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In the political context of 2016-20, this belief was overstated. Yes, Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016 with a minority of the popular vote. But more Americans voted for Republican congressional candidates than Democratic congressional candidates, and more Americans voted for right-of-centre candidates for president — including the Libertarian vote — than voted for Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In strictly majoritarian terms, liberalism deserved to lose in 2016, even if Trump did not necessarily deserve to win. And Republican structural advantages, while real, did not then prevent Democrats from reclaiming the House of Representatives in 2018 and the presidency in 2020 and Senate in 2021. These victories extended the pattern of 21st century American politics, which has featured significant swings every few cycles, not the entrenchment of either party’s power. The political landscape after 2024, however, might look more like liberalism’s depictions of its Trump-era plight. According to calculations by liberalism’s Cassandra, David Shor, the convergence of an unfavourable Senate map for Democrats with their preexisting Electoral College and Senate disadvantages could easily produce a scenario where the party wins 50% of the congressional popular vote, 51% of the presidential vote — and ends up losing the White House and staring down a nearly filibuster-proof Republican advantage in the Senate. That’s a scenario for liberal horror, but it’s not one that conservatives should welcome either. In recent years, as their advantages in both institutions have increased, conservatives have defended institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College with variations of the argument that the United States is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy. These arguments carry less weight, however, the more consistently undemocratic the system’s overall results become. (They would fall apart completely in the scenario sought by Trump and some of his allies after the 2020 election, where state legislatures simply substitute their preferences for the voters in their states.) The Electoral College’s legitimacy can stand up if an occasional 49%-47% popular vote result goes the other way; likewise the Senate’s legitimacy if it tilts a bit toward one party but changes hands consistently. But a scenario where one party has sustained governing power while lacking majoritarian support is a recipe for delegitimisation and reasonable disillusionment, which no clever conservative column about the constitutional significance of state sovereignty would adequately address. From the Republican Party’s perspective, the best way to avoid this future — where the nature of conservative victories undercuts the perceived legitimacy of conservative governance — is to stop being content with the advantages granted by the system and try harder to win majorities outright. You can’t expect a political party to simply cede its advantages: There will never be a bipartisan constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate, on any timeline you care to imagine. But you can expect a political party to show a little more electoral ambition than the GOP has done of late — to seek to win more elections the way that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won them, rather than being content to keep it close and put their hopes in lucky breaks. Especially in the current climate, which looks dire for the Democrats, the Republicans have an opportunity to make the Electoral College complaint moot, for a time at least, by simply taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates and winning majorities outright. That means rejecting the politics of voter-fraud paranoia — as, hopefully, Republican primary voters will do by choosing Brian Kemp over David Perdue in the Georgia gubernatorial primary. It means rejecting the attempts to return to the libertarian “makers versus takers” politics of Tea Party era, currently manifested in Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s recent manifesto suggesting tax increases for the working class — basically the right-wing equivalent of “defund the police” in terms of its political toxicity. And it means — and I fear this is beyond the GOP’s capacities — nominating someone other than Trump in 2024. A Republican Party that managed to win popular majorities might still see its Senate or Electoral College majorities magnified by its structural advantages. But such magnification is a normal feature of many democratic systems, not just our own. It’s very different from losing the popular vote consistently and yet being handed power anyway. As for what the Democrats should do about their disadvantages — well, that’s a longer discussion, but two quick points for now. First, to the extent the party wants to focus on structural answers to its structural challenges, it needs clarity about what kind of electoral reforms would actually accomplish something. That’s been lacking in the Biden era, where liberal reformers wasted considerable time and energy on voting bills that didn’t pass and also weren’t likely to help the party much had they been actually pushed through. A different reform idea, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, wouldn’t have happened in this period either, but it’s much more responsive to the actual challenges confronting Democrats in the Senate. So if you’re a liberal activist or a legislator planning for the next brief window when your party holds power, pushing for an expanded Senate seems like a more reasonable long ball to try to train your team to throw. Second, to the extent that there’s a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, it probably requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two kinds of voters — culturally conservative Latinos and working-class whites — who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have drifted rightward since. That faction would have two missions: To hew to a poll-tested agenda on economic policy (not just the business-friendly agenda supported by many centrist Democrats) and to constantly find ways to distinguish itself from organised progressivism — the foundations, the activists, the academics — on cultural and social issues. And crucially, not in the tactical style favoured by analysts like Shor, but in the language of principle: Rightward-drifting voters would need to know that this faction actually believes in its own moderation, its own attacks on progressive shibboleths and that its members will remain a thorn in progressivism’s side even once they reach Washington. Right now the Democrats have scattered politicians, from West Virginia to New York City, who somewhat fit this mould. But they don’t have an agenda for them to coalesce around, a group of donors ready to fund them, a set of intellectuals ready to embrace them as their own. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and necessity may impose itself upon the Democratic Party soon enough. ©2022 The New York Times Company

That scene is gone from the final version of the sci-fi comedy, starring Adam Sandler and released by Sony Pictures Entertainment this week in the United States. The aliens strike iconic sites elsewhere, smashing the Taj Mahal in India, the Washington Monument and parts of Manhattan. Sony executives spared the Great Wall because they were anxious to get the movie approved for release in China, a review of internal Sony Pictures emails shows. It is just one of a series of changes aimed at stripping the movie of content that, Sony managers feared, Chinese authorities might have construed as casting their country in a negative light. Along with the Great Wall scene, out went a scene in which China was mentioned as a potential culprit behind an attack, as well as a reference to a “Communist-conspiracy brother” hacking a mail server – all to increase the chances of getting “Pixels” access to the world’s second-biggest box office. “Even though breaking a hole on the Great Wall may not be a problem as long as it is part of a worldwide phenomenon, it is actually unnecessary because it will not benefit the China release at all. I would then, recommend not to do it,” Li Chow, chief representative of Sony Pictures in China, wrote in a December 2013 email to senior Sony executives. Li’s message is one of tens of thousands of confidential Sony emails and documents that were hacked and publicly released late last year. The US government blamed North Korea for the breach. In April, WikiLeaks published the trove of emails, memos and presentations from the Sony hack in an online searchable archive. “We are not going to comment on stolen emails or internal discussions about specific content decisions,” said a spokesman for Sony Pictures, a unit of Tokyo-based Sony Corp. “There are myriad factors that go into determining what is best for a film’s release, and creating content that has wide global appeal without compromising creative integrity is top among them.” Chinese government and film-industry officials didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story. A palatable 'Robocop' “Pixels” wasn’t the only Sony movie in which the China content was carefully scrutinised. The emails reveal how studio executives discussed ways to make other productions, including the 2014 remake of “RoboCop,” more palatable to Chinese authorities.  In a 2013 email about “RoboCop,” the senior vice president at Sony Pictures Releasing International at the time, Steve Bruno, proposed relocating a multinational weapons conglomerate from China. His solution: Put it in a Southeast Asian country like Vietnam or Cambodia. Ultimately, that change wasn’t made, a viewing of the movie shows. Bruno has since left Sony. The Sony emails provide a behind-the-scenes picture of the extent to which one of the world’s leading movie studios exercised self-censorship as its executives tried to anticipate how authorities in Beijing might react to their productions. The internal message traffic also illustrates the deepening dependence of Hollywood on audiences in China, where box office receipts jumped by almost a third last year to $4.8 billion, as revenues in the United States and Canada shrank. Other studios have made changes to movies in a bid to get them approved by Beijing, altering the version that is screened in China. A scene showing a Chinese doctor who helps the main character in “Iron Man 3,” for example, was lengthened in the Chinese version and included popular Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, a comparison of the Chinese and international versions shows. Produced by Marvel Studios, “Iron Man 3” was the second top grossing movie in China in 2013. Marvel declined to comment. The logic of self-censorship In the case of “Pixels,” in which the aliens attack Earth in the form of popular video game characters, the Sony emails point to the creation of a single version for all audiences – a China-friendly one. The logic behind Sony’s thinking was explained by Steven O’Dell, president of Sony Pictures Releasing International, in a September 12, 2013 email about “RoboCop.” “Changing the China elements to another country should be a relatively easy fix,” O’Dell wrote. “There is only downside to leaving the film as it is. Recommendation is to change all versions as if we only change the China version, we set ourselves up for the press to call us out for this when bloggers invariably compare the versions and realize we changed the China setting just to pacify that market.” Efforts by the US motion-picture industry to woo China come as the ruling Communist Party under President Xi Jinping is engaged in the biggest crackdown on civil society in more than two decades. About a dozen human rights lawyers were taken into police custody this month, and hundreds of dissidents have been detained since Xi took power in late 2012. As China rises, its efforts to contain civil liberties at home are radiating outward. The removal of scenes from “Pixels” thought to be offensive to Beijing shows how global audiences are effectively being subjected to standards set by China, whose government rejects the kinds of freedoms that have allowed Hollywood to flourish. “I think the studios have grown pretty savvy,” said Peter Shiao, founder and CEO of Orb Media Group, an independent film studio focused on Hollywood-Chinese co-productions. “For a type of movie, particularly the global blockbusters, they are not going to go and make something that the Chinese would reject for social or political reasons. That is already a truism.” Sony’s emails were hacked ahead of the release of “The Interview,” a comedy depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. When Sony halted the film’s release in response to threats made against movie theatres, US President Barack Obama warned of the dangers of self-censorship. (A Sony spokesman said the studio cancelled the theatrical release “because theatre owners refused to show it.”) Ultimately, Sony released the movie. “If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like, or news reports that they don’t like,” Obama said at his year-end White House press briefing. “Or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about.” Fast & furious growth For Hollywood studios, the allure of the Chinese box office has become increasingly difficult to resist. While box office receipts in the United States and Canada combined fell five percent last year to $10.4 billion compared with 2013, box office receipts in China jumped 34 percent to $4.8 billion in the same period, according to the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. China is on course to set a new record this year: Box office receipts were $3.3 billion in the first half of 2015, China’s state-run media reported.  Action movie “Fast & Furious 7” was the best ticket seller in China by early June 2015, grossing $383 million – higher than the $351 million in the United States and Canada combined. It was followed by “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Jurassic World.” Last November, the vice president of the China Film Producers’ Association, Wang Fenglin, said the Chinese film market would overtake the United States to become the largest in the world within three years. The importance of the China market appears to have informed decisions taken by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc in its 2012 remake of the action movie “Red Dawn”. MGM changed the nationality of the soldiers who invade the United States from Chinese to North Korean in post-production, according to Red Dawn producer Tripp Vinson. MGM did not respond to requests for comment. Apparatus of control To get on the circuit in China, a movie must win the approval of the Film Bureau, which is headed by Zhang Hongsen, a domestic television screenwriter and senior Communist Party member. “Foreign films come to China one after another like aircraft carriers; we are facing great pressure and challenges,” Zhang said last year. “We must make the Chinese film industry bigger and stronger.” The Film Bureau is part of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), which reports directly to China’s cabinet, the State Council. The administration controls state-owned enterprises in the communications field, including China Central Television and China Radio International. Censorship guidelines are included in a 2001 order issued by the State Council. The order bans content that endangers the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, harms national honour and disrupts social stability. Harming public morality and national traditions is forbidden. SAPPRFT guidelines also include bans on material seen as “disparaging of the government” and political figures. The broadening scope of these guidelines can be seen in an email sent last November by Sanford Panitch, who has since joined Sony as President of International Film and Television, to Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton. The email outlines new measures that were being implemented by SAPPRFT officials: “What is different is now they are clearly making an attempt to try to address other areas not been specified before, decadence, fortune telling, hunting, and most dramatically, sexuality,” Panitch wrote. Studios also have to work with China Film Group Corp, a state-owned conglomerate that imports and distributes foreign movies. In some cases China Film also acts as an investor. In the emails, Sony executives discussed a co-financing arrangement whereby China Film will cover 10 percent of the budget of “Pixels”. China Film is run by La Peikang, a Communist Party member and the former deputy head of the Film Bureau. 'Too much money on the line' A total of 34 foreign films are allowed into China each year under a revenue-sharing model that gives 25 percent of box office receipts to foreign movie studios. Fourteen of those films must be in “high-tech” formats such as 3D or IMAX. The censorship process in China can be unpredictable, the Sony emails show. In early 2014, the studio was faced with a demand to remove for Chinese audiences a key but disturbing scene from “RoboCop,” the story of a part-man, part-machine police officer. “Censorship really hassling us on Robocop…trying to cut out the best and most vital scene where they open up his suit and expose what is left of him as a person,” reads a January 28, 2014 email written by international executive Steven O’Dell. “Hope to get through it with only shortening up the scene a bit. Don’t think we can make a stand on it either way, too much money on the line, cross fingers we don’t have to cut the scene out.” The political climate under President Xi may also be playing a role, one email indicates. “As to greater flexibility, I am not so sure about that,” Sony China executive Li Chow wrote in early 2014, commenting on a media report that Beijing was mulling an increase in its foreign film quota. “The present government seems more conservative in all aspects and this is reflected by the repeated cuts to Robocop. Lately, members of the censorship board seem uncertain, fearful and overly careful.” In the messages in which “Pixels” is discussed, Sony executives grapple with how to gauge the sensitivities of the Chinese authorities. In a November 1, 2013 email, Li Chow suggested making a number of changes to the script, including the scene in which a hole is smashed in the Great Wall. “This is fine as long as this is shown as part of a big scale world-wide destruction, meaning that it would be good to show several recognisable historical sites in different parts of the world being destroyed,” she wrote. She also advised altering a scene in which the President of the United States, an ambassador and the head of the CIA speculate that China could be behind an attack using an unknown technology. In the final version, which moviegoers are now getting to see, the officials speculate that Russia, Iran or Google could be to blame. “China can be mentioned alongside other super powers but they may not like ‘Russia and China don’t have this kind of technology’,” Li wrote in the email. “And in view of recent news on China hacking into government servers, they may object to ‘a communist-conspiracy brother hacked into the mail server...’” 'The unwritten rule' In mid-December 2013, Li suggested doing away with the Great Wall scene altogether, saying it was “unnecessary.” Around the same time, the emails show Sony executives also discussed relocating a car-chase scene involving the video-game character Pac-Man from Tokyo to Shanghai, and whether that might help with the release date in China. Li Chow advised against the change. “As to relocating the Pac-Man action from Tokyo to Shanghai, this is not a good idea because it will involve destruction all over the city and may likely cause some sensitivity,” she wrote in a December 18, 2013 email. “In other words, it is rather hard to say whether it would be a problem because the unwritten rule is that it is acceptable if there is no real intention in destroying a certain building or street and if it is just collateral damage. But where would you draw the line?” Ultimately, all references to China in the movie were scrubbed. That decision appears to have been made in early 2014. “It looks like Doug is going to heed Li’s advice and get all China references out of Pixels (including not using the Great Wall as one of the set pieces),” international executive O’Dell wrote, referring to then-Columbia Pictures President Doug Belgrad. The cost of not winning approval to distribute a movie in China is also evident in the Sony emails. In February 2014, a Sony marketing executive circulated an email: “Please note that CAPTAIN PHILLIPS will not be released theatrically in China” – a reference to the movie in which Tom Hanks stars as Captain Richard Phillips, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009.  Budget discussions about “Captain Phillips,” contained in the emails, show Sony executives had expected to earn $120 million globally from the movie, but that changed when they didn’t get approval for it to be screened in China. “We are short $9M and we won’t be getting into China,” emailed notes from a conference call read. “We need to grab every dollar we can to meet our objectives. It is incumbent on all of us to try to figure out how we can get more money from this picture.” In a December 2013 email, Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony Pictures, had speculated that “Captain Phillips” was unlikely to be approved by China’s censors. In the film, the US military rescues the ship’s captain. That plot element, Bruer noted, might make Chinese officials squirm. “The reality of the situation is that China will probably never clear the film for censorship,” wrote Bruer. “Reasons being the big Military machine of the US saving one US citizen. China would never do the same and in no way would want to promote this idea. Also just the political tone of the film is something that they would not feel comfortable with.” Beijing shows every sign of being comfortable with “Pixels”. This week, Sony had some good news: “Pixels” has been approved for release in China. It opens there on September 15.

