body,labels
"Even as the justices weigh the case of the Mississippi law barring most abortions after 15 weeks, the political clash is already intensifying, with Democrats warning supporters that the court is poised to reverse access to abortion 50 years after it was recognised as a constitutional right. “What is fundamentally at stake is that every woman in our country should be able to make her own health care decisions and chart her own destiny and have the full independence to do that,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who is seeking reelection in a race with significant implications for control of the Senate. As the court heard arguments in the Mississippi case on Wednesday, it appeared that the six conservative justices were likely to uphold the state’s law despite the precedent set in 1973 by Roe, which held that states could not bar abortion before fetal viability, now judged to be around 22 to 24 weeks. Several of the justices suggested that they were willing to go another step and overturn Roe entirely, leaving states free to impose whatever bans or restrictions they choose. The court is likely to release its decision in the case at the end of its term in June or early July, just as campaigning in the midterms is getting into full swing. While the subject of abortion and the Supreme Court has traditionally been seen as more of an energising issue for Republican and evangelical voters, Democrats say that situation could be reversed should the court undermine Roe, raising the possibility that abortion could be banned or severely limited in many states. That outcome, Democrats said, would transform the long fight over abortion rights from theory to reality and give new resonance to their arguments that a Democratic Congress is needed to protect access to the procedure and seat judges who are not hostile to abortion rights. “There is no question that should the decision be one that would overturn Roe v. Wade, it will certainly motivate our base,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Quite frankly, we know that a majority of the people in this country continue to believe it should be the law of the land.” “It will be an incredibly powerful issue,” Peters said. Republicans see advantages as well, saying it will validate their decadeslong push to limit if not outlaw abortion and show that they should not back away from their efforts when they are succeeding. “Today is our day,” Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No 2 House Republican, told abortion opponents outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday. “This is what we’ve been working for.” Aware that a decision undermining abortion access has political risks for them as well, Republicans say the fight will be just part of their 2022 message as they seek to tie Democrats to inflation, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and other subjects where they see a greater edge. “There’s a lot of issues out there,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, suggesting the significance of abortion will vary from state to state. “Everybody’s going to take a position.” But it was quickly clear that some Republicans would embrace the drive against Roe. “I’m pro-life. I’m anti-Roe v. Wade,” Sen. John Kennedy, the Louisiana Republican who is seeking a second term next year, said in a fundraising appeal sent hours after the court debate. “There is not much else I can say other than that.” In addition to the congressional elections, how the justices dispose of the case holds potentially grave implications for the court itself. The stature and credibility of the court were prominent subtexts of Wednesday’s arguments, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointedly asking how the court would “survive the stench” of overturning Roe in what many would see as a blatantly political act. After Senate Republicans in 2016 blocked President Barack Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy with almost a year left in his term, progressives began calling for adding seats to the court or setting term limits on the now-lifetime appointments to offset what they saw as an unfair advantage seized by Republicans. Then, when Republicans seated Justice Amy Coney Barrett just days before the 2020 election, those calls intensified. However, President Joe Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been lukewarm to the idea of tinkering with the court, and a commission he formed to study the idea is not expected to embrace significant changes. But demands for expanding the court or instituting other changes are likely to be reignited if the justices reverse what much of the country sees as an important precedent after hardball politics played a major role in constituting the court’s conservative membership. “This push will go into hyperdrive if the court upholds Mississippi’s ban, let alone overturns Roe outright,” predicted Brian Fallon, the executive director of the progressive group Demand Justice. Given Biden’s struggles and the tradition of voters turning on the party that controls the White House in midterm elections, Democrats see the abortion fight as a potential way to attract the suburban voters — particularly women — who helped elect Biden and Democratic majorities in 2020 but moved away from Democrats in elections this year. “We’re talking about rolling back the clock on health care for women 50 years,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of the Democratic leadership. “Obviously a whole generation of women have been able to get the health care they need and make their own reproductive choices, and I think you’ll be shocked to fully see what this means.” Anticipating an adverse Supreme Court ruling, House Democrats this year passed on a party-line vote a bill that would incorporate Roe into federal law. The Senate is expected to vote on it at some point to put Republicans on the record, but it has no chance of passage since it will be blocked by a Republican filibuster. Party strategists say the abortion issue has already demonstrated salience in Nevada, another key race in the battle for Senate control. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seeking reelection, is a strong proponent of abortion rights, while a leading Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, opposes abortion rights and as attorney general joined efforts to limit the procedure. In New Hampshire, a state with a history of strongly favouring abortion rights, Hassan and fellow Democrats have repeatedly criticised state Republicans for cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood and instituting new abortion restrictions such as mandatory ultrasounds for those seeking to terminate a pregnancy. Despite the decision by Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, not to challenge her next November, Hassan is still likely to face difficult opposition given the political climate. She vowed in a statement on Wednesday that she “will not be shy about contrasting my record of protecting reproductive rights with their support for policies that take away women’s liberty.” Her Democratic state colleague, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, told reporters this week before the court hearing that “we cannot allow Republican lawmakers to turn back the clock on women’s reproductive health and rights, which is precisely what the Mississippi case seeks to do.” “It is time to sound the alarm,” Shaheen said. © 2021 The New York Times Company",
" A few weeks ago, a leading opposition activist sat down in a downtown Khartoum office to talk to a journalist. The young man immediately removed the battery from his cellphone. ""It's so they can't trace you,"" he said, placing the battery and the phone on the table. ""Any one of the security agencies spread throughout the country can arrest you."" Despite that danger, the activist, from an underground group called ""Change Now,"" said he was convinced Sudan is on the brink of its own Arab Spring uprising. Hard times and growing frustration with the two-decades-old government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir have sparked small protests in Khartoum and other university cities in the Arab-African state. The demonstrations are still tiny compared with those that shook Egypt and Libya. Sometimes about 30 people show up, hold banners denouncing the government for a couple of minutes, and then melt away before security agents arrive. But the demonstrations have become more frequent in the past few months and the question is, could they lead to something bigger? The main economic challenge is plain. When South Sudan seceded from the north last year, Khartoum lost about three-quarters of its oil, the main source of state revenues and hard currency. The Sudanese pound has slumped by as much as 70 percent below the official rate. Annual inflation is at 18 percent as the cost of food imports has shot up. Wars against insurgencies in different parts of the still-vast country have also soaked up government funds. In 1985, protests against food inflation toppled President Jaafar Nimeiri in some 10 days. But the government in Khartoum today says the economy is not nearly as bad as it was in the 1980s, when people had to queue for days to get rationed petrol or food. Sudan, it says, will not follow Egypt or Tunisia. Rabie Abdelati, a senior official in the information ministry and Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP), said that the economy was much better than in 1989 when Bashir came to power. ""The situation at that time was very terrible,"" he said. ""The government has the ability to overcome all obstacles."" A relaxed-looking Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, spoke on state television for almost two hours last week to assure the population that the economic situation was under control. ""We have a 3-year economic program (but) this year will be the most difficult,"" the president said. ""IT WAS LIKE ANGER ERUPTED"" On the surface, life in the capital looks normal. Construction cranes loom on the banks of the Nile, working on new buildings and roads. The city bustles with foreign workers, maids and hotel staff. But there are sporadic signs that public anger is rising. In the last week of December, authorities temporarily closed the University of Khartoum after villagers displaced by a huge hydro-electric dam staged a protest, inspiring a week of some of the biggest student demonstrations in years. Weeks later, the spray-painted graffiti calling for ""revolution"" still covered a few walls near the university. ""Most people didn't care about the first demonstration as we were all in exams mode,"" said a female computer technology student who took part. But when police came to the dormitories one night to detain some students, ""it turned into a protest not just against the dam but against poverty, inflation and the bad situation for students,"" said the woman, playing with her blue head scarf. ""It was like anger erupted,"" she added. ""Now they want to punish us by closing the university, but it will make things worse. We don't get jobs after graduation. Life is so expensive, people are very angry."" Abdelati, the information ministry official, said the protests were small and the university would reopen shortly. OIL AND CONFLICTS Sitting in front of a small metal workshop in downtown Khartoum, Sudanese construction worker Fateh Totu takes his time to recall when he last worked for longer than a week. At the moment he gets jobs for a couple of days, with sometimes a week in between. ""Three, four years ago life was much better. The country was in good shape. Construction work was good,"" Totu said, drawing nods from fellow workers sitting on small plastic chairs along a dusty road. South Sudan's independence deprived Sudan - a country of 32 million people - of around 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the roughly 500,000 it pumped. Since then, oil exports, which made up 90 percent of Sudan's total exports, have fallen to zero. The remaining output in the north of around 115,000 bpd serves only domestic consumption. Industry insiders doubt significant new reserves will be found. But Azhari Abdallah, a senior oil official, said production would rise this year to 180,000 bpd, helped by more efficient technology and recovery rates. Other officials are less optimistic. Central bank governor Mohamed Kheir al-Zubeir has asked fellow Arab countries to deposit $4 billion (2 billion pounds) with the central bank and commercial lenders to stabilise the economy. Finance Minister Ali Mahmoud said in September Sudan might need $1.5 billion in foreign aid annually. ""The state spends a vast proportion of available resources on the security services. With three conflicts ongoing, the military's claim on the national treasury is only growing,"" said Aly Verjee, an analyst at the Rift Valley Institute. ""While some austerity measures have been implemented, there is a general unwillingness in the government to take any step that might lead to popular discontent."" Landlocked South Sudan must pump its oil through Sudan to the Red Sea. Northern officials hope the transit fees they charges will help. But a deal has been elusive - oil analysts say Khartoum has demanded a transit fee more than 10 times the international standard - and the breakaway state has so far refused to pay. Khartoum has seized oil awaiting shipment to compensate for what it argues are unpaid fees. Industry sources say the north has sold at least one shipment of southern oil. In protest, South Sudan has shut down production. OUTLOOK: ""STABLE"" How to find new revenues? Khartoum expects to have exported $3 billion of gold in 2011 plus another $1 billion of other minerals. Mining workers say the real figures are less than a third of that. ""Only 7 of the 70 projected tonnes of gold output for 2011 come from regular mines,"" said a foreign mining executive who declined to be named. ""The rest is produced by gold seekers whose output is very hard to verify, and often ends up being smuggled abroad."" The government predicts 2 percent growth in 2012 but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thinks the economy will contract. A senior Sudanese analyst with ties to the government says food inflation is much higher than the official figure. Prices for meat, sugar, vegetable oil and other staples are doubling every year, according to the analyst, who asked not to be named. Customs officials at Khartoum airport now search almost every piece of luggage brought into the country, hoping to find a laptop or other electric device on which they can charge duties. Khartoum had long known the South would secede, but did little to diversify its economy away from oil, bankers say. Just days after South Sudan became independent last July, Sudan's parliament, which is controlled by Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP), passed a budget predicting stable oil revenues. ""They just thought it would continue like that,"" said a senior banker in Khartoum who declined to be named. ""That's why I doubt they now have a plan to turn the economy around."" Harry Verhoeven, a researcher at the University of Oxford who has studied Sudan extensively, said Khartoum had used its oil revenues for large, expensive projects such as the Merowe dam that sparked December's protest. ISOLATED Since the united States imposed a trade embargo on Sudan in 1997, most Western firms have shunned the country. The ongoing domestic insurgencies and the International Criminal Court's indictment of Bashir mean that's unlikely to end any time soon. That leaves Khartoum reliant on China, its biggest trading partner, and Gulf Arab states. But no substantial aid or loans have been announced yet apart from small development programs. At an Arab investment conference in December, prominent Saudi businessman Sheikh Saleh Kamal slammed Sudan's taxation, investment, land and work laws. ""I said it already in the '90s but I repeat it again since nothing has changed,"" said Kamal, head of Islamic lender Al-Baraka Banking Group and the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry. ""The investment climate in Sudan does not help to attract any investments."" MIXED MESSAGES Despite the growing problems, organising protests isn't easy. Power cuts, unreliable cell phone networks and low internet usage make it hard to mobilise people through Facebook or Twitter as happened in Egypt. Activists are trying to link up with groups such as the people displaced by the Merowe dam, or poor farmers. Many are frustrated with the inconsistent and ineffectual opposition parties, most of which are run by former rulers in their 70s. Activists say the main opposition party, the Umma Party, is unwilling to call for mass protests. The party's veteran chairman Sadeq al-Mahdi recently said he wanted the president to go. But his son just became a presidential assistant in Bashir's office. The leaders of another big opposition party have decided to join the government. For the female computer technology student, the only way is out. ""I'm just tired of Sudanese politics. I think there will be a revolution, but nothing will change. We will have the same people,"" she said. ""I just want to leave Sudan. I don't see any job prospects here. I think 90 percent of students want to leave Sudan.""",
"""Know Your Rights and Claim Them"" - written with human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren, one of the original drafters of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - aims to equip kids with the knowledge to safely challenge injustices. ""So many children are in harm's way across the world and we're simply not doing enough,"" Jolie told Reuters in an interview. ""These are their rights, decided years ago based on what would make them healthy, balanced, safe and stable adults."" Jolie, special envoy for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said she hoped the book would also remind governments of their commitment to the global treaty enshrining children's civil, social, political and economic rights. ""We spent a lot of time blocking those rights, so this book is to help the kids have a tool book to say 'these are your rights, these are things you need to question to see how far you, depending on your country and circumstance, are from accessing those rights, what are your obstacles, others that came before you and fought, ways you can fight'. So it's a handbook to fight back."" The mother-of-six said she put up the UN convention in her home for her children, but was surprised to learn her own country, the United States, has not ratified it. ""That infuriated me and made me start to question what does that mean? So for each country, what is this idea of, you have the right to an education ... but then why is it so many children are out of school? Why is it the girls in Afghanistan are being harmed if they go?"" she said. HOW TO BE AN ACTIVIST The book addresses identity, justice, education and protection from harm, among other issues. It provides guidance on becoming an activist, being safe and a glossary of terms and organisations. ""Through the book, you have to find your own path forward, because we are very concerned about the safety of children. We don't want children just running around screaming for their rights and putting themselves in danger,"" Jolie said. The book is peppered with examples of powerful young voices from around the world, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, climate activist Greta Thunberg and 15-year-old Palestinian journalist Janna Jihad. ""I was trying to ... show the world what Palestinian children face on a daily basis,"" Jihad, who lives in the village of Nabi Salih, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told Jolie and other young activists in a video call, attended by Reuters, where they discussed their campaign work. ""It's really important to band together with other young people ... that's the way we will ever be able ... to make change,"" added London-based Christina Adane, 17, who campaigns for a healthier food system. The book is out in Britain on Thursday and for pre-order in other countries, with the aim of worldwide publication. ""We're going to find that some adults in some countries are going to block the book and the children will find it so I think that's how it's going to reach more children,"" Jolie said. ""The children will make each other aware of it and they might even be a part of translating it and getting it to each other.""",
"Each weekday Raden Roro Hendarti rides her three wheeler with books stacked up at the back for children in Muntang village to exchange for plastic cups, bags and other waste that she carries back. She told Reuters she is helping inculcate reading in the kids as well make them aware of the environment. As soon as she shows up, little children, many accompanied by their mothers, surround her ""Trash Library"" and clamour for the books. They are all carrying trash bags and Raden's three-wheeler quickly fills up with them as the books fly out. She's happy the kids are going to spend less time on online games as a result. ""Let us build a culture of literacy from young age to mitigate the harm of the online world,"" Raden said. ""We should also take care of our waste in order to fight climate change and to save the earth from trash,"" Raden said. 
