not on the same scale as Ethiopian troops. The Ethiopian government accused Tigrayan fighters of killing “youth residents” in Kombolcha in recent days, but provided no evidence. They have been pushing south, into Amhara region, since July, in a grinding battle that has unfolded largely out of sight as a result of internet blackouts and reporting restrictions. The breakthrough came with the capture this weekend of Dessie and Kombolcha, strategically located towns on a highway running from north to south that has become the spine of a war that could determine the future of Ethiopia. As they push south, the Tigrayans have linked up with the Oromo Liberation Army, a far smaller rebel group fighting for the rights of the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. After years of battle in the bush, the OLA appears to be moving into Ethiopia’s towns. Odaa Tarbii, an OLA spokesperson, said Tuesday it had captured a town 120 miles north of Addis Ababa and expected to start moving south, alongside the Tigrayans, in two or three days. For much of the war Abiy enjoyed staunch support from neighbouring Eritrea, whose fighters entered Tigray in the conflict’s early weeks in late 2020, and were accused of many of the worst atrocities against civilians. But in recent weeks, for reasons that are unclear, the Eritreans have been nowhere to be seen in the latest fighting, Tigrayan and Western officials said. Getachew Reda, a spokesperson for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, said the Ethiopian military was falling into disarray as it retreated south, leaving behind bands of heavily armed ethnic militias. “The command and control structure has collapsed,” he said, in an account that was broadly confirmed by two Western officials who could not be identified because of diplomatic sensitivities. If the Tigrayans continue to push south, the officials added, Abiy is likely to face immense pressure from inside his political camp, as well as on the battlefield. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
The drought, which began in 2000 and has reduced water
supplies, devastated farmers and ranchers and helped fuel wildfires across the
region, had previously been considered the worst in 500 years, according to the
researchers. But exceptional conditions in the summer of 2021, when about
two-thirds of the West was in extreme drought, “really pushed it over the top,”
said A Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who led an analysis using tree ring data to gauge drought. As a
result, 2000-21 is the driest 22-year period since AD 800, which is as far back
as the data goes. The analysis also showed that human-caused warming played a
major role in making the current drought so extreme. There would have been a drought regardless of climate
change, Williams said. “But its severity would have been only about 60% of what it
was,” he said. Julie Cole, a climate scientist at the University of
Michigan who was not involved in the research, said that while the findings
were not surprising, “the study just makes clear how unusual the current
conditions are.” Cole said the study also confirms the role of temperature,
more than precipitation, in driving exceptional droughts. Precipitation amounts
can go up and down over time and can vary regionally, she said. But as human
activities continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, temperatures
are more generally rising. As they do “the air is basically more capable of pulling the
water out of the soil, out of vegetation, out of crops, out of forests,” Cole
said. “And it makes for drought conditions to be much more extreme.” Although there is no uniform definition, a megadrought is
generally considered to be one that is both severe and long, on the order of
several decades. But even in a megadrought there can be periods when wet
conditions prevail. It’s just that there are not enough consecutive wet years
to end the drought. That has been the case in the current Western drought,
during which there have been several wet years, most notably 2005. The study,
which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, determined that
climate change was responsible for the continuation of the current drought
after that year. “By our calculations, it’s a little bit of extra dryness in
the background average conditions due to human-caused climate change that
basically kept 2005 from ending the drought event,” Williams said. Climate change also makes it more likely that the drought
will continue, the study found. “This drought at 22 years is still in full swing,” Williams
said, “and it is very, very likely that this drought will survive to last 23
years.” Several previous megadroughts in the 1,200-year record
lasted as long as 30 years, according to the researchers. Their analysis
concluded that it is likely that the current drought will last that long. If it
does, Williams said, it is almost certain that it will be drier than any
previous 30-year period. Tree rings are a year-by-year measure of growth — wider in
wet years, thinner in dry ones. Using observational climate data over the past
century, researchers have been able to closely link tree ring width to moisture
content in the soil, which is a common measure of drought. Then they have
applied that width-moisture relationship to data from much older trees. The
result “is an almost perfect record of soil moisture” over 12 centuries in the
Southwest,” Williams said. Using that record, the researchers determined that last
summer was the second driest in the past 300 years, with only 2002, in the
early years of the current drought, being drier. Monsoon rains in the desert Southwest last summer had
offered hope that the drought might come to an end, as did heavy rain and snow
in California from the fall into December. But January produced record-dry conditions across much of
the West, Williams said, and so far February has been dry as well. Reservoirs
that a few months ago were at above-normal levels for the time of year are now
below normal again, and mountain snowpack is also suffering. Seasonal forecasts
also suggest the dryness will continue. “This year could end up being wet,” Williams said, “but the
dice are increasingly loaded toward this year playing out to be an abnormally
dry year.” Samantha Stevenson, a climate modeller at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study, said the research
shows the same thing that projections show — that the Southwest, like some
other parts of the world, is becoming even more parched. Not everywhere is becoming increasingly arid, she said. “But in the Western US it is for sure," Stevenson said.
"And that’s primarily because of the warming of the land surface, with
some contribution from precipitation changes as well.” “We’re sort of shifting into basically unprecedented times
relative to anything we’ve seen in the last several hundred years,” she added. © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Rich countries must clean their own act to convince developing countries to join the fight against climate change, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri said on the eve of the international Bali conference. Delegates from about 190 nations are gathering in Bali on Monday for to try to launch new negotiations on a long-term agreement to fight climate change. "The first thing that the rich countries should do is set their own house in order and start reducing emissions," Pachauri, the chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told Reuters. "Secondly they have to find means by which they can assist the developing countries ... there has to be a serious effort to transfer technology." The Indian scientist, whose committee shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore this year, said developed countries needed to prove that they were ready to take up more responsibility than poorer ones on global warming. "China and India are feeling that what the developed countries were supposed to do has not been done," he said. "At this point in time, given that China and India have much lower per capita emissions, they are certainly not going to agree to any restrictions." Pachauri expected the United States -- which has not ratified the Kyoto protocol on emissions caps -- to take a constructive approach in Bali. "I have a feeling that the Unites States will allow the negotiations to proceed smoothly, and this will be true of all the other countries as well," he side in the sidelines of a conference in Brussels, before heading to Bali. Pachauri said the European Union was taking the lead in the fight against climate change and also commended Australia's prime minister elect Kevin Rudd's decision to ratify Kyoto. The Bali meeting, with 130 environment ministers attending the final days, will try to launch formal negotiations ending with a new UN climate pact in 2009. "The outcome would be satisfactory in my view if it comes up with the decision to negotiate an agreement and comes up with a timetable for the negotiations," Pachauri said. | 0 |
New Delhi,Oct 9 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - India's raucous democracy, endemic poverty and soaring economic ambition make targetting greenhouse gas emissions cuts a hard sell, even as global pressure mounts on the government to do more on climate change. New Delhi says priority must go to economic growth to lift millions out of poverty while shifting to clean energy led by solar power. The government sets no greenhouse caps, but says per-capita carbon emissions will never exceed those of developed nations. India's per-capita annual emissions are about 1.2 tonnes, compared with China's 4.1 tonnes and Australia's 28 tonnes. Such arguments, Western leaders say, are just a fig leaf for India's apparent reluctance to act. Critics say New Delhi lacks the political will to implement stringent laws. The truth, say analysts, lies somewhere in between -- high growth at any cost and responsible behaviour on tackling emissions growth. India is the world's fourth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and some studies suggest it could soon overtake Russia to become number three after China and the United States. "India lacks political will, simply because climate is not a popular issue with Indians at large," said K. Srinivas of Greenpeace's climate change campaign, during Reuters Global Environment Summit. "In most cases tough decision-making is put off, not because of economic growth concerns, but populist politics." Free electricity is a good example. It often forms part of political parties' election agenda even though power regulators oppose it as wasteful and mostly benefitting rich farmers. Likewise, tougher emissions laws for vehicles haven't been implemented under pressure from users and the automobile lobby. Power equipment companies have resisted switching over to energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Policy implementation was also hindered by inter-ministry competition. For instance, several ministries want their say in the fuel efficiency debate. While the Bureau of Energy Efficiency has the mandate to implement energy conservation policies, the transport ministry wants to implement this as part of Euro emissions standards. "SOUND LOGIC" "Many times people work at cross purposes," said a climate change official on condition of anonymity. "Unlike China, politics here is disparate." Analysts said while China's single-party government could implement tough decisions -- it aims to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent by 2010 -- India's disparate democracy hinders setting targets. Globally, China is seen as doing more than India to fight climate change. "They often quote their efficiency policies and also renewable energy policy," said Srinivas. "The Chinese have a renewable energy policy which clearly looks at a 15 percent uptake of renewable energy by 2020 and a 20 percent efficiency target. These are concrete steps." By comparison, India stresses growth for poverty alleviation. "By citing China's example and asking India to set emission targets, the West wants to block our economic growth and see to it we stay poor," said Bhure Lal, chairman of the government's environmental pollution prevention committee. "There are people in India who are spineless and will change their stance on issues because of vote-bank politics, but overall India's argument that it can not set targets hindering growth is based on sound logic." India says while the Chinese have efficiency targets, they have not been able to implement them and that they are way short of the efficiency targets as of now. Both countries, though, are united in criticising rich nations for not committing to deeper cuts and failing to following through on funding pledges and technology transfers for cleaner energy. At the G8 summit in Japan in July, Group of Eight leaders agreed to the goal of halving emissions by 2050. But some balked at the idea of fixed mid-term targets for emissions cuts by 2020 or 2030, something developing nations say wealthy states must agree to before they are willing to commit to curbs themselves. Rich nations, in turn, say big developing nations must step up and join the fight against climate change. A recent annual study on global carbon emissions showed the developing world now contributes more than half of all mankind's greenhouse gas pollution. FLEXIBLE India, whose economy has grown by 8-9 percent annually in recent years, contributes around 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is not yet required to cut emissions -- said to be rising by between 2 and 3 percent a year -- under the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto's first phase ends in 2012 and U.N.-led talks seek to agree on a broader replacement for Kyoto from 2013 that binds all nations to commit to emissions curbs. The talks reach a climax at the end of next year in the Danish capital Copenhagen but already there are doubts of a tough "Kyoto II" pact being agreed by then. In June, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India was not rigid and would try to make a gradual shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar. India aims to generate 25,000 megawatts from renewable energy over the next four years, more than double the current generation level of 12,000 MW. But coal remains the backbone of India's power sector -- accounting for about 60 percent of generation -- with the government planning to add about 70,000 MW in the next five years. Srinivas criticised the lack of adequate government incentives for green power generation, while Lal pointed to India's chaotic political scene as hindering the pace of change. "Look, there are problems of implementation because of the nature of politics in India, but there is no fundamental fault with India's stance," Lal said. | 0 |
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will join Friday's online meeting with her Group of Seven (G7) peers at which they are likely to renew promises to pursue huge stimulus programmes to aid the economic recovery from COVID-19. The meeting, the first G7 encounter since Biden took office, will also seek to breathe new life into long-running efforts to solve the problem of how to tax giant digital firms, many of them American such as Amazon and Google. That is seen as test case of Washington's renewed engagement after Trump effectively blocked any deal. Britain, which is chairing the meeting, has said the talks will provide to chance to find "global solutions" to the hammer blow dealt to the world's economy by the pandemic. A G7 source said officials would discuss "how best to shape and respond to the phases of the global recovery from COVID-19" including support for workers and businesses in the near term while ensuring fiscal sustainability in the long term. Other aides said there would be a discussion on coordinating fiscal stimulus among the G7 countries, which aside from the United States and Britain include Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. They will also be joined by the heads of their national central banks and the European Central Bank. Biden has proposed a further $1.9 trillion in spending and tax cuts on top of Trump's $4 trillion. British finance minister Rishi Sunak is expected to say in March that he will borrow yet more money - after racking up the biggest ever peacetime deficit - while promising to fix the public finances after the crisis. The G7 source said the meeting would also discuss support for vulnerable countries to aid the global recovery. The finance ministers and central bank governors were likely to sign a joint statement, the source said. DIGITAL TAX The meeting comes as much of the global economy continues to reel from the impact of lockdowns although vaccination programmes are raising the prospect of recovery later this year. The different pace of the rollouts is likely to mean some regions lag behind, with the euro zone at particular risk of a slow recovery. Britain wants to make climate change and biodiversity loss a top priority of it G7 presidency ahead of the COP26 conference it is due to host in November. There could also be some signs of progress on how to sort the rules for taxing cross-border commerce. Nearly 140 countries are negotiating the first update in a generation to the rules for taxing cross-border commerce, to account for the emergence of big digital companies like Google , Apple and Facebook. Biden is seen as more open to a deal and some involved in the talks believe an agreement is within grasp this year. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to host the first in-person summit of G7 leaders in nearly two years in June in a seaside village in Cornwall, southwestern England, to discuss rebuilding from the pandemic and climate change. | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Tue May 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday will propose the most aggressive increase in US auto fuel efficiency ever in a policy initiative that would also directly regulate emissions for the first time and resolve a dispute with California over cleaner cars. A senior administration official, speaking to reporters late on Monday on the condition of anonymity, said average fuel standards for all new passenger vehicles -- cars and light trucks -- would rise by 10 miles a gallon over today's performance to 35.5 miles per gallon between 2012-16. Climate-warming carbon emissions would fall by 900 million metric tons, or more than 30 percent over the life of the program, the official said. "All companies will be required to make more efficient and cleaner cars," the official said, saying the government estimates the program will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. U.S. and key overseas automakers, including General Motors Corp, which is on the verge of probable bankruptcy, and efficiency leader Toyota Motor Corp of Japan, support the plan, an industry trade group said. "GM and the auto industry benefit by having more consistency and certainty to guide our product plans," GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said in a statement. Toyota Motor Sales USA President James Lentz said the single national standard will enhance vehicle choice for consumers. The new program, according to the administration, will add about $600 to the price of producing a vehicle compared to current law, which requires automakers to achieve a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase over today's performance. US auto companies fought significant increases in fuel standards for decades before Congress and the Bush administration agreed to stricter targets in 2007. Some vehicles, most made by overseas manufacturers, already meet or exceed the standards set to be proposed. CALIFORNIA TO DEFER TO NATIONAL STANDARD California also supports the Obama proposal, the official said. California had sought a waiver from federal environmental law to impose its own regulations to cut auto emissions but Bush administration would not permit it. Also, auto companies sued to stop California on grounds the initiative would create a patchwork of rules if other states followed suit instead of a single national fuel efficiency standard. "California has agreed that they will defer to the proposed national standard," the official said, if it is finalized. Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the development "good news for all of us who have fought long and hard" to reduce global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil. The 30 percent reduction in emissions is more aggressive than what California and other states that have supported its bid for a waiver have sought. The administration in April opened the way to regulating emissions by declaring climate-warming pollution a danger to human health and welfare, in a sharp policy shift from the Bush administration. The new policy would give automakers flexibility to meet the standards and would weigh the impact on the environment of carbon-based fuels and other vehicle systems that emit emissions, like air conditioners. "This could be the breakthrough we've been looking for on clean cars," said David Friedman, research director of the clean vehicle program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The plan assumes average gas prices of $3.50 per gallon by 2016, which administration officials hope will help push consumers into more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Automakers are aggressively pursuing better hybrids and electric cars. But more recent declines in gas prices in the later half of 2008 and so far this year due to a recession-induced demand falloff have revived sales, in some cases, of less efficient pickups and SUVs. To help lift the industry out of its sharp sales slump, Congress is considering legislation that would offer consumers up to $4,500 to trade in older, less fuel-efficient models for vehicles that get sharply higher gas mileage. Separately, a key committee in the US Congress on Monday kicked off what promises to be a week-long climate change debate as Democrats aimed to advance a bill to slow global warming and Republicans maneuvered to kill a central part the plan they say will hurt the US economy. | 1 |
In Europe, activists in Berlin, Warsaw, Brussels and
elsewhere targeted German government or embassy buildings. Germany is one of
the European Union countries opposed to an embargo on Russian oil and gas, in
response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, for fear of damage to their economy. Around 50 activists outside Germany's representation to the
European Union in Brussels chanted "be brave like Ukraine", as some
lay on the floor pretending to be dead, wrapped in Ukraine flags and clothes
painted to look bloodied. Nastya Pavlenko, a Ukrainian activist at the Brussels
protest, said money spent on Russian fossil fuels was fuelling both climate
change and the war in Ukraine. "There is no money worth the lives of kids that are
dying right now in Ukraine and the lives of people who will be displaced and
killed due to climate change," she said. About a dozen activists in the western Ukrainian city of
Lviv also held a protest, with placards that spelled out "embargo
now". Parts of Lviv were hit this week by Russian missile strikes that
killed seven people. Natalia Gozak, head of the EcoAction civil society group and
one of those protesting in Lviv, said European politicians need to choose
between an embargo's economic "inconveniences" and the deaths of
Ukrainians. In the United States, activists from the Extinction
Rebellion group blockaded a New York newspaper printing facility to call for
more media coverage of climate change. Youth protesters also gathered in locations including
Bangkok and Stockholm, where Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined the school
strike - a weekly protest she began as a solitary student in 2018 to demand
urgent action to address climate change. And in London, Extinction Rebellion activists dressed as oil
slicks protested outside the offices of Vanguard, the world's second largest
asset manager and largest investor in coal, with more than $300 billion in
fossil fuels. Activists said they wanted to draw attention to the company's
investments, which have largely "flown under the radar". The protests aim to amplify demands for climate action on
Earth Day, when people worldwide celebrate and mobilise in support of
protecting the environment. They come three weeks after a UN climate scientist
report warned there is little time left for reining in greenhouse gas emissions
sufficiently to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Since Moscow's Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine, the EU has spent
more than 38 billion euros ($41.2 billion) on Russian fossil fuel imports. The EU's 27 countries have agreed to ban Russian coal
imports from August, as part of sweeping sanctions also targeting Russian banks
and business tycoons. Countries including Italy and Germany have said they can
wean themselves off Russian gas within a few years, and some European companies
are already shunning Russian oil voluntarily to avoid reputational damage or
possible legal troubles. But the EU states are split over whether to impose an
immediate and full embargo on Russian fuels, which Germany and Hungary say
would hammer their economies. The EU gets 40% of its gas from Russia. German chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday said a gas embargo
would not end the war. "If (Russian President Vladimir) Putin were open to
economic arguments, he would never have begun this crazy war," he told Der
Spiegel. Warsaw-based climate activist Dominika Lasota, 20, said
youth movement Fridays for Future would be changing its approach by holding
smaller actions targeting specific governments opposed to fossil fuel
sanctions, rather than organising the massive street protests that drew
hundreds of thousands in past years and helped draw international attention to
climate change. "It's wartime. We have to brace for a longer
marathon," Lasota said. "The war will not stop with the last bomb
that will fall..., it will end once we end the [fossil fuel] industry and the
system behind it." Ukrainian NGOs also sent a letter on Friday to Germany's
parliament demanding the country stop buying Russian oil and gas. "Germany is one of its main consumers and thus is the
main sponsor of war in Ukraine," said the letter. "You only need some
political will and humaneness to impose a full embargo on Russian oil and
gas." | 0 |
Images shared on social media show cars being swept down streets, buildings and businesses filled with mud, and mudslides that left boulders strewn across roads. Merida Governor Ramon Guevara said 11 people were killed in the municipality of Tovar and two children were killed in the municipality of Antonio Pinto Salinas. "The situation that we're living through is very unfortunate," Guevara said in comments to local media that were filmed and posted on Twitter. "Power is cut off because the waters reached the transformers, which caused them to halt." The area in question is an agricultural zone that provides food to other parts of the country. | 2 |