US Republican White House contenders offered strong support for the military mission in Iraq but voiced qualms about the Bush administration's management of the war during a quiet first debate on Thursday. The Republican debate, staged at the California presidential library of conservative Republican hero Ronald Reagan, produced few direct confrontations or memorable moments but exposed some differences among the 10 candidates on social issues like abortion. Most of the 2008 candidates called for victory in Iraq one week after Democratic presidential candidates endorsed a quick end to the war during their first debate. "We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos, there will be genocide, and they will follow us home," said Arizona Sen John McCain, who has led the charge in support of the war and backs President George W Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq. Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and the leader of the Republican pack in national polls, said: "We should never retreat in the face of terrorism. Terrible mistake." But some candidates raised doubts about the management of the war by Bush and his administration. McCain said the war was "badly managed for four years." "Clearly there was a real error in judgment, and that primarily had to do with listening to a lot of folks who were civilians in suits and silk ties and not listening enough to the generals," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. The debate in California occurred in a dour political climate for Republicans six months after the party was tossed from power in Congress in November's elections. Polls show broad public dissatisfaction with Bush, the Iraq war and Republicans in general 18 months before the November 2008 election for the presidency, forcing the candidates to walk a fine line when deciding whether to embrace Bush or his policies. Former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney, whose strong fund-raising and establishment support have elevated him into the race's top tier even though he lingers in single digits in national polls, said candidates must ignore the polls when it comes to the war. "I want to get our troops home as soon as I possibly can. But, at the same time, I recognise we don't want to bring them out in such a precipitous way that we cause a circumstance that would require us to come back," Romney said. Conservatives have grumbled about the Republican presidential field, particularly Giuliani for his stances in support of gay rights and abortion rights and Romney for changing his stance on those issues. Romney defended his switch on abortion rights as an honest change of opinion. "I changed my mind," he said. Most of the candidates said they supported repealing the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. Giuliani also said he would be "OK" with it, but that abortion should be an issue left to the states. Virginia Gov James Gilmore said he supported the right to abortion in the first eight to 12 weeks of pregnancy but had taken other steps to limit abortion when he was governor. The debate's location at the Reagan library generated an explosion of tributes to the former president and conservative icon, with candidates lining up to praise Reagan's leadership and conservative principles. Former first lady Nancy Reagan, along with California Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger, watched the debate from the front row. But Reagan's presence did not convince many of the candidates to agree with her support for federal funding for stem cell research. Also participating were Kansas Sen Sam Brownback, Reps Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Ron Paul of Texas, and Duncan Hunter of California, and former Gov Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin.

Dhaka, Feb 12 (bdnews24.com)--Chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed has requested G8 leaders to help least developed countries overcome tariff and non-tariff barriers in developed markets. Fakhruddin asked for market access of LDC products "without discrimination". Foreign adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury Tuesday said that the chief adviser had written separate letters to the heads of the G8 nations on behalf of the WTO LDCs Consultative Group of which Bangladesh is the chair. "The chief adviser asked for market access benefits for all products from all LDCs without discrimination," Iftekhar said.

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara has urged his team to show "mental strength and fortitude" at the Twenty20 World Cup after the trauma of Lahore this year when the team bus was attacked by armed militants. "Since Lahore we have accepted there is never a 100 percent guarantee -- that's the way life is," Sangakkara told reporters after his team's warmup match against Bangladesh on Tuesday. "We've got to have the mental strength and fortitude to get on with our business of playing cricket. "With all teams in the current world climate, not just us, security is going to be an issue, in some countries more so than others maybe. But still worldwide there is a threat so our mental comfort depends on certain things being put in place for us and so far we have been very satisfied." Six members of the Sri Lanka team, including Sangakkara, were wounded after gunmen shot at their team bus en route to the Gaddafi Stadium for the second test against Pakistan in March. Six Pakistani policemen and the driver of the bus carrying the match officials were killed. The Sri Lanka team are liaising daily with a national police intelligence cell set up to oversee security for the World Cup in England, which starts on Friday. HEIGHTENED SECURITY World Twenty20 tournament director and former South Africa player Steve Elworthy, 44, held the same role at the 2007 World Twenty20 in South Africa. He said security had become much tighter since Lahore. "The situation has changed and it's now a completely different landscape to then," Elworthy told Reuters. "Without a shadow of a doubt it opened our eyes even more to the hazards facing cricketers and officials. "Our security plan for the event was already at an advanced stage and in place, but something like that made us go back and recheck everything again and do a strategy review." Tournament organisers, as well as the International Cricket Council (ICC), believe they have done as much as they can to keep the players safe. All teams get police convoys to and from matches and when travelling between venues, while there are also dedicated security staff for each side. Elworthy said he could not reveal the exact details of team security. The man heading the event's security is the former chief constable of Devon and Cornwall in south-west England, John Evans, who also advised the Football Association (FA) on security matters. The England team's security head Reg Dickason is also involved, as are the ICC's own independent security consultants. Despite the added attention, Sangakkara said the increased security measures had not distracted his side from cricket. "It feels like just another tournament; they have done a good job at keeping everything low key," Sangakkara said. "We have the opportunity to just concentrate on cricket and that's very nice."

She defended Bangladesh’s human rights record in Geneva at the Human Rights Council’s second Universal Periodic Review of the member states, according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs media release.Moni said her government attached “importance to sensitising the agencies about their human rights obligations in the line of duty”.The minister responded for three and half an hours to questions from different states concerning Bangladesh’s recent ‘achievements and challenges’ in promoting and protecting human rights.She emphasised “upholding the rule of law in every sphere of society and safeguarding the rights of the vulnerable and marginalised segments of the population”.The minister reiterated the government’s ‘unequivocal’ commitment to show ‘zero tolerance’ to attacks against minorities that took place in Ramu, Cox’s Bazar last year and against the Hindu communities during the recent political violence.The foreign ministry says this is the first time Bangladesh participated with a delegation comprising eminent personalities from the religious and ethnic minority groups in the review process.Principal of Seema Bihar Ramu Mohathero Seemath Satyapriyo, Bangladesh Hindu Bouddho Chirstian Oikyo Parishod’s Secretary General Rana Dasgupta, and Buddhist Religious Welfare Trust’s Trustee Gyanendriya Chakma are in the delegation longside senior government officials.The media release said 98 countries spoke during Bangladesh’s session and “commended the significant strides made in ensuring citizens’ civil, political, economic and social rights”.Members of the Human Rights Council have to undergo a review process of their overall human rights situation every four years.The minister made a ‘comprehensive’ presentation on her government’s initiatives to improve human rights situation.She first faced such review in Feb 2009, a month after assuming power.Referring to that session, she said she had then made a commitment that “Bangladesh would pursue the path of inclusion and that change would come”.After four years, she said her government made “a significant qualitative change in the normative and institutional framework in the country’s human rights regime”.She touched upon ‘all the major legislative and policy initiatives’ taken by the current government to ensure human rights in Bangladesh.The media release said during question-answer session “there seemed to be considerable degree of interest in Bangladesh’s success in combating poverty, reducing child mortality, attaining food security, facing climate change impacts and promoting migrant’s well-being and the rights of persons with disabilities”.She sought international community’s support ‘to strengthening its democratic, secular, inclusive and pluralistic socio-political fabric in Bangladesh’.The UN’s universal periodic review is a process which involves a review of the human rights records of all UN member states.The Bangladesh government submitted its report before the UN in January while National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and civil society groups have presented two separate reports for the state-driven process under the auspices of the Human Rights Council.The NHRC Chairman Mizanur Rahman was present during the meeting.The review provides the opportunity for each state to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfill their human rights obligations.

‘9/12’ It’s not easy to find something new to say about Sept 11, which is what makes this provocative and creatively reported series from Dan Taberski (“Missing Richard Simmons,” “Running from Cops”) such a striking listening experience. The show begins with a crew of reality show contestants who set sail on a six-week, 18th century-themed voyage in August 2001. The sailors’ relative inability to engage with the wider world initially prevented them from forming hard impressions of the attacks, a state of innocence that Taberski sets out to re-create. Backed by a stunning score from jazz composer Daniel Herskedal, “9/12” uses little-memorialized stories from the “war on terror” years (a Pakistani grocery store owner in New York who advocates for his detained and desperate neighbors; the staff of The Onion versus a climate of anti-humor) to challenge conventional wisdom about what it all meant. ‘Forever Is a Long Time’ Ian Coss’ five-part meditation on the improbability of lifelong commitment couldn’t have been more personal. Motivated by lingering doubts about the durability of his own marriage, he interviewed divorced members of his family and their former spouses about why theirs fell apart. Each episode tells a different love story from beginning to end, with Coss gathering evidence like a single-minded detective. The details he uncovers — and, at the end of each episode, sets to music in an original song inspired by the couple — quietly reflect the irreducible mysteries of human intimacy. ‘La Brega’ Loosely translated as “the hustle” or “the struggle,” the concept of “la brega” is a point of common heritage and a point of departure in this expansive story collection and love letter to Puerto Rico. Produced in English and Spanish by a collective of Puerto Rican journalists and hosted by Alana Casanova-Burgess, each episode of “La Brega” creates a transporting sense of place. Rich and underexamined American histories abound in its stories of pothole fillers, political activists and basketball heroes who navigate their own versions of the struggle, many of which trace back to the very idea of a self-governing territory in the United States. ‘The Midnight Miracle’ Sound-rich, unpredictable and borderline hypnotic, this star-studded conversation show from Dave Chappelle, Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli is much more than a celebrity podcast. The three hosts, longtime friends and collaborators, are joined by a revolving cast of funny and thoughtful guests (David Letterman, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart) who wax extemporaneously about subjects falling generally under the banners of art, philosophy and politics. Inventive sound design — voices and scoring seamlessly enter and exit the central conversation — makes it feel like the world’s most interesting dinner party. ‘One Year: 1977’ Produced and hosted by Josh Levin, a former host of “Slow Burn,” “One Year” takes that show’s forensic historical lens and zooms both in and out, attempting to capture a year of life in America by focusing on its distinctive icons, manias and controversies. As with all good history, its most haunting episodes — including one focusing on a quack treatment for cancer that became a deadly phenomenon among celebrities and science skeptics — resonate uncannily with the present. ‘The Plot Thickens: The Devil’s Candy’ Julie Salamon unearthed a trove of half-forgotten tape recordings to make this podcast adaptation of “The Devil’s Candy,” her classic book on Hollywood filmmaking. That book, first published in 1991, showed readers the doomed production of Brian De Palma’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities”; the podcast puts listeners in the middle of it. On-set interviews with De Palma, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith and a small army of assistants and crafts people resurrect a quixotic effort to mingle high art and dizzying commerce. ‘Resistance’ Born in the aftermath of the global Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, “Resistance” is more interested in revolutions of a much smaller scale. The host, Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr., and the producer-reporters Salifu Sesay Mack, Bethel Habte and Aaron Randle find hard-to-shake stories in the circumstances that push individuals off the tram lines of their day-to-day existence. Lesser-known miscarriages of justice are made personal and palpable, as in one episode about a woman fighting to free her incarcerated partner and co-parent, and another about the plunder of an early 20th century oasis for the Black bathers of Manhattan Beach. ‘Rough Translation: Home/Front’ The latest season of “Rough Translation,” Gregory Warner’s podcast about the ways cultural conflicts abroad mirror and reframe our own, focused exclusively on an American schism — the “Civ-Mil divide” between civilians and the members of the military who fight on their behalf. Quil Lawrence, NPR’s longtime veterans correspondent, shows how this binary obscures fundamentally human acts of compassion and sacrifice on both sides. His patient eye and ear capture a cast of unforgettable characters, including Alicia and Matt Lammers, whose civ-mil marriage buckles under the weight of compounding trauma, and Marla Ruzicka, an irrepressible aid worker who changed the way the Pentagon handles civilian casualties. ‘The Sporkful: Mission Impastable’ Dan Pashman, a longtime food critic and the host of “The Sporkful,” spent much of his career dreaming of something most people wouldn’t think to imagine: the perfect pasta shape. His three-year quest to not only design that shape (he doesn’t think it exists, and he might convince you) but also get it manufactured unfolds like the overachieving love child of earlier audio capers from “Radiolab,” “StartUp” and “Planet Money.” The emotional roller coaster Pashman endures will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to make a hit — edible or otherwise. ‘Welcome to Your Fantasy’ Natalia Petrzela’s sweeping account of the rise and fall of Chippendales — the traveling male strip show that became a global phenomenon in the spandex-clad ’80s — manages to transcend its noisy keywords: sex, true crime, hidden history. Those things are served, of course, in good measure. But what distinguishes the show is its evocative mood, characters and story. And what a story it is. The stranger-than-fiction odyssey of the troupe’s founder, Steve Banerjee — from immigrant small-business owner to green-eyed sex industry titan to murderous racketeer — is a true American classic. c.2021 The New York Times Company

Scientific detective work has uncovered a decades-old glitch in ocean temperature measurements and revealed that the world's seas are warming and rising faster than previously reported. An international team of scientists, reporting their findings on Thursday in the journal Nature, looked at millions of ship-based measurements taken since 1950, but particularly from 1960, and revealed an error in data from a common probe called an XBT. Correcting the error in data running over decades as well as applying a complex statistical analysis to sea temperature data, the team came up with a global estimate of ocean warming in the top layers down to 700 meters (2,300 feet) as well as how fast oceans are rising. "We show that the rate of ocean warming from 1961 to 2003 is about 50 percent larger than previously reported," said team member Catia Domingues, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research. Fellow report author John Church said he had long been suspicious about the historical data because it did not match results from computer models of the world's climate and oceans. "We've realigned the observations and as a result the models agree with the observations much better than previously," said Church, a senior research scientist with the climate centre. "And so by comparing many XBT observations with research ship observations in a statistical way, you can estimate what the errors associated with the XBTs are." This was crucial because the oceans store more than 90 percent of the heat in the planet's climate system and can act as a buffer against the effects of climate change, Domingues said. Water also expands the warmer it becomes, pushing up sea levels, in addition from run-off from melting glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and parts of Antarctica. Church said the global average surface warming between 1961 to 2003 was about 0.4 degrees Celsius according to his team's estimates and that seas rose on average 1.6 millimeters a year during this period. RISING SEAS But Church said that since 1993, sea levels had been rising more than 3 mm a year as the world consumes ever greater amounts of fossil fuels. XBTs were widely used by commercial vessels but have since been largely replaced by satellites and permanent probes in the ocean. The disposable XBTs were thrown over the side with a wire attached to measure temperatures as it sank. "If you miscalculate how quickly the instrument falls through the water column, you miscalculate the depth and therefore the temperature at that depth and that's the prime source of error," said Church. So a colleague, Susan Wijffels and other associates, figured out a mathematical formula to correct the error. That, combined with a wider statistical analysis of global ocean temperature data, revealed a clearer picture that better matched widely used computer models that project how the climate and oceans behave because of global warming. "Now we see a more steady rate of warming and an increased trend in that warming," Church told Reuters. "It builds confidence in the models that we use for projecting the future," adding that observations also indicated that the actual sea level rise was tracking on the upper end of those projections. The U.N. Climate Panel's latest global assessment last year estimated sea levels could rise by up to 80 cm by the end of 2100 unless carbon dioxide levels were reined in.

He spoke at a virtual press conference after the inauguration of an office of the Global Centre on Adaptation or GCA in Dhaka on Tuesday. He stressed sharing of the best adaptation practices among the countries. "We need to do it quickly, with combined expertise and financial resources," he said. Bangladesh has stood firm in battling disasters when the entire world is busy discussing the effects of climate change, said Ban, the chairman of GCA. He referred to the successful evacuation of a huge number of people during the recent cyclone Amphan that hit Bangladesh amid the coronavirus pandemic. In his speech at the inauguration, Ban Ki-moon described the country as the “best example of successful case” to tackle climate change. This is one of the reasons behind setting up the office in Bangladesh, he said. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the GCA chairman said at the press conference that 17 percent of Bangladesh could go under water if the sea level rises 1 metre by 2050. Another UN report says the Dhaka city can be inundated even if sea level rises slightly, he said, highlighting the dangers Bangladesh faces as one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. He emphasised long-term planning, preparation, knowledge about possible risks and risk-tackling methods, education and awareness to tackle the crisis. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also joined the inauguration of the office via video conferencing from the Ganabhaban. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen also attended the event.

Wearing white boiler suits, the roughly 300 protesters sat on the red carpet where Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix have premiered their latest films during the 11-day event. Waving banners that read 'Our home is on fire' and 'No to cruise ships', the protesters sat outside the main festival venue and chanted slogans, surrounded by police. "We want to address the topic of the climate crisis, we think that it is more important than anything that we can see in the world now," said Chiara Buratti, a member of the Venice anti-cruise ship committee, adding the demonstrators wanted celebrity backing for their cause. The protesters arrived in the early morning but left peacefully several hours later, around 1200 GMT. Saturday is the last day of the festival, held on the Venice Lido, and the winner of the Golden Lion prize will be announced in the evening. Buratti said the demonstrators were also planning a march elsewhere on the Lido later in the day. The protesters, who belong to Italian and foreign groups, were taking part in a five-day Venice Climate Camp event. "The climate crisis has no borders, why should we stop at some border and just care about some local problems that we have back home," said demonstrator Sina Reisch from the German group Ende Gelande. "We must see that the struggles are connected." The demonstrators got the support of rocker Mick Jagger and veteran actor Donald Sutherland, who will walk that red carpet later to present their thriller "The Burnt Orange Heresy". "I am glad they're doing that because they’re the ones that are going to inherit the planet," Jagger said at a news conference to promote the movie. "We’re in a very difficult situation at the moment, especially in the US where all the environmental controls that were put in place, that perhaps were just about adequate say for the last 10 years, are being rolled back by the current administration, so much that they will be wiped out." "I am glad people feel so strongly about it they want to protest anywhere whether it's the red carpet or another place." Sutherland said environmental protesters had "to fight harder" and "get as much support as they can", adding those calling for the plight of migrants also needed backing. "When you're my age ... 85 years old and you have children and grandchildren, you will leave them nothing if we do not vote those people out of office in Brazil, in London and in Washington. They are ruining the world," he said. "We have contributed to the ruination of it but they are ensuring it."