 
 

She collects about 100 kg (220 lbs) of waste each week, which is then sorted out by her colleagues and sent for recycling or sold. She has a stock of 6,000 books to lend and wants to take the mobile service to neighbouring areas as well.   Kevin Alamsyah, an avid 11-year-old reader, scours for waste lying in the village. ""When there is too much trash, our environment will become dirty and it's not healthy. That's why I look for trash to borrow a book,"" he says. Jiah Palupi, the head of the main public library in the area, said Raden's work complemented their efforts to combat online gaming addiction among the youth and promote reading. The literacy rate for above-15-year-olds in Indonesia is around 96 percent, but a September report by the World Bank warned that the pandemic will leave more than 80% of 15-year-olds below the minimum reading proficiency level identified by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.",
"For one thing, after a decade of disengagement with Narendra Modi, Washington is eager to make a fresh start. The US is sending three cabinet secretaries to India in quick succession - Kerry (State), Penny Pritzker (Commerce), and Chuck Hagel (Defence) - and Washington is preparing to host Modi himself in September. From the US perspective, Modi’s government offers a welcome respite from years of perceived strategic and economic drift under UPA-2.But Kerry’s visit is also very well timed:First, the NDA government has been in office for nearly two months. Modi has met Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, among others, so it is high time for cabinet-level US engagement.Second, as Kerry himself argued in a speech this week, relations with strategically important countries cannot be shunted to the sidelines by crises. For over a decade, India has been among the small group of countries vital to American strategy. And the US has a strong stake in continued Indian reform and success-especially as they contribute to global growth, promote market-based economic policies, help secure the global commons, and maintain a mutually favourable balance of power in Asia.Third, Kerry and others, including Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, just attended the US-China strategic and economic dialogue in Beijing. Continued absence from New Delhi at the cabinet level would invite unflattering comparisons between US approaches to China and India.The two sides’ first challenge is to find new ways of working effectively. Modi, unlike UPA-2, has designed an administration with a strengthened executive and an activist Office of the Prime Minister. In such a set-up, there are inherent limits to reliance on ritualized Strategic Dialogue between foreign ministries.The two sides should relook existing structures, reinvigorating trade, defence, and CEO forums. But they also need new lines of coordination that reflect the emerging institutional and political set-up in New Delhi.Kerry is attending a Strategic Dialogue (capitalized “S” and “D”) that has been a calendar-driven exercise. What the two countries need is a “real” strategic dialogue (lower case “s” and “d”), built upon a less ritualized but more powerful set of first principles: strengthened coordination, no surprises on core security equities, sensitivity to each other’s domestic constraints, and frequent not ritualized contact at the highest levels.The most immediate need is to strengthen trust after a rough patch.From India’s perspective, the causes of these frictions include US trade cases, the Khobragade debacle, and inadequate US attention to India’s security concerns, especially in India’s neighborhood.From the US perspective such concerns have centered on the scope and pace of Indian economic reforms. These have badly tainted market sentiment and soured US firms on India. Retroactive taxes and the nuclear liability bill have compounded these negative sentiments.Viewed through this prism, the current US-India standoff at the WTO is badly timed.The US side will listen closely to India’s economic priorities. Hopefully, it will bring a few ideas-for example, technology releases, defence licenses, and co-production. Washington needs to avoid hectoring about India’s investment climate. Instead, it should inject something tangible into the mix, especially since Beijing and Tokyo, among others, offer India project finance vehicles the US lacks.But the biggest challenges are structural, and long-term in nature.First, economic constraints have hindered strategic coordination, especially in East Asia.The US and India share a powerful interest in assuring a favourable balance of power. Much binds them, not least shared regional maritime and energy interests. But lofty strategic ambitions require strengthened economic, not just security, content in relations with regional states, and with one another in the East Asian context.So it is hardly ideal that Washington and New Delhi are pursuing separate, and competitive, regional trade agreements: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).Meanwhile, US economic weight in Asia is increasing absolutely but declining in relative terms. From 2000 to 2009, China’s share of ASEAN trade increased threefold, surpassing the US share, which declined by a third in the same period. The US wants to leverage TPP to restore its leadership but there is zero prospect of a TPP this year and the Administration has no stomach to pursue needed Trade Promotion Authority with Congress.India’s challenge is greater. Trade plays a growing role in its economy but scale remains a handicap. In 2012, 11.7 percent of ASEAN trade was with China, just 2.9 percent with India. And that is no coincidence: the backbone of East Asian economies remains integrated supply and production chains from which India is largely absent. With rising labour costs in China, the geography of Asian manufacturing will shift, so India has an opportunity to align its national manufacturing policies with strategic imperatives to the east.At the same time, the US and India need new bilateral economic vehicles. Vice President Biden has called for an increase in trade from $100 to $500 billion-a number analogous to US-China trade. But that is hard to fathom: India lacks China’s manufacturing base, its integration into regional and global supply chains, its comparative openness to foreign investment at a comparable stage of development, and its hard infrastructure.Instead of pithy slogans, the two sides need better aligned agendas, especially on opportunities for cross-border investment, manufacturing, infrastructure, and gasification and energy opportunities.For Americans, the most pressing need is for growth-conducive reforms and investor friendly tax and sectoral policies in India. The Arun Jaitley budget offered hope but less than many in the US had wished for.One step would be a bilateral investment treaty. Indian firms would benefit from investor protections in the US. US firms would welcome relevant legal changes and safeguards in India. Both countries would benefit from the treaty’s independent arbitration process.In fact, investment is, at this point, more important than trade. It is a vote of confidence in the other country’s economy, and meshes well with current needs on each side.Above all, the two sides need to continue their difficult quest for strategic consensus. Enhanced intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation offer one opportunity. So do defence co-production and weapons sales because they increase the potential for interoperability.But a positive security agenda is needed, especially in Asia, through new initiatives across a series of baskets: energy, seaborne trade, finance, the global commons, and regional architecture.The two sides will need to manage differences of tone and substance on strategic issues of concern, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.Take China: The fact is, India views Beijing’s role in South Asia with far greater alarm than does Washington, and this is unlikely to change soon. The US will lean toward India, but seek to avoid becoming caught between New Delhi and Beijing.Many in India continue to fear a US-China condominium on issues of importance to New Delhi. This fear has receded as US-China relations have deteriorated since 2010, yet India remains sensitive about perceived inattention to its equities. And this concern is even more pronounced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, amid US withdrawal and policy turbulence.The US and India can do (much) better. Kerry’s visit is a start. Modi’s September visit will be pivotal.",
" Western leaders called on Wednesday for expanded sanctions against Iran over a UN watchdog report that it has worked to design atom bombs, but veto-wielder Russia indicated it would block new measures at the UN Security Council. The report laid bare a trove of intelligence suggesting Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, including accusations of work on atom bomb triggers and computer-simulated detonations. France said it would summon the Security Council. Britain said the standoff was entering a more dangerous phase and the risk of conflict would increase if Iran does not negotiate. The Security Council has already imposed four rounds of sanctions on Tehran since 2006 over its nuclear programme, which Western countries suspect is being used to develop weapons but Iran says is purely peaceful. There has been concern that if world powers cannot close ranks on isolating Iran to nudge it into serious talks, then Israel -- which feels endangered by Tehran's nuclear programme -- will attack it, precipitating a Middle East conflict. ""Convening of the UN Security Council is called for,"" French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told RFI radio. Pressure must be intensified, he said, after years of Iranian defiance of UN resolutions demanding it halt uranium enrichment, which can yield nuclear fuel for power stations or weapons. ""If Iran refuses to conform to the demands of the international community and refuses any serious cooperation, we stand ready to adopt, with other willing countries, sanctions on an unprecedented scale,"" Juppe said. But Moscow made its opposition to new sanctions clear. ""Any additional sanctions against Iran will be seen in the international community as an instrument for regime change in Iran. That approach is unacceptable to us, and the Russian side does not intend to consider such proposals,"" Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the Interfax news agency. Russia, which has significant trade ties with Iran and built its first nuclear power station, has called for a phased process under which existing sanctions would be eased in return for actions by Tehran to dispel international concerns. But in talks between Iran and big powers that would be needed to achieve that goal, the sides have been unable to agree even on an agenda. The last round petered out in January. Still, Russia's Security Council, in a statement on Wednesday after a meeting with a senior Iranian security official, said Moscow re-emphasised the need to find a mutually acceptable solutions via negotiations. Russia accepts that the West has legitimate concerns about Iran's nuclear programme but sees no clear evidence that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear warheads. Israel urged the international community to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. ""The significance of the (IAEA) report is that the international community must bring about the cessation of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, which endanger the peace of the world and of the Middle East,"" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement. IRAN ATTACKS AGENCY Iran has repeatedly insisted it wants nuclear energy only for electricity. On Wednesday it vowed no retreat from programme following the U.N. watchdog report, which used Western intelligence information that Tehran calls forgeries. ""You should know that this nation will not pull back even a needle's width from the path it is on,"" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech carried live on state TV. ""Why do you damage the agency's dignity because of America's invalid claims?"" he said, apparently addressing IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano. Russia's Foreign Ministry said: ""According to our initial evaluations, there is no fundamentally new information in the report ... We are talking about a compilation of known facts, given a politicised tone."" It said interpretations of the report brought to mind the use of faulty intelligence to seek support for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In addition to UN sanctions that commit all countries, the United States and European Union have imposed extra sanctions of their own. A US official said that because of Russian and Chinese opposition, chances were slim for another UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran. Washington might extend sanctions against Iranian commercial banks or front companies but is unlikely to go after its oil and gas industry or central bank, the clearing house for Iran's energy trade, for now. ""The reality is that without being able to put additional sanctions into these key areas, we are not going to have much more of an impact than we are already having,"" the US official said. A Western diplomatic source in Europe said there would be an effort to revive dialogue with Iran. ""What we are trying to do is avoid the (nuclear) bomb and bombing strikes,"" he said. But he saw no window for more Security Council action. ""You know the climate at the Council. We are in a complex situation in the post-Libya era and we are experiencing it with Syria so with regard to Iran, (such) things would not be possible."" A rise in tension over Iran could boost oil prices, although quotes on Wednesday for Brent crude fell by up to $2.64 and US crude by $1.67 to stand at $113 and $95.13 a barrel respectively by 1540 GMT because of Italy's debt worries that are dampening the global growth outlook. ""Now, with the more conclusive reports that Iran might be pursuing a nuclear warhead and the increased risk that there may be an attack on those facilities which would likely disrupt their oil exports, there may be growing concerns that there may be an oil price spike on the back of such an event,"" said Nicholas Brooks, head of research at ETF Securities. British Foreign Minister William Hague, in remarks that provided some support to the oil market, spoke about measures that could still be imposed on Iran and a riskier period ahead. ""We are looking at additional measures against the Iranian financial sector, the oil and gas sector, and the designation (on a sanctions list) of further entities and individuals involved with their nuclear programme,"" Hague told parliament. ""We are entering a more dangerous phase. The longer Iran goes on pursuing a nuclear weapons programme without responding adequately to calls for negotiations from the rest of us, the greater the risk of a conflict as a result."" Hague added that Iran's nuclear programme increased the likelihood that other Middle East states would pursue weapons. CHINA CAUTIOUS Russia and China have signed up to limited UN sanctions but have rebuffed Western proposals for measures that could seriously curtail energy and trade ties with Iran. Iran is the third largest supplier of crude oil to China, and overall bilateral trade between the two grew by 58 percent in the first nine months of 2011, according to Beijing data. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was studying the IAEA report and repeated a call to resolve the row through talks. In a commentary, China's official Xinhua news agency said the UN watchdog still ""lacks a smoking gun"". ""There are no witnesses or physical evidence to prove that Iran is making nuclear weapons,"" it said. ""In dealing with the Iran nuclear issue, it is extremely dangerous to rely on suspicions, and the destructive consequences of any armed action would endure for a long time."" Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, has said all options are on the table, including a military one, to halt an Iranian nuclear fuel production drive that is now being transferred to an underground mountain bunker better protected from possible air strikes.",
"He urged the global community, especially the South Asian countries, to do more to ensure their quick return to Myanmar. “You all know that we have given shelter to 1.1 million forcefully displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar in our land in Cox’s Bazar. It is in an extremely vulnerable location. Their presence makes it more vulnerable,” he said. The minister was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the 15th Meeting of the Governing Council of the South Asia Co-Operative Environment Programme (SACEP) on Wednesday in Dhaka. SACEP is an inter-governmental organisation, established in 1982 by the governments of South Asia to promote and support protection, management and enhancement of the environment in the region. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are the member countries. The foreign minister, highlighting the Rohingya crisis, said it is an issue “solely between Myanmar and its own people -- the Rohingyas”. “They themselves have to resolve it. A voluntary return of the Rohingyas to their homes in Rakhine state in safety, security and dignity is the only solution to the crisis,” he said. Momen also underscored Bangladesh’s 'well evidenced' and 'well documented' susceptibility to the impacts of climate change. “Despite being a developing country, we spend over 1 percent of our GDP on combating climate change,” he said. “We are pursuing a low carbon development path with an increasing emphasis on renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy conservation.”",
" A global economic downturn caused by the financial crisis is the biggest threat to world security because it will make many hundreds of millions of people poorer and more resentful, a think-tank report said on Thursday. Job losses and collapsing markets will increase poverty, ill-health and malnutrition in developing countries without effective welfare systems, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) says in its annual security assessment. This is likely to fuel bitterness and lead to the rise of radical and violent social movements, which will be controlled by the use of force, it says. Early indicators include social unrest in China and India's intensifying Maoist rebellion. ""We are facing the deepest economic crisis for two generations,"" said author Paul Rogers, ORG consultant and professor at the University of Bradford. ""We can either respond as a global community or as a narrow group of rich and powerful countries."" The report says wealthy states have so far concentrated on measures to improve financial cooperation, which have little relevance to poorer countries. ""Instead, the opportunity should be taken to introduce fundamental economic reforms which reverse the wealth-poverty divisions that have got so much worse in the past three decades,"" Rogers said. Other major factors making the world less secure are climate change, competition over energy resources and the tendency of powerful elites to maintain security often by military force, the report says. Avoiding a more divided global system requires a commitment to ""emancipation and social justice"", including fair trade, debt cancellation, a radical cut in carbon emissions and investment in renewable energy resources, ORG says. The will to implement these policies could be weakened by tight government finances over the next several years. But if wealthy countries do decide to put more emphasis on helping the world's poor people and tackling climate change, the coming year could be a tipping point towards greater global stability, according to the report. ""The choice we make in the next few months will do much to decide whether the world becomes more or less peaceful over the next ten years,"" Rogers said. On Iraq, the report says an increased pace of U.S. troop withdrawals next year under U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and greater regional engagement by Washington could be positive trends. But the Obama administration may reinforce U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan, which is likely to lead to an intensified war, it says.",