It's no wonder the young don't vote, with many of them saying candidates are overwhelmingly male, old, and disconnected from their concerns. Only 10% of lawmakers in the just-dissolved lower house were women; the representation of female candidates in the ruling coalition is even lower. The average age of male and female candidates is 54, with more than a third aged 60 and above. A handful are over 80. Women's rights are not debated, and other issues such as gender equality, support for young families, the dire labour shortage and dysfunctional immigration system are also barely on the agenda. The disconnect means that in elections over the past decade only a third of young voters turned out, and some analysts fear participation in the upcoming Oct 31 poll could be the lowest in post-war history. "In this situation, young peoples' voices won't be reflected in politics," said Nojo, 23 and a graduate student. "By not going to vote, life will become more difficult for this generation. Whether it's problems with raising children, or other issues, to get politics to turn to our generation you have to vote, you have to take part." Japan's situation contrasts with that of the United States, where, according to the US Census Bureau, voter turnout of those aged 18-24 was 51% in the 2020 Presidential election. Nojo, who developed an interest in activism while studying in Denmark, is not easily discouraged and has already triumphed against huge odds. Early this year she shot to fame with a campaign that ousted octogenarian Tokyo Olympics head Yoshiro Mori after he made sexist remarks. But apathy among young voters is deep-seated and reflects long-term systemic issues in Japanese politics, often dominated by families who have been elected through generations, analysts said. That the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is on track to suffer hefty losses in this election, has held power for all but a brief period over the last six decades also creates a sense change is impossible. "I don't go to vote because there's just no feeling it's connected to my life," said Takuto Nanga, 22 and a comic illustrator. "Even if the top changes, there'll still be problems like in the past." SOCIAL MEDIA For women, things are especially bad. Only 9.7% of LDP candidates are women, with 7.5% for coalition partner Komeito. "Even elected, women lawmakers don't get a chance at the important cabinet portfolios. There are only a handful in the cabinet, and there should be so many more. Then women would have the sense they're taking part," said Airo Hino, a Waseda University professor. While emphasising issues such as climate change, cutting university fees and gender equality would help lure younger voters, the process also has to be appealing, Hino argues. That means rejecting traditional campaigning in newspapers, stump speeches and turgid political appeals on NHK public TV for social media - which some politicians, such as Taro Kono, often cited in polls as a top choice for premier, have used to good effect. "Almost nobody reads those massive party campaign platforms, and for young people it's impossible, a facilitator's needed," Hino added. Voter matching apps, where people answer questions and find out which political party comes closest, are also handy. "It's mainly a game, but that's fine. In a lighthearted way you find a party you like, then you go vote," said Hino. Aside from her online campaigns for "No Youth No Japan", Nojo has taken a similar tack, partnering with a clothing firm to produce a series of T-shirts with quirky designs emphasising issues - life, peace, equality and the planet - and voting. "Clothes are worn daily, it's a form of expressing your opinion and showing yourself," Nojo said, with the hope being they'd become conversation starters and spur wearers to vote. That something must be done is painfully clear. "With a larger population and higher voting rates, inevitably the voice of the older generation is stronger," said Ayumi Adachi, 20 and a student. "To get what we want, we need to speak up. We need to vote." | 0 |
Levels of climate-warming methane -- a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide -- rose abruptly in Earth's atmosphere last year, and scientists who reported the change don't know why it occurred. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, but stayed largely stable over the last decade or so before rising in 2007, researchers said on Wednesday. This stability led scientists to believe that the emissions of methane, from natural sources like cows, sheep and wetlands, as well as from human activities like coal and gas production, were balanced by the destruction of methane in the atmosphere. But that balance was upset starting early last year, releasing millions of metric tonnes more methane into the air, the scientists wrote in the Geophysical Research Letters. "The thing that's really surprising is that it's coming after this period of very level emissions," said Matthew Rigby of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The worry is that we just don't understand the methane cycle very well." Another surprise was that the rise in methane levels happened simultaneously at all the places scientists measured around the globe, instead of being centered near known sources of methane emissions in the Northern Hemisphere, said Rigby, one of the study's lead authors along with Ronald Prinn, also of MIT. A rise in methane in the Northern Hemisphere might be due to a year-long warm spell in Siberia, where wetlands harbor methane-producing bacteria, the scientists said, but had no immediate answer on why emissions also rose in the Southern Hemisphere at the same time. There is considerably less methane than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pre-industrial concentrations of methane were about 700 parts per billion -- that is, for every billion molecules of air, there were only 700 of methane -- but that level rose gradually to 1773 parts per billion by the late 20th century, Rigby said in a telephone interview. The rise in 2007 was about 10 parts per billion over the course of a year, a real jump for such a short period of time. By contrast, there are about 385 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, methane is much better at locking in the solar radiation that heats up the planet. Methane is destroyed by reaction with an atmospheric "cleanser" called the hydroxyl free radical, or OH. The researchers theorized that the rise in methane might be due in part to a decline in OH. The researchers said it is too soon to tell whether the one-year rise in the amount of atmospheric methane is the start of an upward trend or a short-lived anomaly. | 0 |
The buildup of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine, through which Russian gas flows to the West, also has added to concerns about whether gas will run out. Already, low volumes of gas from Russia, Europe’s main source of imports of the fuel, have helped raise prices in recent months. “There is a risk of supply shortages that could erode economic growth and trigger public discord,” said Henning Gloystein, a director for energy and climate at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, adding that blackouts are possible in a worst-case scenario. Gloystein said that should the situation worsen, governments might order factories to cut gas use to ensure that households have enough to keep warm. On Tuesday, gas on the TTF trading hub in the Netherlands hit record levels of about $60 per million British thermal units on reports that flows in a pipeline that brings Russian gas to Germany were being switched back toward the East. (European gas prices have doubled this month and are roughly 15 times what gas is selling for in the United States.) Gloystein said this change of direction might reflect opportunistic trading activity rather than sinister maneuvering on the part of Moscow, but the fact remains that natural gas markets in Europe are ready to soar at the slightest provocation. Tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine make it very unlikely that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany will open anytime soon and bring relief. On a call with reporters Tuesday, Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said Washington considers Nord Stream 2 “a Russian geopolitical project that undermines the energy security and the national security of a significant part of the Euro-Atlantic community.” Donfried said the United States was working closely with the new German government to strengthen Europe’s energy security. Attracted by high prices, energy companies are instructing ships carrying liquefied natural gas to change their destinations from Asia to Europe, but even that switching may not be enough to replace Russian gas or significantly ease the crunch. “The market knows there is more LNG coming,” said Laura Page, an analyst at Kpler, a research firm. “But it doesn’t seem to be having any impact on sentiment.” Because gas is a key fuel for generating electricity, electric power prices also are soaring across Europe. In Britain, for instance, steady power was trading Tuesday for about 340 pounds (about $450) per megawatt-hour, a wholesale metric, on the Epex Spot exchange. That is about three times the average price of electricity over the year. The high gas prices of recent months will eventually lead to rises in energy costs for households in Britain and other countries. Martin Young, an analyst at Investec, a securities firm, forecast in a recent note to clients that British consumers, who have been protected by price ceilings, could see their energy bills rise more than 50% when adjustments are announced early next year. In recent days, the closure of three French nuclear plants to check for faults has further stoked the power market. “It’s becoming the new normal for this winter,” Mark Devine, a trader at Sembcorp, an energy firm, said of the elevated prices. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
The reversal of protocol struck Daschle, who was new in the job, as gracious. “I said, ‘Bob, I’m really humbled that you insist on coming to my office; I’m the junior guy, so I should come to your office,’ ” Daschle recalled Sunday after learning that Dole, 98, had died. “And he said, ‘No, when I come to your office, I can always decide when the meeting is over.’ ” The remark was classic Bob Dole — witty and straight to the point. And the story is a reminder of Bob Dole’s Washington. Dole, a Kansas Republican who overcame the poverty of the Great Depression and grievous injuries suffered during World War II, brought his prairie values and no-nonsense manner when he arrived in Washington in 1961. Over the next 35 years — through eight years in the House, 27 in the Senate and three failed attempts to win the presidency — he operated in a city that was conducive to his instincts as a deal maker. It is perhaps trite to reminisce about and romanticise a “bygone era” in Washington, when politicians of opposing parties fought by day and socialised with one another at night. There was plenty of partisanship — some of it every bit as bitter as what exists today — during Dole’s time in the Capitol. But there also is no denying that the climate was different, and the facts speak for themselves: Both as a senator and as the Republican leader, a job he held from 1985 until 1996, Dole reached across the aisle to help push through a string of bipartisan legislation, such as a bill to rescue Social Security, the Americans with Disabilities Act and a measure to overhaul the welfare system. Among his proudest accomplishments was teaming up with George McGovern, the liberal Democrat from South Dakota, to revamp the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps. They continued to work together on nutrition issues after they both left the Senate. “People believed in working with each other, and they kept their word,” Sen Patrick J Leahy, who counted Dole as a friend, said Sunday. He recalled the close ties between George J Mitchell Jr, the Maine senator who preceded Daschle as the Democratic leader, and Dole. “When George Mitchell was leader, he’d go down to Dole’s office two and three times a day and vice versa,” Leahy said. “And I recall they both said the same thing about the other: ‘He never surprised me.’ You don’t see that happen today.” Not only that, Mitchell and Dole had dedicated phone lines on their desks that let them communicate directly with the touch of a button, one aide recalled. The button came in handy in November 1994, when Republicans won back the majority. Mitchell, who had not sought reelection, asked that Dole be alerted that he was coming to his office to congratulate him. Dole sent a quick message back that he didn’t want Mitchell to make the humbling trek and that Dole would instead go to his office, a gesture that Mitchell and his team regarded as decent and thoughtful. “He operated in a different era, when the idea of bipartisanship was very much in vogue and politicians understood that in a democracy you simply have to work, not just with your fellow party members, but with people from the opposite side or the other side of the aisle,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. “He was masterful at that.” That is not to say that Dole lacked sharp elbows or conservative ideology. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House who is widely credited with ushering in Washington’s era of partisan warfare, said he worked closely with Dole to push through tax cuts and to defeat President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal health care. In an interview Sunday, Gingrich likened Dole to the current Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, an object of loathing for Democrats. “I think there’s a lot of parallels between Dole and McConnell,” Gingrich said. “They’re both creatures of the Senate; they’re both very, very good tactically. They both understand how to stop things, and they understand how to get things done.” Despite their partnership, Dole could not embrace Gingrich’s bomb-throwing style. When Gingrich and House Republicans refused to pass federal spending bills, forcing the government to shut down in 1995, Dole took to the Senate floor to declare that he had had enough. “We ought to end this,” Dole said at the time. “I mean, it’s gotten to the point where it’s a little ridiculous as far as this senator is concerned.” In Washington, Dole and his wife, Elizabeth Dole — who later became a senator and ran for president herself — were seen as a power couple, the embodiment of the city’s institutions. Robert Dole came to stand for World War II and the Greatest Generation, and an earlier era of dignity and honour. He was the driving force behind the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, and could often be found greeting veterans there. “He was in a sense Mr America,” said Dallek, the historian. “He came from the heartland, and he stood for a kind of shared values.” In 1996, Dole left the Senate — an institution in which he had served for more than a quarter century — to run for president. Washington was changing. Gingrich was at the height of his power. Clinton would later be impeached over his affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, exacerbating the growing partisan tensions. But when Dole, who at that point was the Senate’s longest-serving Republican leader, went to the chamber to deliver a speech announcing his departure, the old ways of the Capitol were still intact. “That day he announced he was leaving the Senate, almost every Democratic senator was on the floor,” Leahy said. “Now, he was going to go out to run against Bill Clinton. And when he finished speaking, we all stood and applauded and applauded.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
SINGAPORE, Thu Jun 25, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Want the good life despite the dire economy? Head east, according to a survey showing some of the world's highest-paid expatriates live in Asia and the Middle East. A third of all expats in Russia -- the highest proportion in the world -- earn more than $250,000 a year, followed closely by expats in Japan and Qatar, according to the 2009 Expat Explorer survey, commissioned by HSBC Bank International, the offshore financial services arm of HSBC Holdings. Between a third and a quarter of foreigners working in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand and India earned annual wages of more than $200,000, while countries such as Malaysia, China and India, were ranked among the cheapest for accommodation. "Asia is home to the highest paid expats in the world, with one in four expats earning more than $200,000 per year," said the survey (here). Russia was ranked the number one country overall for expats in terms of wealth. The rest of the top nine were all in Asia and the Middle East. Building a nest egg is one of the perks of expat life for many people, and the survey showed that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar, India and the United Arab Emirates were the top five countries where people have increased their savings. But the global economic crisis has taken a heavy toll on expats in Britain and the United States, where close to a quarter are considering returning home, compared to just 15 percent overall, due to the high cost of living, lack of savings and lower wages. Generous salaries are also relatively scarce in Australia and Belgium, the survey showed. More than 60 percent of expats in both countries earn under $100,000, making them the poorest expats wage-wise when compared to a global average of 35 percent. LARGEST SURVEY "We have seen some interesting trends in terms of how expats are reacting to the credit crunch, but what is also interesting to see is that they remain a wealthy group of individuals," Paul Say, head of marketing and communications for HSBC Bank International, said in a statement. "Over half the expats surveyed are actually earning $100,000 and over -- no mean feat particularly in the current climate." Expat Explorer, now in its second year, surveyed more than 3,100 expats from various nationalities living in 26 countries. HSBC said it was the largest survey of its kind. More than two-thirds of expatriates worldwide said the credit crisis had changed the way they spend their money, with luxuries and day-to-day spending the most affected. Nearly 40 percent said they were saving more for a rainy day. Over half of the expats in Japan -- the highest globally at 53 percent -- said they were cutting back on holidays and other perks, while almost one in two expats in Thailand and Hong Kong -- the second and third globally, were also scaling back. In contrast, two-thirds of expats living in Qatar said the global financial crisis would not change their spending attitudes at all, followed by more than half of those living in Bahrain, which HSBC said indicated that some oil-rich Gulf Arab states have not been hit as hard by the downturn. Expats in Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Russia were also the least likely to cut back on luxuries, the survey showed. Those polled in the survey were chosen by four main criteria: annual income in excess of $200,000; a monthly disposable income in excess of $3,000; an increase in saving while working abroad and having at least two luxury items in the country they live in. The survey was conducted between February and April 2009. | 3 |
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Ukraine on Friday that the door to joining NATO remained open even though its new leadership has abandoned alliance membership as a long-term goal. But she made clear that Washington did not seek to disrupt Ukraine's new closer ties with Moscow. Those who pushed Ukraine to choose between Russia and the West were offering a "false choice," she said. At the same time, she urged President Viktor Yanukovich to stick to a democratic course and obliquely expressed concern over reports that media freedoms were being infringed. "We would urge the Ukrainian government to safeguard these critical liberties," she told a news conference with Yanukovich. She also backed Ukraine's push to win a new International Monetary Fund programme of up to $19 billion and encouraged the country to strengthen its investment climate through economic reform, fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law. Clinton's discreet avoidance of any open criticism of pro-Russian moves by the newly-elected Yanukovich was in line with the Obama administration's policy of "resetting" ties with Moscow. Apart from downgrading contacts with the U.S.-led military alliance, Yanukovich has tilted Ukraine firmly towards Moscow by stepping up commercial contacts and by extending the stay of the Russian navy in a Ukrainian Black Sea port by 25 years. "Regarding NATO, let me say very clearly: Ukraine is a sovereign and independent country that has the right to choose your own alliances," Clinton told Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko. "NATO'S door remains open but it is up to Ukraine to decide whether or not you wish to pursue that or any other course for your own security interests," she added. Yanukovich has dropped NATO membership as a goal, to the delight of Moscow, saying his country will remain outside military blocs. On Friday, he said Kiev would keep cooperating with the Western alliance on defence reform and peace-keeping. Far from faulting his approach, Clinton later told students at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute "what Ukraine is doing in trying to balance its relationships between the United States, the European Union and Russia make a a lot of sense." Yanukovich was sure to be pleased by Washington's blessing for what he says is a pragmatic policy that looks both to Russia and the West, and for Ukraine's efforts to stabilise its economy with help from global financial lenders. Clinton fulsomely praised Yanukovich's election in February as a "major step in consolidating Ukraine's democracy." She later met his arch-rival former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, now in opposition, who may have a different view. Tymoshenko, who faces possible prosecution for alleged misdemeanours in office, disputed Yanukovich's election but then dropped a legal attempt to block his inauguration. MEDIA FREEDOMS THREATENED? The one area where Clinton came close to criticising Yanukovich was over media freedoms and democratic liberties. Last week, US Ambassador to Kiev John Tefft expressed concern about reports of pressure on journalists since Yanukovich came to power. "Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to petition governments, to assemble, to participate in the political sphere -- these are not just afterthoughts," she said. "These are absolutely the right and the property of each individual." Clinton said she had raised these issues with Yanukovich and she noted that he has previously committed to uphold democracy, strengthen rule of law and respect human rights. "We recognize that rhetoric alone does not change behavior," Clinton said. "These statements need to be followed up with concrete actions." Clinton is at the start of a five-country regional tour and was stopping in Krakow, Poland, on Saturday for a gathering of the Community of Democracies, a group that promotes democratic norms. She will also visit Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. | 2 |
The belt will carry millions of tonnes of coal each year to a giant power plant several kilometres inland that will burn the fuel for at least 30 years to generate power for the more than 70 million people that live in India's Tamil Nadu state. The Udangudi plant is one of nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia, according to data from US nonprofit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). This new fleet will produce planet-warming emissions for decades and is a measure of the challenge world leaders face when they meet for climate talks in Glasgow, where they hope to sound the death knell for coal as a source of power. Coal use is one of the many issues dividing industrialised and developing countries as they seek to tackle climate change. Many industrialised countries have been shutting down coal plants for years to reduce emissions. The United States alone has retired 301 plants since 2000. But in Asia, home to 60 percent of the world's population and about half of global manufacturing, coal's use is growing rather than shrinking as rapidly developing countries seek to meet booming demand for power. More than 90 percent of the 195 coal plants being built around the world are in Asia, according to data from GEM. Tamil Nadu is India's second-most industrialised state and is one of the country's top renewable energy producers. But it is also building the most coal-fired plants in the country. "We cannot depend on just solar and wind," a senior official at Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corp told Reuters. "You can have the cake of coal and an icing of solar," he said, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak to media. HOOKED ON COAL Despite dramatic jumps in renewable energy output, the global economy remains hooked on coal for electricity. In Asia, coal's share of the generation mix is twice the global average - especially in surging economies such as India. In 2020, more than 35 percent of the world's power came from coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Roughly 25 percent came from natural gas, 16 percent from hydro dams, 10 percent from nuclear and 12 percent from renewables like solar and wind. This year, coal demand is set for a new record, driving prices to all-time highs and contributing to a worldwide scramble for fuel. Record coal demand is contributing to a rapid rise in emissions in 2021 after a fall last year, when restrictions on movement for billions of people to slow the pandemic caused fuel use to plummet. While some of the new coal plants under construction will replace older, more polluting stations, together they will add to total emissions. "The completion of the capacity that is already under construction in these countries will drive up coal demand and emissions," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air. The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the new plants alone will be close to 28 billion tonnes over their 30-year lifespans, according to GEM. That's not far off the 32 billion tonnes of total worldwide CO2 emissions from all sources in 2020, according to BP, highlighting how tough it will be for leaders gathering in Glasgow - including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi - to make meaningful progress on climate change. India's Environment Secretary Rameshwar Prasad Gupta told Reuters in a recent interview that India was on track to reach its target of cutting back the country's carbon footprint, and with that coal, too, would fall - but it cannot be abolished. "Look, every country has its strengths. We have coal, we have to depend on it," Gupta said. "Our position is once you take up targets of reducing carbon intensity, that will have impact ... Leave it to us whether we do it in coal, or somewhere else." Anil Swarup, a former Coal Secretary, took the same line in an interview. "Renewable energy expansion is critical, but coal will remain India's main energy source for the next 15 years at least, and production needs to be ramped up to address our energy needs," he said. CHINA CRUNCH Across India, 281 coal plants are operating and beyond the 28 being built another 23 are in pre-construction phases, GEM data show. These numbers are dwarfed by China, the top global coal miner, consumer and emitter, whose leader, President Xi Jinping, is not expected to attend COP26. More than 1,000 coal plants are in operation, almost 240 planned or already under construction. Together, coal plants in the world's second-largest economy will emit 170 billion tonnes of carbon in their lifetime - more than all global CO2 emissions between 2016 and 2020, BP data show. Despite also boasting the world's largest renewables capacity, China is now suffering a major energy crunch and has urged coal miners to raise output. That's likely to boost coal consumption in the near term, even though China plans to reduce coal use from 2026. Even so, total global coal consumption looks set to rise, driven by accelerating use in South and Southeast Asia, where projects under construction will raise coal-burning capacity by 17 percent and 26 percent respectively. Lifetime CO2 emissions from coal plants by country Even in economies committed to slashing emissions, coal's grip remains strong. Japan, with its nuclear power industry in crisis since the Fukushima disaster, has turned to coal to fill the gap and is building seven large new coal-fired power stations. Leading generator JERA plans to add clean-burning ammonia to be used with coal to help meet its target to be carbon neutral by 2050, and potentially keep old units operating longer. On a bay near Nagoya, JERA's 30-year-old, 4,100 megawatt Hekinan station - once Asia's largest - supplies electricity to the likes of auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. Like many power plants, Hekinan's boilers rely on fuel from top exporters such as Australia, where coal is both a vital source of revenue - $18 billion in the current financial year - and a bone of contention with allies urging ambitious emissions cuts. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to attend the Glasgow talks. But resources minister Keith Pitt has said there would be demand for coal for decades and made it clear the country would not be swayed by pressure from banks, regulators and investors to hobble the industry. | 0 |