Warning that he might ultimately terminate the agreement, Trump's move was a major change in US foreign policy at a time when his administration is also in a crisis with North Korea over that country's nuclear ambitions. It was the second time in two days that Trump took aim at the legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama after signing an executive order on Thursday to weaken the Democratic former president's signature healthcare reform. Hailed by Obama as key to stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the deal was also signed by China, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and the European Union. But Trump says it was too lenient on Tehran and effectively left the fate of the deal up to the US Congress which might try to modify it or bring back US sanctions previously imposed on Iran. "We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout," Trump said. European allies have warned of a split with Washington over the nuclear agreement and say that putting it in limbo as Trump has done undermines US credibility abroad. Trump's "America First" approach to international agreements has also led him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Iran reaction Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday that Tehran was committed to the deal and accused Trump of making baseless accusations. "The Iranian nation has not and will never bow to any foreign pressure," he said. "Iran and the deal are stronger than ever." Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivers a television address in Tehran, Iran, Oct 13, 2017. President.ir Handout via Reuters The chief of the UN atomic watchdog reiterated that Iran was under the world's "most robust nuclear verification regime" and that Tehran is complying with the deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani delivers a television address in Tehran, Iran, Oct 13, 2017. President.ir Handout via Reuters "The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented," Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, referring to the deal by its formal name. Under US law, the president must certify every 90 days to Congress that Iran is complying with the deal, which Trump had reluctantly done twice. Two administration officials privy to the Iran policy debate said Trump this time ultimately ignored the opinions of his secretary of defense, secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his chief of staff and his national security advisor. Instead, one of the officials said, Trump listened to the more hardline views of (CIA Director Mike) Pompeo and some outsiders. US Democrats criticised Trump's decision. Senator Ben Cardin said: “At a moment when the United States and its allies face a nuclear crisis with North Korea, the president has manufactured a new crisis that will isolate us from our allies and partners.” In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Washington could not unilaterally cancel the accord. "We cannot afford as the international community to dismantle a nuclear agreement that is working," said Mogherini, who chaired the final stages of the landmark talks. "This deal is not a bilateral agreement. Congress decides The US Congress will now have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact. If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the terms of the nuclear deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place. A lone protestor demonstrates outside the White House wearing a Donald Trump mask in opposition to President Trump's announcement about the Iran nuclear deal and his policy towards Iran at the White House in Washington, US, Oct 13, 2017. Reuters Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker was working on amending a law on Iran to include "trigger points" that if crossed by Tehran would automatically reimpose US sanctions. A lone protestor demonstrates outside the White House wearing a Donald Trump mask in opposition to President Trump's announcement about the Iran nuclear deal and his policy towards Iran at the White House in Washington, US, Oct 13, 2017. Reuters A source familiar with the issue said the triggers include reimposing US sanctions if Tehran were deemed to be less than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon. The trigger points are also expected to address tougher nuclear inspections, Iran's ballistic missile program and eliminate the deal's "sunset clauses" under which some of the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program expire over time. It is far from clear Congress will be able to pass the legislation. Trump warned that if "we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated." He singled out Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for sanctions and delivered a blistering critique of Tehran, which he accused of destabilizing actions in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. The Trump administration censured the Revolutionary Guards but stopped short of labeling the group a foreign terrorist organization. The body is the single most dominant player in Iran’s security, political, and economic systems and wields enormous influence in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. It had already previously been sanctioned by the United States under other authorities, and the immediate impact of Friday’s measure is likely to be symbolic. The US military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of Trump's new strategy and was reviewing the positioning of US forces. But US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Iran had not responded to Trump's announcement with any provocative acts so far.

Obama's visit is a fresh bid to make India an enduring strategic partner and he will seek to nurture friendship with a prime minister who a year ago was persona non grata in Washington. 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 Modi. His presence at Monday's parade 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. Modi greeted Obama and his wife, Michelle, on the tarmac of the airport in New Delhi as they came down the steps from Air Force One on a smoggy winter morning. The two leaders hugged each other warmly. According to protocol, the prime minister does not greet foreign leaders on their arrival, meeting them instead at a formal ceremony at the presidential palace. Modi made the decision himself to break with tradition and surprised even his own handlers, media reports said. As Obama's motorcade headed off for the welcome ceremony at the residence of President Pranab Mukherjee, the roads were lined with armed police and soldiers, part of a highly choreographed plan for the visit. Up to 40,000 security personnel will be deployed during the visit and 15,000 new closed-circuit surveillance cameras have been installed in the capital, according to media reports. 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 in 2013 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."

But across the United States, the heights of structures, landmarks, valleys, hills and just about everything else are about to change, at least with regard to average sea level. Most will get shorter. Parts of the Pacific Northwest will shrink by as much as 5 feet, and parts of Alaska by 6 1/2, according to Juliana P Blackwell, director of the National Geodetic Survey. Seattle will be 4.3 feet lower than it is now. That’s because height is only height compared to a reference point — and geodesists, who calculate the Earth’s shape, size, gravitational field and orientation in space over time, are redefining the reference point, or vertical datum, from which height is derived. It is a fiendishly difficult math and physics task that, once completed, will have taken a decade and a half to accomplish. “The US, at the scale that it is working at, it’s a big deal,” said Chris Rizos, president-elect of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and an emeritus professor of geodesy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The grand recalibration, called “height modernisation,” is part of a broader effort within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish more accurately where and how the US physically sits on the planet. This new National Spatial Reference System, encompassing height, latitude, longitude and time, is expected to be rolled out in late 2022 or 2023, Blackwell said. It will replace reference systems from the 1980s that are slightly askew, having been derived from calculations that were done before the advent of supercomputers or global navigation satellite systems such as GPS. The errors in height are magnified as one moves diagonally across the country from the southeast to the northwest. One of the few areas of the US expected to either stay the same height or rise fractionally will be the toe of Florida. “There’s really a tilt that shows that all of the accumulated errors in our vertical network are pushed up into the northwest,” Blackwell said. But height has long been tethered to ego. Some Coloradans worry that a few of their mountain peaks will fall below a bragging-rights threshold under the new height system, Blackwell said. “They are very proud of how high these things are, and I know that it’s going to be a bit of a bummer if they start to be a little bit shorter than they were thought to be previously,” she said. She added that she is not yet sure precisely what the new measurements of Colorado’s peaks will be. And near Beaumont, Texas, citizens are grappling with the unwelcome news that certain areas have subsided so much since previous height calculations that these regions now sit in the floodplain. As a result, some landowners may now need to insure themselves against losses from floods, said Daniel R Roman, chief geodesist at NOAA. “They didn’t want to know that the heights had changed,” he said, “because when they do floodplain mapping, they’re like, ‘Well, I’m this height — it hasn’t changed.’” A SHORT HISTORY OF HEIGHT The US has been measuring its height since 1807, when Thomas Jefferson, then the president, established the Survey of the Coast, forerunner to the National Geodetic Survey, to chart the waters and coasts on the Eastern Seaboard. The survey was the nation’s first civilian scientific agency. The aim was to make shipping safer. As the country expanded westward, so did the measuring, using the coast, a proxy for sea level, as the reference point for zero elevation. Surveyors planted metal bench marks in the land as they travelled, describing each point’s height above sea level, often mile by mile. Anyone who wanted to measure the height of a building or hill measured it relative to the bench mark and, indirectly, to sea level. Geodetic levelling, as the process was called, was painstaking and expensive. The rationale was to make sure heights were measured in the same way right across the country over time, rather than each county or state having its own system. For example, if engineers from two states were building a bridge across state lines, they needed to know it would meet in the middle. And by 1900, geodesy had become more sophisticated. Instead of using a coastline as the stand-in for sea level, geodesists developed a model representing sea level based on readings from tides. They have adjusted the height reference five times since then, in 1903, 1907, 1912, 1929 and 1988. The 1988 model remains the standard in the US and Mexico. But the 1988 version was short on accurate information for California and parts of Texas and North Carolina, said David B Zilkoski, a geodesist who is the former director of the National Geodetic Survey. That is because the crust there has moved up or down considerably, as a result of tectonic plate activity and the removal of oil, gas and water from beneath the ground. The solution, Zilkoski decided, might be to use the global navigational satellite system technologies, such as GPS, that were then beginning to proliferate. GPS is excellent at pinpointing where you are in a flat, two-dimensional system — say, at the corner of Bank Street and Garden Avenue. But it is also capable of telling you where you are in a three-dimensional world: Bank Street and Garden Avenue at 40 feet above sea level. By the mid-1990s, Zilkoski said, the goal of using GPS to modernise height had caught on. It had the advantage of being inexpensive and easy. Satellites, and therefore global positioning systems, measure height relative to a smoothed-out mathematical approximation of the Earth’s shape called an ellipsoid. (Picture a basketball squished at the top and bottom.) But there was a big catch. “GPS doesn’t know much about gravity,” said James L Davis, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York. Topographic work is done in the Glacier Bay area of Alaska. The New York Times A MATTER OF SOME GRAVITY Topographic work is done in the Glacier Bay area of Alaska. The New York Times Gravity matters to a geodesist. Height is distance measured along the direction that gravity points, and the strength and direction of gravity’s pull vary according to the density of what is beneath the terrain and near it. In other words, height is not merely distance or elevation above the ground; it is tied to gravity. Gravity, in turn, is related to the distribution of mass. So geodesists use the term “height” rather than “elevation.” “Whenever I give a public lecture on gravity, half the talk is getting them to think about it differently,” Davis said. As a result, a height measured only by GPS could be badly inaccurate. An engineer who laid pipe only using GPS, without measuring local variations in the effect of gravity, might not get water to flow where it was supposed to go. But making highly detailed measurements of the gravitational field, in order to factor them into heights captured by GPS, is no small task. In 2007, the National Geodetic Survey began an ambitious mission — GRAV-D, for Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum — to accomplish just that. Geodesists will then use these gravity readings to make a model that best represents average sea level everywhere in the world, even on land. Because the pull of gravity varies everywhere, this model, called the geoid, resembles a lumpy potato. All heights will subsequently be measured taking it into account. Once the new height system is in place, people will find unexpected uses for it, Blackwell of the National Geodetic Survey said. She invoked “The Jetsons,” the futuristic animated sitcom from the 1960s that featured characters zipping around their cities in tiny spacecraft. The underlying technology — the ability to calculate heights and other positional coordinates swiftly and accurately — was unimaginable at the time. Today, with the proliferation of drones, self-driving cars and remotely operated aerial systems, the ability to navigate accurately in three dimensions is becoming paramount. “I think it’s going to get adopted really quickly,” she said. OUR SHIFTING SHAPE Even as geodesists get better at calculating the shape of the Earth, humans are changing it. As we warm the planet, we are melting glaciers and ice sheets. Their mass shifts from the land to the ocean, raising sea level and, eventually, changing height, which uses sea level as the reference for zero elevation. The shift in mass also has an effect on the configuration of the planet. “That mass on the surface of Earth pushes down on Earth and actually changes its shape,” said Davis of Columbia University. In effect, through climate change, our species is altering gravity across the planet. “We’re doing it by making chemical changes in the atmosphere that cause mass to be moved around,” Davis said. “And the amount of mass now is tremendous. It’s noticeable in the shape of the geoid. It’s also noticeable in the Earth’s rotation.” Davis and other scientists are scrambling to figure out more accurately how to calculate the effect of the human footprint in the coming years. “A few hundred years ago, it was all about what is the shape of the Earth,” he said. “And now it’s: Can we measure Earth’s changing shape, and the amount of mass in the glaciers, and where it came from, well enough to say what will happen at this location in the next few years? We’re in a race.” c.2020 The New York Times Company

Ugandan police have found an unexploded suicide belt and made several arrests after 74 soccer fans were killed by two bomb attacks while they were watching the World Cup final on television. Somali Islamists linked to al Qaeda said on Monday they carried out the attacks. Uganda's opposition called on Tuesday for the country's peacekeepers to be withdrawn from Somalia. A government spokesman said the unexploded suicide belt was found at a third site in the capital Kampala, a day after the twin explosions ripped through two bars heaving with soccer fans late on Sunday. "Arrests were made late yesterday after an unexploded suicide bomber's belt was found in the Makindye area," government spokesman Fred Opolot said. He did not say how many people were arrested, or where they were from. Such coordinated attacks have been a hallmark of al Qaeda and groups linked to Osama bin Laden's militant network. The al Shabaab militants have threatened more attacks unless Uganda and Burundi withdrew their peacekeepers from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia (AMISOM). Uganda's opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party urged President Yoweri Museveni to pull his soldiers out and said it planned to withdraw if it won elections scheduled for early 2011. "There is no peace to keep in Somalia and Uganda has no strategic interest there. We're just sacrificing our children for nothing," FDC spokesman Wafula Oguttu told Reuters. "Our objective is to withdraw our troops immediately after coming to power." AMISOM said the explosions would not affect its mission in Somalia, where it shields the presidential palace from insurgent attacks and guards Mogadishu's airport and port. FBI INVESTIGATES The coordinated blasts were the first time al Shabaab has taken its bloody push for power onto the international stage. Analysts say its threats should be taken seriously, given the clear evidence the group has the intent and will to strike abroad. Foreign direct investment into east Africa's third largest economy has surged, driven by oil exploration along the western border with Democratic Republic of Congo. Analysts say a sustained bombing campaign would damage Uganda's investment climate, but a one-off attack was unlikely deter major companies such as British hydrocarbons explorer Tullow Oil TLW from investing. [ID:nLDE66B14N] An American was among the dead, and the United States has offered assistance with its investigations. The State Department said it had three FBI agents on the ground collecting evidence. An additional FBI team is on standby to deploy to the east African nation, it said. Opolot said there was no suggestion an African Union summit to be hosted by Uganda this month would be cancelled following the bombings.

Australia Nov. 26 (bdnews24.com/AFP)-- The newly elected Australian prime minister has made signing the Kyoto Protocol his top priority. Kevin Rudd will act quickly to sign the climate change pact, his deputy, Julia Gillard, said on Monday. Rudd's honouring of a campaign promise that he would make signing the pact one of his first acts in office would pave the way for Australia to have a greater role at a major international meeting on tackling environmental issues in Bali, Indonesia, starting next week. The prime minister-elect's policy on Kyoto leaves the US isolated as the only Western country not to ratify the pact. The US is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide while Australia is the worst polluter per capita. Rudd's plan for the phased withdrawal of Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq could also test Australia's tight relations with the US. Among congratulatory messages from foreign leaders over the weekend, Rudd took a phone call from George Bush, the US president. He declined to give details of the conversation but said he planned to visit Washington next year. Rudd entered a second day of meetings on Monday with senior bureaucrats and advisers about taking over the levers of power after sweeping elections on Saturday. He is to meet freshly elected members of parliament from his Labor party on Thursday to choose his ministerial team, which is then expected to be sworn in by Michael Jefferey, the governor-general, within a few days. The government is in caretaker mode until then. Officials said Rudd, whose victory ended almost 12 years of conservative rule, also started work on redrafting the country's labour laws, another campaign promise. Meanwhile, questions remained over who would lead the coalition that lost the election, as the new opposition. John Howard, the outgoing prime minister, looked likely to lose his place in parliament while his nominated successor, deputy Peter Costello, made the surprise announcement on Sunday that he did not want the job. Malcolm Turnbull, the former environment minister, and Tony Abbott, the former health minister, said they would contest the position of opposition leader. The counting of ballots was still under way on Monday, with only the size of Rudd's emphatic win to be confirmed and a handful of closely fought districts to be decided. Among them was the Sydney suburban district of Bennelong, held by Howard for the past 33 years, leaving Australia's second-longest serving leader faced with the ignominy of losing not only the government but also his seat in parliament. Howard acknowledged on Saturday that "it is very likely to be the case that I will no longer be the member for Bennelong". Labor's Maxine McKew, a former television presenter, holds a slight lead over Howard and counting is expected to go down to postal votes.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who blindsided creditors by calling a referendum on the austerity cuts in the aid package proposed by the creditors, appeared on television on Sunday night to announce capital controls to prevent banks from collapsing. Their imposition capped a dramatic weekend for Greece that has pushed the country towards a likely default on 1.6 billion euros ($1.77 billion) of International Monetary Fund loans on Tuesday and closer to an exit from the euro currency bloc. French President Francois Hollande appealed to Tsipras to return to the negotiating table and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was willing to talk to the 40-year-old Greek leader if he wanted. "There are a few hours before the negotiation is closed for good," Hollande said after a cabinet meeting on Greece. But with Greece's bailout programme expiring in less than 48 hours, hopes of a last-minute breakthrough were fading fast. Greeks - used to lengthy talks with creditors before a eleventh-hour deal materializes - were left stunned. "I can't believe it," said Athens resident Evgenia Gekou, 50, on her way to work. "I keep thinking we will wake up tomorrowand everything will be OK. I'm trying hard not to worry." European officials sent confusing signals about their next move. A spokesman for the European Commission told French radio that Brussels would not make any new proposals on Monday, appearing to contradict comments by EU Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici. He said a new offer was forthcoming and that the two sides were "only a few centimetres" away from a deal. European bank shares fell sharply on Monday. Top banks in Spain, France and Germany were down more than 6 percent as the risk of a spillover to banks in other peripheral euro zone countries spooked investors. The Greek government will keep banks shut at least until after July 5, the date of the referendum, and withdrawals from automated teller machines were limited to 60 euros a day when they reopened at midday. The stock exchange will also stay shut. After months of talks, Greece's exasperated European partners have put the blame for the crisis squarely on Tsipras's shoulders. The creditors wanted Greece to cut pensions and raise taxes in ways that Tsipras has long argued would deepen one of the worst economic crises of modern times in a country where a quarter of the workforce is already unemployed. As Tsipras announced the emergency measures late on Sunday, there were long queues outside ATMs and petrol stations as people raced to take out cash before it was too late. Lines of over a dozen people formed at ATMs when they reopenedon Monday. "I've got five euros in my pocket, I thought I would try my luck here for some money. The queues in my neighbourhood were too long yesterday," said plumber Yannis Kalaizakis, 58, outside an empty cash machine in central Athens on Monday. "I don't know what else to say. It's a mess." Newspapers splashed pictures of long lines outside cash machines on their front page. The Nafetemporiki daily headlinedMonday's edition "Dramatic hours" while the Ta Nea daily simply said: "When will the banks open". The conservative-leaning Eleftheros Typos newspaper accused Tsipras of announcing the referendum as a ruse to tip the country into early elections in the hopes of winning them. "Mr Tsipras's decision to call a referendum and a possible euro exit constitutes a premeditated crime," it said in an editorial. "It is clear that Mr Tsipras has lost the trust of citizens. That's obvious from the queues at ATMs and petrol stations, and it will become obvious at next Sunday's ballot." As rumours flew about, dozens of pensioners queued outside at least two offices of the National Bank of Greece (NBGr.AT)on Monday after hearing they could withdraw pensions from some branches. They were turned away, Reuters photographers said. "I've worked all my life, only to wake up one morning to a disaster like this," said one shop owner, who was there to collect his wife's pension. Despite the financial shock, parts of daily life went on as normal, with shops, pharmacies and supermarkets in the city opening and Greeks meeting to discuss their country's fate at cafes and restaurants. Tourists gathered as usual to watch the changing of the presidential guard outside parliament. A rally called by Tsipras's Syriza party to protest against austerity measures and urge voters to say "No" in the referendum on bailout terms is expected later on Monday. Officials around Europe and the United States made a frantic round of calls and organised meetings to try to salvage the situation. U.S. President Barack Obama called Merkel, and senior U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who spoke to Tsipras, urged Europe and the IMF to come up with a plan to hold the single currency together and keep Greece in the euro zone. "While the programme is active until Tuesday, they aren't providing the necessary liquidity for Greek banks just to blackmail and to terrorize us," Administrative Reforms Minister George Katrougalos told Antenna television. "If we vote a yes, they will demolish pensions, you will have to pay for medicare in public hospitals. When your kids can't go to school you will say 'thanks' and they will say 'you asked for it'. "But if you say no you have the ability to fight for a better future."