" Indian art might be just the solution for investors seeking a safe haven at a turbulent time. Take a vivid landscape by avant-garde artist Francis Newton Souza hanging on a wall in Indian art dealer Ashish Anand's New Delhi gallery. With a price tag of $400,000, the painting might not seem like a bargain but Abnand says it will probably be worth $2 million within the next two years. Art dealers and experts say the Indian art market is still undervalued and there is money to be made in local art for those with the means to pay the six figure prices that works by some of India's leading artists fetch at auctions. ""I think Indian art is a one-way bet in the long term. That's why I will allocate money to it,"" said Philip Hoffman who runs the Fine Art Fund based in London. ""If you look 50 years down the line, what you pay now is peanuts compared to what you will have to pay for the great Indian artists,"" he told Reuters at an Indian art summit in New Delhi in August. The prices of Indian art have gone up considerably but not at the levels of Chinese art, which has seen prices soar due to enormous interest at home and abroad. Dealers believe Indian works have plenty of room to appreciate, especially as South Asian art begins to draw a Western audience. ""The growth potential is huge,"" said Hugo Weihe, Christie's international director of Asian Art. ""The Indian art market is particularly strong within India and that's different from the Chinese contemporary. You have that component plus we are now reaching out to an international component every season."" Often depicting vivid and colourful scenes of Indian life and culture, Indian art has long been popular among wealthy Indians, whose ranks are growing rapidly in a booming economy. Yet until recently Western collectors had not taken much interest in classical and contemporary Indian artists. That is starting to change. Weihe predicts that sales of Indian art at Christie's auctions might reach $30 million this year, compared with $680,000 in 2000. SKYROCKETING VALUATIONS Asia's art scene has blossomed in the past five years driven by the continent's rapid economic growth. Valuations have skyrocketed as Asian art has become an investment for speculators and a symbol of affluence for a growing pool of local collectors. The record for a contemporary Indian art work was set in June when Francis Newton Souza's piece 'Birth' was sold for $1.3 million pounds ($2.3 million). The figure was, nevertheless, significantly lower than the $9.7 million record price for Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi's piece 'Mask Series 1996 No. 6' sold at an auction in Hong Kong in May. Works by famous Indian artists such as Maqbool Fida Husain and Syed Haider Raza currently go under the hammer for anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million. Yet industry players expect prices to shoot up to between $5 million to $10 million in the next few years. Neville Tuli, a manager of a $400 million art fund in India, believes that Indian art will appreciate by between 18 to 25 percent per year in a climate in which art is increasingly seen as a secure investment. ""Financial institutions and their HNIs (high net worth individuals) are recognising the inherent stability in the art object as a capital asset,"" said Neville Tuli, a manager of a $400 million art fund in India. ""Hence given its low correlation to economic circumstances and other related factors, the proportion of art within the alternative asset allocation is increasing significantly,"" he added. HOT MONEY CANVASES ART But as with all investments, there are risks. The Indian market is vastly different from the Western art markets because in India, art is viewed more as a financial investment rather than a collectors item, art fund managers said. ""It has gone up 200 times in five years,"" said Hoffman, of the London-based Fine Art Fund, adding that the Indian market consisted of 70 percent speculators and 30 percent collectors. This trend of rapid buying and selling, makes it difficult to predict long term value. ""Let's say you've got a Gupta,"" Hoffman said, referring to Subodh Gupta, one of India's hot new artists whose pieces sell for between $800,000 to $1 million. ""It's a financial commodity like a stock,"" Hoffman said. ""You need the Bill Gates of this world to say I want a Gupta and I don't give a damn how much it cost. It's going into my collection and it's not for sale,"" he added, saying a growing pool of collectors will give the market stability. Art experts would like to see more people like Kusam Sani, a wealthy fashion consultant based in Delhi, who is one of the few art collectors who keeps the art they buy. ""I have a 40 foot dining room and it's covered with work, but I can't buy anymore because I've got no more space,"" said Sani, who has been collecting paintings since she was a teenager. Greater government investment in art infrastructure and museums will give the market stability in the long term, experts said, although they noted that so far the Indian government has shown little political will to support such projects. There are also bureaucratic hurdles such as permits to export works of art and requirements to register antiques with government bodies that turn acquisitions of Indian art into a headache for dealers and collectors abroad. But despite the market's shortcomings, art dealers, Weihe and Hoffman are bullish on Indian art. ""The Indian market will mature when the real collector base is grown up and put the money is put to one side,"" Hoffman said. ""In the long run, all these artists are going to be global, they just happen to be local at the moment."" ",
"The US special presidential envoy for climate met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday to officially invite her to the Leaders’ Summit on Climate called by Biden. Prior to his meeting with Hasina, the US special envoy met Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen at the state guesthouse Padma in the afternoon, which was followed by a joint news briefing. “We are excited in the United States about the prospect of moving to this cleaner energy, this new future that protects our world for our children, grandchildren and future generation as we live up to our global responsibility to lead and do what young people around the world are asking us to do – which is to behave like adults and get the job done,” Kerry said at the briefing.                    Conveying Biden’s greetings on Bangladesh’s 50th anniversary, Kerry noted that he had visited the country as secretary of state. He also mentioned that the US has returned under Biden’s leadership to the Paris Agreement. “Paris was the beginning. We always knew we were gonna have to measure where we were,” he said. Kerry regretted that the previous president, Donald Trump, pulled out of the Paris Agreement. “But while he did that, governors and mayors stayed in that agreement. And we have continued to work,” he said. “And now that we have President Biden back who is deeply committed to his decision, I believe we can make unparalleled progress on a global basis,” he added. The day after taking office, Biden brought the US back to the Paris Agreement, which Donald Trump withdrew from four years ago. Subsequently, Kerry, who signed the Paris Agreement on behalf of the US in 2015, was given a new role as special climate envoy to Biden. “No one country can solve the problem of the climate crisis and no country doubts there is a crisis,” the special envoy remarked. The world has experienced the hottest day in human history this year, the hottest week, the hottest month, the hottest year and the hottest decade. “The decade before that was the second hottest. The decade before that was the third hottest. And we see the damages all across the world of choices the human beings are making. Damages from virus, floods, droughts, ice melding, sea level rising, from food and production interrupted, from the ability of the people the way they live. “Migration is already happening because of climate change. So we know from the scientists that we all must take action,” he said. Kerry said the US dealt with the challenge of helping to bring technology to the places that don’t have it but need it. “Equally importantly we are delighted that we have the ability to work together now and tensely going forward in order to bring technology, research, development, finance to the table to do what we know we must do,” he said. Before Bangladesh, Kerry visited the United Arab Emirates and India. Both countries have pledged to raise ambition in tackling the effects of climate change and try to do more to address this crisis, he said. 
 
 Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and his wife Selina Momen receive US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in Dhaka on Friday, Apr 9, 2021. US Ambassador Earl Miller joins them at the airport. 

They also agreed to work in partnership “with us to accelerate the transition between the energy future”, according to him.  Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and his wife Selina Momen receive US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in Dhaka on Friday, Apr 9, 2021. US Ambassador Earl Miller joins them at the airport.  “Now please do not make mistake, this does not require sacrifice. This does not require a lesser quality of life. It is a better quality of life with cleaner air, less disease, less cancer. “With the ability to create tens of millions of jobs, in the deployment of these technologies in the creation of this new energy future,” he said. President Biden understands this and so he has put $2 trillion on a growth plan in front of the US which will have the country go to zero carbon in its power sector by 2035 and deploy 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, Kerry said. Kerry’s visit is significant for Bangladesh because Biden’s call for a global conference for climate change comes at a time when Bangladesh leads the Climate Vulnerable Forum or CVF, the forum for countries at risk in the change. The foreign ministry said Momen sought from Kerry US support for increasing global climate ambition and commitment to accelerate implementation of the Paris Agreement, hoping that under the leadership of the US, the developed countries would come forward with ambitious actions to limit the global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. In the meeting, Momen highlighted Bangladesh’s low carbon development path with increasing emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency and underlined Bangladesh government’s key initiatives including Climate Change Trust Fund, National Solar Energy Roadmap, National Adaptation Programme of Action, and Mujib Climate Prosperity Plan to achieve low-carbon economic growth. While discussing about the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow in November this year, the foreign minister reiterated the significance of the promised international financial flow at and beyond $100 billion annually to support sustainable development and energy transformations of the developing economies. He stressed that the funding should be distributed at 50:50 ratio between mitigation and adaptation. Kerry departed Bangladesh in the evening after the one-day visit. He also met Environment Minister Md Shahab Uddin and Special Envoy of the Vulnerable Forum Presidency Abul Kalam Azad.",
"Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque proposed to host the workshop at the second half of this year at the 17th session of the BIMSTEC Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) held on Tuesday in Kathmandu. He was leading a six-member Bangladesh delegation at the meeting which was held after nearly three years, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The foreign secretary also proposed to host a range of BIMSTEC programmes this year which include international conference on blue economy, trade negotiation committee meeting, workshop on climate change, meeting of the ministers of culture, and tourism ministers’ roundtable. He stressed “revitalising the activities of BIMSTEC and to have strong collaboration and meaningful cooperation among the member states, especially on the four areas of cooperation in climate change, technology, counter terrorism and transnational crime and trade and investment”. Born in 1997, the seven-member grouping of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand connects South Asia with the Southeast Asia, and serves as a platform for inter-regional cooperation between SAARC and ASEAN members. Bangladesh hosts the headquarters in Dhaka. It is now being seen as an alternative to SAARC by some think-tanks following India-Pakistan tension that resulted in the postponement of this year’s summit in Islamabad. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted BIMSTEC leaders at an outreach meet in Goa last year during the BRICS summit. The grouping is now promoting 14 priority sectors of development and common concerns. Those include trade and investment, technology, energy, transport and communication, tourism, fisheries, agriculture, cultural cooperation, environment and disaster management, public health, people-to-people contact, poverty alleviation, counter-terrorism and transnational crimes, and climate change. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are aimed at eradicating poverty by 2O3O. The foreign secretary also urged the member states to conclude the BIMSTEC Free Trade Area (FTA) negotiations “as early as possible”. Nepalese Foreign Secretary Shankar Das Bairagi, as the current chair, chaired this foreign secretary level meeting.",
"A VVIP flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines arrived at Shahjalal International Airport sometime after Tuesday midnight. It left Madrid–Torrejón Airport in the Spanish capital in the morning local time. Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the World Tourism Organization Hassan Mahmood Khandker saw her off. After travelling to Madrid on Sunday, she renewed her pledge to continue the ongoing drive against terrorism, militancy, drugs and corruption in a meeting with the expatriate Bangladeshis there. On Monday, speaking as the leader of one of the most vulnerable nations at the COP25, she called for action to stave off climate threats to create a world liveable for the future generation. She also said the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis was aggravating the challenge faced by Bangladesh to tackle the imminent threat of climate change. She urged the international community to step up efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis by repatriating them to their homeland Myanmar. Hasina accepted Marshall Islands' President Hilda Heine's proposal to lead the Climate Vulnerable Forum or CVF in 2020. She sought the Netherlands’ help to send back the Rohingya refugees in a meeting with her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte in Madrid. European Parliament President David-Maria Sassoli met Hasina later and assured her of continuing cooperation to tackle the effects of climate change. She paid a courtesy call on Spanish President Pedro Sánchez on Monday afternoon before joining a reception hosted by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano at the royal palace. The COP25 will continue until Dec 13.",
"A Bangladesh Biman flight carrying her took-off from the Shahjalal International Airport around 10 am. Sheikh Hasina will participate of at the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Oct 16-17 in the Italian city of Milan. Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali told a briefing on Tuesday that the prime minister would address the summit on Thursday (Oct 16). She will highlight Bangladesh's position on different important issues like climate change, millennium development goals (MDGs), disaster-risk management and connectivity between Asia and Europe, he added. Talking of Bangladesh’s progress in economic and social spheres, the minister said: “The summit will give importance to our prime minister’s position.” Besides attending the summit, Hasina will have bilateral meetings with the heads of the governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, and Sweden, and hold discussions with chiefs of the European Commission and European Council. The foreign minister said ASEM had 51 members at present, while Croatia and Kazakhstan had applied for membership. He said 50 people were in the PM’s entourage. Hasina is also scheduled to attend a reception to be given to her by expatriate Bangladeshis in Italy.",
" Morocco's Justice and Development Party (PJD) claimed victory on Saturday in a parliamentary election that should produce a stronger government after King Mohammed ceded some powers to prevent any spillover from Arab Spring uprisings. The PJD, which finds its support largely among Morocco's poor, would be the second moderate Islamist party to lead a North African government since the start of the region's Arab Spring uprisings, following Tunisia. But the party, which hopes to push Islamic finance but vows to steer clear of imposing a strict moral code on society, will have to join forces with others to form a government. ""Based on reports filed by our representatives at polling stations throughout the country, we are the winners. We won Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Kenitra, Sale, Beni Mellal and Sidi Ifni to cite just a few,"" Lahcen Daodi, second in command of the moderate Islamist party, told Reuters. ""Our party has won the highest number of seats,"" he said. Government officials could not immediately confirm the party's assertion. The king revived a reform process this year hoping to sap the momentum out of a protest movement and avoid the violence-ridden revolts in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria. He has handed over more powers to the government, although he retains the final say on the economy, security and religion. Some 13.6 million Moroccans out of a population of about 33 million were registered to vote in the country's ninth election since independence from France in 1956. Voter turnout stood at 45 percent, Interior Minister Taib Cherkaoui said, up from a record low in 2007 when only 37 percent of 15.5 million registered voters turned out. The ministry has not accounted for the change in registered voters. The polls ""took place under normal conditions and a under a climate of mobilisation marked by fair competition and respect of electoral laws,"" Cherkaoui told reporters. The first results will be issued later on Saturday, the minister added. In contrast to previous elections, Friday's vote was expected to be a closely-run contest between PJD and a new coalition of liberals with close ties to the royal palace. But Mustapha Al Khalfi, a member of PJD's politburo, sounded a note of caution among the cries of victory. ""We have to wait for the final results because there was a lot of fraud, so we hope that it will not cost us what should be a resounding victory for our party,"" he said. Lahcen Haddad, a prominent member of the so-called Alliance for Democracy, declined to comment. Driss Yazami, who heads the official National Council for Human Rights, told the private Aswat radio that observers had recorded violations, including some potential voters being given food. ""It did not reach a scale that can affect the overall course of the polls,"" Yazami said. BOYCOTTED POLLS? The king will pick the next prime minister from the party that wins the biggest number of seats. But whichever party or bloc comes first is unlikely to be able to form a government on its own. PJD has said it aims to obtain a majority by joining forces with three parties in the current governing coalition, including the left-wing Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) and the nationalist Istiqlal of Prime Minister Abbas Al Fassi. Economists are keen to see the polls leading to the creation of a cohesive government that would be able to narrow a growing budget deficit, cut a 30-percent-plus youth unemployment rate and address the needs of 8.5 million destitute Moroccans. Since becoming king in 1999, King Mohammed won international praise for his efforts to repair a dark legacy of human right abuses under the 38-year rule of his late father King Hassan. But his reform drive lost momentum over the last few years. There remains a vocal minority who say his revived reforms are not enough. Thousands of people joined protests in several cities last weekend to back calls for a boycott of the election. ""Today marked a victory for the boycott,"" said Najib Chawki, an activist with the February 20 Movement, which has been leading protests since February to demand a British- or Spanish-style monarchy and an end to corruption. ""Only 6 million out of 21 million Moroccans eligible to vote took part in the polls. This sends a strong signal to authorities that Moroccans are not buying the proposed reforms. We will not give up until our demands are met,"" Chawki said. The movement plans new nationwide protests on December 4.",
" Germany's corporate chiefs are under fire after a police raid on one of the country's most respected bosses on Thursday added to the list of scandals that is shaking the public's faith in its cherished corporate system. The swoop on the home and offices of Klaus Zumwinkel, chief executive of Deutsche Post and a pillar of the establishment, in a probe into suspected tax dodging was the latest shock for Germans already seething over fat-cat pay and golden handshakes. On top of a series of scandals in the last few years which have engulfed Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen and Siemens, Germany's biggest corporate employer, commentators warn of political consequences and said the far-left Left party could gain. Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the potential damage of the Zumwinkel case, which involves individuals rather than the company as a whole, was ""considerable"". ""If the public has something like this as a role model, they'll start having doubts about the economic and social system,"" said Steinbrueck, a Social Democrat (SPD) in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right coalition. The case took on even bigger proportions on Friday when a newspaper reported the investigation could stretch to hundreds of rich and prominent Germans with offshore bank accounts. Germany's post-war identity is founded on its economic and corporate prowess, epitomised by the country's status as the world's biggest exporter and by the number of companies which are world leaders in their sector. Although managers' salaries are still below U.S. and British levels, discontent is growing among Germans who feel they are not reaping the rewards of growth in Europe's biggest economy. Disposable income for lower earners has fallen and the media have launched a campaign over excessive manager pay. Targets have included Juergen Schrempp, the former chief executive of carmaker Daimler who walked off with millions in a pay off and stock options as his merger with U.S. automaker Chrysler unravelled and shareholders lost out. ""(Zumwinkel's) case is one which feeds the general suspicion many people have: 'The top people lie and cheat everyone else',"" wrote the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an editorial on Friday. 