Japan's greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.3 percent in the year ended in March partly due to a warm winter, but they rose in the three months to June from a year earlier, a newspaper said on Wednesday, quoting official data. The Yomiuri newspaper said the recent rise would make it hard for Japan to meet its target under the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change. Emissions of greenhouse gases, widely blamed for global warming, were 1.341 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent in fiscal 2006/07, the newspaper reported, citing preliminary Environment Ministry data it had obtained. But emissions rose 4.8 percent in the April-June quarter this year from the same period last year, the Yomiuri added. The 2006/07 emissions were 6.3 percent above the benchmark fiscal year 1990/91 set in the Kyoto Protocol. Japan, the only Asian country with a Kyoto target, has set a target to cut emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 period. | 0 |
Obama will be the first US president to attend India's Republic Day parade, a show of military might long associated with the anti-Americanism of the Cold War, and will host a radio show with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His presence at Monday's procession at Modi's personal invitation is the latest revival in a roller-coaster relationship between the two largest democracies that just a year ago was in tatters. "I'd like to think the stars are aligned to finally realise the vision (of) India and America as true global partners," Obama said in an interview with India Today, a weekly magazine, published on Friday. The two sides have worked to reach agreements on climate change, taxation and defence cooperation in time for the visit. Talks on a hoped-for deal on civil nuclear trade went down to the wire with no clear solution at the weekend. The United States views India as a vast market and potential counterweight to China's assertiveness in Asia, but frequently grows frustrated with the slow pace of economic reforms and unwillingness to side with Washington in international affairs. India would like to see a new US approach to Pakistan. "Particularly with regards to security, and we would like a much greater understanding with the United States with regards to regional issues," India's finance minister Arun Jaitley said in Davos ahead of Obama's visit. Elected last May, Modi has injected a new vitality into the economy and foreign relations and, to Washington's delight, begun pushing back against China's growing presence in South Asia. Annual bilateral trade of $100 billion is seen as vastly below potential and Washington wants it to grow fivefold. The White House said Obama will depart slightly early from India to travel to Saudi Arabia following the death of King Abdullah, instead of a planned visit to the Taj Mahal. MODEST ROOTS Like Obama, Modi rose from a modest home to break into a political elite dominated by powerful families. Aides say the two men bonded in Washington in September when Obama took Modi to the memorial of Martin Luther King, whose rights struggle was inspired by India's Mahatma Gandhi. The "chemistry" aides describe is striking because Modi's politics is considerably to the right of Obama's, and because he was banned from visiting the United States for nearly a decade after deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in a state he governed. Obama, the first sitting US president to visit India twice, also enjoyed a close friendship with Modi's predecessor Manmohan Singh, who in 2009 staked his premiership on a controversial deal that made India the sixth "legitimate" atomic power and marked a high point in Indo-US relations. In a reminder that personal chemistry is not always enough, under Obama ties between Washington and India descended into bickering over protectionism that culminated in a fiery diplomatic spat and the abrupt departure of the US ambassador from New Delhi, who has only just been replaced. "India and the United States are still some distance away from realizing their objective of cementing a strong geopolitical affiliation," Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a paper. The 2009 nuclear deal, which failed to deliver on a promise of billions of dollars of business for US companies, is back on the agenda with bureaucrats meeting three times in the past six weeks to find a workaround to a tough Indian liability law. "There's extraordinary potential in this relationship," Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters this week. "What we want to do is turn that potential into concrete benefits for both of our peoples." | 0 |
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Monday President George W Bush should be open to plans to fight climate change at a G8 meeting and willing to move forward in new ways with his partners. The leader of the opposition Democrats said she and a bipartisan delegation of congressional leaders had made a stop in Greenland and saw how global warming was threatening the livelihood of people who were not to blame. "We hope that we can all assume our responsibilities ... and that our administration will be open to listening to why it is important to go forward, perhaps in a different way than we proceeded in the past," Pelosi said. Germany hosts the June 6-8 meeting of Group of Eight leaders that will focus on climate change. Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the club to agree steps to halt global warming to prepare the ground for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Pelosi told journalists she would meet Merkel on Tuesday "to personally congratulate her, and thank her, for her leadership". Merkel faces resistance from Washington, which refused to sign up to Kyoto and opposes binding emission cut targets despite UN reports warning of rising sea levels, droughts and floods linked to climate change. "This trip for us began in Greenland where we saw first-hand evidence that climate change is a reality," Pelosi said. "There is just no denying it. We saw the impact on the local people there, on their hunting, their fishing, their economic survival. "And it wasn't caused by the people in Greenland. It was caused by the behaviour in the rest of the world." The United States, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels that scientists say is nudging up global temperatures, has given no sign it is open to compromise at the G8 meeting in the Baltic resort Heiligendamm. In fact, the United States wants key targets and timetables for combating global warming -- including a pledge to halve emissions by 2050 -- removed from a draft summit communique. "The science is clear, the challenge is undeniable," Pelosi said. "We have to work together, though, to reach a solution." On Friday, Washington signalled its fundamental opposition to Germany's G8 climate change position, according to a draft of a communique to be presented at the June 6-8 meeting. "We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position," the US said in comments in the draft communique. The G8 is composed of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. | 0 |
Gradually rising sea levels caused by global warming over the past 30 years have contributed to a growing number of disasters along China's coast, state news agency Xinhua said on Wednesday. Sea levels along China's coastline had risen 2.6 mm per year over the past three decades, Xinhua said, citing documents from the State Oceanic Administration. Average air and sea temperatures in coastal areas had risen about 0.4 and 0.2 degrees Celsius respectively over the past 10 years, the news agency added. "As a 'gradual' marine disaster, the cumulative effect of rising sea levels could 'aggravate storm tides, coastal erosion, seawater invasion and other disasters'," Xinhua cited the oceanic administration as saying. An expert at the administration, Liu Kexiu, said the rising sea levels were a result of global warming. "Other key factors are land subsidence caused by human activities, including over-exploitation of groundwater and massive construction of high buildings in coastal areas," Liu said. China's high and rapidly climbing output of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas pollutant from burning coal, oil and gas, has put it at the centre of negotiations for a new world pact to reduce the emissions responsible for global warming. The government has vowed to cut the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuels per unit of gross domestic product growth by 17 percent in the next five years. But China has repeatedly said it will not accept a more stringent, absolute cap on total emissions, calling it an unfair burden on developing nations that have much lower emissions per person than rich economies. It has also refused to say when its emissions could peak and begin to fall. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its last assessment report that China could be one of the biggest casualties of global warming in coming decades. Northern regions faced dwindling water supplies, plunging crop yields and increasing sandstorms, while melting glaciers would increase flood risks in the south, it predicted. | 0 |
Michael Szabo Copenhagen, Dec 20 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)—The enormous white globe that hung in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, the site of the world's largest ever summit on climate change, could be an unintended yet chilling sign of things to come. An observant attendee made it clear by scribbling on the giant model of the earth that its designers forgot to paint on small, low-lying Pacific island nations like Tuvalu and the Cook Islands. Antarctica was also missing from the colossal sphere. Scientists say rising global temperatures are melting the world's polar icecaps and this will lead to higher sea levels by the end of the century. Still, as island nations pleaded for major economies like China and the United States to agree a new climate agreement over the 12-day talks, was this an embarrassing mistake on the part of the organisers? The UN climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that falls so short of the conference's original goals that many observers have termed the talks a failure. A long road lies ahead. The accord -- weaker than a legally binding treaty and weaker even than the 'political' deal many had foreseen -- left much to the imagination. It set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times -- seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas. But it failed to say how this would be achieved. It held out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations but did not specify precisely where this money would come from. And it pushed key decisions such as emissions cuts into the future. Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. But there are no guarantees. | 1 |
Japan will consider a scheme for trading greenhouse gas emissions, the government said on Friday, a week after a powerful business lobby and the trade ministry softened their strong opposition. In a report of new steps aimed at slashing its greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Kyoto protocol, the government also proposed deeper but voluntary cuts for industry, adding to existing measures such as preserving forests and purchasing emissions rights from abroad. The plan, revealed as Japan prepares to host a climate-focussed G8 summit of industrialised nations in July, will be opened for public comment before it is officially adopted by the end of March. A cap-and-trade system with mandatory emissions limits, long opposed by the Japan Business Federation, was mentioned in the plan as a topic for consideration in the near future, as were environmental taxes and the introduction of daylight saving time. Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita warned other cabinet ministers that they might later be asked to cooperate with further cuts, an official said. As the host of the conference that produced the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is anxious to improve its own emissions record, at present well adrift of its goal of an average 6 percent cut on 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. That means slashing emissions to 1.186 billion tonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, although Japan actually emitted an estimated 1.359 billion tonnes in the year that ended in March 2006. As it prepares to host G8 on the northern island of Hokkaido in July, Japan has been attempting to take a leading role in climate change, including by planning a major environmental conference ahead of the main summit, media reports have said. The top UN climate change official said earlier this month it would be a disadvantage if Japan were to stay out of an otherwise universal cap-and-trade system in the future. The business lobby's chairman, Fujio Mitarai, was reported this month as softening his opposition to cap-and-trade, while the trade ministry said it was seriously studying such an approach. | 0 |
But if the world’s nations go on as they have done – burning fossil fuels, releasing greenhouse gases, and inexorably changing the climate – then global average temperatures will rise by 3.5°C and global fish catches will fall dramatically. A new study in Science journal calculates that for every degree Celsius that the Earth does not warm, fish catches could increase by 3 million tonnes. So holding warming to two degrees below the rise predicted under a business-as-usual scenario would net the additional six million tonnes. Total fish catches Right now, total fish catches are estimated at 109 million tonnes a year, and the outlook is not promising. Fisheries scientists have already reported change in potential ocean yield, and accelerating change in the habitual ranges of fish species. In the North Sea, which is already warming four times faster than the global average, haddock, lemon sole and plaice are becoming less common, and the sardine − a popular Mediterranean species − is beginning to move northwards. Other research has suggested that the unhappy mix of changing sea temperatures and increasing acidification could knock seafood off the menu for millions. The research, led by scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, confirms that the people with most to lose are in the tropics, as fish move to cooler waters. “The trend we have projected is already happening − it’s a train that has left the station and is going faster and faster” The scientists have already predicted that by 2050 the world’s fishermen could expect to see a loss of revenue of $10 billion a year if climate change continues at the present rate. So the new study does not promise bigger catches, but provides a measure of what to expect in the way of fish catches if they do not contain global warming to a level agreed by 195 nations at a UN climate conference in Paris last December. “The benefit for vulnerable tropical areas is a strong reason why 1.5°C is an important target to meet,” says lead author William Cheung, director of science at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Programme, and associate professor at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “Countries in these sensitive regions are highly dependent on fisheries for food and livelihood, but all countries will be impacted as the seafood supply chain is now highly globalised. Everyone would benefit from meeting the Paris Agreement.” Greater pressure But those benefits will vary between regions. The findings suggest that the Indo-Pacific area would see a 40% increase in catches at 1.5°C warming versus 3.5°C. The Arctic catch would benefit under 3.5°C as more fish migrate there, but the region could also expect greater pressure on fisheries as sea ice melts and climate change accelerates. The researchers make their calculations knowing that the Paris Agreement may be politically precarious, as the US president-elect Donald Trump has declared that he does not believe in climate change. “The trend we have projected is already happening − it’s a train that has left the station and is going faster and faster,” says Gabriel Reygondeau, a UBC researcher. “If one of the largest CO2-emitting countries gets out of the Paris Agreement, the efforts of the others will be clearly reduced. “It’s not a question of how much we can benefit from the Paris Agreement, but how much we don’t want to lose.” | 0 |
"These are the three giant stomachs of Lille." Amid the hum of machinery and warm odor of putrefying autumn leaves, official Pierre Hirtzberger is explaining how three giant fermenters can convert household food waste, trimmings from parks and gardens and the slops from school and hospital canteens into enough methane gas to power about a third of the buses in the French city. "The process is exactly the same as in the stomach of a cow," he said, gesturing toward three biodigesters which each hold 20,000 cubic meters of rotting liquefied waste. "The objective is to fuel 100 of Lille's buses on this biogas, out of a total fleet of 350," Hirtzberger, head of the city's urban waste research and development, told Reuters. From San Francisco to Malmo, Sweden, cities around the globe are preparing for a new imperative: to accommodate the mass of world population growth and thrive, without further accelerating the release of carbon dioxide that threatens their existence. With half the world's population already living in cities and the urban population projected to reach almost five billion by 2030, it is not just growth that puts them in the front line of climate change. Even if populations escaping drought migrate to urban centers, the fact that 60 per cent of the world's 39 largest metropolises are located in coastal areas puts the cities themselves at risk in future centuries, from rising seas. UNSOLD SANDWICHES, CAVITY INSULATION Sunshine, tech creativity and a clued-in population help widen the range of options for places like San Francisco -- the first city to make it a crime not to compost food and waste in city bins, in a bid to cut landfill use to zero. Plenty of money on top of abundant sun are allowing Abu Dhabi to showcase a futuristic eco-city: Masdar City is a vision of solar panels powering pilot less taxis and trams and feeding desalinated water to citizens and its verdant palms. Such visions make dazzling prospectuses for those eyeing a market which analysts expect to be worth a record $200 billion next year, and sunshine will be a major source of clean power as the cost comes down to make it competitive with fossil fuels. But for many cities, particularly older centers in gloomier climates, the reality will be more like Lille -- distilling energy from the excrement of citizens, the waste from restaurants and the mountains of unsold sandwiches left in supermarket fridges at the end of each week. Much of it will just be plain boring -- pumping insulation foam into loft spaces and wall cavities, fitting double or triple glazing -- the stuff that can keep small builders busy even if economic slowdown stalls grand construction projects. In all, it will require myriad different approaches to whittle down society's impact on the planet. HERE COMES THE SUN Cities in France, Sweden, Australia and the United States are looking at an exotic mix of energy sources, and their choices prove that what looks good in architects' promotional literature is not necessarily what works on the ground. In Australia, the government plans seven pioneering "Solar Cities" and is putting A$1.5 billion into four large power stations driven by the sun. But a temperate city like Melbourne will have a very different approach from that of sun-bathed Brisbane, 1,700 km north and just 600 km from the Tropic of Capricorn. "If you're in Brisbane, you'll probably have solar hot water and solar air-conditioning and a bit of electric power as your mix," said Jim Smitham, a renewable energy expert at Australian state research body CSIRO. "But if you're in Melbourne, you'll be much more interested in heating and power and a little bit of air-conditioning for the summer." Even within cities, the density of solar generation will vary according the value of land, he added. In pricey central business districts, solar panels will be stacked on rooftops, but in the suburbs small-scale solar plants will help supplement households' own generation. Outside the cities, where land is cheapest, solar power stations will find a niche, feeding power into the metropolis. As solar power costs have fallen due to economies of scale, an initially subsidized power source is becoming viable in some places. "In countries like Spain, southern Italy and Greece, the cost of energy from solar is already, or will soon be, at parity with the cost of electricity from the grid," said Winfried Hoffmann, president of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association. "Germany is less sunny so it will take longer, but it will reach parity by 2016 at the latest," he added. EXCREMENTAL GAINS But where Brisbane gets about 2,790 hours of sunlight a year, Lille gets about half that, as moist air sweeps in from the North Atlantic. So Lille is focusing hard on waste. Biogas -- the fuel that will power some Lille buses -- is actually an ancient energy source. It captured the attention of 13th-century adventurer Marco Polo in China, where he noted covered pots of sewage stored to generate energy, and it earned a mention by 17th-century writer Daniel Defoe. Lille is also looking at that option. "We're studying the possibility of getting biogas from sewage sludge at one of the city's two sewage treatment plants, and that has the potential to do at least 150 more buses," said Hirtzberger. "Potentially, one could run the entire bus system with biogas from sewage and rubbish. This would be typical of most cities in Europe." Other cities, such as Malmo, Sweden, use waste to heat and power buildings. In Malmo, 50 percent of heat is produced from its 550,000 metric tons of waste a year -- a level that could be replicated in most north European cities, said Richard Bengtsson, project manager of E.ON Nordic, which developed Malmo's heat and power system. "Waste is an interesting fuel due to the fact that you don't have to pay for it," said Bengtsson. "You get paid to take care of it." Malmo owes much of its success to an existing network of pipes to carry heated water from the Sysav plant direct to homes and businesses -- a highly efficient system most popular in eastern Europe known as "district heating." The system is also used in the city of Monsteras, 300 km to the northeast, using waste heat from the local pulp mill, Sodra Cell. As an added benefit, the heat from the subterranean pipelines keeps ice from cycle-paths during the winter. In the Finnish capital Helsinki, a power company is preparing to open an underground data center which will channel excess heat from computers into the district heating network, to warm homes [ID:nGEE5AR06B]. BIOMETHANE IN THE GRID Biogas, rather than the heated water used in Malmo and Monsteras, may be a way to avoid digging up the streets of bustling and historic capitals like London or Paris to retrofit pipework. "Biomethane for the grid has such great opportunities, because it uses the existing infrastructure," said Martin Orrill, head of energy technology and innovation at British Gas. Biogas is already widely used to generate electricity at sewage works, but putting it into the grid and burning it in homes increases makes it three times as efficient, he added. Biomethane is already being injected into the gas grid in Germany, France and Austria. And in New York, gas is taken from the Staten Island landfill and injected into the grid. PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY Most cities will find the answer in a mix. San Francisco plans to use solar to generate about 5 percent of its power by 2012, mostly from small solar arrays which it is helping to underwrite. Residents can enter their address into a Web site for an instant estimate on how much money and carbon they could save with solar panels: even new bus stops have solar cells in their red plastic roofs. The city has just finished a study of small-scale wind turbines, that rev up about the time the sun sets, said Adam Browning, executive director of the Vote Solar Initiative that promotes sun power. "It's kind of like peanut butter and jelly," he said. Next it plans a study of wave power, and this month announced a small-scale hydro plant fed by the mountains to the east, the first in a system that potentially could meet about a tenth of city needs. Carbon emissions are already 5 percent below 1990 levels and headed toward net zero, said Mayor Gavin Newsom, adding the city's eco-friendly citizens are more tolerant of trying new things such as mandatory composting. "It was easy," he said of the carbon cuts so far. "It's just not difficult. We need to disenthrall ourselves about how difficult this stuff is." | 0 |
Dhaka, Oct 30 (bdnews24.com)--A three-member delegation of the European Parliament's Committee on Development will visit Bangladesh from Sunday to Tuesday, a press release said on Friday. The members are Al Svensson (EPP, Sweden), Franziska Keller (Verts, Germany) and Niccob Rinaldi (ALDE, Italy). The delegation will especially examine the impact of climate change and the problem of food security, the statement said. They will call on prime minister Sheikh Hasina, speaker Abdul Hamid and the ministers in charge of food and risk management; environment and forests, women and children affairs, it also said. They will visit various climate change and disaster management projects. | 1 |
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "appalled" after China on Tuesday executed a British citizen caught smuggling heroin, dismissing pleas from the prisoner's family that he was mentally unsound. Akmal Shaikh's relatives and the government had appealed for clemency, arguing the former businessman suffered from bipolar disorder, also called manic depression. The Chinese supreme court rejected the appeal saying there was insufficient grounds, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Shaikh had been given all due legal rights. Brown condemned the execution in strong words that may raise diplomatic temperatures over the case. "I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted," he said in a statement issued by the British Foreign Office. "I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken." China had yet to publicly confirm Shaikh had been executed in the western city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang region, at the time Brown made the statement. In London, a British Foreign Office spokesman said Britain had been informed by Chinese authorities of Shaikh's execution. He would be the first European citizen to be executed in China since 1951, Western rights groups say. Shaikh was still "hopeful" when relatives met him in Urumqi this weekend, his cousin Soohail Shaikh told reporters at Beijing airport late on Monday night. "We beg the Chinese authorities for mercy and clemency to help reunite the heartbroken family," Soohail Shaikh had said. Brown last week asked China not to execute Shaikh, who was born in Pakistan and moved to Britain as a boy. The case could harden public opinion in Britain against China. It could also rile Chinese public opinion, resentful over what Beijing often calls "interference" in the country's internal affairs. The two countries recently traded accusations over the troubled Copenhagen climate change negotiations. Heroin use is a major problem in Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia. The region was convulsed by ethnic violence and protests in July, with further protests in September after widespread panic over alleged syringe attacks. All executions in the city have used lethal injections in recent years, an official surnamed Jia told reporters at the detention centre in Urumqi where Shaikh had been held. Shaikh's defenders, including rights group Reprieve which lobbies against the death penalty, say he was tricked into smuggling the heroin by a gang who promised to make him a pop star. Arrested in 2007, a Chinese court rejected his final appeal on December 21. Reprieve posted on the Internet a recording Shaikh made of a song, "Come Little Rabbit," which it described as "dreadful" but which Shaikh believed would be an international hit and help bring about world peace. "This is not about how much we hate the drug trade. Britain as well as China are completely committed to take it on," the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said in a statement emailed to reporters. "The issue is whether Mr Shaikh has become an additional victim of it." | 0 |
Britain's government will need to spend more than 7 billion
pounds ($9.6 billion) this year if it wants to offset the effect of soaring
energy prices for households, the think tank said. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is under growing
pressure from the rising cost of living. The Bank of England predicts annual consumer
price inflation will hit a 30-year high of around 6% in April. "Rising gas prices are causing energy bills to soar,