In early September, a seawall at Japan's Kansai International Airport built on a reclaimed island near Osaka, was breached during Typhoon Jebi. The runway was flooded and it took 17 days to fully restore airport operations, at a high cost to the region's economy as well as the dozens of airlines that cancelled flights. Major airports in Hong Kong, mainland China and North Carolina were also closed due to tropical storms last month. Such incidents highlight the disaster risks to investors and insurers exposed to a sector with an estimated $262 billion of projects under construction globally, according to Fitch Solutions. "There is a kind of one-way direction with regards to the frequency and severity of climate change-related events," said Fitch Solutions Head of Infrastructure Richard Marshall. "If people aren't taking that seriously, that is a risk." Fifteen of the 50 most heavily trafficked airports globally are at an elevation of less than 30 feet above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to a changing climate, including rising sea levels and associated higher storm surges. "You see it at individual airports that are already seeing sea rise and are already dealing with water on their runway," Airports Council International (ACI) Director General Angela Gittens said, citing examples in island nations including Vanuatu and the Maldives. "But even in some of these mature economies they are having more storms, they are having to do more pumping. My old airport in Miami is in that scenario." A draft copy of an ACI policy paper reviewed by Reuters and due to be released this week warns of the rising risks to facilities from climate change. It encourages member airports to conduct risk assessments, develop mitigation measures and take it into account in future master plans. The paper cites examples of forward-thinking airports that have taken climate change into account in planning, such as the $12 billion Istanbul Grand Airport on the Black Sea, set to become one of the world's largest airports when it opens next month. FILE PHOTO: Planes are surrounded by flood waters caused by Tropical Storm Harvey at the West Houston Airport in Texas, US, August 30, 2017. Reuters INVESTOR INTEREST FILE PHOTO: Planes are surrounded by flood waters caused by Tropical Storm Harvey at the West Houston Airport in Texas, US, August 30, 2017. Reuters Debt investors in particular have high exposure to airports, most of which are owned by governments or pension funds. Ratings agency Moody's alone has $174 billion of airport bonds under coverage. Earl Heffintrayer, the lead analyst covering US airports at Moody's, said the risk of climate change became apparent to investors after Superstorm Sandy closed major New York airports for days in 2012. Sandy led to the cancellation of nearly 17,000 flights, costing airlines $500 million in revenues and disrupting operations around the world, according to a 2017 presentation by Eurocontrol on climate change risk. Investors are increasingly asking about mitigation plans at low-lying airports like San Francisco and Boston as they look to invest in bonds with terms of up to 30 years, Heffintrayer said. San Francisco International Airport, built on reclaimed land that is slowly sinking, has completed a feasibility study on a $383 million project to make the airport more resilient to sea level rises on its 8 miles (12.9 km) of bay front shoreline by 2025. "We are seeing a lot more thought going into protection against flood damage, catastrophe, making sure that the storm drains around the airport are fit for purpose," said Gary Moran, head of Asia aviation at insurance broker Aon. "There definitely is a lot more thought going into potential further worsening in weather conditions further down the line." FILE PHOTO: An MH-65T Dolphin helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City looks over LaGuardia Airport while it conducts an over flight assessment of New York Boroughs impacted by Hurricane Sandy, October 30, 2012. US Coast Guard handout via Reuters TAKING ACTION FILE PHOTO: An MH-65T Dolphin helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City looks over LaGuardia Airport while it conducts an over flight assessment of New York Boroughs impacted by Hurricane Sandy, October 30, 2012. US Coast Guard handout via Reuters Singapore's Changi Airport, which has analysed scenarios out to 2100, has resurfaced its runways to provide for better drainage and is building a new terminal at a higher 18 feet (5.5 metres) above sea level to protect against rising seas. Moran said such steps were prudent and would provide comfort to insurers. "If you were to look at Singapore, if something was to happen at Changi in terms of weather-related risk, Singapore would have a problem," he said. "There isn't really too much of an alternative." Singapore expects sea levels to rise by 2.5 feet (0.76 metre) by 2100. Changi Airport declined to comment on the cost of the extra protection. ACI, Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's were unable to provide Reuters with an estimate of the global cost of climate change protection at airports. The protective action is often folded into larger refurbishment and expansion projects, ratings agency analysts said. In Australia, Brisbane Airport and located on reclaimed land on the coast at just 13 feet (4 metres) above sea level, is constructing a new runway 3.3 feet (1 metre) higher than it otherwise would have done, with a higher seawall and better drainage systems as sea levels rise. Paul Coughlan, the director of Brisbane Airport's new runway project, said the incremental cost of such moves was relatively low - for example the seawall cost around A$5 million ($3.6 million) more than without taking into account sea level rises - but the potential benefits were big. "At the end of the day, whether you are a believer in climate change or a disbeliever, doing a design that accounts for elevated sea levels, more intense rainfall, flooding considerations, that is just prudent," Coughlan said. "If you build it into your design philosophy from day one, you don't pay that much of a premium and you have bought a lot of safeguards." ($1 = 1.3841 Australian dollars)

In a ceremony where no single movie commanded attention, Mexico's Alejandro Inarritu nabbed the best directing Oscar for "The Revenant", becoming the first filmmaker in more than 60 years to win back-to-back Academy Awards. Inarritu won in 2015 for "Birdman." "The Revenant" went into Sunday's ceremony with a leading 12 nominations, and was among four movies believed to have the best chances for best picture after it won Golden Globe and BAFTA trophies. The ambitious 20th Century Fox Pioneer-era tale, shot in sub-zero temperatures, also brought a first Oscar win for its star Leonardo DiCaprio, who got a standing ovation from the A-list Hollywood audience. "I do not take tonight for granted," DiCaprio said, taking the opportunity in his acceptance speech to urge action on climate change. Yet voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose Open Road Films'  "Spotlight," which traces the Boston Globe's 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning investigation of child sex abuse by Catholic priests, for best picture. The movie also won best original screenplay. 'Spotlight' Producer Michael Sugar accepts the Oscar for Best Picture. "This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope can become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican," said producer Michael Sugar. 'Spotlight' Producer Michael Sugar accepts the Oscar for Best Picture. Rising star Brie Larson, 26, took home the statuette for best actress for her role as an abducted young woman in indie movie "Room," adding to her armful of trophies from other award shows. 'Jabbing at Hollywood' Racial themes and barbs about the selection of an all-white acting nominee line-up for a second year were a running theme of the show, dubbed "the white People's Choice awards" by Rock, an outspoken black comedian. He questioned why the furore over diversity in the industry had taken root this year, rather than in the 1950s or 1960s, saying that black Americans had "real things to protest at the time.""We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer," Rock added. In a taped section, Rock visited the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Compton - the heart of the hip-hop music industry - to ask residents if they had heard or seen the Oscar-nominated movies. None had. Several nominees gave Rock a thumbs-up for striking the right balance on a tricky theme. "I thought it was jabbing at Hollywood, yet at the same time even-handed, and kind of dealing with a new era of how we discuss diversity," said Adam McKay, director and co-writer of best picture nominee "The Big Short." "Really impressive and really funny." Rock wasn't alone in putting people of colour in the spotlight on the movie industry's biggest night. Alejandro Inarritu, winner for Best Director for "The Revenant". "I (am) very lucky to be here tonight, but unfortunately many others haven't had the same luck," Inarritu said, expressing the hope that, in the future, skin colour would become as irrelevant as the length of one's hair. Alejandro Inarritu, winner for Best Director for "The Revenant". Among surprises, Britain's Mark Rylance beat presumed favourite and "Creed" actor Sylvester Stallone to win the Academy Award for best supporting actor for "Bridge of Spies." "Sly, no matter what they say, remember, to me you are the best, you were the winner. I'm proud of you," Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fellow action star, said in a short video he posted online. British singer Sam Smith's theme song for James Bond movie "Spectre" beat Lady Gaga's sexual assault awareness ballad "Til It Happens to You." Swedish actress Alicia Vikander won the supporting actress Oscar for transgender movie "The Danish Girl" while documentary "Amy," about the late and troubled British pop star Amy Winehouse was also a winner. Warner Bros "Mad Max: Fury Road" was the biggest winner, clinching six Oscars, but all were in technical categories such as costume, make-up and editing.

Democrats are positioned to bolster their Senate majority in next year's elections, which would give them more clout regardless who succeeds President George W Bush in the White House. With Republicans dogged by retirements, scandals and the Iraq war, there's an outside chance Democrats will gain as many as nine seats in the 100-member Senate in the November 2008 elections, which would give them a pivotal 60. That is the number of votes needed to clear Republican procedural roadblocks, which have been used to thwart the Democrats' efforts to force a change in Bush's policy on the Iraq war, particularly plans to withdraw U.S. troops. The last time Democrats had an overriding majority in the Senate was in the 1977-1979 congressional session, when they held 61 seats. "Sixty is not outside the realm of possibility," said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "But for that to happen, everything would have to break their way," she said. "Right now, it's way too early to say." With the elections a year away, many Republicans are distancing themselves from Bush, whose approval rating was around 33 percent in recent polls. But they remain largely tied to his unpopular stance on the Iraq war, now in its fifth year. Many are concerned about their future and Senate Democrats have raised more in campaign contributions than Republicans. "We're going to lose seats," predicted a senior Senate Republican aide. "The political climate is not good for us." Republicans now hold 22 of the 34 Senate seats up for re-election next year, while Democrats have 12. The Democrats all intend to seek re-election, and most are seen as shoo-ins. Five Republican incumbents have already announced they will not seek another six-year term in 2008. For sharply different reasons, Sens. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Larry Craig of Idaho last week followed fellow Republicans John Warner of Virginia, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Wayne Allard of Colorado, in announcing they would not to seek re-election. Domenici, 75, cited declining health, while Craig, 62, pointed to his disputed conviction in a undercover sex-sting in an airport men's room. The Craig conviction has embarrassed Republicans, who portray themselves as the party of "conservative family values." The party also has been shaken by an expanding political corruption investigation in Alaska that has touched Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican senator ever. Stevens, who first joined the Senate in 1968, has denied any wrongdoing. But the probe has suddenly helped make the 83-year-old Alaskan vulnerable in the 2008 elections. The Iraq war helped Democrats win control of Congress last year. It may also enable them to widen their majorities next year in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate. Yet Republicans see some hope in polls that show only about one in four Americans approves of the Democratic-led Congress, which has been stifled by partisan gridlock. "Democrats have yet to prove that they can lead this country effectively and voters are taking note," said Rebecca Fisher, a spokeswoman for the party's Senate campaign committee. She predicted that Republicans would take back control of the Senate. Democrats brush aside such talk, noting surveys still find that Americans prefer Democrats over Republicans in Congress. But many are reluctant to predict how well they may do in the elections. "Democrats want to tamp down expectations of any big (Senate) gains because they fear it could fire up the Republican base," said the Cook Political Report's Duffy. As if to underline the point, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who in 2005 said it would "take a miracle" for his party to win the Senate in 2006, declines to offer any predictions about 2008. He simply says his top goal is to "maintain a majority." Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who heads the Senate Democratic campaign committee, also refuses to discuss how many seats his party may gain. But he says, "We feel very good about our chances."

“All our 45 workers are jobless now. The men are driving taxis and women are back to being housewives,” said CEO Farzad Rashidi. Reuters interviews with dozens of business owners across Iran show hundreds of companies have suspended production and thousands of workers are being laid off because of a hostile business climate mainly caused by new US sanctions. The Iranian rial has fallen to record lows and economic activity has slowed dramatically since US President Donald Trump withdrew from the big powers’ nuclear deal with Tehran in May. He imposed sanctions directed at purchases of US dollars, gold trading, and the automotive industry in August. Iran’s vital oil and banking sectors were hit in November. “We have lost around five billion rials ($120,000 at the official rate) in the last few months, so the board decided to suspend all activities for as long as the fluctuations in the currency market continue. It is stupid to keep driving when you see it’s a dead end,” Rashidi said. The country has already experienced unrest this year, when young protesters angered by unemployment and high prices clashed with security forces. Official projections indicate unrest could flare up again as sanctions make the economic crisis worse. Four days before parliament fired him August for failing to do enough to protect the jobs market from sanctions, labor minister Ali Rabiei said Iran would lose a million jobs by the end of year as a direct result of the US measures. Unemployment is already running at 12.1 percent, with three million Iranians unable to find jobs. A parliamentary report in September warned that rising unemployment could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic. “If we believe that the country’s economic situation was the main driver for the recent protests, and that an inflation rate of 10 percent and an unemployment rate of 12 percent caused the protests, we cannot imagine the intensity of reactions caused by the sharp rise of inflation rate and unemployment.” The report said if Iran’s economic growth remains below 5 percent in coming years, unemployment could hit 26 percent. The International Monetary Fund has forecast that Iran’s economy will contract by 1.5 percent this year and by 3.6 percent in 2019 due to dwindling oil revenues. Iran’s vice president has warned that under sanctions Iran faces two main dangers: unemployment and a reduction in purchasing power. “Job creation should be the top priority ... We should not allow productive firms to fall into stagnation because of sanctions,” Eshaq Jahangiri said, according to state media. But business owners told Reuters that the government’s sometimes contradictory monetary policies, alongside fluctuations in the foreign exchange market, price increases for raw materials, and high interest loans from banks have made it impossible for them to stay in business. Many have not been able to pay wages for months or had to shed significant numbers of workers. A manager at the Jolfakaran Aras Company, one of the biggest textile factories in Iran, told Reuters that the firm was considering halting its operations and hundreds of workers might lose their jobs. “Around 200 workers were laid off in August, and the situation has become worse since. There is a high possibility that the factory will shut down,” the manager said, asking not to be named. Ahmad Roosta, CEO of Takplast Nour, was hopeful that a drought in Iran would provide a boost for his newly launched factory, which produces plastic pipes used in agriculture. “I will wait one or two months, but I will have to shut down if the situation remains the same ... The farmers, who are the main consumers of our products, cannot afford them,” Roosta told Reuters. The sanctions have affected the Iranian car industry, which had experienced a boom after sanctions were lifted two years ago and it signed big contracts with French and German firms. French carmaker PSA Group (PEUP.PA) suspended its joint venture in Iran in June to avoid US sanctions, and German car and truck manufacturer Daimler has dropped plans to expand its Iran business. Maziar Beiglou, a board member of the Iran Auto Parts Makers Association, said in August that more than 300 auto parts makers have been forced to stop production, threatening tens of thousands of jobs in the sector. A spokesperson for Iran’s Tire Producers Association blamed the government’s “changing monetary policies over the last six months” for problems in the sector. “Fortunately tire factories have not slowed down, but the production growth that we had planned for was not achieved,” Mostafa Tanha said in a phone interview from Tehran. YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT Washington says economic pressures on Tehran are directed at the government and its malign proxies in the region, not at the Iranian people. But Iran’s young people, bearing the brunt of unemployment, stand to lose the most. Maryam, a public relations manager in a food import company, lost her job last month.  “The prices went so high that we lost many customers ... In the end the CEO decided to lay off people and started with our department.” She said the company had stopped importing, and people who still worked there were worried that it might shut down after selling off its inventory. Youth unemployment is already 25 percent in a country where 60 percent of the 80 million population is under 30. The unemployment rate among young people with higher education in some parts of the country is above 50 percent, according to official data. Armin, 29, has a mechanical engineering degree but lost his job in the housebuilding industry when the sector was hit by recession following the fall of rial. “The property market is slowing because high prices have made houses unaffordable ... It is getting worse day by day,” he told Reuters from the city of Rasht in northern Iran. Nima, a legal adviser for startups and computer firms, believes sanctions have already affected many companies in the sector that depended on an export-oriented model and hoped to expand in the region. He said even the gaming industry in Iran has felt the sanctions pinch: “The situation has become so severe that many of these teams decided to suspend development of their games and are waiting to see what will happen next. Without access to international markets, they see very little chance of making a profit.” Saeed Laylaz, a Tehran-based economist, was more sanguine. He said youth unemployment was a product of Iran’s demographics and government policies, and sanctions were only adding to an existing problem. “The sanctions, the uncertainty in the market and Rouhani’s zigzag policies have put pressures on the economy and the job market, but I predict that the market will find a balance soon,” Laylaz told Reuters. “We will defeat this round of sanctions as we have done in the past,” said Laylaz who met Rouhani last month with other economists to offer advice on economic policies.