PUSH TO THE LEFT? Although politicians from across the spectrum, including Merkel, have criticised excessive corporate pay, commentators say public anger over what the media calls morally degenerate bosses could lead to more left-wing policies. The growing appeal of the Left party, a group of former communists and disaffected former centre-left SPD supporters, has already pulled the main political parties to the left by forcing the ruling coalition to soften its stance on welfare reforms. ""The picture of a number of greedy managers is catastrophic as it spawns a sense of social injustice which can only help the Left party,"" Klaus Schneider, head of the SdK shareholders' association told Reuters. Former German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, a co-leader of the Left, wants to increase public spending on pensions, welfare benefits and education. Corruption watchdog Transparency International says there is no objective data to show corruption is increasing in Germany. ""But you can say that in the last 10 to 15 years the subject has become far more important in peoples' minds ... there has been a change in the climate,"" Peter von Blomberg, deputy head of Transparency International Germany, told Reuters. Von Blomberg said Scandinavian countries were something of a model, thanks to open communication channels between citizens and authorities. German firms need to introduce and enforce compliance guidelines and protect whistleblowers, he said. ""In Germany there is still quite a distaste for denouncing people -- there are historical reasons for this but I think we may see a discussion about a possible legal framework to protect whistleblowers here,"" he said.",
"News of Rex Tillerson's possible
appointment comes as US intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia
intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House. The choice of Tillerson further stocks
Trump's Cabinet and inner circle with people who favour a soft line towards
Moscow. Tillerson, 64, has driven Exxon's expansion
in Russia for decades and opposed US sanctions imposed on Russia for its
seizure of Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded
Tillerson Russia's Order of Friendship, one of the country's highest civilian
honours. Exxon's Tillerson emerged on Friday as
Trump's leading candidate for US secretary of state over 2012 Republican
presidential nominee Mitt Romney and three other people. Tillerson met with Trump for more than two
hours at Trump Tower on Saturday morning. It was their second meeting about the
position this week. The source, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said Tillerson was the expected pick but cautioned no formal offer
had yet been made. A senior official on the Trump transition
team said the president-elect was close to picking Tillerson. Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said on Twitter that no
announcement on the high-profile job was forthcoming in the immediate future.  
Transition Update: No announcements on Secretary of State until next week at the earliest. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) December 10, 2016


  Transition Update: No announcements on Secretary of State until next week at the earliest. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain Trump on Saturday attended the Army-Navy
football game in Baltimore, where he was joined by former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, who withdrew from consideration as secretary of state on Friday. NBC News, which first reported the
development, said Trump would also name John Bolton, a former US ambassador to
the United Nations, as deputy secretary of state. As Exxon's CEO, Tillerson oversees
operations in more than 50 countries, including Russia. In 2011, Exxon signed a deal with Rosneft,
Russia's largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and
production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for
projects in Russia. Tillerson and Rosneft chief Igor Sechin
announced plans to begin drilling in the Russian Arctic for oil as part of
their joint venture, in spite of US sanctions. In July, Tillerson was one of the
highest-profile US representatives at the St. Petersburg International Economic
Forum, one of Putin's main investment forums, even as Washington had been
taking a harder line than Europe on maintaining sanctions. Trump has pledged to work for stronger US
ties with Russia, which have been strained by Putin's incursion into Crimea and
his support for Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. In a preview from an interview to be aired
on ""Fox News Sunday,"" Trump said Tillerson is ""much more than a
business executive."" ""I mean, he's a world class
player,"" Trump said. ""He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty
much double the size of his next nearest competitor. It's been a company that
has been unbelievably managed."" ""And to me, a great advantage is he
knows many of the players, and he knows them well. He does massive deals in
Russia,"" Trump said. Tillerson's Russian ties figure to be a
factor in any Senate confirmation hearing. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain, a long-time Putin critic, told Fox News that he does not know what
Tillerson's relationship with Putin has been, ""but I'll tell you, it is a
matter of concern to me."" Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee raised concerns in a memo on Saturday citing Trump's ""cavalier
dismissal"" of US intelligence reports that Russia interfered in US
elections and the appointment of Tillerson, who has ""business ties to
Russia and Vladimir Putin, and whose company worked to bury and deny climate
science for years."" Should Tillerson be nominated, climate
change could be another controversial issue for him. The company is under
investigation by the New York Attorney General's Office for allegedly
misleading investors, regulators and the public on what it knew about global
warming. Tillerson is, however, one of the few
people selected for roles in the Trump administration to believe that human
activity causes climate change. After Trump's election, Exxon came out in
support of the Paris Climate Agreement and said it favours a carbon tax as an
emissions-cutting strategy.",
"The pandemic has profoundly disrupted the largest public transit system in America, throwing it into financial turmoil. But getting more people on public transportation will be a crucial component of New York City’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2050. The system needs to grow — right at a time when it is facing a sharp decline in ridership and revenue. Subway rides, bus rides and car trips in New York City fell drastically last March as coronavirus cases surged and the city entered a mandatory lockdown. Some residents who could afford to left the city for second homes or rentals in the suburbs. Many employees switched to remote work and have not yet returned to their offices. Keeping the city’s buses and subways moving has been crucial for transporting medical and essential workers, but, with fewer riders, the city’s public transit organisation is facing its worst budget crisis in history. “We are still in a severe fiscal crisis caused by the pandemic,” said Shams Tarek, deputy communications director at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates many of the subways, buses and trains in the New York metro area. “But we’re optimistic about the future, given the support we’ve received in Washington. We expect ridership to gradually return to the system — it’s not a matter of if, but when — and we will continue to power New York’s recovery.” Before the pandemic, New York City’s subways were the city’s most popular mode of transit. There were nearly 1.7 billion turnstile swipes in 2019. But last March, ridership fell 90% and has only recovered to a third of what it was before the pandemic. Transportation researchers attribute New York City’s drop in public transit riders to the shift to remote work and say that the dip in tourism may also be contributing to fewer subway rides. “There’s a difference in travel right now,” said Hayley Richardson, a senior communications associate at TransitCenter, a nonprofit group that advocates for public transportation in New York City. “White-collar workers are not going to the office, fewer people are taking trips for entertainment. There’s just less movement around the city.” But subway ridership has not fallen equally in every neighbourhood. Subway stations in higher income neighbourhoods have seen much larger declines in ridership than lower income neighbourhoods. With offices shuttered, midtown Manhattan stations now see just a small fraction of their previous riders. In January, turnstile entries to the Times Square 42nd Street station hovered around 19% of what they were the year before. Neighbourhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, which are home to more people of colour and families with lower annual income than most parts of Manhattan, are also home to many of the city’s essential workers — and have retained more of their subway riders. Those subway stations report closer to 40% of their prepandemic ridership. 


  A look at how neighbourhood wealth has affected NYC public transit ridership during the pandemic. The New York Times  




 
The citywide decline in subway riders has wiped out the transit budget. Since last spring, the MTA has been operating on $8 billion in coronavirus relief payments from the federal government and an additional $3 billion in short-term loans. But that money will soon run out. The MTA will require an additional $8 billion by 2024 to avoid dramatic service cuts and layoffs.   A look at how neighbourhood wealth has affected NYC public transit ridership during the pandemic. The New York Times   The high costs of sanitization and investments in worker protections have also compounded financial problems for the organization. Systemwide, the MTA spent $371 million on pandemic-related costs in 2020 and expects to spend close to that same amount each year through 2024. Station and train cleaning efforts require closing the subway system overnight, which reduces service in the early morning hours. In the early days of the pandemic, it seemed all but impossible to follow social distancing guidelines while staying safe on New York’s crowded buses and subways. Those initial fears of infection may have spurred car purchases. And some former riders may still be avoiding transit for fear of contracting the virus, though transmission risks are lower than offices or classrooms if all passengers wear masks and practice social distancing. “Despite the fact that all of the subsequent studies have failed to show a link between COVID transmission and transit, that idea was difficult to dislodge once it got into people’s minds,” Richardson said. Bus ridership dropped precipitously in March, but rebounded faster than subway ridership. “The majority of bus riders during the pandemic were essential workers,” said Jaqi Cohen, the campaign director for the Straphangers Campaign, which advocates for public transit riders. In March, the MTA implemented rear-door boarding on buses to keep passengers distanced from drivers until plastic partitions could be installed around the driver’s seats. On local buses, the fare box is near the front door, so the policy effectively eliminated fares on those routes. When those partitions were completed in September, fares were reinstated and ridership dropped a second time. “The fact that bus ridership is only down 40% really says so much about what role the city’s bus system plays as sort of the workhorse and getting essential workers where they need to go and, you know, getting people to doctor’s appointments and grocery stores,” Richardson said. Bus riders are more likely to be older, people of colour or immigrants than subway riders, according to Richardson. The MTA has also introduced three new bus routes to serve riders during the overnight subway closures and increased service along its busiest routes. Yasmin Asad, who commutes from her home in Queens to classes at Brooklyn College, used to travel by subway but now prefers taking the bus. Along her stretch of the A line, there are longer waits on the platform and more time stopped on the tracks between stations, but buses come more frequently than they used to. That makes social distancing easier because if one bus is full, passengers don’t have to wait long for the next one. “You can respect the social distancing guidelines without running late,” Asad said. Car travel was quicker to recover than any form of public transit, though fewer people are making trips than before the pandemic, according to analyses by INRIX and StreetLight Data, two firms that specialize in mobility data. In New York City, morning rush hour on highways has subsided. With less driving overall, the city’s roadways have fewer traffic jams and higher vehicle speeds. The traffic analysis showed that the daily surge in vehicle traffic is more spread out throughout the day and into the afternoon, likely because of an increase in home deliveries and more New Yorkers running errands during the afternoon. As New York City reopens, the increase in driving will lead to bottlenecks and slower speeds. “We cannot depend on single-occupancy vehicles to function as a city,” Cohen said. “There’s only so many cars that can be on the road in New York before the streets have hit total gridlock.” For New York City to hit its climate goals, it will be critical for more people to use public transit, bikes or walking to commute than before the pandemic. When offices and businesses begin to reopen, more flexible remote options for workers could also be friendly for the planet. Transit experts also say that existing tools and policies could encourage commuters to embrace low-emissions modes of transportation. Bike shares and bike sales are experiencing a boom in the city, which could help reduce transit emissions, but cycling advocates say continued investment in bike paths and protected lanes will be key for keeping people on their bikes as commuting returns to its post-pandemic normal. Congestion pricing, which the city passed in 2019 but has yet to implement, could discourage car commuting and the fees could generate $1 billion each year to fund public transit. Dedicated bus lanes would also increase bus speeds, making public transit a more attractive option. Despite the current public transit crisis, many transit experts say the pandemic will create a temporary decline in ridership, not a lasting trend. “The fundamental conditions that created our commuting patterns have not shifted because of the pandemic,” said Matthew Raifman, a doctoral student in environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. “If you think of a place like New York City, the challenges around owning a car, like parking and traffic, will not have gone away after the pandemic, and the benefits of biking to work or taking public transit will also still be there.” © 2021 New York Times News Service",
" When Harper Lee wrote 'To Kill A Mockingbird' she could not have known it would be hailed as a classic, much less that it would shape the way her hometown viewed its past. Lee's novel has put Monroeville, Alabama, on the map and acted as a magnet for tourists. It has also stimulated debate in the town about the legacy of racial segregation that prevailed in the south until the 1960s. Mockingbird tells the story of two children growing up in a fictional southern town similar to Monroeville. Their father, an attorney, is selected to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. Though the man is innocent, he is convicted by an all-white jury. Some of the book's most powerful moments come as the children realize their father was fighting a doomed cause. Published in 1960, it was an instant sensation. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has sold at least 30 million copies and a film of it starring Gregory Peck is hailed as a classic. But sales only tell part of the story. US readers often cite it as their favourite novel. It ranked second only to the Bible in a reader survey of books that had affected them the most. Library Journal voted it the novel of the 20th century. Every spring, thousands of Mockingbird tourists flock to Monroeville to visit locations associated with Lee's life, the book and the courthouse used in the film. They also come to watch a stage adaptation of Mockingbird. Act One takes place in the grounds of the court but for Act Two the audience and players move indoors to the original oval-shaped courthouse where the book and film are set. That setting allows the drama to unfold with audience, judge, lawyers and defendant occupying the same positions as they would have held in a real trial. Black cast members are even confined to the gallery as they were under segregation. For the audience, part of the fascination is being witness to injustice. For the volunteer actors, the annual productions have also allowed them to reflect on the book's message. ""It's taught me you don't judge people,"" said Robert Champion, a detective with the Monroeville police department who plays Boo Radley, a reclusive figure in the novel who turns out to be a hero. ""One of the lessons is that we should be tolerant of other people but intolerant of injustice,"" said Champion, who prepared for the role by speaking with people who knew the real-life person on whom the character in the book is based. Lee may have based her story on an actual rape trial that took place in Monroeville's old courtroom, according to Jane Ellen Clark of the Monroeville County Heritage Museum. In 1934 Walter Lett, a black man, was tried for the rape of a white woman. He was sentenced to death but according to records recently uncovered, white citizens wrote anonymously to Alabama's governor to say he had been falsely accused. Lett's sentence was commuted to life in prison and he died of tuberculosis in 1937 in a state prison, Clark said. George Thomas Jones, a former businessman who writes local history, went to school with Lee and remembers her as a tomboy similar to the character of Scout, the novel's narrator. Jones, 81, said he could understand why the all-white juries of the time would have returned a guilty verdict in such cases. ""People were called 'nigger lovers.' Regardless of the circumstances they would have been branded and they would have been social and economic outcasts,"" he said. Jones said relations between blacks and whites were in some ways better at that time despite injustices against blacks, and the social climate had been misunderstood. ""There was mutual respect and we didn't have racial problems back in the '20s and '30s,"" he said. ""People that were good at heart on both sides had no problem in getting along."" Some of the major struggles of the civil rights movement were played out in Alabama but Monroeville desegregated its public facilities quietly. The biggest change was school desegregation, according to residents. The lack of protest didn't mean blacks were not resentful over segregation, said Mary Tucker, who moved to the town in 1954 and taught in both black and integrated schools. ""We were separate but not equal,"" she said of the difference between black and white schools. ""In spite of our history of segregation and oppression there were always some good people who tried to be fair as Harper Lee portrayed in (the lawyer) Atticus. There were always a few good people who tried to do the right thing,"" she said. Lee, now 81, still lives in Monroeville part time, but is rarely seen in public. ""Nelle (Lee's first name) is very unassuming, unpretentious. You may run into her in the grocery store in jeans ... She's a very shy person,"" said Tucker.",