and will see the number of families suffering from 'fuel stress' to treble to
more than six million households this summer," Resolution Foundation
economist Jonny Marshall said. The proportion of households spending more than 10% of their
income on electricity and heating bills - a threshold used to define 'fuel
poverty' in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - will triple to 27% from
April, the think tank estimated. Many smaller utility companies have collapsed as wholesale
energy prices have risen faster than the maximum tariffs they are allowed to
charge, which are updated twice a year. The average household energy bill is likely to rise to 2,000
pounds a year in April, the Resolution Foundation said. Offsetting the impact of this for the poorest households
would cost 2.5 billion pounds, through a 300-pound increase to an annual grant
and expanding it to the poorest 8.5 million households. This measure would
reduce the number of households in 'fuel stress' by 1 million, the think tank
said. A further measure - deferring the cost of utility company
failures charged to household bills and using general taxation rather than
energy bills to fund climate change mitigation - would cost a further 4.8
billion pounds and reduce the number of households in 'fuel stress' by an extra
1.7 million. ($1 = 0.7306 pounds) | 0 |
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Wednesday there was enough space in the world for both China and India to grow and that the world's fastest-growing major economies were not competitors, but partners. "Some media have said India and China are competitors... I do not agree with that view,' Wen told business leaders at the India-China Business Cooperation Summit in New Delhi. In remarks seen as an effort to soothe tensions between the Asian rivals, he said Chinese companies would sign deals with Indian firms worth more than $16 billion, and that China may open up some of its sectors to Indian firms. Wen's visit is the first by a Chinese premier in five years. The two countries, home to more than a third of the world's population, fought a war in 1962 and relations remain uneasy despite their booming trade relationship and rising global clout. Both have stood together to resist Western demands in world trade and climate change talks, but they have also clashed over China's close relationship with Pakistan, fears of Chinese spying and a longstanding border dispute. "Impressive business delegations have accompanied Barack Obama and David Cameron, but when the Wen circus rolls into town with 100 of China's top tycoons, the red carpet needs to be a bit longer," said a commentary in the Hindustan Times. "Let trade do the talking, other issues that add to the trust deficit will hopefully get addressed on the way." Wen announced more Chinese investments in India to assuage the worries of Indian politicians, peeved that the Sino-Indian trade balance is heavily in China's favour. Wen also said he would discuss with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh ways to substantially increase trade volumes. India's deficit with China could reach $24-25 billion this year, analysts said. The deficit rose to $16 billion in 2007-08, from $1 billion in 2001-02, according to Indian customs data. India has sought to diversify its trade basket, but raw materials and other low-end commodities such as iron ore still make up about 60 percent of its exports to China. In contrast, manufactured goods from trinkets to turbines form the bulk of Chinese exports. China is now India's largest trade partner and two-way trade reached $60 billion this year, up from $13.6 billion in 2004. "Economic ties constitute literally the bedrock of our relations ... Both sides are keen to further enhance mutually beneficial trade and are looking at new initiatives," said an Indian foreign ministry spokesman on Monday. Still, total investment by China in India is small, amounting to only $221 million in 2009, representing only about 0.1 percent of China's total outward foreign direct investment stock in that year. That figure is seven times less than what China has invested in Pakistan, according to data from China's Ministry of Commerce. TIBETAN PROTESTS The Sino-Indian trade relationship is overlaid with political and strategic rifts. Beijing's longest running grudge against India is over its granting of asylum to Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in the 1950s following a failed uprising, setting off a chain of events that led to the war between them. Hundreds of demonstrators wearing orange T-shirts with slogans such as "Free Tibet Now" took to the streets of central Delhi, shouting "Wen Jiabao go back!" and "Tibet's independence is India's security". Six Tibetan protesters were arrested at the Taj Palace hotel, after attempting to enter the main gates waving flags and chanting slogans while the Chinese premier was attending a business event inside. "Don't pull me, India is a free country," shouted Tenzin Deki as she was forced into the vehicle. The Dalai Lama is due to visit Sikkim, an Indian state on the Chinese border, during Wen's visit to Delhi, something that could inflame tensions. FRAGILE RELATIONS The two nations have pursued divergent paths in their development: for India, a democracy, economic reforms began only in 1991; for China, a one-party state that implemented market reforms in 1979, catapulting the country's economy. Although both India and China have said they are exploring a possible free-trade agreement, no real progress is expected on that front as there is some scepticism in New Delhi that Beijing may only want to dump cheap manufactured goods on India's booming $1.3 trillion economy. While the two are often lumped together as emerging world powers, China's GDP is four times bigger than India's and its infrastructure outshines India's dilapidated roads and ports, a factor that makes New Delhi wary of Beijing's growing might. "Relations are very fragile, very easy to be damaged and very difficult to repair. Therefore they need special care in the information age," China's envoy to India, Zhang Yan, told reporters in New Delhi. India fears China wants to restrict its global reach by possibly opposing its bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat or encircling the Indian Ocean region with projects from Pakistan to Myanmar. Long wary of Washington's influence in South Asia, Beijing's overtures toward New Delhi also come just a little over a month after US President Barack Obama's trip to India, during which he endorsed India's long-held demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. After Wen's Dec. 15-17 visit he travels straight to Pakistan, India's nuclear armed rival, for another two nights. In the days leading up to Wen's trip, China and India have agreed on a series of business deals. | 0 |
The investment is part of Bloomberg’s
push, announced last year, to shut down coal production in 25 countries and
builds on his $500 million campaign to close every coal-fired power plant in
the United States. The announcement is tied to a gathering this week in Rwanda
hosted by Sustainable Energy for All, an international group working to
increase access to electricity in the global south. The money will fund programmes in
Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, South
Africa, Turkey and Vietnam. Representatives of Bloomberg Philanthropies and
partner organisations, including Sustainable Energy for All and the
ClimateWorks Foundation, said they would work with local governments and
businesses to develop spending plans. Helen Mountford, president and CEO of
ClimateWorks, said that specific ways Bloomberg’s money could be spent include
research and analysis, public education campaigns, clean energy pilot programmes
and buyout payments to close existing coal plants. “Which strategies are appropriate for
each country will really be guided by the in-country partners who know them
best,” Mountford said. “The first approach is to identify the relevant
strategies per country and to start to identify who can help to deliver those
and move those forward and get the funding to the ground.” Success in the 10 nations would
demonstrate to other countries that renewable energy can help, not hinder,
economic growth, Bloomberg said in an interview by email. “The alternative is
to meet growing energy needs by burning more coal, which would have disastrous
consequences for public health and for the battle against climate change,” he
said. Climate campaigns tend to focus on
industrialised countries, which are responsible for the vast majority of
greenhouse gas emissions. But many developing countries have rapidly growing
populations and economies, and rapidly increasing energy needs. How nations
meet those needs will be a major factor in whether the world can decarbonise
fast enough to avoid the worst consequences of a warming planet. Developing countries “haven’t reached
their peak in the amount of energy they actually need,” said Damilola Ogunbiyi,
CEO of Sustainable Energy for All. “We have a unique opportunity to drive that
energy source being renewable from the start instead of going back again in
another 30 years and try and transition them out of unsustainable sources of
power.” More than 750 million people worldwide
lack electricity, and energy poverty is a powerful driver of economic and
health inequality. Although Bloomberg’s investment is meant to combat climate
change, Ogunbiyi said the funds could also help address a variety of crises
caused or worsened by the lack of electricity, among them food scarcity and
poor medical care. “It’s important to understand that this
is a crisis on its own,” she said. “People not having access to electricity or
clean cooking isn’t an inconvenience. It’s the difference between life and
death for a lot of people, and it needs to be treated as an emergency.” Total investments in clean energy in
developing countries were less than $150 billion in 2020, according to a June
2021 International Energy Agency report, which warned that, by the end of the
decade, such financing needed to be more than $1 trillion per year to put the
world on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Ogunbiyi said that as Sustainable Energy
for All and other groups work with the 10 countries to create energy transition
plans or update existing ones, they would encourage leaders to sign “no new
coal” pledges. The idea behind the type of investment
Bloomberg is making is that a philanthropic organisation like his takes on the
biggest risk early in a project that decision-makers might otherwise be sceptical
about, and if it works, the project will become attractive to conventional
investors later, said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts
University and a former CEO of Sustainable Energy for All. Even if Bloomberg’s money can lower
financial barriers, the political barriers remain formidable. The fossil fuel
industry’s deep opposition to renewable energy development “is a huge
obstacle,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis at the Institute
for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. But what funding like Bloomberg’s can do
is create foundations upon which a transition to renewable energy from fossil
fuels becomes the smartest financial decision for companies. That means
increasing the risk involved in fossil fuel development, Sanzillo said. It also
means decreasing the risk involved in renewable energy development. “I think that, overall, the market
forces are on Bloomberg’s side,” Sanzillo said. “If he’d done this 10 years
ago, I probably would’ve said it might not work. I think here you have a better
wind at your back.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Trump, continuing to build his Cabinet as he prepares to take office on Jan 20, said Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, 48, would be nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt sued the EPA in a bid to undo a key regulation under outgoing President Barack Obama that would curb greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change, mainly from coal-fired power plants. Trump tapped retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, 66, for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, whose responsibilities include immigration. Kelly, the third retired general named by Trump to a senior administration post, last year told Congress that a lack of security on the US-Mexican border posed a threat to the United States. Trump's transition team said Republican Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, 70, who has boasted of close ties to Beijing's leaders, was picked as USambassador to China. In addition, transition officials said Linda McMahon, 68, former CEO of professional wrestling company WWE and wife of wrestling kingpin Vince McMahon, was Trump's choice to head the Small Business Administration. Trump has taken part in WWE events in the past and has close ties to the McMahons. He is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. All four posts require Senate confirmation. Pruitt's selection came despite a softer tone Trump has struck on environmental regulation since his Nov. 8 election. He has stepped back from casting climate change as a hoax, signaled he might be willing to allow the United States to continue participating in the Paris climate change deal aimed at lowering world carbon emissions, and met with former Vice President Al Gore, a leading environmental voice. Pruitt's selection brought a quick rebuke from Democrats.
"The head of the EPA cannot be a stenographer for the lobbyists of polluters and Big Oil," House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said of Pruitt. Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, brushed off the criticism, praising Pruitt's record and telling reporters at Trump Tower: "We're very accustomed to the naysayers and the critics." Tough talk Trump talked tough during the campaign about deporting all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and building a wall along the Mexican border. But since the election he has softened his comments on deportation and referred to some illegal immigrants as "terrific people." Kelly would work in tandem with Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general, who is a leading advocate of cracking down on illegal immigration. The former four-star general would head a department in charge of securing borders against illegal immigration, protecting the president, responding to natural disasters and coordinating intelligence and counterterrorism. He formerly headed the Southern Command, responsible for US military activities and relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean. He was a proponent of keeping open the USmilitary prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Trump previously picked retired Marine Corps General James Mattis as defense secretary and retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Branstad has been an eager trading partner with China, helping Iowa sell agricultural goods to the Asian powerhouse. His choice came after Trump rattled the world's second-largest economy with tough talk on trade and a telephone call with the leader of Taiwan. Trump has more key appointments to make in coming days, including the high-profile job of secretary of state. His team said former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a fierce Trump critic during the campaign, is still under consideration for a diplomatic job. Aside from the personnel announcements, Trump basked in being named Time magazine's "person of the year," telling NBC's "Today" show, "It's a great honor, it means a lot." In an interview with Time, Trump continued to take on corporate America, promising to bring down drug prices and causing shares of US pharmaceutical and biotech companies to fall. | 0 |
Poland's prime minister vowed on Friday to do his utmost to avoid a referendum in his country on the European Union's reform treaty after being grilled by anxious EU leaders at a summit. Powerful anti-EU nationalists in Poland's opposition Law and Justice party are demanding a referendum, suddenly complicating an expected smooth ratification of the treaty by the bloc's biggest east European member. Speaking after an EU summit, Poland's Donald Tusk said EU leaders had expressed concern at the situation in his country. "All my interlocutors asked me what's going on," he told a news conference. Any referendum in Poland could trigger calls for similar plebiscites in other EU nations, notably Britain, and delay ratification across the bloc. Only Ireland is bound by its constitution to hold a vote. EU leaders hope the treaty, which aims to overhaul the bloc's institutions and improve decision-making, will take effect next January before European Parliament elections in mid-2009. "A referendum is the last resort," Tusk said. He said EU leaders had not expected any problems with Polish ratification since the treaty was negotiated and agreed last year when the current, often Euro-scepetic opposition was in power, and the new government also backed it. But pressure from the Law and Justice party's nationalist wing had pushed its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who as prime minister had signed the treaty last year, to make a U-turn. Kaczynski said his party may support the ratification bill if it included a preamble asserting the supremacy of the Polish constitution over EU law and Poland's right to leave the bloc, something that legal experts have doubts about. Tusk's centrist government has ruled out bowing to those demands, saying it might accept a non-binding resolution on the issue. Parliament is to resume debating the treaty on Tuesday. Tusk said that by obstructing the ratification process, the opposition had tarnished Poland's image abroad. This had weakened his hand in summit negotiations on what burden Poland would have to take under the EU's flagship plan to fight climate change. "Our efforts to rebuild our position in Europe have been partly wasted," he said, appealing to "responsible" opposition parliamentarians to vote in favour of the treaty. | 0 |
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would push world leaders this week for a reshaping of the global economy in response to the deepest financial crisis in decades. In Europe, officials kept up pressure for a deal to curb bankers' pay and bonuses at a two-day summit of leaders from the Group of 20 countries, which begins on Thursday. The summit will be held in the former steelmaking center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, marking the third time in less than a year that leaders of countries accounting for about 85 percent of the world economy will have met to coordinate their responses to the crisis. The United States is proposing a broad new economic framework that it hopes the G20 will adopt, according to a letter by a top White House adviser. Obama said the U.S. economy was recovering, even if unemployment remained high, and now was the time to rebalance the global economy after decades of U.S. over-consumption. "We can't go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we're taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we're not selling anything to them," Obama said in an interview with CNN television. For years before the financial crisis erupted in 2007, economists had warned of the dangers of imbalances in the global economy -- namely huge trade surpluses and currency reserves built up by exporters like China, and similarly big deficits in the United States and other economies. With U.S. consumers now holding back on spending after house prices plunged and as unemployment climbs, Washington wants other countries to become engines of growth. "That's part of what the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh is going to be about, making sure that there's a more balanced economy," Obama told CNN. China has long been the target of calls from the West to get its massive population to spend more. It may be reluctant to offer a significant change in economic policy when Chinese President Hu Jintao meets Obama this week. The U.S. proposal, sketched out in a letter by Obama's top G20 adviser, Michael Froman, calls for a new "framework" to reflect the balancing process that the White House wants. "The Framework would be a pledge on the part of G-20 leaders to individually and collectively pursue a set of policies which would lead to stronger, better-balanced growth," said the letter, which was obtained by Reuters. Without naming specific countries, the proposal indicates the United States should save more and cut its budget deficit, China should rely less on exports and Europe should make structural changes -- possibly in areas such as labor law -- to make itself more attractive to investment. To head off reluctance from China, Froman's letter also supported Beijing's call for developing countries to have more say at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF would be at the center of a peer review process that would assess member nations' policies and how they affect economic growth. Some economists have worried that a trade dispute over new U.S. import duties on Chinese tires could make it hard for leaders to renew their pledges to avoid protectionism, let alone discuss a major rethink of the world economy. Nonetheless, calls for a new equilibrium are growing. "We need to have rebalancing of growth and increase in consumption in the emerging markets to have enough growth in the short term," International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the Financial Times. In Pittsburgh, the first of several expected anti-G20 protest marches took place with hundreds of demonstrators demanding governments create more jobs by spending more money on public works. "(This) is a jobless recovery and there is the prospect of a permanent high unemployment economy." said Larry Holmes, of protest organizers Bail Out the People Movement. Bigger protests are expected on Thursday and Friday. EUROPE PRESSES ON BONUSES European officials renewed calls on the summit to curb bonuses paid to bankers. Massive payouts linked to risky investments are widely seen as a factor in the credit crisis. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said he supported a Dutch proposal to limit banking executives' bonuses to the level of their fixed annual salary, the kind of idea that U.S. officials, mindful of Wall Street's concerns, oppose. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is seeking re-election next weekend, said on Saturday she was "thoroughly optimistic" that a deal could be done on reforming financial markets. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has tempered his calls for bonus caps, possibly paving the way for a G20 deal tying payouts to bankers' long-term performance, not quick bets. Steinbrueck, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, said he would press G20 countries to examine the idea of a global tax on financial transactions to curb excesses. A U.S. draft of the summit communique did not mention this plan, German magazine Der Spiegel said. But G20 sources told Reuters the idea would be discussed by leaders. The European Union should impose limits on bankers' bonuses even if the United States does not, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday. The United States is keen to show Europe that it is taking steps to rein in excesses in financial markets. But the pace of U.S. regulatory reform has been slow, hindered by opposition from a powerful banking lobby and the Obama administration's focus on healthcare reform. Those delays could get longer still because the Senate's top legislator on financial regulation favors a more radical streamlining of bank supervisory agencies than the changes proposed by Obama. The G20 leaders are due to discuss other issues in Pittsburgh, including climate change ahead of important United Nations negotiations on emissions levels in December. The EU's Barroso will warn on Monday that the talks "are dangerously close to deadlock at the moment ... and the world cannot afford such a disastrous outcome," according to excerpts of a speech he will make in New York. | 0 |
For three years Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali galvanised Dutch society with a frank account of her traumatic past and her conviction that Islam is a violent, misogynous religion. That conviction led to death threats, the murder of her associate, filmmaker Theo van Gogh and, her critics say, the alienation of precisely those she aimed to engage as relations between Muslims and non-Muslims deteriorated as never before. Now almost a year since the former Dutch parliamentarian hit headlines worldwide for admitting she lied to gain asylum in the Netherlands, many of the Dutch-Muslim women Hirsi Ali sought to stir and inspire state bluntly they are relieved she is gone. The 37-year-old now works for a US think-tank, while her international profile as an ex-Muslim critic of Islam soars. "I am glad that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is gone, because now the tone has softened, it has become less extreme and tensions have eased," said Nermin Altintas, who runs an education centre for migrant women. Hirsi Ali is held responsible by many in the Muslim community for "Islamising" the Netherlands' migrants, polarising communities and diverting attention from those trying to boost integration in what they see as a more constructive approach. "Let her call one woman forward and show how she really helped her," said Famile Arslan, a 35-year-old family lawyer. "We worked for 10, 15, 20 years to help emancipate Muslim women... and she stole the respect we should have had as grass- roots movements working for change." In the Netherlands, where the majority of the country's 1 million Muslims are of Moroccan or Turkish background, some of Hirsi Ali's pronouncements on Islam met astonishment. "Her statements on Islam were very harsh. I have a completely different experience of Islam... as I come from a Turkish cultural background," said Altintas. Hirsi Ali caused uproar by calling Islam "backward", and by branding the prophet Mohammad a paedophile and a tyrant. However, it was the film "Submission" she wrote for Dutch television which most provoked. In the short film, an actress whose naked body is covered with a thin veil appeals to God about the violence she believes she must endure in his name, while in other scenes naked women cower with texts from the Koran inscribed on their bodies. "If she wanted to campaign against violence against women then she shouldn't have written the Koran text on the body, because that was offensive to many of the religious women she claimed she was trying to help," said Altintas. "Her methods were such that rather than attracting Muslim women she pushed them away... She polarised things," said 19-year-old student Suzan Yucel from Eindhoven. The film's director Theo van Gogh was gunned down on an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan, who stabbed a note to his body addressed to Hirsi Ali warning she would be next. The Dutch watched in disbelief as their country, once prized as a liberal, multicultural model, slid into a mood of mutual hostility and tit-for-tat attacks on mosques and churches. "I was restricted by male macho culture, and my migrant background... but you cannot use Islam as an excuse," said Arslan, whose parents from eastern Turkey were illiterate. "I have a very positive experience of Islam." Yucel agreed that Hirsi Ali ascribes problems to Islam which have other, more complex roots. "Islam is interpreted by people and in Turkey the interpretation is very different from Somalia... Culture and religion got mixed up with Hirsi Ali," she said. Hirsi Ali arrived in the Netherlands from Kenya in 1992, unable to speak a word of Dutch and having fled an arranged marriage and abusive family who had her circumcised as a child. She took odd jobs, studied Dutch, and began work as a translator for asylum seekers before studying political science and working as a political researcher. In 2003 she entered parliament for the VVD (Liberals), while at the same time her graceful looks, soft voice and compelling vulnerability made her a media star. Last year Hirsi Ali admitted to lying to win asylum in the Netherlands after it emerged that she had arrived in the country via Germany, but said her party knew of the deception. The ensuing row saw the then immigration minister threaten to strip her of her Dutch citizenship, and a small party left the coalition in protest, bringing down the government. After resigning as a Dutch parliamentarian in May 2006, Hirsi Ali stated: "I am going away, but the questions remain. The questions about the future of Islam in our country, the suppression of women in Islamic culture and the integration of the many Muslims in the West." Yucel, who with other young Muslims runs a website called "We are staying here" (www.wijblijvenhier.nl), says she and her cohorts are examining the same issues but, unlike Hirsi Ali, with a view to diffusing tension and staying. The former politician has been the subject of lively debates on the site, with some bloggers saying she deserves respect for exposing phoney tolerance in the Netherlands, and daring to speak her mind despite the death threats. But the dominant sentiment is relief that she has left the Dutch public arena. While some are hopeful that a new centrist Dutch government with the country's first Muslim ministers might usher in a more supportive climate, Yucel points out that anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders, who broke away from the VVD Liberals to found an independent party, made big gains. Wilders, also subject to death threats, said recently Dutch Muslims must throw away half the Koran if they want to stay. But Yucel says she is optimistic for the long-term, and proud to be a Dutch-Muslim who is free to wear a headscarf in places she would not be able to in Turkey. "The Muslim community here will change... This is still a new environment and we have to get used to it." | 0 |