The six-meter (20 foot) high blimp will fly above Parliament Square for two hours from 0900 GMT when Trump is due to hold talks with the outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May nearby in Downing Street. Trump and his wife Melania arrived on Monday for a three-day state visit - a pomp-laden affair that involved a banquet at Buckingham Palace on Monday evening. "We’re sending a very clear message of solidarity to those affected by his despicable politics – and saying loud and clear that the US president doesn’t deserve the red carpet treatment," said Ajuub Faraji, one of the organisers of the blimp. In central London, tens of thousands of protesters are expected to take part in a "Carnival of Resistance" later in the day to voice their opposition to the president. Among those taking part will be environmental activists, anti-racism campaigners and women’s rights protesters. Police will close the road directly outside Downing Street to protect the president and his family. In Britain, Trump's ban on travel to the United States from several primarily Muslim countries, the decision to withdraw the United States from a global deal to combat climate change, and his criticism of British politicians have helped stoke opposition to his presidency. The state dinner held in the president's honour was boycotted by several lawmakers, including Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party. The US president’s supporters said it was an insult to snub the leader of Britain’s closest ally. But the demonstrators have received tactical support from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who has repeatedly clashed with the president and who gave permission to fly the blimp. The president called the mayor a "stone-cold loser" shortly before he arrived in Britain and has in the past accused him of failing to do enough to stop deadly terror attacks in London. POMP AND PROTESTS Trump said he is "loved" in Britain despite the protests. He said he was closer to Britain than any other American leader, citing his mother's Scottish roots and the two golf courses he owns in the country. "I don't imagine any US president was ever closer to your great land," he told The Sun in an interview. "I think I am really — I hope — I am really loved in the UK. I certainly love the UK." The protests are expected to build up later in the day when demonstrators begin gathering at Trafalgar Square at 10:00 GMT. They will travel via Embankment to reach Parliament Square in the afternoon because the police have closed off the southern part of Whitehall. Protesters from all over Britain will travel to London to join the demonstrations. Other protests against Trump's visit are planned in 14 other cities and towns. Trump’s last visit in July cost police more than 14.2 million pounds ($17.95 million). At the time, 10,000 officers were deployed from all over Britain. Scott Lucas, a professor of international and American studies at the University of Birmingham, said other US presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W Bush have faced large protests in Britain. He said the protests typically tend to be larger for American presidents than leaders from other countries such as China or Saudi Arabia because the two countries are historic allies. "America is our friend and you have to be able to speak to your friends in a certain way," he said. "You are usually more concerned about someone who is in your own household, or your neighbour down the street, than someone who is in the next village or town."

Published online in Nature Geoscience, the study by an international research team of geoscientists details how relatively recent geologic events -- volcanic activity 10 million years ago in what is now Panama and Costa Rica -- hold the secrets of the extreme continent-building that took place billions of years earlier. Many scientists think that all of the planet's continental crust -- masses of buoyant rock rich with silica -- was generated during this time in earth's history, and the material continually recycles through collisions of tectonic plates on the outermost shell of the planet. But the new research shows "juvenile" continental crust has been produced throughout earth's history. "Whether the earth has been recycling all of its continental crust has always been the big mystery," said senior study author Esteban Gazel, an assistant professor of geology at Virginia Tech. "We discovered that while the massive production of continental crust that took place during the Archaean is no longer the norm, there are exceptions that produce 'juvenile' continental crust," Gazel added. Melting of the oceanic crust originally produced what today are the Galapagos islands, reproducing Achaean-like conditions to provide the "missing ingredient" in the generation of continental crust. The researchers discovered the geochemical signature of erupted lavas reached continental crust-like composition about 10 million years ago. They tested the material and observed seismic waves travelling through the crust at velocities closer to the ones observed in continental crust worldwide. The western Aleutian Islands and the Iwo-Jima segment of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana (IBM) arc system are some other examples of juvenile continental crust that has formed recently, the researchers said. The study raises questions about the global impact newly-generated continental crust has had over the ages, and the role it has played in the evolution of not just continents, but life itself. For example, the formation of the Central American land bridge resulted in the closure of the seaway, which changed how the ocean circulated, separated marine species, and had a powerful impact on the climate on the planet. "We've revealed a major unknown in the evolution of our planet," Gazel said.

Kim Yong Chol, vice-chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, will lead a high-level delegation at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang on Sunday. The delegation will also meet President Moon Jae-in. He was previously chief of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a top North Korean military intelligence agency, which South Korea blamed for the deadly 2010 sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean navy corvette. North Korea has denied its involvement in the event. “Under current difficult circumstances, we have decided to focus on whether peace on the Korean peninsula and improvement in inter-Korean relations can be derived from dialogue with (the visiting North Korean officials), not on their past or who they are,” said Unification Ministry Baik Tae-hyun in a media briefing on Friday. Kim’s visit will also coincide with the visit of US President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who is scheduled to arrive in South Korea later on Friday to attend a dinner with Moon and later, the Winter Olympics’ closing ceremony. The Blue House has said there are no official opportunities for U.S. and North Korean officials to meet. South Korea’s decision on Thursday to allow Kim, currently sanctioned by the United States and South Korea, across the border has sparked protest from family members of the dead Cheonan sailors and opposition parties. Some 70 members from the main opposition Liberty Korea Party staged a protest in front of the presidential Blue House on Friday, demanding the government withdraw its decision. “President Moon’s decision to accept the North’s facade of peace is a serious issue and it will go down in history as a crime eternal,” said the party in a statement. A group of family members of those killed in the Cheonan sinking has said it will hold a press conference against the decision on Saturday. Acknowledging public angst over Kim’s pending visit, Baik said the South’s stance that the Cheonan sinking was instigated by the North has not changed. “However, what’s important are efforts to create actual peace on the Korean peninsula so these kind of provocations don’t occur again,” said Baik, adding the government would make “various efforts” to assuage the public’s concerns. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he wants to boost the “warm climate of reconciliation and dialogue” with South Korea after a high-level delegation returned from the Winter Olympics, while the United States has stressed the need to intensify pressure to force North Korea to give up his nuclear weapons. Last year, North Korea conducted dozens of missile launches and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of United Nations sanctions. However, it has now been more than two months since its last missile test in late November.

BELENE, Bulgaria, Nov 8, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - In the dense forests of the idyllic Danube island of Persin, home to the endangered sea eagle and the pygmy cormorant, lie the ghastly remains of a communist-era death camp. Hundreds of "enemies of the regime" perished from beatings, malnutrition and exhaustion in 1949-59 in Bulgaria's Belene concentration camp, where dead bodies were fed to pigs. Twenty years after the fall of communism, Belene is largely forgotten -- only a small marble plaque tells its horrific story. And nostalgia for the past is growing in the small Balkan country and across the former Soviet bloc. Capitalism's failure to lift living standards, impose the rule of law and tame flourishing corruption and nepotism have given way to fond memories of the times when the jobless rate was zero, food was cheap and social safety was high. "(The bad) things have been forgotten," said Rumen Petkov, 42, a former guard now clerk at the only prison still functioning on the Persin island. "The nostalgia is palpable, particularly among the elderly," he said, in front of the crumbling buildings of another old jail opened on the site after the camp was shut in 1959. The communists imprisoned dozens of ethnic Turks here in the 1980s when they refused to change their names to Bulgarian. Some young people in the impoverished town of Belene, linked to the island with a pontoon bridge, also reminisce: "We lived better in the past," said Anelia Beeva, 31. "We went on holidays to the coast and the mountains, there were plenty of clothes, shoes, food. And now the biggest chunk of our incomes is spent on food. People with university degrees are unemployed and many go abroad." In Russia, several Soviet-themed restaurants have opened in Moscow in recent years: some hold nostalgia nights where young people dress up as pioneers -- the Soviet answer to the boy scouts and girl guides -- and dance to communist classics. Soviet Champagne and Red October Chocolates remain favorites for birthday celebrations. "USSR" T-shirts and baseball caps can be seen across the country in summer. While there is scant real desire for old regimes to be restored, analysts say apathy is a vital outcome. "The big damage of the nostalgia...is that it dries out the energy for meaningful change," wrote Bulgarian sociologist Vladimir Shopov in the online portal BG History. DISENCHANTMENT Across former communist eastern Europe, disenchantment with democracy is widespread and pollsters say mistrust of the elites who made people citizens of the European Union is staggering. A September regional poll by U.S. Pew research center showed support for democracy and capitalism has seen the biggest fall in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Hungary. The poll showed 30 percent of Ukrainians approved of the change to democracy in 2009, down from 72 percent in 1991. In Bulgaria and Lithuania the slide was to just over half the population from nearer three-quarters in 1991. Surveys by U.S.-based human rights group Freedom House show backsliding or stagnation in corruption, governance, independent media and civil society in the new EU-member states. The global economic crisis, which has wounded the region and put an end to six or seven years of growth, is now challenging the remedy of neoliberal capitalism prescribed by the West. Hopes of catching up with the wealthy Western neighbors have been replaced by a sense of injustice because of a widening gap between the rich and the poor. In Hungary, one of the countries worst hit by economic downturn, 70 percent of those who were already adults in 1989 say they were disappointed with the results of the regime change, an October survey by pollster Szonda Ipsos showed. People in the former Yugoslav countries, scarred by the ethnic wars from the 1990s and still outside the EU, are nostalgic for the socialist era of Josip Broz Tito when, unlike now, they traveled across Europe without visa. "Everything was better then. There was no street crime, jobs were safe and salaries were enough for decent living," said Belgrade pensioner Koviljka Markovic, 70. "Today I can hardly survive with my pension of 250 euros ($370 a month)." GOLDEN ERA In Bulgaria, the 33-year rule of the late dictator Todor Zhivkov begins to seem a golden era to some in comparison with the raging corruption and crime that followed his demise. Over 60 percent say they lived better in the past, even though shopping queues were routine, social connections were the only way to obtain more valuable goods, jeans and Coca Cola were off-limits and it took up to 10 years' waiting to buy a car. "For part of the Bulgarians (social) security turned out to be more precious than freedom," wrote historians Andrei Pantev and Bozhidar Gavrilov in a book on the 100 most influential people in the Balkan country's history. Nearly three years after joining the EU, Bulgaria's average monthly salary of about 300 euros and pension of about 80 euros remain the lowest in the club. Incomes in the more affluent Poland and the Czech Republic, which joined the bloc in 2004, are also still a fraction of those in western Europe. A 2008 global survey by Gallup ranked Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania among the 10 most discontented countries in the world. "Our parents' generation was much more satisfied with what they had. Everybody just wants more of everything these days," said Zsofia Kis, a 23-year old student in Budapest, referring to the way communist regimes artificially held down unemployment. DALAVERA, MUTRI, MENTE After two decades of patchy, painful reforms, the majority of people refuse to make more sacrifices, as would be needed to complete a revamp of the economy and the judiciary. Demoralization and heightened popularity for political parties promising "a firm hand" are other consequences. Not without reason. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, described the fall of the Soviet Union as the "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Kremlin critics have accused the authorities of a creeping rehabilitation of the Soviet Union to justify their clampdowns on the media and opposition parties. "There is an idealization of the Soviet past," said Nikita Petrov, an historian from the Memorial human rights group. "It's a conscious policy. They are trying to show the Soviet authorities looking decent and attractive to today's generation." In Bulgaria, oligarchs who control entire sectors of the economy have emerged from the former communist party's ranks and its feared secret services. The names of corrupt politicians and crime bosses are an open secret, but Bulgaria has not convicted a single senior official of graft and has jailed only one gang boss since 1989. No one has been convicted for the communist repressions. Some of the most popular words among ordinary Bulgarians are "dalavera," a Turkish word meaning fraud, "mutri," a nickname for ugly mafiosi and "mente," which means counterfeit products. "People are losing faith that one can achieve success in an honest, decent way. Success is totally criminalized," said Boriana Dimitrova of Bulgarian polling agency Alpha Research. She said the sense of injustice was particularly strong in the Balkans, Europe's poorest corner, where untouchable parallel structures of power reign. "Some people say: 'yes, the old regime was repressive but at least there was law and order.'" A promise to end the climate of impunity helped tough-talking Prime Minister Boiko Borisov of the center-right populist GERB party to a landslide election win in Bulgaria in July. Public discontent and recession mean only populist governments can survive in the region, analysts say. "The level of mistrust in the political elite and institutions is so high that you cannot convince people to do anything under unpopular governments," said Ivan Krastev of Sofia's Liberal Strategies Institute. Some in Bulgaria accuse the West of duplicity for easily swallowing the communist past of members of the new elite. The election of Bulgarian Irina Bokova, 57, a former communist apparatchik and ambassador to Paris, as head of the U.N. culture and education body UNESCO in September was a stark example of the West's hypocrisy, critics say. Bokova studied in Moscow during the communism and climbed the diplomatic career ladder in the 1990s thanks to her past. "AMERICANIZATION" On one front at least, some eastern Europeans say they have succeeded in catching up with and even outstripping capitalist standards -- the thirst for materialism. A big chunk of the loans taken in the boom years was spent on fancy cars and yachts, flat TV screens, designer clothes, silicon surgeries and exotic trips abroad. Copying foreign standards went as far as giving babies Western names and flooding TV screens with reality shows like "Big Brother." "Bulgaria is becoming Americanized," said renowned Bulgarian artist, Nikola Manev, who lives in Paris. "I pick up the phone and they talk to me in English, I go to a restaurant and it's called Miami. Don't we have our own names for God's sake? "Looking on the surface, I see new buildings, shops, shiny cars. But people have become sadder, more aggressive and unhappy," he said, prescribing spiritual cures. This autumn for the first time in many years, tickets at Sofia's theatres are selling out weeks in advance.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Monday the country could not have high economic growth and a rapid rise in carbon emissions now that the nation was the number three emitter after China and the United States. Jairam Ramesh's comments come as negotiators from nearly 200 governments meet in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The UN talks aim to reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012. Indian per-capita emissions are still low but demand for energy is rising as the middle-class buys more cars, TVs and better housing. Much of that energy comes from coal oil and gas, the main sources for planet-warming carbon dioxide. But Ramesh said India's rush for wealth could not come at the expense of the environment. Officials said his comments are the first time a government minister has said India has overtaken Russia as the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. "We will unilaterally, voluntarily, move on a low-carbon growth path. We can't have 8-9 percent GDP growth and high-carbon growth," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in the Nepalese capital. "It has to be low-carbon 8 percent, 9 percent growth and that is the objective that we have set for ourselves," he said. Poorer nations are now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and many big developing countries have taken steps to curb the growth of their emissions but say they won't agree on absolute cuts, fearing this will hurt their economies. India weathered the global financial crisis better than most, and is setting its sights on economic growth of almost 10 percent over the coming years. Its economy currently grows at around 8.5 per cent. "We are the third largest emitter of the greenhouse gases in the world ... China is number one at 23 percent, the United States is second at about 22 percent and India is number three at about five percent." GREENER PATH In India, any talk of a low-carbon economy was once seen as politically very risky, given the economic costs involved. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January asked a panel to begin charting a path to a greener economy. The report is expected by the year-end. Although India has announced a new climate plan which identifies renewable energy, such as solar power, as a key element, coal remains the backbone of energy supply in a country where almost half the 1.1 billion population has no access to electricity. "The gap between the second and the third (highest emitters) is very very high, but nevertheless we need to be conscious of our contribution," Ramesh said. The fraught UN talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations. The risk of the talks stalling is so great that the United Nations has stopped urging nations to commit to tougher pledges to curb carbon emissions, fearing further debate could derail already fraught talks on a more ambitious climate pact.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, widely credited with bringing democracy to the hideaway resort islands, resigned on Tuesday after weeks of opposition protests erupted into a police mutiny and what an aide said amounted to a coup. Nasheed, the Maldives' first democratically elected president, handed power over the Indian Ocean archipelago to Vice-President Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik, explaining that continuing in office would result in his having to use force against the people. "I resign because I am not a person who wishes to rule with the use of power," he said in a televised address. "I believe that if the government were to remain in power it would require the use of force which would harm many citizens. "I resign because I believe that if the government continues to stay in power, it is very likely that we may face foreign influences." It was not immediately clear to what influences he was referring but Hassan Saeed, leader of the DQP, one of the parties in the opposition coalition, and an Indian diplomatic source in Colombo said Nasheed had requested help from India and been refused. India helped foil a coup on the islands in 1988 by sending a battalion of soldiers to back the government. A spokesman for India's Foreign Ministry, Syed Akbaruddin, said the rebellion was an internal matter of the Maldives "to be resolved by the Maldives." Nasheed swept to victory in 2008, pledging to bring full democracy to the low-lying islands and speaking out passionately on the dangers of climate change and rising sea levels. But he drew opposition fire for his arrest of a judge he accused of being in the pocket of his predecessor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who ruled for 30 years. Protests at the arrest set off a constitutional crisis that had Nasheed defending himself against accusations of acting like a dictator. "It's a coup, I am afraid," an official at Nasheed's office said, asking not to be identified. "The police and Gayoom's people as well as some elements in the military have forced the president Nasheed to resign. According to my book it's a coup." The new president said that Nasheed was in protective police custody for his security. "We will insist Nasheed is tried for his corruption, for his violation of rule of law," said Saeed of the DQP. "...we will provide full support for the new president." Overnight, vandals attacked the lobby of the opposition-linked VTV TV station, witnesses said, while mutinying police attacked and burnt the main rallying point of Nasheed's Maldives Democratic Party before taking over the state broadcaster MNBC and renaming it TV Maldives, as it was called under Gayoom. On Tuesday, soldiers fired teargas at police and demonstrators who besieged the Maldives National Defence Force headquarters in Republic Square. Later in the day, scores of demonstrators stood outside the nearby president's office chanting "Gayoom! Gayoom!." SCRAMBLE FOR POSITION Gayoom's opposition Progressive Party of the Maldives accused the military of firing rubber bullets at protesters and a party spokesman, Mohamed Hussain "Mundhu" Shareef, said "loads of people" were injured. He gave no specifics. An official close to the president denied the government had used rubber bullets, but confirmed that about three dozen police officers defied orders overnight and attacked a ruling party facility. "This follows Gayoom's party calling for the overthrow of the Maldives' first democratically elected government and for citizens to launch jihad against the president," said the official who declined to be identified. The protests, and the scramble for position ahead of next year's presidential election, have seen parties adopting hardline Islamist rhetoric and accusing Nasheed of being anti-Islamic. The trouble has also shown the longstanding rivalry between Gayoom and Nasheed, who was jailed in all for six years after being arrested 27 times by Gayoom's government while agitating for democracy. The vice-president is expected to run a national unity government until the presidential election. The trouble has been largely invisible to the 900,000 or so well-heeled tourists who come every year to visit desert islands swathed in aquamarine seas, ringed by white-sand beaches. Most tourists are whisked straight to their island hideaway by seaplane or speedboat, where they are free to drink alcohol and get luxurious spa treatments, insulated from the everyday Maldives, a fully Islamic state where alcohol is outlawed and skimpy beachwear frowned upon. Nasheed was famous for his pleas for help to stop the sea engulfing his nation and in 2009 even held a cabinet meeting underwater, ministers all wearing scuba gear, to publicize the problem. An Asian diplomat serving in Male told Reuters on condition of anonymity: "No one remembers the underwater cabinet meeting. They remember Judge Abdulla Mohamed," a reference to Nasheed having the military arrest the judge accused of being in Gayoom's pocket. Meanwhile, Twitter user Alexander Brown said he was in the Maldives enjoying life. "Maldives government overthrowing (sic) and im watching a Vogue photo shoot infront of me on Four Seasons ... very strange world."