" Huge profits made by London-based brokers who arrange emissions-cutting projects in developing countries contrast with little benefit for the world's poorest nations, company and United Nations data shows. The Kyoto Protocol on global warming allows rich countries to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets by paying poor nations to cut emissions on their behalf, using the so-called clean development mechanism (CDM). But evidence is emerging that while brokers stand to make enormous profits, least developed nations, especially in Africa, will get next to nothing -- raising questions over whether Kyoto is fulfilling its social as well as environmental goals. ""We're either going to have bend the rules and be softer with CDM in Africa or forget it and give them more aid,"" said Mike Bess, an Africa specialist working for London-based project developer Camco. The text of the Kyoto Protocol calls for its carbon trading scheme to assist poor countries in achieving sustainable development. The text of Kyoto's umbrella treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, says that action to combat climate change should help economic development, too. But action so far has seen the biggest potential profits going to London-based project developers, instead of projects on the ground, most of which are based in China and India. Africa has seen just 21 out of a total of 751 CDM projects officially registered with the U.N. climate change secretariat. A common argument is that Africa has a tiny fraction of the world's carbon emissions, that these emissions are widely dispersed and so difficult to bundle into profitable projects, and that the continent has high investment risk. But projects are slowly emerging. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation formally launches later this month an initiative called ""Lighting the Bottom of the Pyramid"", which aims to supply low-carbon lighting to some of the 500 million Africans who have no electricity access. It aims to apply for carbon finance through the CDM, because solar power would replace higher carbon kerosene lamps used now. ""Ten years ago you'd say there was no market for mobile phones in Africa, that people couldn't afford it,"" said Fabio Nehme, IFC team leader for the project, who estimated that there were now over 100 million mobile phone users on the continent. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan launched last November in Kenya an initiative called the ""Nairobi Framework"" to try and increase the number of CDM projects in Africa. Since then just 10 new projects have been registered in Africa, versus 348 extra elsewhere, U.N. data show, but the U.N. official leading the project defended progress so far. ""Let's give it some time,"" said Daniele Violetti. UN agencies, the World Bank and the African Development Bank will pool resources for a joint CDM project, with details likely in October following a meeting in Ethiopia, he said. Western project developers are under no obligation to show that their projects contribute to sustainable development. ""The investors should be proud,"" said Michael Wara, research fellow at Stanford University. ""You want the market to work and find the low-hanging fruit, but you want to be able to modify the system when people start extracting these kinds of profits."" In one of the biggest money-spinning projects yet, 10 investors including London-based Climate Change Capital and New York-based Natsource bought 129 million tonnes of carbon credits for 6.2 euros ($8.49) per tonne from two projects in China. The price of such carbon credits for guaranteed delivery closed last week at some 16 euros per tonne, implying potential profits for these investors of well over 1 billion euros. Climate Change Capital said last week it had a carbon credit portfolio of over 65 million tonnes, more than double Africa's entire registered portfolio of 32 million tonnes, Reuters data shows (http://www.reutersinteractive.com/CarbonNews/67999). Climate Change Capital also told Reuters that it had no registered projects in Africa, but had at least one in the pipeline. While China levies a tax of up to 65 percent on CDM profits made by local companies -- to invest in Chinese renewable energy projects -- no such tax is levied on these potentially much bigger margins made by western brokers. ""The (profit) margin isn't going into sustainable development. A lot of the money is staying in London,"" Wara said.",
"WASHINGTON, Thu Sep 27,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters -- including the United States and China -- sent envoys to the US State Department on Thursday for discussions on climate change and what to do about it. The two-day meeting was called by President George W Bush, whose administration has been criticized for its refusal to adopt mandatory limits for climate-warming emissions. The White House favors ""aspirational"" targets. By most counts, the United States is the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles. But at least one study this year indicated that fast-developing China is now in the lead. Other participants are the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. This gathering of major economies follows a high-level United Nations meeting on Monday that drew more than 80 heads of state and government to focus on the problem of global warming. At its conclusion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he saw a ""major political commitment"" to seek a global solution to the problem at future U.N. discussions in December in Bali, Indonesia. At the United Nations and in Washington before the State Department meeting, envoys and lawmakers called on the United States to take a leading role. ""US leadership in the area of climate change is essential, not only because it is a big emitter of greenhouse gases, but because the US is on the cutting edge of developing technological solutions and bringing them to the global market,"" said special UN climate envoys Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ricardo Lagos Escobar and Han Seung-soo at a Capitol Hill briefing. A letter to Bush from members of Congress, led by Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, who chairs the House of Representatives global warming committee, urged mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions: ""We need actual reductions in global warming pollution, not aspirational goals."" ""What would really galvanize the international efforts on climate would be a set of policies in the United States to put the United States on a fast track to building a low carbon economy,"" John Ashton, Britain's climate envoy, said in a telephone interview. ""We now need to stop talking about talking and start deciding about doing."" The Washington talks are not formal climate negotiations, but rather an airing of views on greenhouse gases, energy security, technology development and commercialization, financing -- and a daylong closed-door session on ""process and principles for setting a long-term goal"" to cut the human-caused emissions that spur climate change. Bush's proposal would come up with ""aspirational goals"" to limit emissions by the end of 2008, shortly before his administration leaves office. The Bali meeting in December is meant to begin figuring out a way to curb emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. The Kyoto plan sets out mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions, but the United States has rejected it as unfairly exempting fast-growing economies like China and India.",
"Yellen, in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, called for global coordination on an international tax rate that would apply to multinational corporations, regardless of where they locate their headquarters. Such a global tax could help prevent the type of “race to the bottom” that has been underway, Yellen said, referring to countries trying to outdo one another by lowering tax rates in order to attract business. Her remarks came as the White House and Democrats in Congress begin looking for ways to pay for President Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plan to rebuild America's roads, bridges, water systems and electric grid. “Competitiveness is about more than how US-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,” Yellen said. “It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods and respond to crises, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government.” The speech represented Yellen's most extensive comments since taking over as Treasury secretary, and she underscored the scope of the challenge ahead. “Over the last four years, we have seen firsthand what happens when America steps back from the global stage,” Yellen said. “America first must never mean America alone.” Yellen also highlighted her priorities of combating climate change, reducing global poverty and the importance of the United States helping to lead the world out of the crisis caused by the pandemic. Yellen also called on countries not to pull back on fiscal support too soon and warned of growing global imbalances if some countries do withdraw before the crisis is over. In a sharp break with the administration of former President Donald Trump, Yellen emphasised the importance of the United States working closely with its allies, noting that the fortunes of countries around the world are intertwined. Overhauling the international tax system is a big part of that. Corporate tax rates have been falling around the world in recent years. Under the Trump administration, the US rate was cut from 35% to 21%. Biden wants to raise that rate to 28% and increase the international minimum tax rate that US companies pay on their foreign profits to 21%. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in coordination with the United States, has been working to develop a new international tax architecture that would include a global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations as part of its effort to curtail profit shifting and tax base erosion. Yellen said she is working with her counterparts in the Group of 20 advanced nations on changes to the global tax system that will help prevent businesses from shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. “President Biden’s proposals announced last week call for bold domestic action, including to raise the US minimum tax rate, and renewed international engagement, recognizing that it is important to work with other countries to end the pressures of tax competition and corporate tax base erosion,” Yellen said. “We are working with G-20 nations to agree to a global minimum corporate tax rate that can stop the race to the bottom.” ©2021 The New York Times Company",
"In a contest Thursday to select a new member of Parliament for North Shropshire, a district near the border with Wales, to the northwest of London, voters abandoned the Conservatives in favour of the centrist Liberal Democrats in one of the biggest voting upsets of recent years. The victorious Liberal Democrat candidate, Helen Morgan, overturned a majority of almost 23,000 won by the former Conservative lawmaker, Owen Paterson at the last general election, in 2019. Paterson, a former Cabinet minister who had held the seat since 1997, resigned last month after breaking lobbying rules despite an unsuccessful effort by Johnson to save him. The defeat follows a rebellion Tuesday in which around 100 of Johnson’s own lawmakers refused to support government plans to control the rapid spread of the omicron coronavirus variant. As well as embarrassing Johnson, the mutiny forced him to rely on the support of the opposition Labour Party to pass the measures, sapping his authority. When the results in North Shropshire were announced early Friday, Morgan had secured 17,957 votes; Neil Shastri-Hurst, the Conservative, had gotten 12,032; and Ben Wood, for Labour, had received 3,686. The vote counting for Thursday’s election took place overnight. “Tonight the people of North Shropshire have spoken on behalf of the British people,” Morgan said after her victory. “They have said loudly and clearly, ‘Boris Johnson, the party is over.’ ” She added that the voters had decided that Johnson was “unfit to lead and that they want a change.” She thanked Labour supporters who had given her their votes saying, “Together, we have shown that we can defeat the Conservatives not with deals behind closed doors, but with common sense at the ballot box.” Although the Liberal Democrats had hoped to pull off a surprise victory, the size of their majority was striking and unexpected. Ed Davey, the leader of the party, described the result as “a watershed moment,” adding in a statement: “Millions of people are fed up with Boris Johnson and his failure to provide leadership throughout the pandemic, and last night, the voters of North Shropshire spoke for all of them.” Even before the loss of the seat, there was speculation that Johnson could face a formal challenge to his leadership a little more than two years after he won a landslide general election victory in December 2019. To initiate a no-confidence vote, 54 of his lawmakers would have to write to Graham Brady, the chairman of the committee that represents Conservative backbenchers. Such letters are confidential but analysts do not believe that prospect is close. Parliament is now in recess, giving Johnson a short political breathing space. Even so, Friday’s result is likely to increase jitters in Downing Street since North Shropshire was one of the Conservative Party’s safest seats, in an area of Britain that supported Brexit, Johnson’s defining political project. Despite their pro-European stance, the Liberal Democrats — who finished well behind Labour in North Shropshire in the 2019 general election — successfully presented themselves as the only credible challengers to the Tories in the constituency. By doing so they appeared to have persuaded a significant number of Labour’s voters to switch to them in order to defeat the Conservatives. This year the Liberal Democrats caused another upset when they won another seat from Johnson’s party in the well-heeled district of Chesham and Amersham, northwest of London. To some extent, the circumstances of Paterson’s resignation always made the North Shropshire seat hard to defend for the Conservative Party. But critics say that Johnson was the main architect of that situation through his unsuccessful efforts to save Paterson last month. Since then Johnson’s standing has been weakened by claims that his staff held Christmas parties in Downing Street last year at a time when they were forbidden under coronavirus restrictions. The Cabinet secretary, Simon Case, is investigating those allegations and his report is expected soon. Johnson also faces questions about whether he misled his own ethics adviser over what he knew about the source of funding for an expensive makeover of his Downing Street apartment. In recent weeks Labour has moved ahead of the Conservatives in several opinion surveys which also recorded a drop in Johnson’s approval ratings. Political analysts said that could put the prime minister in a vulnerable position, given the transactional nature of his party. “The Tory Party is a ruthless machine for winning elections,” said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “If that is continuing into an election cycle, the party will get rid of him quickly.” But, while the political climate remains volatile, most voters are probably more preoccupied by the impact of the omicron variant as they prepare for the holiday season. Johnson has placed his hopes of political recovery on a speedy roll out of coronavirus booster vaccinations. This year his fortunes revived when Britain’s initial vaccination effort proved fast and effective, allowing the country to remove all restrictions in July. Speaking before the North Shropshire result, Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, said that Johnson could recover but may also be in danger of handing the next election to Labour through his errors. “I don’t think it’s over for Johnson,” Goodwin said. “I think this is salvageable.” He added: “but Johnson has entered that territory whereby oppositions don’t necessarily win elections because governments end up losing them.” Johnson was selected to lead his party in 2019 because of his track record of winning elections and because he promised to ensure that Britain left the European Union. Now that it has, his position could become vulnerable if he comes to be seen as an electoral liability to the party, Goodwin said, adding that there was a perception among Conservative lawmakers that Johnson “has no philosophical, intellectual project behind his premiership.” © 2021 The New York Times Company",
" A new film that portrays Turkey's revered founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as a lonely, hard-drinking man beset by doubts has whipped up emotions in a country still grappling with his legacy 70 years after his death. Ataturk, a former soldier, founded modern Turkey as a secularist republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Portraits of a stern-looking Ataturk adorn the walls of government offices, schools, shops and living rooms across the sprawling nation, testament to a man who has achieved the status of a demi-god among most Turks. ""Mustafa,"" a documentary that chronicles Ataturk's life from childhood to his death on November 10, 1938, presents an intimate and flawed Ataturk rarely seen before, angering hardline secularists who have called for a boycott and say the film is an enemy plot to humiliate ""Turkishness."" The film, which has drawn large crowds, has fed into a climate of soul searching in Turkey, where democratic reforms, social changes and an impassioned debate over secularism is shaking the pillars of the autocratic state left by Ataturk. ""This documentary is the product of an effort to humiliate Ataturk in the eyes of Turkish people,"" wrote columnist Yigit Bulut in the secularist Vatan newspaper. ""Do not watch it, prevent people from watching it and most importantly keep your children away from it to avoid planting seeds of Ataturk humiliation in their subconscious,"" he said. On Monday, at 9.05 a.m., factory sirens wailed, traffic halted and school children stood to attention, a ritual Turks have followed for 70 years to mark the moment of his death. ""I wanted to show a more human Ataturk than the Ataturk they teach us about at school and in the military service,"" respected director Can Dundar said in an interview. ""Ataturk has been turned into a dogma or a statue by some of his supporters, but I wanted to show a more real Ataturk -- a man who fought difficulties, loved women, who made mistakes, who was sometimes scared and achieved things,"" Dundar said. Although the film contains no revelations about his life -- thousands of books are published every year on Ataturk -- ""Mustafa"" is the first film that emphasizes the private side of the deified leader over his military and nation-building feats. Dundar shows him writing love letters during the battle of Gallipoli, where Turkish troops fought foreign occupiers. Blending archive pictures, black and white footage and re-enactments, he is also seen dancing, drinking raki, wandering his palaces in lonely despair and becoming more withdrawn as he is overtaken by age and illness. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in Istanbul, aged 58. DOWN FROM A PEDESTAL ""Mustafa"" has spawned extensive commentary in newspapers and on television since it opened two weeks ago. Nearly half a million movie-goers saw it in its first five days. One Turkish newspaper said the film, with a 1-million-euro budget, had ""brought Ataturk down from his pedestal."" ""I found it interesting to learn more about who Ataturk was as a human being,"" said Gorkem Dagci, a 22-year-old engineering student. ""He was not flawless, he was like the rest of us."" ""Kemalists,"" who see themselves as true guardians of Ataturk's legacy and have built a personality cult around him, say the film is an insult to Turkey's national hero. Nationalists are furious that the boy who plays Ataturk as a child is Greek. Ataturk was born in Thessaloniki (in today's Greece) and Dundar used local children while shooting on location. Turkcell, Turkey's main mobile phone provider, pulled out of a sponsorship deal for fear of irritating subscribers. After wresting Turkey's independence from foreign armies after World War One, Ataturk set about building a country based on Western secular values. When surnames were introduced in Turkey, Mustafa Kemal was given the name Ataturk, meaning ""Father of the Turks."" He introduced the Latin alphabet, gave women the right to vote, modernized the education system and removed religion from public life. But he also created an authoritarian state and left the army as guardian of order. Under the military constitution drafted in 1982, it is a crime to insult Ataturk. Today, democratic reforms aimed at European Union membership are straining notions such as secularism, nationalism and a centralized state. The secularist old guard of generals, judges and bureaucrats is losing its grip on society as a rising and more religious-minded middle class moves into positions of power. Battles between the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party and the secularist establishment over the use of the headscarf have revived the debate over Islam and secularism in modern Turkey. Critics say Kemalists have turned Ataturk's legacy into a dogma to defend the status quo. Many of his diaries and letters believed to touch on the issue of Islam and Kurdish nationalism are kept out of public view in military archives. ""The foundations of the republic are being discussed and the secularist establishment feels uneasy,"" author Hugh Pope said. ""The debate around this film is a reflection of that but also of a maturing society that can discuss these things openly.""",