A few seconds later, another man leaps up and grabs his legs as the protester tries to kick him off. They both fall, and the protester is buried among the angry mob, who seem to attack him on the floor. Video of Thursday morning’s episode in eastern London, which was circulated widely, illustrated the complicated passions that have been ignited by protests in the British capital by Extinction Rebellion, a group of environmental activists who employ radical disruptive tactics to draw attention to the climate crisis. A total of eight activists were arrested on suspicion of obstructing trains, the British transport police said Thursday. The actions suspended some lines, creating significant delays in the transport system. Extinction Rebellion has been holding protests in London for about two weeks. Three days ago, the police banned the group’s actions in the centre of the city. In other protests, an activist was chased by a commuter on top of a train in Canning Town, in eastern London, while some demonstrators glued themselves to a train in Shadwell station, also in the east of the capital. Sean O’Callaghan, the assistant chief constable of the British Transport Police, called the behaviour of passengers in Canning Town was “unacceptable,” saying that it was “concerning to see that a number of commuters took matters into their own hands, displaying violent behaviour to detain a protester.” Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said Thursday that the activists’ protests were “illegal,” “extremely dangerous” and “counterproductive.” But Extinction Rebellion said in a statement that the act was “borne of necessity in the face of an impending disaster.” “This is disruption with a purpose since we will all encounter far greater disruption in the future if we don’t radically change our society,” Valerie Milner-Brown, a spokeswoman for the group, said in the statement. “We can already see the horrifying early effects of the climate and ecological emergency in parts of the Global South, and it’s clear that this will be coming our way soon,” she added. The group said that they had taken measures to minimize the risk to commuters trapped in the subway and that the police had been informed about the protests in advance, adding that the actions were part of “an ongoing campaign intended to increase pressure upon the government.” Disruption lies at the heart of the group’s tactics, and affiliated activists are urged to seek to get arrested. For maximum disruption, the movement’s actions are focused on capital cities. In the past two weeks, Extinction Rebellion action has shut down roads and bridges around Parliament in London. Last week, James Brown, a British Paralympic medallist, protested by climbing on top of a British Airways plane at London City Airport. A judicial review of the ban is underway, the BBC reported Wednesday. Extinction Rebellion attracted criticism on social media after the group compared its noncompliance with the police ban to the actions of the American civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. One user called Mal Jutley suggested in a Twitter post on Thursday that the movement had lost support from Londoners because of the disruptive action on the London Underground. He said the delays were “a nightmare” for people just trying to go to work, adding, “the Rosa Parks comparison ... really??” c.2019 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The European Parliament watered down plans on Wednesday to create a new EU research body designed to close the competitiveness gap with the United States, but funding was left unresolved. The European Institute of Technology (EIT) is the brainchild of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who envisaged a 2.3 billion euro ($3.25 billion) campus-based institute to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States and study areas such as climate change. Faced with scepticism on the part of Britain and other EU states, the EIT will have a more modest start as a link to a network of universities and private research bodies. "I think today's major support from the European Parliament is a big success for the Commission. If you look back two years, there was a lot of misinterpretation and reluctance to the idea," EU Education Commissioner Jan Figel told Reuters. "If we finalise this before the end of the year we have a chance to establish in 2008 the institute and start operation." The parliament diluted the measure by ditching the Commission's proposal for the EIT to award its own degrees and the assembly insisted the new body start with a pilot phase. It also renamed the new body the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. "We don't want to weaken or water down the educational part of the architecture. Higher education must be duly developed in the strategy," Figel said. "We think for credibility and success, we need a more streamlined process which is of course gradual and grows, but cannot be conditional on subsequent debate and positions." The institute's location will be chosen next year, with Poland, Germany and Hungary among the candidates. "What is the most important is not the place or the name, we are not speaking about Massachusetts in Europe. the EIT could be a strong promoter and signal of Europe being more innovation-friendly," Figel said. Green Party members voted against the plan, saying the idea was laudable but poorly defined and lacked a realistic budget. "The proposals for an EIT that were endorsed by the European Parliament today would create a pointless white elephant," the party's David Hammerstein said. | 0 |
The government has initiated a programme to provide input assistance to some 50,000 small and marginal farmers for boosting maize cultivation. Agriculture minister Matia Chowdhury announced the assistance, which includes providing seeds and fertilisers worth Tk 65 million free of cost, at a press conference at the ministry's conference room on Wednesday. Under the programme, the government will provide the seeds and fertilisers to the farmers for cultivating maize over 16,500 acres of land in 62 upazilas under 11 districts. The programme starts from the current winter season. A farmer will get 3 kilograms of hybrid maize seeds and 50 kgs of fertilisers, including 25kgs of diamonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MoP), as incentives for maize cultivation on each bigha [0.33 acre] of land, the minister said. The programme will help increase maize production by 31,000 tonnes, said the minister, adding that the market price of the additional maize would be at least Tk 62 crore. The programme will be implemented at Nilphamari, Kurigram, Rangpur, Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat, Pirojpur, Barisal, Barguna, Patuakhali, Bhola and Jhalokhati districts. Narrating objectives of the incentive programme, the agriculture minister said: "We're trying to motivate the farmers to grow maize because of its high demand and less irrigation and other cost for its cultivation than that of other crops like rice and wheat." She mentioned that the overall production of wheat had already declined in the northern region due to climate changes. The minister said maize cultivation is now generating interest among the farmers as there is huge demand for the produce both for human and poultry consumption. The country's annual maize production is around 1.55 million tonnes and it needs to import another 422,000 tonnes a year. | 2 |
In 2020, a year marked by the triple forces of the coronavirus pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and a social justice movement protesting police violence and racism, the FBI reported a surge in hate crimes targeting African Americans. About 64.9% of the 8,052 reported hate crime incidents that year were based on race, ethnicity or ancestry bias, according to the FBI. Within that category, Black Americans made up more than half the victims. The number of reported hate crimes against African Americans in 2020 was 2,871, up from 1,972 in 2019. That spike drove a nearly 9.1% increase in hate crimes overall. In the five years before 2019, African Americans were victims in about half of all the race, ethnicity or ancestry bias cases, according to FBI data. Experts who track data caution that federal numbers are incomplete, and that some of that spike might be the result of increased awareness and more willingness to report such crimes. Yet they say the attention to social justice might itself have spurred more violence targeting Black Americans. “The year 2020 changed the trajectory of prejudice in some ways to refocus on American Blacks, in part because of the social justice protests following the murder of George Floyd,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. While national hate crime statistics for 2021 have not yet been released, hate crime experts say the assault on Black Americans and institutions has continued: About one-third of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities were targeted with bomb threats this year, along with more than a dozen houses of worship and other faith-based and academic institutions, according to the FBI. Racially motivated violence took centre stage again in February when three white Georgia men were convicted of federal hate crimes for chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery because he was African American. The trial stood out for its unvarnished examination of racism. The FBI releases a report of hate crimes annually, but the federal tracking system does not require police agencies to submit data, and a significant number of victims may not report bias crimes to the police. The underreporting creates an imprecise portrait of the scale of hate crimes nationally, but the report still offers a useful snapshot of broad trends. In recent years, the Justice Department has encouraged victims to report bias and made prosecuting the crimes a priority. The FBI report released last year, based on data collected in 2020 from more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies, showed the highest spike in hate crimes in a dozen years, numbers driven largely by increases in incidents against Black and Asian Americans. The FBI defines a hate crime as a crime against a person or property motivated by bias. That can include everything from bomb threats and vandalism to physical violence and murder. The federal data shows that in the past decade, hate crimes against Black Americans, who make up 12.1% of the population, have far exceeded those reported against any other group, including biases based on a victim’s religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. According to the data, 20,084 instances of anti-Black crimes were reported over the past decade. The next largest category in that time period, anti-Jewish crimes, included 7,688 reports — though the Jewish population is only about 2.4% of the US adult population, according to Pew Research Center. The man accused of the attack in Buffalo, a white 18-year-old armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a white supremacist ideology embraced during the idle hours of the pandemic, opened fire at a supermarket in a mostly Black neighbourhood several hours away from where he lived. Authorities say he killed 10 people and injured three others, almost all of them African American. In a screed the suspect posted online detailing his plans, he made clear they were driven by hate, scrawling a racist slur on his weapon and referring to replacement theory, a far-right belief that the white population is at risk of being replaced by people of colour and immigrants. The mass shooting, which the Justice Department is investigating as a potential hate crime, parallels other racial violence born from white supremacy, such as the massacres in a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, a Pittsburgh synagogue and a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where the shooting suspect complained of Hispanic “invasion.” The contemporary universe of hate crimes against African Americans is a combination of old and new strains of bigotry, those who study it say. It includes the enduring fear of demographic shifts and “replacement” brewing in pockets of the internet and often stoked by racist political rhetoric. “It’s an old theme in white supremacists dating back decades, many decades,” said Jeannine Bell, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and an expert on hate crimes. “They’ve long been worried about white replacement,” she said. “And I imagine when times get tough as they are now, there are more worries about it.” Bell also attributed the recent rise in anti-Black hate crimes in part to a backlash against the protests following the murder of Floyd in Minneapolis. “Those protests brought out a lot of anger about African Americans. A lot of support, but also a lot of anger,” she said. “Black victimisation was in the news. And if it’s anything that angers white supremacists, it’s seeing African Americans being seen sympathetically.” Bell said it was not easy to trace the source of an increase in hate crimes. But major events like the protests in the summer of 2020 provide a helpful touchstone. “It’s easy to say that there’s probably been an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes,” Bell said. “What happened? There was an event, a pandemic, and large numbers of anti-Asian hate crimes associated with the pandemic started happening.” Hate crimes against African Americans are particularly difficult to count accurately, Bell said, because of a lack of groups dedicated to specifically tracking such crimes. On Sunday, a group of national civil rights and social justice organisations called on President Joe Biden to convene a summit this week to address hate crimes and right-wing extremism. The Rev Al Sharpton said on Twitter that he had spoken to two members of Biden’s Cabinet and stressed the need for a summit: “This needs a National response to rising crimes immediately.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 2 |
More than two-thirds of the world's people are worried by global warming with Americans among the least anxious even though their nation is the top source of greenhouse gases, an opinion poll showed on Tuesday. The survey, of more than 14,000 people in 21 nations for BBC World television, showed most respondents around the world reckoned the United States was more to blame that other nations for rising temperatures. "More than two-thirds (68 percent) of the world is concerned about climate change with the South Africans (82 percent) and Brazilians (87 percent) most concerned," a statement of main findings said. At the low end of anxiety were Americans on 57 percent and Indians with 59 percent. Almost all scientists say temperatures are rising because of a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, threatening ever more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. And the poll, by the Synovate research group, said two-thirds of all respondents reckoned the United States was more to blame than any other country for the problem. "Almost four in five Americans, however, think that no one country is to blame," it said. The United States is the top world emitter of greenhouse gases with almost a quarter of the total, ahead of China, Russia and India. In per capita terms, Americans are responsible for about 20 tonnes of greenhouse gases each per year, against a world average of below 4 tonnes. Still, the survey found 22 percent of US citizens had bought or planned to buy a smaller car -- ahead of a world average of 20 percent. US President George W Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, in 2001. He said Kyoto would cost US jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations from goals for 2012. He has instead focused on big investments in technology, such as hydrogen or biofuels. | 0 |
China and India's explosion of trade with Africa and greater investment and tolerance by traditional partners have boosted the continent's development climate, Ethiopia's prime minister said on Monday. "The external environment has been more conducive for African development. We have more latitude to be authors of our own destiny," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told a meeting of finance and economy ministers in the Ethiopian capital. China's trade with Africa grew to $40 billion in 2005 compared with $364 million in 1978, while India's rose to $11 billion from $613 million in the same period, according to UN and African Union figures. Analysts say that the influx of money, combined with the no-strings-attached trade and aid policies of both nations, has helped make Western donors who traditionally dictated the terms in Africa ease restrictions on its funding. "There has been a significant change in attitudes in our traditional developmental partners. There has also been more willingness to tolerate alternative paths of development on the continent," Meles said. Meles said that India's and China's interest "has created a new source for investment and technology for Africa's economy and a significant jump to foreign direct investment, hence Africa's rapid growth." The continent grew by an average 5.8 percent in 2007, according to United Nations figures. But trade among African nations has remained low, accounting for only a tenth of total trade on the continent, the African Union said. Meles was speaking at an African Union-UN Economic Commission for Africa conference to tackle development issues like rising food and energy prices and the impact of climate change on the continent's economies. But Meles said China and India's growing appetite for food, raw materials and commodities was a mixed blessing for Africa. "These developments have contributed to a steep rise in commodity prices and the associated risks to African economies," he said. The African Union and United Nations in a statement released on Monday warned: "The rising price of staples has been blamed for social disburbances in at least four African countries in 2008." It listed Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and Mauritania. Abdoulie Janneh, U.N. under-secretary general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, said the global problem of high food and oil prices would force the continent to strike a balance between its role as a producer and a consumer. "The challenge that we face is to ensure that these essential goods are affordable while not stifling the signaling role of prices for increased production," Janneh said. | 1 |
- Countries will make a last ditch effort to save a dying Kyoto Protocol at global climate talks starting on Monday aimed at cutting the greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for rising sea levels, intense storms and crop failures. Kyoto, which was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005, commits most developed states to binding emissions targets. The talks are the last chance to set another round of targets before the first commitment period ends in 2012. Major parties have been at loggerheads for years, warnings of climate disaster are becoming more dire and diplomats worry whether host South Africa is up to the challenge of brokering the tough discussions among nearly 200 countries that run from Monday to December 9 in the coastal city of Durban. There is hope for a deal to help developing countries most hurt by global warming and a stop-gap measure to save the protocol. There is also a chance advanced economies responsible for most emissions will pledge deeper cuts at the talks known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP 17. But the debt crisis hitting the euro zone and the United States makes it unlikely those areas will provide more aid or impose new measures that could hurt their growth prospects. "The South Africans are desperate to ensure that the COP does not fail, but they will not be able to deliver much," said Ian Fry, lead negotiator for the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which could be erased by rising sea levels. Fry blamed the United States, which has not ratified Kyoto, for blocking progress and said: "The EU seems to be going weak at the knees and will opt for a soft continuation of the Kyoto Protocol with a possible review process in 2015 to think about new legal options." Envoys said there may be a political deal struck with a new set of binding targets, but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland are likely to sign up at best. Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world's top emitters, agreeing binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years. China is unwilling to make any commitments until Washington does while Russia, Japan and Canada say they will not sign up to a second commitment period unless the biggest emitters do too. Emerging countries insist Kyoto must be extended and that rich nations, which have historically emitted most greenhouse gas pollution, should take on tougher targets to ensure they do their fair share in the fight against climate change. Developing nations say carbon caps could hurt their growth and programmes to lift millions out of poverty. HIGH STAKES The stakes are high, with many experts urging immediate action. This month, two separate U.N. reports said greenhouse gases had reached record levels in the atmosphere while a warming climate is expected to lead to heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones and more intense droughts. Despite individual emissions-cut pledges from countries and the terms of the Kyoto pact, the United Nations, International Energy Agency and others say this is not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius. Global average temperatures could rise by 3-6 degrees by the end of the century if governments fail to contain greenhouse gas emissions, bringing unprecedented destruction as glaciers melt and sea levels rise, the OECD said last week. The warning from the OECD, whose main paymasters are the United States and other developed economies, underscored fears that the commitment to curb climate-heating gases could falter at a time when much of the world is deep in debt. "The COP is being held on the African continent which bears the greatest social injustices due to the impacts of climate change," environmental group Greenpeace said. Rich nations have committed to a goal of providing $100 billion (64 billion pounds) a year in climate cash by 2020, which the Green Climate Fund will help manage. But the United States and Saudi Arabia have objected to some aspects of the fund's design. South Africa has said it wants to advance an African agenda at the conference but is seen by many diplomats as not having the diplomatic muscle or prestige to broker complex talks. As the world's poorest continent, Africa is also the most vulnerable to the extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels brought by climate change. In the Horn of Africa, some 13 million people are going hungry due to prolonged drought. In Somalia, the crisis is compounded by conflict. | 0 |
The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday. As the world's population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water, according to U.N. estimates, at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply. And if the world fails to tackle these problems, it risks condemning up to 3 billion people into poverty, the report said. Efforts towards sustainable development are neither fast enough nor deep enough, as well as suffering from a lack of political will, the United Nations' high-level panel on global sustainability said. "The current global development model is unsustainable. To achieve sustainability, a transformation of the global economy is required," the report said. "Tinkering on the margins will not do the job. The current global economic crisis ... offers an opportunity for significant reforms." Although the number of people living in absolute poverty has been reduced to 27 percent of world population from 46 percent in 1990 and the global economy has grown 75 percent since 1992, improved lifestyles and changing consumer habits have put natural resources under increasing strain. There are 20 million more undernourished people now than in 2000; 5.2 million hectares of forest are lost per year - an area the size of Costa Rica; 85 percent of all fish stocks are over-exploited or depleted; and carbon dioxide emissions have risen 38 percent between 1990 and 2009, which heightens the risk of sea level rise and more extreme weather. The panel, which made 56 recommendations for sustainable development to be included in economic policy as quickly as possible, said a "new political economy" was needed. "Let's use the upcoming Rio+20 summit to kick off this global transition towards a sustainable growth model for the 21st century that the world so badly needs," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in response to the report, referring to a U.N. sustainable development summit this June in Brazil. ACTION Among the panel's recommendations, it urged governments to agree on a set of sustainable development goals which would complement the eight Millennium Development Goals to 2015 and create a framework for action after 2015. They should work with international organizations to create an "evergreen revolution," which would at least double productivity while reducing resource use and avoiding further biodiversity losses, the report said. Water and marine ecosystems should be managed more efficiently and there should be universal access to affordable sustainable energy by 2030. To make the economy more sustainable, carbon and natural resource pricing should be established through taxation, regulation or emissions trading schemes by 2020 and fossil fuel subsidies should also be phased out by that time. National fiscal and credit systems should be reformed to provide long-term incentives for sustainable practices as well as disincentives for unsustainable ones. Sovereign wealth and public pension funds, as well as development banks and export credit agencies should apply sustainable development criteria to their investment decisions, and governments or stock market watchdogs should revise regulations to encourage their use. Governments and scientists should also strengthen the relationship between policy and science by regularly examining the science behind environmental thresholds or "tipping points" and the United Nations should consider naming a chief scientific adviser or board to advise the organization, the report said. | 0 |
Firefighters were battling 50 blazes in Portugal and a similar number in Spain. Portugal's government asked for international help and declared a state of emergency in territory north of the Tagus river - about half of its landmass. Flames ripped across Iberian countryside left tinder-dry by an unusually hot summer and early autumn, fanned by strong winds as remnants of ex-Hurricane Ophelia brushed coastal areas. Television footage showed abandoned villages with many houses in embers and charred vehicles left on the roads. Portuguese opposition parties and the media harshly criticised the government for failing to prevent a new wave of deadly fires after the country's worst ever forest fire in June that killed 64 people.