India's prime minister and US President Barack Obama meet next week to strengthen ties, with the emerging Asian power increasingly playing a bigger role on global issues such as climate change and trade. Manmohan Singh's three-day state visit starting on November 23 is seen by New Delhi as a touchstone of Obama's intention of sustaining a relationship that deepened under his predecessor George W. Bush. India is also widely seen as a key geopolitical player in helping bring stability to a South Asian region overshadowed by violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as militant attacks like last year's raids on Mumbai. Singh and Obama will hold talks on issues ranging from curbing carbon emissions - where the two sides are poles apart - to multi-billion dollar defense contracts and speeding up the completion of a landmark civilian nuclear deal signed last year. Singh's trip will be the first state visit of the Obama administration, highlighting the prime minister's personal push for broadening ties with Western economies and moving India away from decades of mistrust with Washington. The success of the trip may be measured by whether the two leaders manage to dispel any doubts of Washington's commitment to New Delhi in a region where it rivals China and Pakistan -- both seen as U.S. foreign policy priorities. "The relationship is good, but lacks a central defining issue, such as the civilian nuclear deal, that defined the relationship during the presidency of George Bush," said Walter Andersen of Johns Hopkins University's South Asia Studies center. "(The visit) provides an opportunity for India and the U.S. to introduce new ideas for regaining the bilateral relationship's strategic momentum." President Bill Clinton started U.S. efforts to build ties with modern India when the Cold War ended nearly two decades ago and India began to liberalize its economy in the 1990s. FOCUS ON CHINA, PAKISTAN His successor Bush elevated relations with a 2008 civilian nuclear deal that ended an embargo imposed in 1974 after New Delhi tested a nuclear bomb. Bilateral trade went from $5.6 billion in 1990 to about 43 billion in 2008, a 675 percent rise. But Obama's early focus on Pakistan to fight the Taliban and emphasis on relations with China irked some in India, which had hoped to build on Bush's legacy. "In terms of important but second-tier issues -- trade, climate change, even defense sales and counter-terrorism -- relations are good, and may get better," said Stephen Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution think tank. "However, there seems to be a parting of the ways at the strategic level." U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, focused partly on Pakistan which Washington sees as a necessary ally, has been criticized as ignoring the concerns of regional countries such as India, which competes with Islamabad for influence in Kabul. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. India, whose long-running border dispute with China has sharpened in recent months, sees the Asian giant's huge influence over the U.S. economy as leverage Beijing enjoys over Washington. India also worries about Chinese support for Pakistan. Beijing is concerned about the Dalai Lama's presence in India. "So when India sees Obama preoccupied with China and Pakistan it gets worried," Chintamani Mahapatra, foreign policy professor at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University. "It will look for a statement that will acknowledge a greater role for India in the region and assuage the fact that the Obama administration has so far marginalized New Delhi." But Washington values India's importance as an economic power, its huge market, a booming IT industry, its military might and potential as a counterweight to China. Among the nettlesome issues Singh will discuss is the nuclear deal held up now for want of liability protection for American firms and nuclear fuel reprocessing rights for India. India will also hope Obama declares his support for a permanent seat for Indian on the U.N. Security Council. "We can talk strategy, we can talk economics, we can talk the great global issues of the day," said consultant Frank Wisner, former U.S. ambassador to India. "We need India's cooperation if we are to achieve any of our objectives."

Bangladesh is to receive a grant of $2 million from Japan, administered by the Asian Development Bank, to tackle the huge challenges posed by climate change over the coming decades. ADB approved a technical assistance grant of US$2 million from the Japan Special Fund on Wednesday to increase the capacity of government agencies implementing a 10-year Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan. The Plan addresses food security, disaster preparedness and other key issues linked to climate change. "It is essential that Bangladesh prepares to adapt to climate change and safeguard the future well being of its people," says Zahir Ahmad, Project Implementation Officer for ADB's Bangladesh mission. "ADB assistance will allow the government to implement the Strategy and Action Plan, which will put the country on a low carbon growth path, make it more climate-resilient and help strengthen its food and energy security." In recent years, the country has seen higher-than-normal temperatures, heavier monsoon rains and an increasing number of tropical cyclones and storms linked to climate change, said a statement by ADB. With temperatures expected to keep rising over coming years, it is estimated that average sea levels may rise by around 30 centimetres by 2050 and could make about 14% of the country highly vulnerable to flooding, it said. Along with increasing the capacity of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and other government agencies, support will be given to develop specific climate change mitigation and adaptation programs and projects. A sub-programme will also be put in place to attract private sector businesses and other stakeholders to invest in clean energy projects eligible for carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. The full cost of the technical assistance is estimated at $2.5 million with the government making an in-kind contribution of $500,000. It will run for two years, starting in August 2009, with the Ministry of Environment and Forests as the executing agency. The Japan Special Fund is financed by the government of Japan and is administered by ADB.

Britain urged world leaders on Monday to turn up in person to salvage a UN climate deal in Copenhagen in December, and Australia and India outlined ways to curb their greenhouse gases. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told representatives of 17 major emitters meeting in London that success was still within reach for 190-nation talks in Denmark from Dec. 7 to 18, up to now intended as a gathering for environment ministers. "We must frankly face the plain fact that our negotiators are not getting to agreement quickly enough," he said. "Leaders must engage directly to break the impasse," he told the two-day talks ending on Monday. "I've said I'll go to Copenhagen, and I'm encouraging them to make the same commitment." Talks are bogged down in disputes between industrialized and developing countries over how to share out curbs on emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. Just one week of formal talks remains before Copenhagen, in Barcelona in early November. The two-year UN talks launched in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 are particularly stuck on how big carbon cuts recession-hit rich countries should make by 2020, and how much they should pay developing countries to fight global warming. Among signs of action on Monday, Australian Climate Minister Penny Wong said the government would bring carbon trade legislation back to parliament on Thursday and will demand a vote on the controversial laws before the end of November. POSSIBLE ELECTION The conservative opposition on Sunday demanded changes to the scheme, already rejected once by the upper house to avert a second defeat that would give Prime Minister Kevin Rudd an excuse to call a possible snap election. The government, which is ahead in opinion polls and could benefit from an election, wants to start carbon trading from July 2011, putting a price on greenhouse gas and helping curb emissions in one of world's highest per capita polluters. The Australian scheme will cover 75 percent of Australian emissions from 1,000 of the biggest companies and be the second domestic trading platform outside Europe. Companies will need a permit for every tonne of carbon they emit. An Indian newspaper said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh wanted New Delhi to accept curbs on the country's rising carbon emissions, dropping insistence that they should hinge on new finance and technology from rich nations. "We should be pragmatic and constructive, not argumentative and polemical," The Times of India quoted Ramesh as writing in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Ramesh signalled a willingness to make compromises to win a deal. India, China and other big developing countries fear they will be hard hit by climate change and say it is in their national interest to try to limit the effects more extreme droughts, floods, rising seas and melting glaciers that feed major rivers. The London talks of the Major Economies Forum focus on how to turn a patchwork of national policy plans, from China to the United States, into a deal. Countries attending account for 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. "The rich countries in the Major Economies Forum must urgently put new money on the table," said Friends of the Earth Climate Campaigner Asad Rehman. A big sticking point for Copenhagen is that the United States, the only industrialized country outside the current Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions, is unlikely to pass carbon-cutting laws by December. In Cape Town, South Africa pointed to one area of soaring emissions -- next year's soccer World Cup. Emissions would leap almost tenfold from a 2006 benchmark set by Germany, partly because air travel would be added to the count. "The FIFA 2010 World Cup will have the largest carbon footprint of any major event with a goal to be carbon neutral," Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said.

As a consequence of a geomagnetic storm triggered by a recent outburst of the sun, up to 40 of 49 newly launched Starlink satellites have been knocked out of commission. They are in the process of reentering Earth’s atmosphere, where they will be incinerated. The incident highlights the hazards faced by numerous companies planning to put tens of thousands of small satellites in orbit to provide internet service from space. And it’s possible that more solar outbursts will knock some of these newly deployed orbital transmitters out of the sky. The sun has an 11-year-long cycle in which it oscillates between hyperactive and quiescent states. Presently, it is ramping up to its peak, which has been forecast to arrive around 2025. This recent solar paroxysm was relatively moderate by the sun’s standards. “I have every confidence that we’re going to see an extreme event in the next cycle, because that typically is what happens during a solar maximum,” said Hugh Lewis, a space debris expert at the University of Southampton in England. If a milquetoast outburst can knock out 40 Starlink satellites hanging out at low orbital altitudes, a more potent solar scream has the potential to inflict greater harm on the megaconstellations of SpaceX and other companies. SpaceX announced the looming destruction of as many as 40 of its satellites in a company blog post on Tuesday night. The company said that after the launch, the satellites were released to their intended orbit, about 130 miles above Earth. This altitude was chosen partly to prevent potential collisions in the future with other satellites. If the satellites malfunction after being deployed at that altitude, and are unable to raise their orbits to more secure heights, “the atmosphere kind of reclaims the failed technology very rapidly,” Lewis said. “And that’s a very good safety measure.” But on Jan 29, before these satellites launched, a violent eruption from the sun of highly energetic particles and magnetism known as a coronal mass ejection was detected. That ejection arrived at Earth sometime around Feb 2, creating a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s magnetic bubble. The powerful storm added kinetic energy to particles in Earth’s atmosphere. “The atmosphere kind of puffs up, expands, as a result,” Lewis said. That expansion causes an increase in the atmosphere’s density, which in turn increases the drag experienced by objects moving through it, including satellites. This drag shrinks the size of their orbits, which draws them closer to the thick, lower atmosphere in which they burn up. According to SpaceX, during the recent Starlink deployment, “the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50% higher than during previous launches.” This ensured that as many as 40 of the 49 satellites would eventually succumb to the forces of gravity and perish. There are currently a total of 1,915 Starlink satellites in orbit, so for SpaceX, a loss of up to 40 “is not a big deal from their point of view,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who also catalogs and tracks artificial space objects. But Lewis said “that probably accounts for potentially up to $100 million of hardware, if you include the cost of the launch.” The dangers that solar outbursts and geomagnetic storms pose to objects in low-Earth orbit, from electrical damage to communications disruptions, are well known. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale from minor to extreme. The latest, a “moderate” storm, is noted by the agency as possibly causing changes in atmospheric drag that can alter orbits. With these risks being known, did SpaceX take this hazard into account during this Starlink deployment? “I’m just kind of dumbfounded,” said Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada. “Really? They did not think of this?” “It’s a bit of a surprise,” said McDowell. “They should have been ready for this, one would have thought.” When contacted by email, a SpaceX media representative said that no one was available to answer questions, noting that “it’s an incredibly demanding time for the team.” That these satellites seem to be quickly entering the atmosphere, rather than lingering in low-Earth orbit, is a good thing. They also pose no threat to anyone on the ground. “From a safety perspective, the system functioned exactly as it should have,” Lewis said. “The satellites de-orbited, and nothing else was put at risk.” Most satellites orbit at higher altitudes and can avoid the hazards posed by atmospheric expansion. But the threat to satellites orbiting at lower altitudes is far from over, and it leads to the question of whether SpaceX can continue deploying spacecraft at this low altitude. “As the sun gets more active, it releases an increasing amount of extreme ultraviolet, which gets absorbed into our atmosphere,” Lewis said. That atmosphere will expand significantly, and “the expectation is that the atmospheric density is going to increase by one or two orders of magnitude. That’s a way bigger change compared to what we’ve just seen with this particular event.” Many astronomers have been critical of Starlink and other satellite constellations, which reflect sunlight and will potentially interfere with telescope research on Earth. And some see this incident as emblematic of SpaceX’s attitude toward problems occurring in low-Earth orbit. “If things fail, they fix them and do things better next time,” Lewis said. “This is another example of that” — a policy of adherence to hindsight, not foresight. The death of these satellites is “a harsh lesson for SpaceX,” Lewis said. What happens next is up to them. Lawler added, “I hope this will knock a little bit of sense into them.” © 2022 The New York Times Company

Negotiators from 190 countries meeting in Bali to discuss climate change have "a political and historical responsibility" to reach a deal, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. Asked about the consequences of not reaching a deal, Ban said "that would be very serious". The UN Secretary General said he felt all countries, including the United States, wanted an agreement. The United States, as well as Japan, Canada and Australia, have been disputing a guideline for rich nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels. "I think there will be an agreement," he told reporters on board a flight from the Indonesian resort island of Bali, where the summit is taking place, to East Timor's capital Dili. He warned against countries becoming fixated on emission targets. "That will have to be negotiated down the road" he said. Ban said he would be prepared to make an unscheduled return to Bali on Saturday if the talks were still deadlocked. "I think the negotiators and particularly the ministers and the senior leaders have a political and historical responsibility" to conclude the talks successfully, he said. "Climate change, global warming doesn't care where you're from," he said.