"The tumult has finally sounded the death knell for the English-language daily. It has now ceased all operations for good. The decision was announced during a meeting with the staff on Sunday, according to the newspaper's Executive Editor Shamim A Zahedi. ""The Independent newspaper has been shut down permanently from today. It is our owners' decision. Our Editor-in-Chief M Shamsur Rahman held a meeting today and informed everyone about the matter,” he said. All employees will be paid their dues in line with the law, Zahedi added. But the promise of payment has done little to allay the frustrations of long-time staff of the daily. Manjurul Haque Monju has been working for The Independent since its inception 27 years ago. As sports editor, he has been deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of the newspaper. ""When the meeting was called today, I was hoping that we might start printing again. But I was shocked when the editor-in-chief said, 'We're going to lay you off from today.'"" The Independent started its journey on March 26, 1995. It was among a few media outlets launched by Independent Publications Limited, a unit of leading industrial conglomerate Beximco Group. It caught the eye of readers as the first four-colour, 16-page daily in Bangladesh. It was also the first newspaper to use imported newsprint. Within two years, the newspaper introduced a 32-page weekend magazine for the first time in Bangladesh. Other outlets later soon followed suit. But the good days did not last long as the newspaper's focus later turned to survival in a recessionary market. As the political climate changed, Independent Television was launched in 2010. At the same time, The Independent also went through an overhaul. Its late Editor Mahbubul Alam said at the time, ""Our aim is to create a new trend after 15 years."" Alam was the editor of The Independent for 18 years. In 2007, he became the caretaker government's information adviser. After his death, M Shamsur Rahman took over as the editor and publisher of The Independent. But the newspaper was dealt a crippling blow in April 2020 following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. As the country went into lockdown, many people stopped buying print editions of newspapers from hawkers in fear of catching the virus. Newspaper sales in Dhaka dropped by half in one fell swoop, prompting many outlets to temporarily stop printing in a bid to cut their losses. The Independent added its name to the list on Apr 6. But hopes among its staff remained alive as the online edition of the paper kept going. That was until Sunday's announcement. Abu Zakir, a senior correspondent for The Independent, said, ""After finishing my studies, I landed jobs in Sonali Bank and Independent newspaper at the same time. I stayed here because I love journalism."" ""I have been working here since 2010, but the newspaper closed today. I never thought it would close."" Sports Editor Manjurul said, ""We've been told that the dues will be paid in a very short time. A few years ago, we were told that it would be better for the newspaper to leave the wage board and employ its staff on a contractual basis. ""We agreed to this in the interest of the newspaper. But my time on the wage board will not be taken into account. Many may not have protested, but they are sad. We didn't want the newspaper to shut down this way.""",
"KATHMANDU,April 08 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Nepal and China have agreed to recognise the snow and rock heights of Mount Everest, ending a long-standing debate about the height of the world's tallest mountain, officials said on Thursday. More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the mountain that straddles the Nepal-China border since it was first summited by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in May 1953. But its exact height has remained a matter of debate. The official Everest snow height of 8,848 metres (29,028 feet) was measured by the Survey of India in 1954. Chinese mountaineers and researchers climbed Mount Everest in May 2005 to determine its height afresh and concluded that the rock height of the peak was about 3.7 metres (11 feet) less than the estimates made in 1954, or the summit was 8,844.43 metres (29,017 feet), with a margin of error of about 0.21 metres. Officials from China and Nepal who met this week said both heights were accurate. ""Both are correct heights. No measurement is absolute. This is a problem of scientific research,"" said Raja Ram Chhatkuli, director general of Nepal's survey department, and a delegate. Eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks including Mount Everest are in Nepal or on its borders with China and India. In 1999, an expedition by the National Geographic Society and Boston's Museum of Science used satellite-based technology to measure the height of the snow covered peak, and determined the mountain stood 8,850 metres (29,035 feet) high. They said they were unsure about the height of the rock peak. Nepal has stuck to the snow height determined in 1954.",
" As the nations of the world struggle in Doha to agree even modest targets to tackle global warming, the cuts needed in rising greenhouse gas emissions grow ever deeper, more costly and less likely to be achieved. UN talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases. An overriding long-term goal set by all nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial Revolution is fast slipping away. ""The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished,"" Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, told Reuters. Disagreements mean the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7 have scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to start by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the US Northeast last month. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about 3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s. Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing by about 3 percent a year over the next decade. For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since pre-industrial times. ""The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls,"" Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks. Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week. Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030. POLLUTION In some projections, global emissions will need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C. And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming sunshine. ""Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases,"" Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters. Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said. The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C. But deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40 rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012. The deadline for a deal on new cuts due to start in 2020 has been put back to 2015, giving breathing space for the troubled talks as ever more carbon enters the air. Yet current emissions cut pledges are putting the planet on course for a warming of 3 to 5 C, a UN report said last week, adding that 2 C was still possible with tough action. ""The later we go in getting complete action and the higher emissions are in 2020, the greater is the risk that these targets are not possible or are extremely expensive,"" said Bill Hare, head of the non-profit advisory organisation Climate Analytics. Key will be a switch to nuclear or biomass power and carbon capture and storage. If these don't step up, there will be no financially feasible solutions to meet the target, he said. In Doha, both the United States and the European Union - the main emitters among developed nations - say they will not deepen their pledges for cuts by 2020. ""It's a desperate situation,"" said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace. To be effective, the next climate pact from 2020 would need global agreement for rapid and deep cuts. Under a scenario drawn up by the IPCC, rich nations needed to achieve cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. But existing pledges are for less than 20 percent. STARK MESSAGE Canadell, citing work by the Global Carbon Project and other researchers, said that to have a reasonable chance of keeping warming to 2 C, global emissions would have to drop about 3 percent a year from 2020. Since developed nations are meant to take the lead, that would mean the rich would have to cut by between 4 and 5 percent a year, he said. That could cripple economies by prematurely shutting down coal-fired power plants and polluting factories. Global accountancy firm PwC estimated that the improvement in global carbon intensity - the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output - needed to meet a 2 C target had risen to 5.1 percent a year, from now to 2050. ""We have passed a critical threshold - not once since World War Two has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation, but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years,"" PwC said.",
"The flights, which were to have begun from Svalbard, a group of islands far north of mainland Norway, this month, already had been delayed when one participant tested positive for the virus while still in Germany. But late last week Norway imposed new restrictions requiring that any nonresident entering the country be placed in quarantine for two weeks. Those obstacles proved too logistically difficult to overcome. “The highly unusual situation at the moment leaves us no choice,” Andreas Herber, an atmospheric scientist with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, which organised the expedition, said in a statement. Herber, who is the coordinator of the airborne research efforts, said if other flights planned for this summer were able to go ahead, the institute would see if it was possible to fly more often to gather more data. The yearlong expedition in the Arctic, known as Mosaic, is centred on a research icebreaker, Polarstern, that has been drifting with the pack ice for the past six months. A rotating team of researchers and technicians is on board studying the ice, atmosphere, ocean and other elements of the Central Arctic to better understand how climate change is affecting the region. The flights, which would collect data on the atmosphere and sea-ice thickness, were designed to complement the research happening at the surface. The roughly 100 researchers and crew aboard the Polarstern remain unaffected by the coronavirus outbreak. The next mission to bring a new team of researchers to the ship is scheduled for next month, when other aircraft are to make the trip from Svalbard and land on an ice runway built next to the Polarstern. Wegener Institute officials said that those flights should still be possible, unless Norway imposes even more drastic measures. The current restrictions would require that, in addition to testing negative for the virus, anyone going to the ship arrive in Svalbard early enough to wait out the quarantine. “The spreading wave of infections poses an immense challenge for this international expedition,” said Markus Rex, a climate scientist and the expedition leader. “Our safety concept represents a commensurate response to the current situation. That said, no one can predict how the situation will change over the next few months.” © 2020 The New York Times Company",
" Britain's new leader Gordon Brown stamped on talk of cooler relations with Washington on Saturday, saying before his first meeting with President George W. Bush that the bond between the countries remained strong. Brown flies to the United States on Sunday for his first meeting with Bush since he succeeded Tony Blair as British prime minister a month ago. Some of Brown's ministerial appointments and a comment by one of Brown's ministers that Brown and Bush were unlikely to be ""joined together at the hip"" have fuelled speculation that the cozy relationship Bush had with Blair would change under Brown. Blair was Bush's closest ally in the invasion of Iraq, but Brown is well aware that the war's unpopularity in Britain was one of the factors that forced Blair to step down early in June after a decade in power. Brown, who was Blair's finance minister, said in a statement released before his trip that ties with the United States should be Britain's ""single most important bilateral relationship"". ""It is a relationship that is founded on our common values of liberty, opportunity and the dignity of the individual. And because of the values we share, the relationship with the United States is not only strong but can become stronger in the years ahead,"" he said. None of the world's major problems could be solved without the active engagement of the United States, Brown said. ""We will continue to work very closely together as friends to tackle the great global challenges of the future,"" he said, adding that the relationship between a US president and a British prime minister would always be strong. UNITED NATIONS Brown will hold talks with Bush at Camp David before traveling to New York for a meeting with United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Brown will also give a speech at the United Nations. Brown's office said talks with Bush would cover the Middle East peace process, the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, climate change and how to reinvigorate global trade liberalization talks. While Brown and Bush will stress London and Washington's ""special relationship"" is alive and well, political analysts say the reserved, sometimes awkward Brown is unlikely to enjoy the same close relationship with the US president that Blair had. Brown will want to avoid the ""Bush's poodle"" tag that Blair was sometimes labeled with by the British press, particularly after the US president greeted him with ""Yo, Blair"" at an international conference last year. Brown regularly holidays in the United States and is a keen reader of books on US politics and economics. He has said Britain will abide by its U.N. obligations in Iraq and there will be no immediate withdrawal of British troops, as some in the ruling Labor Party want. On Iran, Brown said this week he would not rule out military action but believed sanctions could still persuade Tehran to drop its disputed nuclear program.",
"The fallout may take months to assess. But the impact on the US economy is bound to be considerable, especially in Texas and other states where oil drives much of the job market. With the coronavirus outbreak slowing trade, transportation and other energy-intensive economic activities, demand is likely to remain weak. Even if Russia and Saudi Arabia resolve their differences — which led the Saudis to slash prices after Russia refused to join in production cuts — a global oil glut could keep prices low for years. Many smaller US oil companies could face bankruptcy if the price pressure goes on for more than a few weeks, while larger ones will be challenged to protect their dividend payments. Thousands of oil workers are about to receive pink slips. The battle will impose intense hardship on many other oil-producing countries as well, especially Venezuela, Iran and several African nations, with political implications that are difficult to predict. The only winners may be drivers paying less for gasoline — particularly those with older, less fuel-efficient cars, who tend to have lower incomes. “What a day, what a time,” said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and author of “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.” “This is a clash of oil, geopolitics and the virus that together have sent the markets spiralling down. The decline in demand for oil will march across the globe as the virus advances.” Saudi Arabia and Russia are hurt by low prices and have reasons to compromise, but both have a cushion to absorb financial losses for a few months at least. Saudi Arabia depends on high oil prices to fund its ample social programs, but it has the lowest production costs of any producer, so it can operate profitably even at lower prices. Russia has sufficient financial reserves and can devalue its currency, the ruble, to sustain the flow of money through its economy even when prices decline. That leaves the higher-cost producers, and the service companies that drill for them, most immediately vulnerable. Diamondback Energy, a medium-size company based in Texas, slashed its 2020 production plans, cutting the number of hydraulic-fracturing crews to six from nine. Other companies are expected to follow suit in the coming days. The operations in greatest jeopardy are small, private ones with large debts, impatient investors and less productive wells. Small companies — those with a couple of hundred wells or fewer — account for as much as 15% of US output, which has more than doubled over the last decade to roughly 13 million barrels a day. But medium-size companies are also imperilled, including Chesapeake Energy, according to Morgan Stanley. Chesapeake, a major Oklahoma oil and gas company, has $9 billion in debt and little cash because of persistently low commodity prices. Chesapeake did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In an investment note Monday, Goldman Sachs said that large companies like Chevron and ConocoPhillips would be prepared to handle the shock, but that Exxon Mobil could be forced to cut spending on exploration and new production, which has recently been focused on West Texas, New Mexico and the waters off Guyana. Shares of Occidental Petroleum, deeply in debt from its acquisition of Anadarko last year, declined by more than 50% over concern that it would need to slash its dividend. Halliburton and other service companies — the ones that do the drilling and hydraulic fracturing that blasts through shale rock — are exposed because explorers and producers frequently cut their services first during downturns. On the other hand, refiners like Valero may benefit from increased supplies of cheap oil, according to Goldman Sachs. And there may be an upside for natural gas producers, because a reduction in oil production will mean less gas bubbling up from oil wells, bolstering prices. American oil executives put the best face on the situation, noting that many reduced their risks over the last six months by hedging with sales contracts at $50 a barrel or higher. But they said layoffs were inevitable, as when oil prices plunged in late 2014 and 2015 and more than 170,000 oil and oil-service workers lost their jobs. Companies can adjust their spending by drilling but not finishing their wells with hydraulic fracturing, leaving them ready to ramp up when prices recover. Still, oil analysts note that even a sharp decline in new wells would not reduce American oil production by more than a couple of million barrels a day over the next year or two. Scott D Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the biggest Texas oil companies, predicted that Russia and Saudi Arabia would be hurt far more than US oil producers. “We will all adjust our capital and employee work force to preserve balance sheets,” Sheffield said. “Many companies will go bankrupt, but new shareholders will own the drilling locations.” The oil industry has dealt with sharp price declines several times in recent decades. Big oil companies invested through those cycles, especially with long-term projects such as deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off Brazil and Africa. Some analysts say the global industry may not be as well prepared for the latest challenge. Increased concerns about climate change and the growing reluctance of investors to pour money into a sector that has strained to make profits in recent years hobbled the industry even before the virus hit. “In many respects, this time will be different, but not in a good way,” said David L Goldwyn, the top energy diplomat in the State Department during the first Obama administration. “Low oil prices will not necessarily result in increased demand due to the firm commitment of many countries to decarbonisation. The uncertain trend line for coronavirus suggests demand recovery will be slow in coming.” The stock market plunge that has accompanied the drop in oil prices will hurt many Americans, but at least they will be paying less at the gasoline pump. The average regular gasoline price has declined by 5 cents over the last week, to $2.38 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, and is 9 cents below a year ago. Every penny drop means a roughly $4 million a day savings for US drivers, energy economists say. President Donald Trump grasped at the silver lining. “Good for consumer, gasoline prices coming down!” he declared Monday on Twitter. But Yergin, the energy historian, noted that “low gasoline prices don’t do much for you if schools are closed, you cancel your trip or you’re working from home because of the virus.” And oil-producing states will suffer. Texas lost as many as 100,000 oil jobs the last time prices collapsed in 2014 and 2015, and some companies never replaced all their workers. The state has diversified its economy since the 1990s, but restaurants, hotels and shopping malls in Houston and across the state still rely on the energy economy. Oil companies have already been laying off employees in recent months as crude prices sagged. Internationally, the price drop will reverberate differently from country to country. China and India, as huge importers of oil, stand to gain. But it’s a different story for Venezuela, a Russian ally that depends on its dwindling oil exports. The country is short of food and medicine, prompting many Venezuelans to leave for neighbouring countries and the United States. Iran, already under pressure from tightening American oil sanctions, will also be hurt by lower prices, adding to an economic burden that has led to growing discontent. Saudi Arabia may also be hurt, even though it precipitated the crisis. Saudi government finances and social programmes are based on oil sales, which are also meant to help diversify the economy. Twenty percent of the Saudi population is invested in the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, after its initial public offering last year. With the prospect of reduced earnings, Aramco shares have fallen below their IPO price. “There could be a large number of disgruntled citizens,” said Ellen Wald, a Middle East historian and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Centre. Lower oil prices have a mixed impact on the environment. Drilling goes down, as do releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas connected with climate change. But if prices stay low for a while, gas-guzzling cars and trucks may find more buyers. And as with any cycle, the question is how long it will last. “What goes down will go up,” said Dan Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign. c.2020 The New York Times Company",