Smoke and flames from a forest fire are seen near Lousa, Portugal, Oct 16, 2017. Reuters
Prime Minister Antonio Costa, however, refused to sack his interior minister and defended his government's attempts to reform the troubled forestry management system. Smoke and flames from a forest fire are seen near Lousa, Portugal, Oct 16, 2017. Reuters "It's a structural problem that we are facing... This is not a time for resignations, but for solutions. Everything has to be transformed into reforms, to provide responses that the country needs so that nothing stays the way it was after this year," he told reporters after a television address to the nation. "We are aware that the country wants results from us and we're running against time after decades of negligence," Costa told reporters after his address. Poor land management At the heart of the problem is poor land management in Portugal, where traditional small plots have become fire hazards after being abandoned by successive generations of landholders who moved to the cities. Interior Minister Constanca Urbano de Sousa said climate change was also to blame. "We are facing new (weather) conditions ... In an era of climate change, such disasters are becoming reality all over the world," she said, citing the wildfires burning in California. The weekend fires also injured 63 people in Portugal, civil protection service spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar said. The toll could still increase as seven people were unaccounted for. Water-spraying planes could not be deployed against most fires due to gigantic plumes of smoke that reduced visibility. But Gaspar said rains expected late on Monday and on Tuesday in the north of Portugal were likely to bring some relief. The Lisbon government has been criticised for a slow, inefficient response and a lack of fire-prevention policies, leaving Portugal with Europe's largest expanse of woodland burned by wildfires. Portugal's fires have burned over 40 percent of the total in all of the European Union this year. With just 2.1 percent of the EU's landmass, Portugal suffered the biggest fires during 2008-16 as well, with an average of 36 percent of the total. Three people died in Spain's northwestern Galicia region - two of them women found inside a burnt-out car, the third a man in his 70s killed as he tried to save his farm animals, according to local media. Most of the fires in Galicia were started deliberately, said Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the regional government. Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said some of those responsible had already been identified. They could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted. At least two persons were arrested in Portugal for allegedly starting fires. | 0 |
Johannesburg,july 18 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Former South African President, Nelson Mandela, a worldwide icon of freedom and reconciliation, celebrates his 90th birthday on Friday. Here is a short summary of his life: * EARLY LIFE - Born July 18, 1918, son of a counsellor to the paramount chief of the Thembu people near Qunu in what is now Eastern Cape. He is widely known in South Africa by his clan name, Madiba. * ANTI-APARTHEID CAMPAIGNER: -- Mandela devoted his life to the fight against white domination, leaving Fort Hare university in the early 1940s before completing his studies. He founded the ANC Youth League with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu -- Mandela was among the first to advocate armed resistance to apartheid, going underground in 1961 to form the ANC's armed wing -- Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation). -- Charged with capital offences in the infamous 1963 Rivonia Trial, his statement from the dock was his political testimony. "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. * FROM PRISON TO PRESIDENT: -- FW de Klerk, South Africa's last white president, finally lifted the ban on the ANC and other liberation movements and Mandela was freed on Feb. 11, 1990. -- A year later he was elected president of the ANC and in May 1994 was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. He used his charisma and prestige to achieve reconciliation, setting up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to probe crimes by both sides in the anti-apartheid struggle. -- In 1999, Mandela handed over to younger leaders better equipped to manage a modern economy -- a rare voluntary departure from power cited as an example to African leaders. * FAMILY LIFE: -- Restful retirement was not on the cards as Mandela shifted his energies to battling South Africa's AIDS crisis raising millions of dollars to fight the disease. -- His struggle against AIDS became starkly personal in early 2005 when he lost his only surviving son to the disease. -- The country also shared the pain of Mandela's humiliating divorce in 1996 from Winnie Mandela, his second wife, and watched his courtship of Graca Machel, widow of Mozambican President Samora Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998. -- In 2007 Mandela celebrated his 89th birthday by launching an international group of elder statesmen, including fellow Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, to tackle world problems including climate change, HIV/AIDS and poverty. | 0 |
"He's a great guy", Trump told the German chancellor, according to sources familiar with the exchange. Merkel listened politely before pointing out that Erdogan had been lobbing vitriol at Germany and its European allies for weeks, denouncing them as the descendents of Nazis. Trump was surprised, the sources said. He appeared unaware that Ankara and Berlin were in the midst of a fierce diplomatic row over whether Turkish ministers should be allowed to campaign in Germany for a referendum on boosting Erdogan's powers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The German government declined comment, citing the confidential nature of the call. The exchange, weeks after Merkel paid her first visit to Trump in Washington, underscored the challenge the German leader faces as she tries to forge a relationship with a president that half a dozen European officials who spoke to Reuters described as erratic, ill prepared and prone to rhetorical excess. Six months after Trump's election and a little more than a week before he makes his first trip to Europe as president, officials in Berlin and other European capitals are still unsure about where the Trump administration stands on many of the big issues that concern them. Coupled with this confusion is relief that he has not turned US foreign policy on its head, as some feared, during his first months in office. Trump is no longer calling NATO obsolete. And he has kept Russia's Vladimir Putin at arm's length. Apart from his suggestion last month that an attack on policemen in Paris would help far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the French election, Trump has not intervened in European politics or sought to undermine the European Union. His controversial National Security Adviser Mike Flynn has been fired, replaced by H.R. McMaster, who is seen as a smart, steady hand. And the influence of Steve Bannon, the White House adviser Europeans fear most, may be on the wane. "We feel there is now a productive working relationship," said Peter Wittig, the German ambassador to Washington. But beneath the veneer are lingering questions about the president's character and his policies on a range of issues. German officials remain worried about a shift to protectionism under Trump, despite his less confrontational rhetoric toward China and his decision to drop controversial plans for a border adjustment tax. Several European diplomats expressed concern about what they view as the lack of a coherent U.S. strategy on Syria. Some of them said the abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey showed Trump was capable of taking rash decisions on issues of major importance. Reports that he revealed highly classified information to Russia's foreign minister at a meeting in the Oval Office last week seem likely to aggravate the level of distrust in European capitals. "The doubts about the professionalism of Trump's team, at least in foreign and security policy, have receded," one veteran German diplomat said. "But the doubts about Trump himself, his character, maturity and trustworthiness, have only grown." A second German official said: "You shouldn't underestimate the influence of Trump on the Trump administration." UNIQUE CHALLENGE Few foreign leaders have as much riding on the relationship as Merkel. Germany relies heavily on the United States for its security. And a tit-for-tat protectionist spiral could threaten its export-reliant economy. In July, just two months before Germany holds an election, Merkel will host a tricky G20 summit in Hamburg, where Trump is expected to meet Putin for the first time. Turkish President Erdogan and China's Xi Jinping will also be there. Merkel has been sparring with Putin and Erdogan for over a decade and worked with two U.S. presidents before Trump. She formed a close relationship with George W. Bush in his Europe-friendly second term. And although she got off to a tricky start with Barack Obama after denying him a chance to speak at the Brandenburg Gate during his 2008 campaign, the two ended up forming a close bond. Before traveling to Brussels to meet Trump on May 25, she will appear with Obama at the landmark in central Berlin. Trump, her aides acknowledge, presents a unique challenge because of his unpredictability and ambivalent attitude toward Europe. He is deeply unpopular in Germany, making it politically awkward for her to get too close in an election year. Nevertheless, there is satisfaction in Berlin that Merkel and Trump have gotten off to a relatively smooth start, after he accused her of "ruining" Germany with her open-door refugee policies and she responded to his victory by signaling she would only cooperate with him on the basis of common values. The two leaders have spoken four times on the phone since her visit in mid-March. Both sides have played down the incident that dominated coverage of that visit: Trump's failure to shake Merkel's hand in the Oval Office. Last month, Trump, the brash former real estate mogul from New York, told the Associated Press that he had "unbelievable chemistry" with Merkel, the reserved former physicist from communist East Germany. German officials speak of a systematic effort by the chancellor to minimize tensions with Trump, pointing to the invitation she extended to his daughter Ivanka to attend a G20 women's summit in Berlin in April. They note that Trump has not pulled out of the Paris climate deal, NAFTA or the nuclear deal between western powers and Iran, as he had threatened during his campaign for the presidency. Trump has said he will not make a decision on the climate deal until after a G7 summit in late May, where Merkel and other European leaders are expected to lobby him hard to stay in. "There are signs that this administration is capable of being influenced," said a senior French official. "You can talk to the people around Trump and give input. They are perhaps more malleable and open to outside views than many people thought." During Merkel's visit in March, she spent a long time explaining to Trump and his team how the European Union worked, according to participants. By the end of four hours of meetings - including a half hour one-on-one between the two leaders, a meeting with business executives, and a lunch - Trump had dropped his push for a bilateral trade deal with Germany and accepted that only an agreement with the EU was possible. Although German officials acknowledge that the prospect of reviving TTIP - the transatlantic trade deal Europe tried to clinch with Obama - seems remote, they were pleased that Trump seemed open to the idea of negotiating with the EU. They were also reassured that Trump proved to be a good listener. At the end of the two hour lunch, when aides to the president reminded him it was time to head off to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for the weekend, he demurred, saying the discussion was going well and his departure would have to wait. Officials in the German chancellery were pleasantly surprised when, 10 days after the visit, Trump called Merkel to congratulate her on a surprise win for her party in the tiny state of Saarland - even if he used the call, one source said, to harp about "fake polls". The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The German government declined comment. Over the past months, German officials have made a concerted effort to reach out to a wide range of officials in Washington, including people in the White House and Congress. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble met with Trump's economic adviser Gary Cohn during the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank last month. His deputy Jens Spahn visited the White House, seeing Bannon and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. This outreach is especially important, German officials say, because top policy positions in the State Department remain unfilled more than three months since Trump took office. But it is also a form of hedging. No one knows for sure who Trump is listening to today and whether that might change tomorrow. "You simply can't afford to put all your eggs in one basket with this administration," said Robin Niblett, director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. "Trump is on one day and off the other. One day you have a deal and the next day you don't. You have to hedge. And you have to cover yourself at home because he can dump you in it at any moment." | 1 |
China condemned claims ascribed to Britain's climate change minister that it had "hijacked" negotiations in Copenhagen, saying on Tuesday the accusations were an attempt to sow discord among poor countries. The sharp words from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu were the latest baring of diplomatic bad blood after the talks in Copenhagen ended on Saturday with a broad, non-binding accord that fell short of hopes for a robust global agreement on how to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Jiang was responding to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper that said the Environment Minister Ed Miliband had accused China, Sudan, Bolivia and other left-wing Latin American nations of "hijacking" efforts to reach deeper agreement on how to fight global warming. In a separate commentary for the paper, Miliband said China vetoed a widely supported proposal at the Copenhagen talks to aim to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. "We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked," he also wrote, but without singling out China or any other country as a "hijacker." Chinese spokeswoman Jiang did not chide Miliband by name, but Beijing's ire was clear. "The statements from certain British politicians are plainly a political scheme," she said in a statement issued by the official Xinhua news agency. "Their objective is to shirk responsibilities that should be assumed towards developing countries, and to provoke discord among developing countries. This scheme will come to nothing." The flap is unlikely to seriously disrupt negotiations seeking to turn the Copenhagen accord into a legally binding treaty. But the sour exchange has underscored the distrust between China and rich countries that could frustrate efforts to agree on that treaty by late 2010. "Everyone is raising the banner of protecting the planet, but in reality they are protecting their own interests," Wang Yi, a climate change policy researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told Reuters. "The compromises (in Copenhagen) were very, very limited." China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activities and its biggest developing economy. Other governments have pressed it to do more to reduce its growing emissions and to submit its emissions goals to international checks as part of any new climate pact. But China and other big developing countries have accused the rich economies of failing to offer big enough cuts to their emissions, and of not offering enough money and technological help to poor countries to cope with climate change. Chinese experts have also said the goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 is empty rhetoric without those commitments from rich nations. "Currently, the most difficult issue to resolve is the scale and structure of each country's emissions reductions," said Li Zhiqing, an environmental policy professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, writing in the city's Wenhui Daily newspaper. "Clearly, there will be no breakthrough on this in the near term and we can only maintain the status quo," wrote Li. | 0 |
Owned by TAL Group, which is based in Hong Kong and is a founding member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, TAL Apparel employs about 26,000 garment workers in 10 factories globally, producing roughly 50 million pieces of apparel each year including men’s chinos, polo tees, outerwear and dress shirts. One of those factories is Pen Apparel, in the steamy seaside town of Penang in Malaysia, where 70% of workers at the factory were migrants hired in countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh, according to TAL. Along with Imperial Garments, a second TAL factory in nearby Ipoh, Pen Apparel is the subject of a new report from Transparentem, a nonprofit that focuses on environmental and human rights abuses in supply chains. The investigation, which was shown to brands supplied by the factories in late May, included allegations of potential forced labour among TAL migrant workers, linked to payment of high recruitment fees in their home countries to guarantee their jobs. According to the International Labour Organization, a specialised agency of the United Nations dedicated to improving labour conditions, forced labour is “work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.” Companies don’t always make prompt, substantive changes when faced with revelations of exploitation in their supply chains. But the pandemic has added factors that made the situation even more urgent. The lockdown sent most clothing sales plummeting, causing Western retailers to slash orders and TAL to start closing its Malaysian operations. If an agreement by TAL and the brands it supplied to pay compensation was not reached quickly, the risk was that the migrant workers — now out of work — could be deported, or disappear into new local employment while still in heavy debt from their jobs with TAL. Conscious that Western brands are increasingly being held to account by consumers, both TAL and its partners appeared eager to make amends. TAL also released a collective action plan July 24 though it was scant on key details. The New York Times contacted Levi’s, Brooks Brothers, Suitsupply, Untuckit, LL Bean, Walmart, Lacoste, Charles Tyrwhitt, Stitch Fix, Tie Bar, the Black Tux and Paul Frederick — all brands known to be supplied by TAL’s Malaysian factories. “We try our utmost to carry out extensive due diligence and audits but with such a global chain it can be a struggle,” said Joy Roeterdink, the corporate social responsibility manager at Suitsupply. “When there is an issue, we don’t believe in cutting relationships with factories. That doesn’t help the workers. It is better for everyone to invest in fixing the problem.” None of the other brands said anything on the record beyond a statement from the American Apparel and Footwear Association, an industry lobbying group that spoke on behalf of the US brands involved. THE INVESTIGATION Over 18 months, Transparentem gathered evidence in Malaysia from hundreds of the 2,600 migrant workers employed by TAL. Researchers found that many had paid substantial recruitment fees and related costs like visas and health checks in order to secure their jobs before they left their home countries, a common industry practice. Migrant workers from Bangladesh, for example, paid recruitment agents in their home country an average of $2,450 to work in the TAL factories in Malaysia. Once they arrived, they would also pay a second set of fees, which were effectively TAL’s recruitment costs. TAL company policy was to front the cost of these fees, which were in practice considered “factory loans,” Transparentem said, that workers gradually repaid through paycheck deductions. But in Bangladesh, some were charged additional recruitment fees directly by agents, according to Transparentem. They were then threatened by those agents and forced to say, on film, they were not being exploited, at the risk of losing their jobs. For others, the total fees were so high they had used their life savings, sold family land or taken out loans with high interest rates for the chance of a more lucrative livelihood abroad. “We have come here to work and save up some money,” one Pen Apparel worker, whose identity was not disclosed to prevent retaliation, told Transparentem. “But even after working very hard we are not able to save any money. It is hard to even earn back the money we invested.” A similar tale was told by workers at Imperial Garments. Many said they had not learned about the TAL factory loans that would be deducted from their salaries until after they had already paid the agents’ fees, according to Transparentem, and the result was that they were being paid half of what they were promised. Transparentem also said it recorded accounts of deception, intimidation and unsafe living conditions from workers, all of which are listed among the 11 indicators of forced labour outlined by the International Labour Organization. After production volumes fell to 30% of capacity, TAL had announced in April that Pen Apparel would close at the end of July, while Imperial Garments would close at the end of 2020. Against a backdrop of tensions in Malaysia over the country’s harsh treatment of migrant workers during lockdown, many workers were left in a state of despair. “I have already spent so much money to come here, if they send me back now I will lose that money,” an Imperial Garments worker said in the Transparentem report. “And the land I sold to come here is gone anyway.” THE REACTION When Transparentem presented its findings to a dozen brands supplied by TAL, nine companies agreed to begin discussions on a collective reimbursement plan, including the Dutch brand Suitsupply and American names like Levi’s, LL Bean, Eddie Bauer and Brooks Brothers (before Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy this month). Tu Rinsche, the vice president of engagement and partnerships at Transparentem, noted that Transparentem had never seen such a rapid response to one of its reports, or one in which the factory owner played such an active role. After several rounds of negotiations, an agreement was reached: More than 1,400 workers from eight countries would receive payment from what TAL called a “substantial” collective action fund, distributed to workers in two instalments — on July 24 and July 31. According to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the ethical trade consultancy Impactt had also been hired by the brands to assess the living and working conditions of TAL factory workers in Malaysia and ensure they were in line with coronavirus health and safety protocols. The AAFA called the deal “an immediate solution” that would “protect the rights of all workers throughout our supply chains.” But beyond saying there would be compensation, TAL and the brands declined to say much else, except that the workers would only be partly — and not fully — compensated for their debts. Although the restitution fund may total several million dollars, according to guidance from Transparentem, TAL declined to disclose the full amount of compensation that would be paid, or break down the contributions made by TAL and the participating brands. Both the AAFA and TAL declined to outline which brands were taking part in the compensation agreement. (TAL supplies roughly 75 companies.) At a time when questions are growing around what fashion supply chain transparency means, the reception of the report underscored how few companies still actively tackle labour abuses unless challenged, or disclose their actions afterward. One of the starkest revelations in the report was that TAL had previously identified many issues — including worker exploitation by recruitment agents — to the extent that in 2018 it stopped hiring from Bangladesh, where the most unethical practices had taken place. Most of the TAL workers in Malaysia who were from Bangladesh were hired before 2018. TAL, though relatively unknown outside fashion, is nonetheless a visible company within the industry. It is a signatory of the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, suggesting its progressive leanings. Why, then, didn’t TAL immediately reimburse the affected workers when it discovered the abuses and pay them back as part of their wages in 2018? THE SLOW ROUTE TO CHANGE On a Zoom call last week, Roger Lee, the chief executive officer of TAL Group, offered some answers. Lee said that there were deep-rooted problems in worker recruitment across the apparel industry. Although the numbers of migrant workers were particularly high in its Malaysian factories, 80% of TAL’s total employees are local employees, he said. And despite Transparentem’s allegations of potential forced labour in Malaysia — and the fact that TAL had agreed to pay workers’ compensation — he said that such exploitation no longer existed inside the company. According to Lee, TAL factory loans are waived when a worker leaves for whatever reason, meaning they were not forced to stay against their will (though that would not reduce any debts accrued with agents in their home countries). Lee said that on Jan. 1, 2020, TAL changed its policy to cover recruitment fees for all new migrant recruits, a policy that was communicated to customers before the company was aware of the Transparentem investigation. TAL had also since halted factory loan salary deductions of current workers. That move was part of an internal project with significant expenses to improve labour policies, he said. It required the company to offset factory loans by, in part, raising the prices it charged the brands whose clothes it makes. “This kind of progress is important but it cannot be done alone by suppliers,” said Lee, who added that TAL had invested in worker hotlines and educational classes to prevent exploitation. A longer timeline had been necessary to allow the brands it supplied to make the necessary cost adjustments and absorb the migrant workers’ recruitment costs. “These changes are now in place for workers we hire in the future,” he continued. “But what we’ve been negotiating with Transparentem is how to go back in time to give these migrants what they are owed from events that took place outside Malaysia. It is not impossible. But in this climate, it is not easy either.” With some clients declaring bankruptcy (Brooks Brothers and J. Crew), and most clients reducing orders, TAL said it had