Ardem Patapoutian and David Julius received the Nobel for medicine on Monday. Giorgio Parisi, Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann won the physics gong for their work deciphering chaotic climate, while Benjamin List and David MacMillan received the chemistry accolade for developing a tool for molecule building. Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, 72, on Wednesday became only the second writer of colour in sub-Suharan Africa ever to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. The last Black recipient of the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993. "Abdulrazak Gurnah meets at least one of the criterion of a writer from a non-traditional cultural circle - a non-European with a colonial background, but he's no woman," said Anne-Marie Morhed, head of the Swedish Association of Female Academics. "Two prizes remain, the Peace Prize and the Economy Prize. The (Norwegian) Nobel committee... still have a chance to honour a woman." Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Greta Thunberg are at least two women seen to be in contention when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Norway on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is led by a woman and the majority of the members are women. Ditto the previous committee: led by a woman and with a majority of women on it. There has also been a real push in recent years to not give the prize to only white men from North America and Western Europe, as was the case in the earlier decades. In comparison to the dozen Black peace laureates in the Nobel's history, there has never been a Black recipient of the prizes for medicine, chemistry and physics, points out Professor Winston Morgan, a toxicologist at the University of East London who has looked at representation in the prizes as part of his research on inequality in the sciences. "In terms of the gap between the world's population and the winners - the biggest gap is a gender one," Morgan said. "The number of female prize winners is really, really tiny." Scientists of both genders have already taken to social media to decry the lack of women recognised so far this year. GenderAvenger, a non-profit group dedicated to advancing women's voices in public dialogue, said the prizes were "like a terrible mystery where you know the ending halfway through the book. 4 out of 6 categories announced and nary a woman in sight, @NobelPrize. Is the story of the 2021 Nobel Prize that the men did it? (Spoiler: Women are also doing amazing work)." Some, including Ellie Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, expressed disappointment that this year's awards excluded the contributions of Katalin Kariko and Kizzmekia Corbett, key scientists behind the development of mRNA vaccines that are changing the course of the pandemic. Nobel watchers, however, said it was entirely likely that Kariko and Corbett would be recognised in years to come. The committee, they said, tended to reward recipients after a period of time. "The issue for the Nobel prize is it has a criteria and a tradition and it is hard for them to break away from that," Morgan said, adding that the committee would likely respond to scientific innovation during the pandemic in three or four years. He added that if you looked at the general trajectory of Nobel prize winners, the number of women scientists was growing as were those given to men from Japan and China. "We are not seeing that same trajectory for Black scientists. That concerns me more," he said. "You need to ask are there enough black scientists in universities and are they being supported." Asked why there were so few Black Nobel Prize winners for literature, Gurnah told Reuters the world was changing. Jesper Haeggstrom, chairman of the Nobel Assembly that awarded the prize in Physiology or Medicine, said there was no simple explanation for the lack of female prize winners, but that it reflected the representation of women in science. "There has been an under-representation of women historically in science, so the further back in time you look, the fewer female candidates there are," he said. Haeggstrom declined to say whether gender played a role in the committee's selection process. "I'm not at liberty to give you any details on this, but in general terms, I can say that scientific competence is the deciding factor," he said. Critics, however, point to the makeup of the scientific selection committees. Only 25 percent of the 50 professors on the medicine selection committee are women. The Committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences consists of six members, of which one is a woman, and two co-opted members, both men. The chemistry committee consists of six members, all male, and two co-opted members, both women.

Bringing a message that America's power and wealth should be used to serve humanity, the 78-year-old pontiff said the United States must not turn its back on "the stranger in our midst." "Building a nation calls us to recognise that we must constantly relate to others, rejecting a mindset of hostility," Francis told the Republican-led Congress in Washington a day after he met with Democratic President Barack Obama. Francis, born in Argentina to an Italian immigrant family, delivered a wide-ranging speech that addressed issues dear to liberals in the United States but also emphasized conservative values and Catholic teachings on the family. The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics called for a worldwide end to the death penalty, which is still used in 31 of the 50 US states, while advocating a more equitable economy to help people "trapped in a cycle of poverty" and a greater effort against climate change driven by human activities. The pope later flew to New York, where he was cheered by throngs lining Fifth Avenue as he headed in his "popemobile" to St. Patrick's Cathedral to the sound of the cathedral bells pealing. With organ music playing and a chorus singing, the pope was welcomed by a crowd of 3,000 inside the cathedral for an evening prayer service. Francis on Friday is due to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and to celebrate an open-air Mass in Philadelphia on Sunday. His plea on immigration received frequent applause mostly from Democrats but also from Republicans among the lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and other dignitaries packed inside the House of Representatives chamber to hear the first address by a pope to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. Harsh rhetoric toward illegal immigrants has featured heavily in the race for the Republican nomination for the November 2016 presidential election. Republican front-runner Donald Trump says if elected he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are from Latin America like the pope, and the billionaire businessman has accused Mexico of sending rapists and other criminals across the border. Francis, addressing an issue that has cost the Republicans support among increasingly influential Hispanic voters, said America should not be put off by the flow of foreigners from south of the border "in search of a better life." "We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal," he said, speaking softly and in heavily accented English. As he spoke, Francis was flanked by two of America's most influential Catholics: House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, and Democratic Vice President Joe Biden. Boehner, who often tears up at emotional moments, cried openly during the speech. The United States has grappled for years over what to do with illegal immigrants. Republicans in Congress last year blocked a bipartisan effort to overhaul immigration laws that would have allowed illegal immigrants a chance to win US citizenship. In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in May, 51 percent of 2,002 U.S. adults surveyed said immigrants strengthen the United States because of their hard work and talents, while 41 percent said immigrants are a burden because they take jobs, housing and healthcare. It was is unclear whether the pope's speech will change hearts and minds on immigration. "It doesn't affect my thoughts," said Michael Tipsword, a student at George Washington University and a Catholic. He said Francis' opinion on immigration is more related to humanitarian needs than politics. "I'm a pretty staunch conservative," said Tipsword, standing on the lawn in front of the US Capitol building where thousands watched the speech on a large video screen. Invoking famous American figures Abraham Lincoln and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Francis told U.S. lawmakers who are often caught up in bitter partisan fights that politics should be "an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good." Presidential candidates from both sides of the divide held up the pope's comments as evidence that the leader of America's 70 million Catholics agrees with them. Alluding to abortion and euthanasia, the pope cited a "responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development." But he quickly turned to the abolition of the death penalty, saying "every life is sacred" and "society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes." Francis also called for an end to a global arms trade fuelled by "money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood, in the face of the shameful and culpable silence." In remarks welcomed by conservatives, Francis said, "Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family," expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage. To underscore his message of helping the poor, Francis went straight from the US Capitol in his small black Fiat to have lunch with homeless people, telling them there was no justification for homelessness.

The prime minister urged members of the public to plant more trees as she kicked off the 'National Tree Plantation Campaign' at Ganabhaban on Saturday. "Today is World Environment Day. I have planted trees myself. At the same time, I would urge all the people of the country to plant trees in whatever space that is available." "It is best to plant three trees at a time. If you can't do that, then plant at least one.” Highlighting the threat of climate change, the Awami League chief called for initiatives aimed at building a 'greener' Bangladesh. She also addressed the measures taken by the government geared towards afforestation which she hopes will help make Bangladesh even greater strides now that it has achieved the status of a developing nation. "We have had a lot of success in the field of afforestation. As a result of these measures, we have been able to create about 22 percent more forests.” Many families are also growing their own gardens in the country amid growing awareness of the benefits of a green environment, according to the prime minister. “Trees bring many benefits to our lives. That is why I urge everyone to protect the environment, and your own financial well-being, the most useful thing to protect the environment is to plant trees extensively.”

European Union states debate how far they are willing to go to fight climate change on Tuesday as the 27-nation bloc forms what could become the world's most ambitious strategy to curb global warming. A draft statement to be agreed at a meeting of EU environment ministers, obtained by Reuters, endorses a plan to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. It also says the bloc would be willing to reduce its emissions by 30 percent by 2020 if other industrialised nations made similar cuts and 'economically more advanced' developing countries contributed, too. That call is likely to form the basis of the EU's negotiating position for a global agreement to cut emissions after 2012, when the first period covered by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change concludes. But officials said Hungary and Poland, which joined the EU in 2004, oppose making the 20 or 30 percent targets mandatory. Finland has also voiced opposition to a unilateral EU target, while Sweden and Denmark feel the bloc should commit to a 30 percent reduction from the start. Some states also wanted to discuss using a different base year than 1990 for calcualting the emissions cuts. Germany, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, will try to smooth out differences between ministers to get unanimous support for its climate change strategy ahead of a summit of the bloc's top leaders in March. The draft says EU states would commit to a 30 percent target 'provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable emissions reductions and economically more advanced developing countries adequately contribute according to their responsibilities and respective capabilities.' The statement said that a 'differentiated approach' would be needed when distributing the requirements to fulfil the EU's target among the 27 states. It called on the Commission to analyse criteria for how the targets would be divided up. "A differentiated approach to the contributions of the member states is needed reflecting fairness and taking into account national circumstances and the base years of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol," the draft said. The 15 'old' EU member states that were members before the bloc expanded to 25 nations in 2004 and 27 countries in 2007 have a collective target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by eight percent by 2012 compared to 1990 levels. That overall goal is split up among the 15 states in a burden-sharing agreement, with some having to reduce emissions more than others.

Cities should play a much bigger role in fighting global warming and can act more easily than governments struggling to agree on a UN climate accord, the World Bank said on Friday. "The 10 biggest cities in the world emit more greenhouse gases than Japan," Andrew Steer, the World Bank's special envoy for climate change, told Reuters. He urged reforms including changes to carbon markets to help cities become greener. A World Bank study said that urban areas, home to just over half the world's population and responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, could help by shifting to greener transport, clean energy or better trash recycling. "Cities are the most important cause of climate change and cities are the most important potential solution to climate change," Steer said. And they have huge economic power. The report said that the world's 50 biggest cities had a combined gross domestic product behind only that of the United States, ahead of China. It listed Tokyo and New York as having bigger economies than Canada or Turkey. "When you have 194 countries in the world it's not always easy to get consensus," he said of UN climate talks, which are seeking to agree a modest package of measures to slow global warming at Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 talks in Cancun. More than 1,000 US mayors, for instance, signed on in 2008 to targets to cut greenhouse gases in line with the UN's Kyoto Protocol, an accord binding almost 40 nations to curb emissions until 2012 but never ratified by Washington. SEA LEVELS And many of the world's biggest cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, New York or Buenos Aires, are near coasts or rivers and so have compelling reasons to act to limit risks of floods or sea level rise. He said the World Bank favored an overhaul of a UN market mechanism that encourages investments in individual projects in developing nations, such as solar panels in Morocco or hydropower in Honduras, to allow a broader, city-wide scale. Such a reform of the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would allow mayors to get money and allow them to invest in areas ranging from flood barriers to hydrogen-powered buses, rather than getting each individual project approved. "Our view is that measurement challenges are not overwhelming for cities as a whole," he said. The CDM allows companies to invest in green projects in developing nations and claim credits back home for the averted emissions. Steer also said that city-dwellers' views of where it was best to live were shifting -- in past decades, when industrial air pollution was high, areas downwind such as the east side of London were home to the poor. In future, the poor would live in low-lying areas at risk of river floods or rising sea levels.

The agency said in a statement that Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and Sabah were still affected by floods, and 8,727 people were taking shelter at 128 relief centres. A total of 125,490 people have been affected by the floods nationwide, it said, of which 117,700 evacuees have returned home. Floods are common on the eastern coast of Malaysia during the annual monsoon season between October and March, but unusually heavy rainfall that started on Dec. 17 displaced thousands and strained emergency services. Fifty people have died in the floods, and two remain missing, according to a police tweet citing Inspector-General Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani. Following the meteorological department's warning of continuous heavy rains, the National Disaster Control Centre has issued a disaster operation preparedness notice. The Department of Irrigation and Drainage also issued a warning of high tides between Jan. 2-5, and cautioned residents on the west coast in Peninsula Malaysia, the statement said. Malaysia said it will provide 1.4 billion ringgit ($336.22 million) in cash aid and other forms of relief for those hit by severe flooding this month. It is also seeking $3 million from the UN Green Climate Fund to develop a national plan to adapt to climate change.

Cuba will free seven of 59 dissidents imprisoned since 2003, a move that opponents of ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said reflects a "climate of change" under his brother's rule. The first releases of jailed dissidents since August were negotiated by Spain on health grounds and announced by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos on Friday. "The decision was made unilaterally by the Cuban authorities and we are very satisfied," Moratinos told Spanish radio from the city of Cordoba, noting that the move came after dialogue with Cuba. The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on its Web site that four of them will be sent to Spain with their families to receive medical treatment. The four dissidents who will go to Spain have been gathered from different jails around Cuba in the Combinado del Este prison on the outskirts of Havana. They are Omar Pernet, Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo, Alejandro Gonzalez and Pedro Pablo Alvarez. "We hope ours are not the only releases," Alvarez, 60, told Reuters by telephone from the prison. "The four of us are well. They've treated us well. We don't know when they will free us; it could be today or tomorrow," he said. The dissidents were arrested in a political crackdown ordered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in March 2003 that put 75 of his opponents in prison with sentences of up to 28 years. 'CLIMATE OF CHANGE' Sixteen had already been freed on health grounds. One of them, economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, said the new releases were a step in the right direction by acting President Raul Castro, who has been running Cuba since Fidel Castro was sidelined by illness in July 2006. He has not appeared in public since. "This is a rational step by the Cuban government and by the reformist sectors within that want change," Espinosa Chepe said. "It reflects a climate of change and will benefit that climate of change," he said. Another dissident, Manuel Cuesta Morua, said the government of Raul Castro was responding to requests by the international community for improved respect for human rights in Cuba. The releases show that a strategy of dialogue and engagement of Cuba's communist government advocated by Spain within the European Union is paying off with "concrete results," Morua said. Cuba's main rights group, the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights, says there were 234 political prisoners in Cuba at the end of 2007, down from 283 a year earlier, indicating a drop in the number of Cubans behind bars for political reasons since Raul Castro took over. Last August, Cuba released its longest-serving political prisoner, Francisco Chaviano Gonzalez, a former mathematics professor and rights activist who had spent more than 13 years in jail. Morua said more releases can be expected as Havana prepares to sign the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and a similar pact on economic and social rights by next month. This would oblige Cuba to accept regular U.N. monitoring of its human rights record from 2009. The Cuban government does not allow the International Red Cross access to its prisons. It denies holding any political prisoners and labels dissidents "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" on the payroll of its arch-enemy, the United States

The program, "Countering Violent Extremism," or CVE, would be changed to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States. Such a change would reflect Trump's election campaign rhetoric and criticism of former President Barack Obama for being weak in the fight against Islamic State and for refusing to use the phrase "radical Islam" in describing it. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on civilians in several countries. The CVE program aims to deter groups or potential lone attackers through community partnerships and educational programs or counter-messaging campaigns in cooperation with companies such as Google and Facebook. Some proponents of the program fear that rebranding it could make it more difficult for the government to work with Muslims already hesitant to trust the new administration, particularly after Trump issued an executive order last Friday temporarily blocking travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Still, the CVE program, which focuses on US residents and is separate from a military effort to fight extremism online, has been criticised even by some supporters as ineffective. A source who has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the program said Trump transition team members first met with a CVE task force in December and floated the idea of changing the name and focus. In a meeting last Thursday attended by senior staff for DHS Secretary John Kelly, government employees were asked to defend why they chose certain community organisations as recipients of CVE program grants, said the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions. Although CVE funding has been appropriated by Congress and the grant recipients were notified in the final days of the Obama administration, the money still may not go out the door, the source said, adding that Kelly is reviewing the matter. The department declined comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Program criticised Some Republicans in Congress have long assailed the program as politically correct and ineffective, asserting that singling out and using the term "radical Islam" as the trigger for many violent attacks would help focus deterrence efforts. Others counter that branding the problem as "radical Islam" would only serve to alienate more than three million Americans who practice Islam peacefully. Many community groups, meanwhile, had already been cautious about the program, partly over concerns that it could double as a surveillance tool for law enforcement. Hoda Hawa, director of policy for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said she was told last week by people within DHS that there was a push to refocus the CVE effort from tackling all violent ideology to only Islamist extremism. "That is concerning for us because they are targeting a faith group and casting it under a net of suspicion," she said. Another source familiar with the matter was told last week by a DHS official that a name change would take place. Three other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such plans had been discussed but were unable to attest whether they had been finalised. The Obama administration sought to foster relationships with community groups to engage them in the counterterrorism effort. In 2016, Congress appropriated $10 million in grants for CVE efforts and DHS awarded the first round of grants on Jan. 13, a week before Trump was inaugurated. Among those approved were local governments, city police departments, universities and non-profit organisations. In addition to organisations dedicated to combating Islamic State's recruitment in the United States, grants also went to Life After Hate, which rehabilitates former neo-Nazis and other domestic extremists. Just in the past two years, authorities blamed radical and violent ideologies as the motives for a white supremacist's shooting rampage inside a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina and Islamist militants for shootings and bombings in California, Florida and New York. One grant recipient, Leaders Advancing & Helping Communities, a Michigan-based group led by Lebanese-Americans, has declined a $500,000 DHS grant it had sought, according to an email the group sent that was seen by Reuters. A representative for the group confirmed the grant had been rejected but declined further comment. "Given the current political climate and cause for concern, LAHC has chosen to decline the award," said the email, which was sent last Thursday, a day before Trump issued his immigration order, which was condemned at home and abroad as discriminating against Muslims while the White House said it was to "to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals."