"The Russian invasion has bonded America
to Europe more tightly than at any time since the Cold War and deepened US ties
with Asian allies, while forcing a reassessment of rivals like China, Iran and
Venezuela. And it has reenergised Washington’s
leadership role in the democratic world just months after the chaotic US
withdrawal from Afghanistan ended 20 years of conflict on a dismal note. But the new focus on Russia will come
with hard choices and internal contradictions, similar to ones that defined US
diplomacy during the Cold War, when America sometimes overlooked human rights
abuses and propped up dictators in the name of the struggle against communism. “It feels like we’re definitively in a
new era,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser in
the Obama White House. “The post-9/11 war on terror period of American hubris,
and decline, is now behind us. And we’re not sure what’s next.” The attack by President Vladimir Putin
of Russia on his neighbour has become a prism through which nearly all US
foreign policy decisions will be cast for the foreseeable future, experts and
officials said. In recent weeks, Western officials have
spoken in terms that often echo the grand declarations that followed the 2001
terrorist attacks. On Friday, President Joe Biden said that “the free world is
coming together” to stand up to Putin — a phrase reminiscent of President
George W Bush’s talk of how “the entire free world” was at war against
terrorism. In the near term, Moscow’s aggression is
sure to invigorate Biden’s global fight for democracy against autocracies like
Russia, making vivid the threats to fledgling democracies like Ukraine. Yet
three increasingly authoritarian NATO nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey —
play key roles in the coalition aiding Ukraine. And the United States is
grappling with internal assaults to its own democracy. The war lends urgency to Biden’s climate
change agenda, reinforcing the need for more reliance on renewable clean energy
over the fossil fuels that fill Russian coffers. Yet it has already generated
new pressure to increase the short-term supply of oil from the likes of
Venezuela’s isolated dictatorship and Saudi Arabia’s authoritarian monarchy. And it creates a powerful new incentive
for the United States to find ways of prying President Xi Jinping of China away
from Putin, who is likely counting on diplomatic and economic lifelines from Xi
amid crushing Western sanctions. But some administration officials see China as
a lost cause and prefer to treat China and Russia as committed partners, hoping
that might galvanise policies among Asian and European allies to contain them
both. While some experts warn that a renewed
focus on Europe will inevitably divert attention from Asia, several top White
House officials say the United States can capitalise on how the war has
convinced some Asian governments that they need to work more closely with the
West to build up a global ideological front to defend democracy. “What we are seeing now is an
unprecedented level of Asian interest and focus,” Kurt M Campbell, the top
White House official on Asia policy, said at a talk hosted by the German
Marshall Fund of the United States. “And I believe one of the outcomes of
this tragedy will be a kind of new thinking around how to solidify
institutional connections beyond what we’ve already seen between Europe and the
Pacific,” he said. America’s approach to the world was
already undergoing a major shift, with the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
concluded, and conversations over Islamic terrorism no longer at the fore. Many
war-weary Americans welcomed calls for a reduced military footprint overseas by
President Donald Trump, who questioned NATO’s relevance and even flirted with
withdrawing from the alliance. Biden sought to rebuild US alliances,
but did so largely in the name of confronting China. The Russian invasion has
expanded his mission dramatically and urgently, setting the stage for a seismic
geopolitical shift that would pit the United States and its allies against
China and Russia at once if they form an entrenched anti-Western bloc. But it also gives Washington a new and
nobler sense of purpose, Rhodes said. “We’ve been trying to get to a new era
for a long time,” he said. “And now I think Putin’s invasion has necessitated
an American return to the moral high ground.” Playing Hardball Over Energy Early signs of how the new US priorities
are creating diplomatic quakes have already emerged. On Friday, the United States and its
European allies agreed to pause talks with Iran that just days earlier seemed
on the verge of clinching a return to the 2015 deal that limited Iran’s nuclear
program. Western nations are refusing a demand by Moscow, which is a party to
the Obama-era agreement from which Trump withdrew, for guarantees that its
future transactions with Iran be exempted from the sanctions imposed on Russia
in recent weeks. “It’s been clear since last weekend that
negotiations to revive the Iran deal could not be walled off from the Ukraine
war,” Dalia Dassa Kaye, an Iran expert at the Rand Corp., said Friday. Last year, Biden made a new agreement a
core goal of his foreign policy. It is unclear whether one can be struck
without Russia, which is a member of the commission that supervises compliance
with the deal and would take control of Iran’s excess enriched uranium. The United States is also looking at
Venezuela from a new angle. Senior Biden administration officials travelled to
Venezuela two weeks after the Russian invasion, becoming the first to visit the
country in years. Venezuela, a partner of Russia, is under heavy US sanctions
imposed years ago to weaken the repressive government of President Nicolás
Maduro. In 2019, the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on the
state oil company, central bank and senior officials to pressure Maduro to step
down. Now, with Biden looking to increase
global oil supplies to bring down prices, US officials are talking to Maduro’s
government about buying his oil again. The idea has drawn some sharp criticism
in Congress, however, where Sen Bob Menendez, D-NJ, chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, fumed that “efforts to unify the entire world against a
murderous tyrant in Moscow should not be undercut by propping up a dictator
under investigation for crimes against humanity in Caracas.” The same imperative on oil is reshaping
US diplomacy with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two Persian Gulf
nations that some Biden administration officials view with suspicion or
hostility because of their autocratic systems and leading roles in a war in
Yemen that has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe. Brett McGurk and Amos J
Hochstein, two senior administration officials, travelled to the Gulf days
before the Russian invasion to discuss security and energy issues. However, Saudi Arabia has declined so
far to increase oil production, while the United Arab Emirates waited until
Wednesday to ask the OPEC nations to do so. US officials were also furious with
the UAE for declining to vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution
to condemn Russia, although it did support a similar resolution later in the UN
General Assembly. The unreliability of the two nations and
Russia’s place in the oil economy have increased momentum within the Biden
administration to enact policies that would help the United States more quickly
wean itself off fossil fuels and confront the climate crisis. This could lead
future administrations to devote fewer diplomatic and military resources to the
Gulf nations in the long term, even if US officials want them to help on oil
now. “We may see more fundamental questioning
about the value of these partnerships,” Kaye said. “These states already believe
the US has checked out of the region, but their stance on Russia may only
strengthen voices calling for a further reduction of US forces in the region.” Israel, the closest US ally in the
Middle East, has also staked out a neutral position on the Ukraine war, largely
because of Russia’s presence in the region. But US officials have been more
forgiving of Israel’s stance as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett conducts shuttle
diplomacy. He met with Putin for three hours in Moscow on March 5 and then
spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by phone before returning
home. US officials said Bennett consulted with them about the talks, and
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this past week that they “appreciate the
efforts.” Zelenskyy told reporters Saturday that
Jerusalem could be a site for peace talks between the leaders of Ukraine and
Russia. Juggling Allies in Europe and Asia In Europe, Russia’s invasion has
supercharged the Biden administration’s efforts to restore the morale of a NATO
alliance that Trump undermined. But the alliance includes three nations
— Poland, Hungary and Turkey — whose democratic backsliding has troubled the
Biden administration. Hungary and Turkey were pointedly excluded from Biden’s
global democracy summit in December, and the European Union has cut billions of
euros of funding to Poland and Hungary for what it sees as erosions of legal
and democratic principles. Now all three countries are participating in the
coalition against Russia. “In times of crisis, there is sometimes
a tension between our values and our interests,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a
senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “In the short term,
we’re going to have to prioritise pushing back against Russia, at the risk of
taking our foot off the gas on the democracy and human rights concerns that had
been at the front and centre of the Biden administration’s agenda.” In the Asia-Pacific region, several
important US partners and allies are working with Washington on sanctions and
export controls on technology against Russia. These include Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, Singapore and Australia. Some Asian nations have agreed to long-term
gas swaps with Europe to help relieve a potential Russian shut-off of energy
exports. And Australia has committed to spending $50 million to send weapons to
Ukraine, including missiles and ammunition. However, India — the most populous US
partner in the so-called Quad coalition of democracies in Asia — has refrained
from condemning Russia’s invasion because of decades-old security ties with
Moscow. That stance undermines Biden’s insistence that democratic nations band
together against autocracies. But it is the other Asian behemoth,
China, that presents the biggest diplomatic challenge for the United States.
China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and their bond has strengthened in
recent years. Even as the Russian military decimates
Ukrainian cities and kills hundreds or thousands of civilians, China has signalled
that it stands by Moscow by issuing anti-US declarations and amplifying the
Kremlin’s propaganda and conspiracy theories. Xi’s persistent support of Putin, with
whom he shares a drive to dilute US power, has made administration officials
wonder whether there is any way to pull them apart on Ukraine. On Thursday, CIA Director William Burns
told US senators he believed that Xi was “unsettled” by the war. Some China
analysts say that if Beijing wants to salvage its reputation with Western
nations, particularly in Europe, it might agree to take steps to help Ukraine
without directly breaking from Russia. Ryan Hass, a China director on the
National Security Council in the Obama White House, proposed testing Beijing
with specific requests, such as asking them to provide more humanitarian aid
and refrain from recognising Russian-installed governments in Ukraine or
shielding Russia from war crimes investigations. “If China’s leaders take concrete
actions to relieve suffering,” he said, “then lives would be saved and there
would be less centrifugal pressure toward cleaving the world into rival blocs.” © 2022 The New York Times Company",
"“Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years,” said AG Sulzberger, the publisher, in a note to the staff on Sunday announcing Bennet’s departure. In a brief interview, Sulzberger added: “Both of us concluded that James would not be able to lead the team through the next leg of change that is required.” At an all-staff virtual meeting on Friday, Bennet, 54, apologised for the op-ed, saying that it should not have been published and that it had not been edited carefully enough. An editors’ note posted late Friday noted factual inaccuracies and a “needlessly harsh” tone. “The essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published,” the note said. The op-ed, by Sen Tom Cotton had “Send In the Troops” as its headline. “One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers,” he wrote. The piece, published on Wednesday, drew anger from readers and Times journalists. Bennet declined to comment. Bennet’s swift fall from one of the most powerful positions in American journalism comes as hundreds of thousands of people have marched in recent weeks in protest of racism in law enforcement and society. The protests were set in motion when George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, died last month after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer’s knee. The foment has reached other newsrooms. On Saturday night, Stan Wischnowski resigned as top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer days after an article in the newspaper about the effects of protests on the urban landscape carried the headline “Buildings Matter, Too.” The headline prompted an apology published in The Inquirer, a heated staff meeting and a “sickout” by dozens of journalists at the paper. Bennet’s tenure as editorial page editor, which started in 2016, was marked by several missteps. Last spring, The Times apologised for an anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in the Opinion pages of its international edition. Last August, a federal appellate court found that Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate, could proceed with a defamation lawsuit against The Times over an editorial edited by Bennet that inaccurately linked her statements to the 2011 shooting of a congresswoman. During Bennet’s first year on the job, two Times national security reporters publicly objected to an op-ed by the journalist Louise Mensch, who cited her own reporting on US law enforcement’s purported monitoring of the Trump presidential campaign. Times reporters who had covered the same story, along with reporters at other outlets, were sceptical of her claim. Bennet worked and held key jobs in the Times newsroom from 1991 until 2006, when he left the newspaper to become the editor of The Atlantic. Since his return, he had widely been considered a possible successor to Dean Baquet, who has been in charge of the newsroom for six years. In his four years as editorial page editor, Bennet sought to expand Opinion’s range, making it more responsive to breaking news and better positioned to cover the tech industry. While he hired several progressive columnists and contributors, he also added conservative voices to the traditionally liberal department. He reduced the number of unsigned editorials and encouraged editorial board members to write more signed opinion pieces; one editorial board member, Brent Staples, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing last year for a series of opinion columns on race in America. Under Bennet, the opinion section also published investigative journalism, developed newsletters and a podcast. It also published a much-discussed op-ed by an anonymous Trump administration official who described a “quiet resistance” within the federal government. The most prominent conservative columnist hired by Bennet, Bret Stephens, angered many readers with his inaugural Times column, in which he chastised the “moral superiority” of those who look down on climate-change sceptics. Late last year, Stephens published another column, headlined “The Secrets of Jewish Genius,” that led to widespread criticism. After a review, the editors appended a note to the column and reedited it to remove a reference to a study cited in the original version after it was revealed that one of the study’s authors had promoted racist views. Bennet is the brother of Michael Bennet, a US senator from Colorado, and he recused himself from presidential campaign coverage during his brother’s unsuccessful run for this year’s Democratic nomination. Katie Kingsbury, a deputy editorial page editor, will be the acting editorial page editor through the November election, Sulzberger said in his memo to the staff. Jim Dao, the deputy editorial page editor who oversees op-eds, is stepping down from his position, which was on the Times masthead, and taking a new job in the newsroom. Baquet, the executive editor, said Sunday that he and Dao had just started discussing possible jobs for Dao. Dao did not reply to a request for comment. Kingsbury, 41, was hired in 2017. Previously she was on The Boston Globe’s editorial board, where she won a Pulitzer for editorial writing and edited another Pulitzer-winning series. In a note to the Opinion staff Sunday, Kingsbury, who declined to comment for this article, said that until a more “technical solution” is in place, anyone who sees “any piece of Opinion journalism — including headlines or social posts or photos or you name it — that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately.” Cotton’s op-ed prompted criticism on social media from many Times employees from different departments, an online protest that was led by African-American staff members. Much of the dissent included tweets that said the op-ed “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” Times employees objected despite a company policy instructing them not to post partisan comments on social media or take sides on issues in public forums. In addition, more than 800 staff members had signed a letter by Thursday evening protesting the op-ed’s publication. The letter, addressed to high-ranking editors in the opinion and news divisions, as well as New York Times Co. executives, argued that Cotton’s essay contained misinformation, such as his depiction of the role of “antifa” in the protests. Sulzberger said at the Friday town hall meeting and in his note on Sunday that a rethinking of Opinion was necessary for an era in which readers are likely to come upon op-eds in social media posts, divorced from their print context next to the editorial page. c.2020 The New York Times Company",
" The man widely tipped to be South Korea's next president on Friday promised to open the economy, rein in disruptive labour unions and ditch the ideological policies he said are holding back Asia's third-most-powerful economy. Latest opinion polls show almost 50 percent of voters in December's presidential election would pick former Seoul mayor and one-time major construction firm boss, Lee Myung-bak, compared to just over 20 percent for his closest rival. ""The biggest problem with President Roh (Moo-hyun) is he doesn't run the economy based on market principles but brings in too much ideological and political logic,"" said Lee. ""Our job is to restore the market economy,"" he added. ""The South Korean economy needs to be more open. Many regulations must be removed so companies both here and from abroad have fewer burdens in doing business here."" Foreign investors repeatedly complain of the difficulties of doing business in South Korea, blaming bureaucracy to outright discrimination. Major local companies, too, have become increasingly reluctant to invest at home in what many see as an unfavourable business climate under the current liberal government, which has often focused on improving the lot of South Korea's have-nots. ""There's a need to change the economic climate ... it's a reflection of this government's economic policy that we have the lowest rate of investment in 20 years."" Lee, who will seek to be the opposition Grand National Party's presidential candidate in primaries starting in June, made clear he would come down hard on illegal strikes by unions. A recent study showed that strikes and protests, a daily part of life in the capital, cost South Korea over $7 billion a year. ""This must be corrected ... we need people to obey the law for democracy to stand."" On the controversial issue of changing the constitution so a president can have two consecutive terms in office instead of one, Lee said he backed the idea but opposed making the change in the last year of Roh's term in office. ""I don't think it's appropriate to simply change the term now. There's the possibility of trying to use it politically. There are several clauses that need to be revised, so we should do that in the next administration,"" he said, pointing to the need to ensure greater equality for women under the law. The unpopular Roh, whose ruling party has started to splinter in disarray ahead of the December election, has run into a wall of opposition to his proposal for a change now even though it would not affect his single five-year tenure. Lee, who as Seoul mayor won huge popularity for transforming a concrete road into a stream and park in the city centre, has promised to push an even bigger project if he becomes president -- a $15 billion waterway cutting the country from north to south and connecting Seoul to Pusan. Calling his popularity ratings unprecedented in South Korea, which spent its first decades under autocrats and military despots, Lee said it showed that people now wanted a businessman to take charge. ""Career politicians of the past used to make many policies but were not able to make them reality. I think there's expectation that someone who's been a CEO would be able to do that.""",