seen a decline of almost 50% in orders and was absorbing significant levels of bad debt. Delman Lee, the president and chief technology officer of TAL Apparel, said that the full fund amount could not be disclosed “because payments differ depending on the individual worker.” The company was focused on creating a safe environment for workers, he said, which included the payment of allowances, regular temperature checks and, in some cases, repatriation flights to countries like Vietnam, as well as matching migrant workers to new local employers in Malaysia. At least 1,200 workers would not receive any compensation from the fund. However, TAL said they have received severance or termination compensations, as required by local law. Although output had ground to a halt in Malaysia, TAL was still paying out wages of $100,000 a day, he said. “We are in a labor-intensive business,” Lee said of TAL Group, which has generated pre-pandemic annual revenues of more than $850 million. “Inevitably, issues will take place in our factories, but if we are wrong we will always admit we are wrong and do our best to fix them. We know solving one case is the tip of the iceberg.” Rinsche of Transparentem said that only a handful of brands supplied by TAL’s Malaysian factories contributed to the workers’ relief effort and that she hoped more would come forward after the circulation of the report. “Everyone in the fashion business needs to pay more attention to how they oversee the recruitment of migrant workers, and talk more about the processes required in improving bad practices,” Rinsche said. ©2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Edward O Wilson, a 92-year old naturalist hailed as the Darwin of the 21st century, said humankind is not too polarised to save the planet, even as some of the world's biggest polluters drag their feet on cutting carbon emissions and arresting global warming. He sees preventing catastrophic climate change -- the aim of UN climate talks starting in Scotland on Sunday -- and saving biodiversity, or the variety of plant and animal species in the world, as two initiatives that must happen together. "This is the most communal endeavor with a clear definable goal that humanity has ever had and we need to get the kind of cooperation and ethical harmony and planning in order to make it work," Wilson told Reuters in an interview outside Boston on Oct 21. "Otherwise, the slope of human history will always be downward." Today, species are going extinct at a rate not seen in 10 million years, with around 1 million currently on the brink. To limit the loss, the United Nations has urged countries to commit to conserving 30% of their land and water – almost double the area currently under some form of protection - by 2030. The so-called "30 by 30" target is in part inspired by Wilson's Half-Earth Project. First outlined in 2016, it calls for protecting half the planet's land and sea so there are enough diverse and well-connected ecosystems to reverse the course of species extinction. "The point is that human nature has not changed enough. Our strongest propensities of a social nature tend to disfavor the lives of most other species," Wilson said. Humanity continues to solve problems by burning materials - coal and oil - left behind by ancient organisms, Wilson said, decrying the continued exploration and burning of fossil fuels, which amplifies the destruction of biodiversity. The Group of 20 rich countries remain divided over phasing out coal and committing to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. G20 nations account for 80% of global emissions, but big polluters such as China and India have also so far dug in their heels. read more THE ANT MAN STARTED YOUNG Alongside British naturalist Sir David Attenborough, Wilson is considered the world's leading authority on natural history and conservation. He is also the world's foremost authority on ants, of which he has discovered over 400 species. He has written two Pulitzer Prize-winning books and popularised the term "biodiversity", leading to a movement to preserve all species on the planet while safeguarding against humankind's domination of natural resources. He has worked at Harvard for 70 years and still puts in time as a curator in entomology. His trajectory as an entomologist - someone who studies insects - was set at age 10, when he spent hours in the woods of Rock Creek Park in Washington D C. "I already had a serious library from my collection of bugs and butterflies," Wilson recounted during the interview. A highlight of his career would come years later when he climbed more than 13,000 feet (3,962 metres) to the center of the Sarawaged Range in Papua New Guinea. He said he owes part of his adventuresome spirit to his great-grandfather, William "Black Bill" Wilson, who piloted a steam ship during the US Civil War. He was captured and imprisoned by Union troops for trying to move arms and other supplies to the Confederacy. Wilson is a natural storyteller and his accessible writing style is on full display in "The Ants", a 1990 book he wrote with Bert Holldobler. The monograph is more than 700 pages and weighs more than 7 pounds (3.2 kg). He said one of his greatest achievements was working out how ants communicate danger and food trails, for example, by emitting chemicals. Now living in a retirement community in a suburb of the northeastern U.S. city of Boston, Wilson continues to write and is working on a book about ecosystems. Despite his love and fascination of ants, he waves off any suggestion that humans should model themselves after their traits or those of any other species as a way of improvement. "I'm going to say something daring," Wilson said. "To follow the ethics and behavior of most other species would lead us to even more warfare over (resource) utilisation ..." Still, he is optimistic humankind will set aside more space than it has in the past to save the rest of Earth's biology. "It will be one of humanity's proudest achievements," Wilson said. "If we fail to do it, and a large portion of the biological diversity of the world is allowed to be exterminated, for all of the generations to come that carelessness will be regarded as one of humanity's greatest failures." | 0 |
Climate negotiators from 175 nations meet in Spain next week for a final session to try to break deadlock between rich and poor and salvage a UN deal due in Copenhagen in December. The November 2-6 talks in Barcelona of almost 4,000 delegates, led by senior government officials, will seek to end deep splits about sharing out curbs on greenhouse gases and ways to raise billions of dollars to help the poor tackle global warming. In a step forward, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said European Union leaders agreed on funds at a summit on Friday with three conditional offers for Copenhagen. He said poor nations need 100 billion euros ($148 billion) a year from 2020. Brown told reporters in Brussels that EU states would pay their "fair share." "I think this is a breakthrough that takes us forward to Copenhagen," he said. Most industrialized nations have not outlined offers. All sides agree progress has been too slow since talks began in 2007, spurred by findings by the UN Climate Panel that world emissions would have to peak by 2015 to avoid the worst of desertification, floods, extinctions or rising seas. "Time has almost run out," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told delegates in a video message. "In Barcelona, all nations must step back from self-interest and let common interest prevail." The worst financial crisis since the 1930s has distracted attention from global warming and the United Nations and many countries say a legally binding treaty is impossible at the Copenhagen meeting from December 7-18. The US Senate is unlikely to agree legislation to cut US emissions before Copenhagen, raising fears that other rich nations will be unwilling to promise deep cuts. "The issue is 'can we agree on the core questions?'," said Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta, chair of a group negotiating commitments by all nations. "I think we can." HUGE PUZZLE "It's a huge puzzle politically to get things done," said Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He said there had been too much optimism that US President Barack Obama would bring new momentum this year. "There is a big risk that you end up with a woolly G8-type statement that doesn't take us anywhere," said Mark Kenber, of London based think-tank the Climate Group. The Group of Eight club of the world's leading industrialized nations usually releases non-binding statements of principle after its summits. Developing nations such as China and India say that the developed countries must cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- arguing they got rich by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Offers on the table so far from the rich countries total cuts of about 11 to 15 percent. And developed nations say the poor must also do more by 2020 to slow their rising emissions -- China, the United States, Russia and India are the top emitters. "It's crucially important that we keep ambitions high, to reach something we can consider 'the Copenhagen Deal'. We do not support any notion of postponing into 2010," said Kim Carstensen of the WWF environmental group. De Boer wants Copenhagen to agree four key elements -- individual cuts in emissions for rich nations, actions by poor nations to slow their rising emissions, new finance and technology for developing nations and a system to oversee funds. | 0 |
As everything from mammoth bones to ancient vegetation frozen inside it for millennia thaws and decomposes, it now threatens to release vast amounts of greenhouse gases. Zimov, who has studied permafrost from his scientific base in the diamond-producing Yakutia region for decades, is seeing the effects of climate change in real time. Driving a thin metal pole metres into the Siberian turf, where temperatures are rising at more than three times the world average, with barely any force, the 66-year-old is matter-of-fact. "This is one of the coldest places on earth and there is no permafrost," he says. "Methane has never increased in the atmosphere at the speed it is today ... I think this is linked to our permafrost." Permafrost covers 65% of Russia's landmass and about a quarter of the northern landmass. Scientists say that greenhouse gas emissions from its thaw could eventually match or even exceed the European Union's industrial emissions due to the sheer volume of decaying organic matter. Meanwhile, permafrost emissions, which are seen as naturally occurring, are not counted against government pledges aimed at curbing emissions or in the spotlight at UN climate talks. Zimov, with his white beard and cigarette, ignored orders to leave the Arctic when the Soviet Union collapsed and instead found funding to keep the Northeast Science Station near the part-abandoned town of Chersky operating. Citing data from a US-managed network of global monitoring stations, Zimov says he now believes the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that permafrost has begun to release greenhouse gases. Despite factories scaling back activity worldwide during the pandemic which also dramatically slowed global transport, Zimov says the concentration of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been growing at a faster rate. Whole cities sit on permafrost and its thawing could cost Russia 7 trillion roubles ($100 billion) in damage by 2050 if the rate of warming continues, scientists say. Built on the assumption that the permafrost would never thaw, many homes, pipelines and roads in Russia's far north and east are now sinking and increasingly in need of repair. ICE AGE ANIMALS Zimov wants to slow the thaw in one area of Yakutia by populating a nature reserve called the Pleistocene Park with large herbivores including bison, horses and camels. Such animals trample the snow, making it much more compact so the winter cold can get through to the ground, rather than it acting as a thick insulating blanket. Zimov and his son Nikita began introducing animals into the fenced park in 1996 and have so far relocated around 200 of different species, which they say are making the permafrost colder compared with other areas. Bison were trucked and shipped this summer from Denmark, along the Northern Sea Route, past polar bears and walruses and through weeks-long storms, before their ship finally turned into the mouth of the Kolyma River towards their new home some 6,000 kilometres to the east. The Zimovs' surreal plan for geo-engineering a cooler future has extended to offering a home for mammoths, which other scientists hope to resurrect from extinction with genetic techniques, in order to mimic the region's ecosystem during the last Ice Age that ended 11,700 years ago. A paper published in Nature's Scientific Reports last year, where both Zimovs were listed as authors, showed that the animals in Pleistocene Park had reduced the average snow depth by half, and the average annual soil temperature by 1.9 degrees Celsius, with an even bigger drop in winter and spring. More work is needed to determine if such "unconventional" methods might be an effective climate change mitigation strategy but the density of animals in Pleistocene Park -- 114 individuals per square kilometre -- should be feasible on a pan-Arctic scale, it said. And global-scale models suggest introducing big herbivores onto the tundra could stop 37% of Arctic permafrost from thawing, the paper said. PERMATHAW? Nikita Zimov, Sergey’s son, was walking in the shallows of the river Kolyma at Duvanny Yar in September when he fished out a mammoth tusk and tooth. Such finds have been common for years in Yakutia and particularly by rivers where the water erodes the permafrost. Three hours by boat from Chersky, the river bank provides a cross-section of the thaw, with a thick sheet of exposed ice melting and dripping below layers of dense black earth containing small grassroots. "If you take the weight of all these roots and decaying organics in the permafrost from Yakutia alone, you'd find the weight was more than the land-based biomass of the planet," Nikita says. Scientists say that on average, the world has warmed one degree in the last century, while in Yakutia over the last 50 years, the temperature has risen three degrees. The older Zimov says he has seen for himself how winters have grown shorter and milder, while Alexander Fedorov, deputy director of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, says he no longer has to wear fur clothing during the coldest months. But addressing permafrost emissions, like fire and other so-called natural emissions, presents a challenge because they are not fully accounted for in climate models or international agreements, scientists say. "The difficulty is the quantity," says Chris Burn, a professor at Carleton University and president of the International Permafrost Association. "One or two percent of permafrost carbon is equivalent to total global emissions for a year." Scientists estimate that permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere contains about 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, about twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere, or about three times as much as in all of the trees and plants on earth. Nikita says there is no single solution to global warming. "We're working to prove that these ecosystems will help in the fight, but, of course, our efforts alone are not enough." | 0 |
By Peter Griffiths OXFORD July 7 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Public awareness about the "catastrophe" of climate change is not high enough to pressure politicians into taking action, former Vice President Al Gore said on Tuesday. Gore, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his environmental campaigning, said politicians will only do more once the people who elect them force the issue. Voters need to tell leaders they must act on the environmental concerns if countries are to strike a new deal on global warming at U.N. climate talks in Denmark later this year. "The only way we can get one is if politicians in each country act and the only way that can happen in turn is if awareness rises to the level to make them feel it is a necessity," Gore said in a speech. "We can berate politicians for not doing enough and for compromising too much and for not being bold in addressing this existential threat to civilization. "But the reason that they don't is because the level of awareness and concern among populations still has not risen to cross the threshold that makes the political leaders feel they must address it." Countries will meet in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December to try to agree a new global deal to restrict manmade climate change. Scientists say global warming is taking place at a quicker pace than previously thought and will lead to more diseases, flooding, extreme weather and crop failures. Preparatory talks on planned emissions cuts have stumbled on rows between rich countries and poor states, who say they did least to contribute to global warming and will suffer the most. However, Gore said there were some optimistic signs in the run-up to the talks. China, the United States and Australia have made good progress on the issue, young people are increasingly aware of the dangers of inaction and countries have all the technology needed to fix the problem. "We have the tools available to us to solve three climate crises," Gore told an environment conference at the University of Oxford, southern England. "We only have to solve one." Energy efficiency and more use of renewable energy will help cut emissions from coal-fired power plants, he added. Geothermal power alone could meet the world's current energy needs for the next 30,000 years, Gore said. Geothermal projects involve drilling wells deep into the earth to tap steam or hot water to power turbines. Halting deforestation, building more efficient buildings and making transport networks less reliant on fossil fuels will also help to cut emissions dramatically, he said. | 0 |
Soaring food prices may throw millions of people back into poverty in Asia and undo a decade of gains, regional leaders said on Sunday while calling for increased agricultural production to meet rising demand. Asia - home to two thirds of the world's poor - risks rising social unrest as a doubling of wheat and rice prices in the last year has slammed people spending more than half their income on food, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga said during the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting. If food prices rise 20 percent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, warned Indian Finance Secretary D Subba Rao. "In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth," Rao told the ADB's meeting in Madrid. A 43 percent rise in global food prices in the year to March sparked violent protests in Cameroon and Burkina Faso as well as rallies in Indonesia following reports of starvation deaths. Many governments have introduced food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising costs, but they have only exacerbated price rises on global markets, Nukaga said. "Those hardest hit are the poorest segments of the population, especially the urban poor," Nukaga told delegates. "It will have a negative impact on their living standards and their nutrition, a situation that may lead to social unrest and distrust," he added. The ADB estimates the very poorest people in the Asia Pacific region spend 60 percent of their income on food and a further 15 percent on fuel -- the key basic commodities of life which have seen their prices rise relentlessly in the last year. POVERTY TIME BOMB Japan is one of 67 ADB member economies gathered in Spain to discuss measures to counter severe weather and rising demand that have ended decades of cheap food in developing nations. The Asia-Pacific has three times the population of Europe -- around 1.5 billion people -- living on less than $2 a day. Rice is a staple food in most Asian nations and any shortage threatens instability, making governments extremely sensitive to its price. Decade high inflation, driven by food and raw materials costs, has topped the agenda of the ADB's annual meeting. The Manila-based multilateral lender has had to defend itself from US criticism it is focused on middle income countries and has neglected Asia's rural and urban poor. Smaller countries such as Cambodia urged the ADB to focus its lending on the poorest Asian states. The Bank on Saturday called for immediate action from global governments to combat soaring food prices and twinned it with a pledge of fresh financial aid to help feed the Asia Pacific region's poorest nations. Leading members Japan, China and India backed long-term ADB strategy to provide low-cost credit and technical assistance to raise agricultural productivity. The United Nations said the rural poor represented a political time-bomb for Asia that could only be defused by higher agricultural investment and better technology. "Unless you can look at the plight of the poorest farmers in the region and how they are going to add to the numbers of very poor, very deprived people, we are unnecessarily going to create a problem that will erupt into a political crisis," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel on climate change. | 0 |
Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate whose moral might permeated South African society during apartheid's darkest hours and into the unchartered territory of new democracy, has died, South Africa's presidency said on Sunday. He was 90. The outspoken Tutu was considered the nation's conscience by both Black and white, an enduring testament to his faith and spirit of reconciliation in a divided nation. He preached against the tyranny of white minority and even after its end, he never wavered in his fight for a fairer South Africa, calling the black political elite to account with as much feistiness as he had the white Afrikaners. In his final years, he regretted that his dream of a "Rainbow Nation" had not yet come true.
FILE PHOTO: Archbishop Desmond Tutu shares a joke with the Dalai Lama after their meeting, August 21. The Dalai Lama is in the country on a short visit, the first by the Bhuddist leader. -REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File Photo
On the global stage, the human rights activist spoke out across a range of topics, from Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories to gay rights, climate change and assisted death - issues that cemented Tutu's broad appeal. FILE PHOTO: Archbishop Desmond Tutu shares a joke with the Dalai Lama after their meeting, August 21. The Dalai Lama is in the country on a short visit, the first by the Bhuddist leader. -REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File Photo "The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa," said President Cyril Ramaphosa. Just five feet five inches (1.68 metres) tall and with an infectious giggle, Tutu was a moral giant who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent struggle against apartheid. He used his high-profile role in the Anglican Church to highlight the plight of black South Africans. Asked on his retirement as Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 if he had any regrets, Tutu said: "The struggle tended to make one abrasive and more than a touch self-righteous. I hope that people will forgive me any hurts I may have caused them."
FILE PHOTO: Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams (L) smiles with South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu October 1, after meeting at Sinn Fein's headquarters. Archbishop Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was on a one day visit to Northern Ireland to promote peace. - REUTERS/Paul McErlane/File Photo
Talking and travelling tirelessly throughout the 1980s, Tutu became the face of the anti-apartheid movement abroad while many of the leaders of the rebel African National Congress (ANC), such as Nelson Mandela, were behind bars. FILE PHOTO: Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams (L) smiles with South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu October 1, after meeting at Sinn Fein's headquarters. Archbishop Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, was on a one day visit to Northern Ireland to promote peace. - REUTERS/Paul McErlane/File Photo "Our land is burning and bleeding and so I call on the international community to apply punitive sanctions against this government," he said in 1986. Even as governments ignored the call, he helped rouse grassroots campaigns around the world that fought for an end to apartheid through economic and cultural boycotts. Former hardline white president PW Botha asked Tutu in a letter in March 1988 whether he was working for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom promised by the then-outlawed and now ruling ANC. GRAVESIDE ORATIONS Among his most painful tasks was delivering graveside orations for Black people who had died violently during the struggle against white domination. "We are tired of coming to funerals, of making speeches week after week. It is time to stop the waste of human lives," he once said. Tutu said his stance on apartheid was moral rather than political.
FILE PHOTO: US President Barack Obama (L) is pictured alongside Desmond Tutu as he visits his HIV Foundation Youth Centre and takes part in a health event with youth in Cape Town, June 30, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo
"It's easier to be a Christian in South Africa than anywhere else, because the moral issues are so clear in this country," he once told Reuters. FILE PHOTO: US President Barack Obama (L) is pictured alongside Desmond Tutu as he visits his HIV Foundation Youth Centre and takes part in a health event with youth in Cape Town, June 30, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo In February 1990, Tutu led Nelson Mandela on to a balcony at Cape Town's City Hall overlooking a square where the ANC talisman made his first public address after 27 years in prison. He was at Mandela's side four years later when he was sworn in as the country's first black president. "Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu's voice will always be the voice of the voiceless," is how Mandela, who died in December 2013, described his friend. While Mandela introduced South Africa to democracy, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that laid bare the terrible truths of the war against white rule. Some of the heartrending testimony moved him publicly to tears. PULLED NO PUNCHES But Tutu was as tough on the new democracy as he was on South Africa's apartheid rulers. He castigated the new ruling elite for boarding the "gravy train" of privilege and chided Mandela for his long public affair with Graca Machel, whom he eventually married. In his Truth Commission report, Tutu refused to treat the excesses of the ANC in the fight against white rule any more gently than those of the apartheid government.