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, told workers during a staff meeting that was livestreamed on his Facebook page that within a decade as many as half of the company’s more than 48,000 employees would work from home. “It’s clear that COVID has changed a lot about our lives, and that certainly includes the way that most of us work,” Zuckerberg said. “Coming out of this period, I expect that remote work is going to be a growing trend as well.” Facebook’s decision, the first among tech’s biggest companies, is a stark change for a business culture built around getting workers into giant offices and keeping them there. Using free shuttle buses, free cafeterias and personal services like dry cleaning, tech companies have done as much as possible over the years to give employees little reason to go home, let alone avoid the office. If other giant companies follow suit, tech employment could start to shift away from expensive hubs like Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York. The option to work from home could also provide more reason for tech workers who complain that their enviable salaries still aren’t enough to buy a home in San Francisco or San Jose to consider settling in other parts of the country. Zuckerberg’s announcement followed similar decisions at Twitter and the payments company Square, both led by Jack Dorsey. Dorsey said last week that employees at his companies would be allowed to work from home indefinitely. At Google, employees have been told they can work from home through the end of the year, but the company has not made any indications about permanent plans. There are signs that remote work is popular among technologists. After Dorsey’s announcement, Google searches for “Twitter jobs” spiked, according to Google Trends. Aaron Levie, the chief executive of the business technology company Box, wrote on Twitter that “the push happening around remote work is as game-changing for the future of tech as the launch of the iPhone” more than a decade ago. Tech executives have long believed that person-to-person communication was a big part of the creativity that went into generating popular products. They built giant campuses that reflected that belief, from the ornate offices of Apple, Google and Facebook in Silicon Valley to the new Amazon headquarters in Seattle. Still, the biggest tech companies were trying to expand beyond their main offices before the pandemic, as an older generation of companies like Intel had done. Amazon, for example, intends to open a second headquarters in Virginia. The coronavirus pandemic could accelerate those plans. “Before the virus happened, a lot of the discussion about the tech sector was about how to bring people to work sites and create affordable housing,” said Robert Silverman, a professor of urban and regional planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “This is kind of a natural progression.” An employee exodus from the biggest urban tech hubs, combined with layoffs, could have dramatic local impacts. Housing costs in the Bay Area, for example, have fallen since the pandemic began, according to the rental firm Zumper. Rents in San Francisco fell 7% in April, and were down 15% in Menlo Park, Facebook’s home. Zuckerberg long worried that employees who worked remotely would lose productivity. Facebook once provided cash bonuses to employees who lived within 10 miles of its headquarters. In 2018, Facebook expanded its main campus with elaborate new offices designed by Frank Gehry, including a 3.6-acre roof garden with more than 200 trees. Just last year, Facebook started moving into a 43-story office tower that it had leased in San Francisco, and the company is still reportedly in talks for a significant office expansion in New York, as well. In March, the coronavirus lockdown forced companies to send employees home. Many tech companies, including Facebook, emptied their offices before local shelter-in-place orders. Now, more than two months later, executives are discovering that their remote workers performed better than expected. Zuckerberg said employees remained focused even though they were working from home. Facebook will begin by allowing new hires who are senior engineers to work remotely, and then allow current employees to apply for permission to work from home if they have positive performance reviews. Starting in January, Facebook’s employee compensation will be adjusted based on the cost of living in the locations where workers choose to live. Facebook will make sure employees are honest about their location by checking where they log in to internal systems from, he said. Zuckerberg said the shift could offer more benefits than inconveniences for the company. Allowing remote work will allow Facebook to broaden its recruitment, retain valuable employees, reduce the climate impact caused by commutes and expand the diversity of its work force, Zuckerberg said. So far, Facebook, Square and Twitter are being far more aggressive than their counterparts in the industry. Their work is mostly done in software code, which can be handled remotely. At Apple, on the other hand, many employees are hardware engineers who need to be in the company’s lab, particularly because of the company’s secrecy around its products. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in April that the company’s main office in Silicon Valley would be closed until at least June and has not updated that timeline. Startups could also find it difficult to manage a remote work force. Allowing workers to live in the Midwest could keep costs down, but Silicon Valley has a giant talent pool from which startups draw their workers. Also, many venture capitalists, mostly based in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, expect the companies they invest in to be based nearby. At Los Angeles-based Snap, the maker of Snapchat, employees are allowed to work at home through September. Evan Spiegel, Snap’s chief executive, said in an interview that he was reassessing the situation regularly and considering guidance from health authorities about when to reopen. “People want certainty, and there’s a huge amount of pressure as a leader to make definitive statements,” Spiegel said on Wednesday. “I think it’s important that we remain flexible in a situation that is changing rapidly.” c.2020 The New York Times Company

“Not everything is closed as USA quits…only one country has exited but all others are with it,” he said, “Even 79 percent of the US people believe climate change is a big issue and their government should take initiatives.” He made the remarks at a press briefing at the foreign ministry on Monday on the “Dhaka Meeting of the Global Commission on Adaptation” to be held on Wednesday. Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister M Shahab Uddin and Principal Coordinator (SDG Affairs) at the Prime Minister’s Office Md Abul Kalam Azad also spoke at the briefing. President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the landmark agreement, reached in Paris after years of negotiations, that provides a pathway for countries to reduce emissions so that the global temperature rise is kept below 2 degrees Celsius. Bangladesh as the climate vulnerable country has ratified the agreement. “We hope they (US) will join again (Paris Agreement) as their citizens want it,” the foreign minister said. Marshall Island President Hilda Heine, former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva are scheduled to arrive in Dhaka on Tuesday to attend the meeting to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. They will also visit Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar to see environmental degradation due to influx of Myanmar people here. “We would like to show the global leaders (involved in climate change mitigation efforts) how our environment is being affected due to huge influx of Rohingyas,” Principal Coordinator Azad said. The Marshal Island president will arrive in the early hours of Tuesday and Ban Ki-moon in the afternoon. They will be received by foreign minister at Shahjalal International Airport. Hasina will hold a meeting with the Marshall Island president and the former UN chief before the inauguration of the conference at the Hotel Intercontinental.

The UN climate agency called on Wednesday for a special summit to spur a fight against climate change but said high-level ministerial talks could fit the bill if world leaders resist. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, said that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon agreed at talks in New York on Tuesday to send envoys to probe government willingness for a high-level meeting about global warming. "The Secretary-General is exploring ways and means ... to facilitate global efforts for dealing with climate change," de Boer told Reuters by telephone after flying back to Europe. Ban's envoys would "explore the possibility of a high-level meeting ... possibly on the margins of the UN General Assembly" in New York in September, de Boer said. "It doesn't necessarily have to be heads of state," he added. "It could be a different level, such as foreign affairs or energy ministers." On March 1, Ban said global warming posed a threat as great as war and urged the United States to play a leading role in combating climate change. But Ban's spokeswoman said at the time that there were no plans to arrange a summit despite pleas from UN environment agencies. "I don't think it's a change of heart. What's being explored is ... a high-level meeting to engage a broader constituency -- foreign affairs, energy, trade, economy, transport," de Boer said. "It needs a broader push and broader support," irrespective of whether leaders meet, he said. World talks on expanding a fight against global warming, widely blamed on burning fossil fuels, are stalled. UN scientific reports this year say that mankind's emissions of greenhouse gas are "very likely" to be causing global warming that could bring more hunger, droughts, floods, heatwaves, melt glaciers and raise sea levels. De Boer says the world needs to speed up talks on widening the UN Kyoto Protocol, which sets cuts on emissions by 35 industrialised nations until 2012. The United States and Australia pulled out in 2001, reckoning Kyoto too costly. Kyoto nations make up only about a third of world emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Only Russia is bound to a Kyoto target of the top four emitters -- the United States, China, Russia and India. De Boer said that a new meeting could build on, rather than duplicate, a Group of Eight summit in June at which German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to focus on climate change. The G8 summit will be joined by heads of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Together the G8 and the five make up the bulk of world emissions of carbon dioxide. De Boer said that the G8 summit omits groups such as small island states, threatened by rising seas, the poorest nations such as in sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia. Environment ministers will meet for a next round of formal UN climate negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

Output from mines, utilities and factories grew by a much slower-than-expected 0.5 percent year-on-year, government data showed on Friday, down from June's revised 3.9 percent rise.Output growth hit a 19-month high of 5.0 percent in May.Retail inflation, which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) tracks for setting lending rates, edged down marginally to 7.8 percent in August from 7.96 percent a month earlier, helped by slower annual rises in prices of fuel and clothes.The numbers come after the economy posted its fastest growth in 2-1/2 years in the quarter to June, helped by a revival in industry.Prime Minister Narendra Modi seized on that figure to highlight the "huge positive sentiment" behind India's recovery.However, high inflation would make it tougher for Modi to encourage Indian consumers, who power nearly 60 percent of the economy, to loosen their purse strings.It would also make the RBI wary of lowering interest rates later this month.The RBI, which wants to reduce retail inflation to 6 percent by 2016, left interest rates steady last month, citing inflationary risks from a late monsoon.While better rainfall in recent weeks, falling global crude prices, moderating vegetable prices and a favourable statistical base will likely help lower inflation, rates are widely expected to remain on hold when the RBI reviews them on Sept 30. A man works inside a boiler spare parts manufacturing workshop on the outskirts of Kolkata June 11, 2014. Credit: Reuters "The outlook on inflation seems less discomforting than it was a month back," says Upasna Bhardwaj, an economist at ING Vysya Bank, in Mumbai."We continue to expect that RBI will keep its policy rate unchanged through fiscal year 2014/15 (March 2015) with a probable action mid-next year."The prospects of a revival in demand-driven price pressures following a pick-up in economic activity and sooner-than-expected interest rate increases in the US are also expected to weigh on the central bank's rate decision.Any decision by the US Federal Reserve to raise rates, which have been held near zero since December 2008, will have implications for India, as it could lead to capital outflows, weakening the rupee and inflating costs of imported commodities.Modi won India's strongest electoral mandate in 30 years in May, vowing to lift sliding economic growth, cool inflation and create enough jobs for its young workforce.Bullish investors, glum consumersThe optimism fanned by Modi's rise to power has already brought inflows of nearly $14 billion of foreign funds into Indian equities this year as investors bet that his drive to cut red tape will revive stalled projects and underpin the economic recovery. A labourer works inside a steel factory on the outskirts of Jammu January 2, 2014. Credit: Reuters The 50-share Nifty has gained over 30 percent in US dollar terms this year to become the best-performing equity index in Asia.Goldman Sachs upgraded its target for the index this week, citing optimism over future earnings of Indian firms.To sustain this euphoria, economists say, Modi must overhaul India's strained public finances, stringent land acquisition laws, chaotic tax regime and rigid labour rules.During his first 100 days in office, the new prime minister showed little appetite for such structural changes, and there is concern that sharply higher growth in the last quarter could reduce their urgency.That could be damaging for an economy that is still hobbled by slack consumption and weak business investment.Persistently high inflation and years of stagnant growth have forced consumers to cut discretionary spending.Consumer goods output, a proxy for consumer demand, has grown in just two of the last 19 months. It fell an annual 7.4 percent in July.Firms are shying away from fresh investments. Capital goods production fell 3.8 percent from a year earlier."The pro-business government has facilitated the investment climate and boosted confidence, but more needs to be done to get back to a period of high growth and low inflation," said Rohini Malkani, an analyst at Citi. A man works inside a boiler spare parts manufacturing workshop on the outskirts of Kolkata June 11, 2014. Credit: Reuters A labourer works inside a steel factory on the outskirts of Jammu January 2, 2014. Credit: Reuters

In a ceremony marking Rokeya Day on Thursday, Hasina made the request for Saima, who is known for her work on global child autism. Born in 1973 in Dhaka, the granddaughter of Bangabandhu is on the National Advisory Committee for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders and is also a member of World Health Organization’s global Expert Advisory Panel on Mental Health. “There was a time when parents kept their autistic or disabled children away from public eyes. The mothers of such children were harassed. There were cases where husbands divorced women over giving birth to such children,” Hasina said. “Saima Wazed has brought about a major change, allowing parents to no longer have to hide autistic or disabled children. Rather, they now proudly speak about them.” Saima, who is a licensed school psychologist in the United States, entered the field of autism and children’s nervous complications in 2008 and was acclaimed for her work within a short time. In 2014, she received the ‘Excellence in Public Health’ award from the WHO for her contribution in the field in 11 Southeast Asian countries. She received the ‘International Champion Award’ in 2017 from the New York-based School and Center for Children with Autism. The daughter of nuclear scientist MA Wazed Miah, Saima also played the role of a thematic ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum or CVF. Saima achieved her honours degree in psychology in 1997 and master’s in clinical psychology in 2002 from Barry University in the US. She received a specialist degree in school psychology two years later. At the university, she conducted a study on the development of Bangladeshi women. It was praised as the best scientific presentation by the Florida Academy of Science. The efforts of Saima, who earned a place in the list of 100 Innovative Women Leaders in Global Mental Health published by Global Mental Health Programs Consortium in 2019, included organising an international conference on autism in Dhaka for the first time in 2011. Saima played a chief role in the formulation of the country’s Neurodevelopment Disability Trust Act 2013. She is also the chairperson of Shuchona Foundation, which works on mental health issues. She is a trustee and the vice-chairperson of Awami League’s research wing Centre for Research and Information or CRI.

Modern humans may have left Africa for Arabia up to 65,000 years earlier than previously thought and their exodus was enabled by environmental factors rather than technology, scientists said on Thursday. Their findings suggest the migrants followed a direct route to the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, and did not travel via the Nile Valley or the Near East as suggested in previous studies. An international team of researchers studied an ancient tool kit containing hand axes, perforators and scrapers which was unearthed at the Jebel Faya archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates. "Our findings should stimulate a re-evaluation of the means by which we modern humans became a global species," said Simon Armitage, of the University of London, who worked on the study. Using luminescence dating -- a technique used to determine when mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight -- they found that the stone tools were between 100,000 and 125,000 years old. Hans-Peter Uerpmann of Eberhard Karls University in Tuebingen, who led the research, said the craftsmanship ruled out the possibility the tools were made in the Middle East. He said the tools resembled those made by early humans in east Africa instead, suggesting that "no particular cultural achievements were necessary for people to leave Africa". The research, published in the journal Science, suggests environmental factors such as sea levels were more important than technological innovations in making the migration possible. The researchers analysed sea-level and climate-change records preserved in the landscape from the last interglacial period -- around 130,000 years ago -- to determine when humans would have been able to cross Arabia. They found that the Bab al-Mandab strait between Arabia and the Horn of Africa would have become narrower at this time as sea levels were lower, providing a safe route out of Africa both prior to and at the beginning of the last interglacial period. Uerpmann said the straits may have been passable at low tide, making it likely that the modern humans walked across or travelled on either rafts or boats. It was previously thought that the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula would have hindered an exodus from Africa but the new study suggests Arabia became wetter during the last interglacial period, with more lakes, rivers and vegetation, making it easier for humans to survive the passage to Arabia. Although the timing of modern humans moving out of Africa has been the subject of much debate, previous evidence suggested the exodus took place along the Mediterranean Sea or Arabian coast around 60,000 years ago.

NEW ORLEANS, Oct 16,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - President Barack Obama fired back on Thursday at critics who say he has few accomplishments of note in his nine months in office and declared he was just getting started. In recent weeks, Obama has faced criticism both from liberals who want him to do more to advance causes such as gay rights, and conservatives who accuse him of taking too long to decide whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan. A comedy skit on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" program a couple of weeks ago drew attention to the issue. An actor playing the president said, "When you look at my record, it's very clear what I've done so far, and that is: Nothing. Nada. Almost one year, and nothing to show for it." The criticism was magnified after Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a week ago when even some commentators sympathetic to the president said it seemed premature. Obama, making his first trip as president to see efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, opened a town-hall meeting by saying his work had led to some improvement in the US economy and brought an overhaul of the US healthcare system within reach this year. "Now, just in case any of you were wondering, I never thought any of this was going to be easy," he said. "You know, I listen to sometimes these reporters on the news (who say) 'Well, why haven't you solved world hunger yet?'" As the crowd laughed, he said: "Why hasn't everybody done it? It's been nine months. Why? I never said it was going to be easy. What did I say during the campaign? I said change is hard. And big change is harder." In what seemed a reference to Republicans opposed to Democratic healthcare proposals, Obama accused them of "trying to stand in the way of progress." "Let me tell you: I'm just getting started," Obama said. 'WHY DO PEOPLE HATE YOU?' The town-hall meeting showed evidence of the partisan divide in America. When the Democratic Obama introduced Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a rising star in Republican politics, some in the crowd booed until Obama settled them down and hailed Jindal as a hard-working politician. At the end of the event, a young schoolboy named Terence Scott asked Obama, "Why do people hate you?" "Well, now, first of all, I did get elected president, so not everybody hates me now," Obama replied. "I got a whole lot of votes." "But you know, what is true is if you were watching TV lately, it seems like everybody's just getting mad all the time," Obama said, blaming the climate in part on politics and on concerns among Americans about losing jobs or their healthcare. "And when things are going tough, then, you know, you're going to get some of the blame, and that's part of the job. But you know, I'm a pretty tough guy," he said.