FILE PHOTO: Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, holding her son Archie, meets Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, September 25, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Pool/File Photo
Even in his twilight years, he never stopped speaking his mind, condemning President Jacob Zuma over allegations of corruption surrounding a $23 million security upgrade to his home. FILE PHOTO: Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, holding her son Archie, meets Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, September 25, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Pool/File Photo In 2014, he admitted he did not vote for the ANC, citing moral grounds. "As an old man, I am sad because I had hoped that my last days would be days of rejoicing, days of praising and commending the younger people doing the things that we hoped so very much would be the case," Tutu told Reuters in June 2014. In December 2003, he rebuked his government for its support for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, despite growing criticism over his human rights record. Tutu drew a parallel between Zimbabwe's isolation and South Africa's battle against apartheid. "We appealed for the world to intervene and interfere in South Africa's internal affairs. We could not have defeated apartheid on our own," Tutu said. "What is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander too." He also criticised South African President Thabo Mbeki for his public questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, saying Mbeki's international profile had been tarnished. SCHOOL TEACHER'S SON A schoolteacher's son, Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, a conservative town west of Johannesburg, on Oct 7, 1931. The family moved to Sophiatown in Johannesburg, one of the commercial capital's few mixed-race areas, subsequently demolished under apartheid laws to make way for the white suburb of Triomf - “Triumph in Afrikaans. Always a passionate student, Tutu first worked as a teacher. But he said he had become infuriated with the system of educating Blacks, once described by a South African prime minister as aimed at preparing them for their role in society as servants. Tutu quit teaching in 1957 and decided to join the church, studying first at St. Peter's Theological College in Johannesburg. He was ordained a priest in 1961 and continued his education at King's College in London.
FILE PHOTO: Archbishop Desmond Tutu greets Dr George Carney, Archbishop of Canterbury on his arrival ahead of Sunday's retirement mass for Tutu, June 22. Tutu retires at the end of the month as Archbishop of Cape Town, a post he has held for the past ten years. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File Photo
After four years abroad, he returned to South Africa, where his sharp intellect and charismatic preaching saw him rise through lecturing posts to become Anglican Dean of Johannesburg in 1975, which was when his activism started taking shape. FILE PHOTO: Archbishop Desmond Tutu greets Dr George Carney, Archbishop of Canterbury on his arrival ahead of Sunday's retirement mass for Tutu, June 22. Tutu retires at the end of the month as Archbishop of Cape Town, a post he has held for the past ten years. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/File Photo "I realised that I had been given a platform that was not readily available to many Blacks, and most of our leaders were either now in chains or in exile. And I said: 'Well, I'm going to use this to seek to try to articulate our aspirations and the anguishes of our people'," he told a reporter in 2004. By now too prominent and globally respected to be thrust aside by the apartheid government, Tutu used his appointment as Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches in 1978 to call for sanctions against his country. He was named the first Black Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, becoming the head of the Anglican Church, South Africa's fourth largest. He would retain that position until 1996. In retirement he battled prostate cancer and largely withdrew from public life. In one of his last public appearances, he hosted Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and their four-month-old son Archie at his charitable foundation in Cape Town in September 2019, calling them a "genuinely caring" couple. Tutu married Leah in 1955. They had four children and several grandchildren, and homes in Cape Town and Soweto township near Johannesburg. | 0 |
The European Commission underlined the need for common responses to economic challenges on Wednesday in a congratulatory note to David Cameron on becoming Britain's prime minister. ] Many European leaders are wary of Cameron's centre-right Conservatives coming to power because they are more hostile to the 27-country European Union than the Labour Party which they and the Liberal Democrat party are replacing in government. Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU executive, said Cameron's government faced difficult choices in difficult times but he was confident it would chart the right course to steer Britain out of crisis and towards sustainable growth. "On behalf of the European Commission, I would like to offer you my warmest congratulations on your election as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom," he wrote. "Many of the challenges ahead -- delivering economic recovery, fighting global poverty, tackling climate change, ensuring energy security -- are common across the European Union and require a common response." He said he looked forward to working with Cameron on these and other issues, such as boosting the internal market and promoting "smarter regulation", more transparency and greater accountability in the European Union. Cameron is widely expected to want to show more eurosceptic members of his party that he will defend Britain's interests strongly in the EU. But European officials regard him as a pragmatist who has more to gain from cooperating with the rest of the EU than in picking fights with his new partners. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats reached a coalition agreement five days after an inconclusive election, ending 13 years of rule by the centre-left Labour Party under Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown. The coalition will have to tackle a record budget deficit running at more than 11 percent of national output. European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said last week that dealing with the deficit should be the new government's priority. "The first thing for the new government to do is to agree on a convincing, ambitious programme of fiscal consolidation in order to start to reduce the very high deficit and stabilise the high debt level of the UK," Rehn said. | 0 |
Edison Research, which made the call, also projected that North Carolina, the only other battleground state with an outstanding vote count, would go to Trump, finalising the electoral vote tally at 306 for Biden to 232 for Trump. The numbers gave Biden, a Democrat, a resounding victory over Trump in the Electoral College, equal to the 306 votes Trump, a Republican, won to defeat Hillary Clinton, a 2016 victory that Trump called a "landslide." While Trump had yet to concede, Biden officials reiterated they were moving ahead with transition efforts regardless. Although the national popular vote does not determine the election outcome, Biden was ahead by more than 5.3 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points. His share of the popular vote, at 50.8%, was slightly higher than Ronald Reagan's share of the vote in 1980 when he defeated Jimmy Carter. Trump, a Republican, has claimed without evidence that he was cheated by widespread election fraud and has refused to concede. State election officials report no serious irregularities, and several of his legal challenges have failed in court. To win a second term, Trump would need to overturn Biden's lead in at least three states, but he has so far failed to produce evidence that he could do so in any of them. States face a Dec. 8 "safe harbor" deadline to certify their elections and choose electors for the Electoral College, which will officially select the new president on Dec. 14. A Michigan state court rejected on Friday a request by Trump to block the certification of votes in Detroit, which went heavily in favor of Biden. And lawyers for Trump's campaign dropped a lawsuit in Arizona after the final vote count rendered it moot. Federal election security officials have found no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, "or was in any way compromised," two security groups said in a statement released on Thursday by the lead US cybersecurity agency. Trump was set on Friday afternoon to make his first public remarks since Biden was projected as the election's winner on Nov. 7. The White House said he would address the nation on the efforts by the government and drugmakers to develop effective treatments for the coronavirus pandemic. TRANSITION TALK Biden officials said on Friday they would press forward with the transition, identifying legislative priorities, reviewing federal agency policies and preparing to fill thousands of jobs in the new administration. "We're charging ahead with the transition," Jen Psaki, a senior adviser to Biden's transition team, said on a conference call on Friday, while stressing that Biden still needs "real-time information" from the Trump administration to deal with the resurgent pandemic and national security threats. Psaki urged Trump's White House to allow Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to receive daily intelligence briefings on potential threats around the world. “With every day that passes on, it becomes more concerning that our national security team and the president-elect and the vice president-elect don't have access to those threat assessments, intelligence briefings, real-time information about our engagements around the world," Psaki said. "Because, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know." Biden will be briefed by his own group of national-security experts next week, she said. He met with transition advisers again on Friday at his Delaware beach house where he is mapping out his approach to the pandemic and prepares to name his top appointees, including Cabinet members. Trump's refusal to accept defeat has stalled the official transition. The federal agency that releases funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognise Biden's victory, denying him access to federal office space and resources. Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, a Trump confidant, said he had spoken to the president by phone on Friday and that Trump had given him the impression that he would follow the US Constitution and surrender his office after every vote was counted. "He told me he's a realist. He told me he would do the right thing," Rivera said in an interview with Fox. "I got no impression that he was plotting the overthrow of the elected government. He just wants a fair fight." | 1 |
The US' National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said that Willa weakened slightly on Monday afternoon, it was still expected to be a dangerous major hurricane when it slams into Mexico's central Pacific coast "over or very near" Islas Marias on Tuesday morning, CNN reported. Willa's maximum sustained winds ticked down from 160 mph to 145 mph, bringing the hurricane down from Category 5 strength to Category 4. Its current intensity is about the same as Hurricane Michael's when it made landfall in Florida's Panhandle two weeks ago. Willa became a tropical storm on Saturday morning and was a Category 5 hurricane in less than two days. As of Monday morning, Willa had swelled by 80 mph in just 24 hours. Storm surge accompanied by "large and destructive waves" are forecast along portions of Mexico's central and southwestern coast, the NHC said. Dangerous surf and riptides were expected along the southern coast of Baja California late Monday. Rainfall ranging from six to 12 inches could spawn life-threatening landslides and flash flooding in portions of the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa, CNN quoted the NHC as saying. There were 10 major hurricanes this year, including Willa, which ties 1992 as the most major hurricanes seen in the northeast Pacific in one year, CNN said. Increasing numbers of major hurricanes, along with a greater propensity of storms to undergo "rapid intensification" are expected consequences of warmer ocean waters resulting from climate change. The ocean waters off the western coast of Mexico are running 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit above average for late October. | 0 |
"The Embassy believes Tarique is guilty of egregious political corruption that has had a serious adverse effect on US national interests mentioned in Section 4 of the proclamation, namely the stability of democratic institutions and US foreign assistance goals," the cable marked 'confidential' said.The Embassy however made it clear they did not wish to place a similar ban on Tarique Rahman's wife, Dr Zubaida Rahman, their daughter, Zaima, or Tarique's mother Khaleda Zia, a former Prime Minister of Bangladesh.The cable provided a detailed background to justify what it was recommending."Bangladesh is a developing nation in which systemic corruption has permeated all aspects of public life. Through 2006, the nation topped Transparency International's ranking of the world's most corrupt governments four years in a row."The current Caretaker Government, which assumed power in January 2007 after months of political unrest, pledged to root out corruption and rid the nation of the kleptocratic scourge that has so long plagued this poverty-stricken nation. In fact, corruption has lowered Bangladesh's growth rate by two percent per year, according to experts."Cynicism about the Government's willingness or ability to hold corrupt leaders accountable remains high. Concerns about corruption continue to create a vacuum of trust that limits private sector investment and undermines public confidence in a democratic future."The cable described Tarique Rahman as "the notorious and widely feared son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia”.It talks of his release on bail and departure from Bangladesh to seek medical treatment in the UK on September 11, 2008.And then what the cable said about Tarique was a damning indictment of the former prime minister's son."Notorious for flagrantly and frequently demanding bribes in connection with government procurement actions and appointments to political office, Tarique is a symbol of kleptocratic government and violent politics in Bangladesh."His release occurred despite multiple pending cases against him on charges of, inter alia, corruption, extortion, bribery, embezzlement and tax evasion. With deep political ties that reach the highest court in the land, Tarique managed to manipulate the judicial process and overcome a concerted effort by the Caretaker Government to block his bail."We believe Tarique has several passports, including a new one in which the UK issued him a visa in September. Another passport contains a five year multiple-entry B1/B2 visa (issued May 11, 2005). We suspect that passport is being held by the government. "Tarique reportedly has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit wealth. There are multiple extortion cases pending against him, founded on the testimony of numerous prominent business owners who he victimized and exploited."In one case, Tarique allegedly threatened Al Amin Construction owner Amin Ahmed with closure of the company unless he received a payment of 150,000 USD. Other local business leaders, including Mohammad Aftab Uddin Khan of Reza Construction, Ltd, Mir Zahir Hossain of Mir Akhter Hossain Ltd., and Harun Ferdousi have each filed accusations detailing a systematic pattern of extortion on a multi-million dollar scale. The ACC has also filed charges of concealing ill-gotten wealth, and the National Board of Revenue has brought tax evasion charges against Tarique."Tarique's corrupt activities were not limited to extortion of local companies. The ACC has also uncovered evidence in several bribery cases involving both foreign and local firms and individuals:A. Siemens: According to a witness who funneled bribes from Siemens to Tarique and his brother Koko, Tarique received a bribe of approximately two percent on all Siemens deals in Bangladesh (paid in US dollars). This case is currently being pursued by DOJ Asset Forfeiture (POC: Deputy Chief Linda Samuels) and by the FBI (POC: Debra Laprevotte).B. Harbin Company: ACC sources report that the Harbin Company, a Chinese construction company, paid 750,000 USD to Tarique to open a plant. According to the ACC, one of Tarique's cronies received the bribe and transported it to Singapore for deposit with Citibank.C. Monem Construction: An ACC investigator advised Embassy officials that Monem Construction paid a bribe worth 450,000 USD to Tarique to secure contracts.D. Kabir Murder Case: The ACC has evidence that Tarique accepted a 210 million taka (3.1 million USD) bribe to thwart the prosecution of a murder case against Sanvir Sobhan. Sanvir is the son of the chairman of the Bashundura Group, one of the nation's most prominent industrial conglomerates. Sanvir was accused in the killing of Humayun Kabir, a Bashundura Group director. An investigation by the ACC confirmed Tarique had solicited the payment, promising to clear Sanvir of all charges."Beyond bribery and extortion, the ACC reports Tarique also became involved in an elaborate and lucrative embezzlement scheme. With the help of several accomplices, Tarique succeeded in looting 20 million taka (300,000 USD) from the Zia Orphanage Trust fund. According to an ACC source, Tarique, who is a co-signer on the trust fund account, used funds from the trust for a land purchase in his hometown. He also provided signed checks drawn from the orphanage fund accounts to BNP party members for their 2006 election campaigns.
File Photo
File Photo "Tarique's corrupt practices have had deleterious effects on the US interests specified in the Proclamation. His antics have weakened public confidence in government and eroded the stability of democratic institutions. Tarique's well-established reputation for flouting the rule of law directly threatens US financial assistance goals directed toward reforming legal codes, strengthening good governance and halting judicial abuses."The bribery, embezzlement, and culture of corruption that Tarique has helped create and maintain in Bangladesh has directly and irreparably undermined US businesses, resulting in many lost opportunities. His theft of millions of dollars in public money has undermined political stability in this moderate, Muslim-majority nation and subverted US attempts to foster a stable democratic government, a key objective in this strategically important region."Tarique's flagrant corruption has also seriously threatened specific US Mission goals. Embassy Dhaka has three key priorities for Bangladesh: democratization, development, and denial of space to terrorists. Tarique's audaciously corrupt activities jeopardize all three. His history of embezzlement, extortion, and interference in the judicial process undermines the rule of law and threatens the US goal of a stable, democratic Bangladesh."The climate of corrupt business practices and bribe solicitation that Tarique fostered derailed US efforts to promote economic development by discouraging much needed foreign investment and complicating the international operations of US companies."Finally, his flagrant disregard for the rule of law has provided potent ground for terrorists to gain a foothold in Bangladesh while also exacerbating poverty and weakening democratic institutions. In short, much of what is wrong in Bangladesh can be blamed on Tarique and his cronies."Applying a 212(f) finding to Tarique Rahman supports the US's strong stand against corruption in Bangladesh. Embassy recommends that Tarique Rahman be found subject to Presidential Proclamation 7750 for participating in public official corruption as defined by Section 1, Paragraph (c) of the Proclamation," is how the cable ends.Six years later, much has evidently changed. | 5 |
Global warming could wipe out large areas of glaciers in the Himalayas and surrounding high-altitude regions, threatening dire consequences for China and South Asia, climate scientists said in Beijing on Monday. Rising average temperatures mean that about one-quarter of the glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could melt, Qin Dahe, a senior Chinese climate expert, told a news conference. He and other experts said the rapid disappearance of glaciers could affect people across Asia. They spoke at a news conference to explain the impact of global warming forecasts issued by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month. "Glaciers are vital to the national economy and peoples' livelihoods," Qin said, explaining that they were a major source of water and had a profound impact on other climate patterns. Glaciers across the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are a major source of water for large rivers, such as the Yangtze in China, the Mekong in Indochina and the Ganges in India. A top Indian climate expert said South Asia would also be threatened if glacier-fed rivers dry up. "That is the region that is really the granary of South Asia," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, referring to the northern part of the subcontinent that is fed by waters from the mountains. He also said "we will have to use water far more efficiently than we have in the past". The panel's report predicts that warmer average global temperatures fuelled by greenhouse gases will lead to more hunger in Africa, melting of Himalayan glaciers, more heatwaves in the United States and damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In recent days, China has released its own national assessment of climate change, which says that unless steps are taken, water scarcity and increasingly extreme weather could reduce nationwide crop production by up to 10 percent by 2030. Fast-industrialising China could overtake the United States as the world's top emitter of human-generated greenhouse gases as early as this year, and Beijing faces rising international demands to accept mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions from factories, fields and vehicles. But China says accepting emissions limits would be unfair and economically dangerous, and the burden of reducing greenhouse gases should fall on wealthy countries that have contributed most to the problem. | 0 |
The British government's public consultation last year on the need for new nuclear power plants to tackle climate change and bridge the looming energy gap was flawed and misleading, a group of academics said on Friday. The government, which has said repeatedly new nuclear power stations are needed, was forced by a legal ruling last February to undertake the consultation which ended in October. It is expected early next week to give the green light to a new generation of nuclear power plants to replace the ageing nuclear stations due to close by 2035 which currently supply nearly 20 percent of the country's electricity. "The government was in error in asking the public for a decision 'in principle', when the core 'what if' issues were not consulted on in any meaningful way, or resolved in practice," the academics concluded in an 80-page report. "These issues include nuclear fuel supply and manufacture, vulnerability to attack, security and nuclear proliferation, radiation waste, radiation risk and health effects, reactor decommissioning, reactor design and siting," they added. Environmentalists, who could have given a balancing view, pulled out of the public consultations in September, saying the process was clearly intended to produce a positive outcome. Greenpeace, which took up the legal case in February, said its lawyers would study the government's decision in detail and it reserved the right to go back to court. "We believe we have a very strong case but will not be bounced into taking a decision," Greenpeace campaigner Ben Ayliffe told Reuters. The main issue for the group of academics from universities including Oxford, Warwick, Sussex, Newcastle, Cardiff and Manchester is disposal of waste from the new nuclear plants. "The government consultation documents said this issue had been resolved. That is simply not true," said Paul Dorfman of Warwick University, one of the report's authors. CoRWM, the independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, said in 2006 nuclear waste, which remains toxic for centuries, should be kept forever in a specially built safe storage facility deep under ground. But while the government pointed to this as the solution to waste from any new plants, CoRWM said it only meant this solution to apply to waste from Britain's old military nuclear program dating back to the 1950s, so called legacy waste. The academics also accused the government of glossing over security considerations, the true costs of nuclear and alternative renewable energy sources, the availability of uranium fuel and the siting of new nuclear plants given sea level rises due to global warming. Underlying the objections is the fact that the government green light is not actually legally necessary -- there is no legal barrier to any utility now opting to build a nuclear plant, although there is a lot of planning red tape. "Although the government has said no public money will be involved in any new nuclear plants, a positive declaration must indicate government commitment in the final event and that can only mean taxpayers' money," said Dorfman. The report noted that a new nuclear plant being built in Finland was not only two years behind schedule but already 50 percent over budget, a fate it suggested would not be escaped by new plants in Britain to the detriment of alternatives. | 0 |
India recorded its warmest March in over a
century, with the maximum temperature across the country reaching 33.1 degrees
Celsius, nearly 1.86 degrees above normal, according to the India
Meteorological Department. In a meeting with federal officials on
Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told authorities to take measures to
avoid deaths due to heat waves and fire incidents, according to a statement
issued by his office. "He stressed that in view of the
rising temperatures, regular hospital fire safety audits need to be done,"
the statement said. Over two dozen people have died in India
from exposure to extreme heat since late March, as temperatures in many parts
of the north, west and the east surged past 40C. Scientists have linked the early onset of
an intense summer to climate change, and say more than a billion people in
India and neighbouring Pakistan were in some way vulnerable to the extreme
heat. With monsoon rains likely to arrive within
weeks, Modi also told authorities to create "Flood Preparedness
Plans" and make arrangements for monitoring the quality of drinking water. | 0 |
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