"In the town of Reivilo in the country's North West Province where Seikaneng works, patients were waiting for a diagnosis, personal protective equipment (PPE) had to be ordered, and a full week of 12-hour shifts lay ahead. ""We miss Dudu. That loss, it was so bad. But we had to come straight back to work to make sure no one else got sick,"" Seikaneng said between consultations. Seikaneng, 64, is one of 11 nurses in the town about 500 km (310 miles) west of the country's biggest city, Johannesburg, fighting the spread of the coronavirus in a nation with the highest numbers of confirmed cases on the continent. According to the Africa Centre for Disease Control, South Africa has some 681,200 COVID-19 cases. About 16,976 people have died from the disease. Seikaneng's experience in this former mining town of roughly 4,000 people is echoed by nurses across the country who have spoken out in recent months about their working conditions, with protests erupting over pay, short-staffing and a lack of PPE. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are about 28 million nurses in the global workforce - 6 million less than are needed, with 90% of the shortfall concentrated in low- and middle-income countries such as South Africa. For Seikaneng and her colleagues, minimal PPE and staff shortages have forced them to innovate and adapt to prevent more lives being lost to COVID-19. ""We're doing the best we can with the little we have,"" she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from an office in Reivilo Health Centre where she works. It has meant working longer hours when a colleague has to quarantine and carefully assessing patients' symptoms to decide whether to call for an ambulance from the nearest hospital 70 km (43 miles) away, where tests can be carried out. On some days, no PPE was delivered to the health centre, forcing the nurses to re-use masks or go without. Often their priority was simply stabilising patients until the ambulance arrived to take them to Taung hospital, which has the municipality's only COVID-19 ward. ""We're in a rural area far from supporting health services,"" Sipho Bathlaping, 29, another nurse at the Reivilo centre. ""What we need is more PPE, but also moral support,"" he said. 'WE HAVE TO KEEP WORKING' At Taung hospital, COVID-19 ward manager Vicky Shikwambana receives patients from surrounding towns including Reivilo, dividing them between rooms for suspected or confirmed cases. If a patient's condition worsens, they have to be moved to Klerksdorp hospital, some 250 km (155 miles) away. ""We only have one ventilator in the whole hospital. What can we do? We have to keep working because this is a pandemic,"" Shikwambana said. Like many nurses, Shikwambana has had to adapt to plug the gaps during the coronavirus crisis. The COVID-19 ward used to be for tuberculosis (TB) patients, who were moved elsewhere in the hospital as the pandemic gathered pace. Coronavirus has piled pressure on a health system already dealing with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, with the latter claiming an estimated 78,000 lives every year in the country, according to the WHO's Global TB report. Under-staffed, over-burdened health systems are not unique to low-income countries. According to Nurse Heroes - a joint initiative between philanthropists, media and celebrities that supports and honours nurses, within three years the United States and Europe could lack 1 million and 1.5 million nursing staff respectively. In Taung, Shikwambana knows that even minor adjustments can preserve PPE, and possibly help his small team save lives. Shikwambana and the other nurses sometimes speak to patients through the window, cutting down on the need for PPE and preserving precious supplies. ""My family are nervous about me working here, but they are also proud,"" Shikwambana said, standing outside the ward. 'SAVE OUR COMMUNITY' In Pudumong, a town of 3,000 people not far from Taung hospital, a group of community healthcare workers gathered outside the clinic, adjusting their hats in the glaring sun. ""We are here to save our community,"" said Kgomotso Moremedi, 43, who is one of 26 members of an outreach team doing door-to-door contact tracing to stem the virus's spread. Gontlafetse Leinane, 45, sprayed the last drops of hand sanitizer onto her colleagues' open palms. ""This is all the sanitizer we have today,"" she said, as the mostly women team members rubbed their hands and adjusted their face masks before heading out on their rounds. About 90% of the global nursing workforce is female, even though few women occupy leadership positions in the healthcare sector, according to the WHO. With no thermometer, they use a verbal assessment form to ask quarantining residents who they last saw and whether their symptoms are better or worse. At their first stop, nurse and team manager Rachel Asitile accompanied three outreach team members to the house of Thuso Kalanyane, a 49-year-old teacher with COVID-19 who had been self-isolating for a week. ""We're relieved and happy to see the healthcare workers,"" said his wife Mapuledi, who had been isolating with him. ""Now we feel someone is there for us, that we're not alone in this."" Asitile said the climate of fear and uncertainty was palpable in the town, which lies near the border with Botswana. ""We cannot be afraid or it will affect us psychologically"" said Asitile, adding that when funds were low she paid for sanitiser and photocopied assessment forms herself. ""All we can do is try by all means to protect ourselves and others.""",
" Environment experts Saturday linked floods, droughts, cyclones, tidal surges and river erosion—commonplace in Bangladesh— to climate change caused by global warming. The observation based on available data came amid a warning that natural disasters would be more frequent and severe in future. Prof AQM Mahbub, chairman of the Geography and Environment Science department at Dhaka University, said: ""We saw almost all types of natural disasters climate change might cause. We have seen signs of climate change all the year round.""
Droughts and floods alternate in Bangladesh. The country saw a spell of drought in January and floods in July, followed by the September deluge that killed 564 people and affected over 10 million others. The floods damaged 63,431 houses and crops on 60,685 acres. As many as 510 educational institutions were totally damaged, according to a government estimate. In the wake of the floods, river eroded lands in much of the country, leaving many people homeless. Cyclone Sidr—the latest in the long line of natural disasters—struck the coast on November 15, killing more than 3,000 people. Earlier 11 depressions formed in the Bay of Bengal this year. Ainun Nishat, country representative of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), told bdnews24.com Sidr that had affected the entire country was triggered by climate change. Nishat said: ""Global warming may affect Bangladesh in many ways. Many coastal areas will go under saline water if sea level rises further."" Data collected from Coast Trust Bangladesh, an NGO, shows that up to 17 percent of land of Bangladesh would go under water leaving 20 million people homeless if sea level rose by a mere 1 metre. Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed, executive director of the Centre for Global Change, said: ""We have evidence of climate change. Records of rainfall and temperature of 50 years showed that night temperature in winter rose and the duration of winter shrunk. Rainfall in September and October increased."" ""In the last four decades, sea temperature rose by 0.6 degrees Celsius, which is not normal,"" he added.",
"The Republican rout was wide and deep in what was bound to be seen as a sharp rebuke to Obama, who has lurched from crisis to crisis all year and whose unpopularity made him unwelcome to Democratic candidates in many contested states.The Republicans also strengthened their grip on the House of Representatives. When the new Congress takes power in January, they will be in charge of both chambers of Congress for the first time since elections in 2006.The Republican takeover in the Senate will force Obama to scale back his ambitions to either executive actions that do not require legislative approval, or items that might gain bipartisan support, such as trade agreements and tax reform.It will also test his ability to compromise with newly empowered political opponents who have been resisting his legislative agenda since he was first elected. And it could prompt some White House staff turnover as some exhausted members of his team consider departing in favour of fresh legs.Obama, first elected in 2008 and again in 2012, called Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to the White House on Friday to take stock of the new political landscape.He watched election returns from the White House, and saw little to warm his spirits.Before the election results, the White House had signalled no major changes for Obama. Officials said Obama would seek common ground with Congress on areas like trade and infrastructure.""The president is going to continue to look for partners on Capitol Hill, Democrats or Republicans, who are willing to work with him on policies that benefit middle-class families,"" White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.Obama, a one-term senator before he became president, has often been faulted for not developing closer relations with lawmakers.He will find one familiar face in a powerful new position.Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who won a tough re-election battle against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, will replace Democrat Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. Reid has been one of Obama's top political allies and helped him steer the president's signature healthcare law through the Senate in 2010.“Some things don’t change after tonight. I don’t expect the president to wake up tomorrow and view the world any differently than he did when he woke up this morning. He knows I won’t either. But we do have an obligation to work together on issues where we can agree,"" McConnell said in his victory speech in Louisville.Toss-ups Become Republican WinsIn Tuesday's comprehensive rout, Republicans won in places where Democrats were favoured, taking a Senate race in North Carolina, pulled out victories where the going was tough, like a Senate battle in Kansas, and swept a number of governors' races in states where Democrats were favoured, including Obama's home state of Illinois.Of eight to 10 Senate seats that were considered toss-ups, Republicans won nearly all of them. They needed six seats to win control of the 100-member Senate, and by late evening they had seven.The winning margin came when Iowa Republican Joni Ernst was declared the winner over Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Thom Tillis defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina.The Iowa race was particularly indicative of Republican fortunes. Ernst came from behind and surged in recent weeks despite herculean efforts by powerful Democratic figures to save Braley, including a campaign visit by Obama's wife, Michelle.Republican Senate candidates also picked up Democratic seats in Montana, Colorado, West Virginia, South Dakota and Arkansas.'Responsibility ... To Lead'Once the euphoria of their victory ebbs, Republicans will be under pressure to show Americans they are capable of governing after drawing scorn a year ago for shutting down the government in a budget fight. That will be a factor in their ambitions to take back the White House in 2016.Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative firebrand who may run in 2016, told CNN: ""The American people, they’re frustrated with what’s happening in Washington, but now the responsibility falls on us to lead.""While there was talk of conciliation, no major breakthrough in Washington's chilly climate is expected soon.Partisan battles could erupt over immigration reform, with Obama poised to issue executive actions by year's end to defer deportations of some undocumented immigrants, and over energy policy, as Republican press the president to approve the Keystone XL pipeline carrying oil from Canada.Jay Carney, Obama's former spokesman, said he expects Obama to make an ""all-out push"" on his priorities regardless of the makeup of Congress.Whatever the case, Obama will face pressure to make changes at the White House. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 75 percent of respondents believe the administration needs to ""rethink"" how it approaches major issues facing the United States. Sixty-four percent said Obama should replace some of his senior staff after the election.The Republican victory had been widely predicted ahead of Tuesday's voting to elect 36 senators, 36 state governors and all 435 members of the House of Representatives.Obama and other White House officials blamed the electoral map - noting that many key Senate races took place in conservative states that Obama lost in 2012.Election Day polling by Reuters/Ipsos found a dour mood among the electorate with less than one-third of voters believing the country is headed in the right direction.Roughly 40 percent of voters said they approved of the job Obama is doing as president, though they were split over whether they expected the economy to improve or worsen in the coming year.In a consolation for Democrats, Jeanne Shaheen won re-election over Republican Scott Brown in New Hampshire in what polls had forecast as a tight race.In Virginia, heavily favoured Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Warner found himself in a surprisingly close fight against Republican challenger Ed Gillespie, with much of the vote counted. By late evening, he claimed victory but Gillespie had not yet conceded.In the most closely watched governors' races, Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott edged out Democrat Charlie Crist, and Republican Scott Walker survived a challenge from Democrat Mary Burke in Wisconsin.",
" Arm raised in a Nazi-style salute, the leader of Greece's fastest-rising political party surveyed hundreds of young men in black T-shirts as they exploded into cheers. Their battle cry reverberated through the night: Blood! Honour! Golden Dawn! ""We may sometimes raise our hand this way, but these hands are clean, not dirty. They haven't stolen,"" shouted Nikolaos Mihaloliakos as he stood, floodlit, in front of about 2,000 diehard party followers filling an open-air amphitheatre at Goudi park, a former military camp near Athens. ""We were dozens, then a few hundred. Now we're thousands and it's only the beginning,"" cried the leader of Golden Dawn, a far-right party that is seeing its support soar amid Greece's economic collapse. Last month's rally revealed the party, which describes itself as nationalist and pledges to expel all illegal foreigners, has a new-found sense of triumph, even a swagger, that some find menacing. Riding a wave of public anger at corrupt politicians, austerity and illegal immigration, Golden Dawn has seen its popularity double in a few months. A survey by VPRC, an independent polling company, put the party's support at 14 percent in October, compared with the seven percent it won in June's election. Political analysts see no immediate halt to its meteoric ascent. They warn that Golden Dawn, which denies being neo-Nazi despite openly adopting similar ideology and symbols, may lure as many as one in three Greek voters. ""As long as the political system doesn't change and doesn't put an end to corruption, this phenomenon will not be stemmed,"" said Costas Panagopoulos, chief of ALCO, another independent polling company. ""Golden Dawn can potentially tap up to 30 percent of voters."" The party now lies third in the polls, behind conservative New Democracy and the main opposition, the radical leftist Syriza. Violent behavior by Golden Dawn members, who often stroll through run-down Athens neighborhoods harassing immigrants, seems to boost rather than hurt the party's standing. As the government imposes yet more austerity on an enraged public, the collapse of the ruling conservative-leftist coalition remains on the political horizon. The possibility that Golden Dawn could capture second place in a snap election is slim but real, say pollsters. Analysts believe that, ultimately, the party lacks the broad appeal and structure needed to gain mass traction. In World War Two Greece suffered massacres and famine in its fight against the Nazis, and the spectre of the 1967-1974 military junta still hangs heavy over its modern politics. So why are many Greeks now turning to a party whose emblems and rhetoric, critics say, resemble Hitler's? Golden Dawn denies any such resemblance. In an interview with Reuters at an open-air cafe in the Athens district of Papagou, a traditional neighbourhood for military personnel, Ilias Panagiotaros, a Golden Dawn lawmaker and spokesman, explained the party's appeal. ""Golden Dawn is the only institution in this country that works. Everything else has stopped working or is partially working,"" he said. ""We operate like a well-organized army unit, because the military is the best institution in any country."" Greece's far-right party goes on the offensive (PDF) link.reuters.com/rut83t > Greece's other debt problem (PDF) link.reuters.com/ryq82t NO LONGER MARGINAL Short, squat and combative, Mihaloliakos once praised Hitler and denied the Nazi gas chambers existed. A former special forces commando in the Greek army, he met the leaders of the Greek military junta while in prison for carrying illegal weapons and explosives as a member of a far-right group in 1979. When pressed on such issues, Golden Dawn says they are all in the past and it is looking to the future. For years after Mihaloliakos founded the party in 1985 it remained marginal: in the 2009 elections Golden Dawn won just 0.29 percent of the vote, or fewer than 20,000 votes. Yet in June, the party amassed votes from across the political spectrum, wiping out the more moderate nationalist LAOS party and winning support from as far left as the communist KKE party, pollsters said. Now it is stealing votes from New Democracy, which flip-flopped on the international bailout keeping Greece afloat and, after coming to power, imposed harsh cuts instead of relief measures. Though Golden Dawn attracts mainly urban male voters up to 35 years old, the party is also gaining its share of women and the elderly, primarily those suffering unemployment or falling living standards, say pollsters. Part of its appeal is down to the sort of welfare work that Hamas, the Palestinian party, does in Gaza. Golden Dawn distributes food in poor neighborhoods, helps old ladies get money safely from ATMs - and has also set up a Greeks-only blood bank. One story repeated at cafes, but not verified, is that of a Greek whose house is taken over by immigrants. When he asks the police for help, he is given the Golden Dawn number. Not only do they throw out the squatters but deliver the house clean and painted, the tale goes. ""I voted for Golden Dawn for the first time in June and I will vote for them again because they are the only ones who really care about Greece,"" said 45-year-old Demetra, an unemployed Athenian, as she walked through the party's rally at Goudi park. ""All the other politicians have sold us out."" The gathering was a chance for the party to relish achievements and flex muscle. Well-built youths in black T-shirts emblazoned with the Swastika-like party logo stood in military formation at the entrance. Two men stood to attention on both sides of the podium, flagged with a big sign reading ""Getting the stink off the country"", while speakers delivered patriotic oratories. A short film showed highlights of the year, which included attacks on immigrant street vendors, clashes with police outside parliament and food distribution to the poor. When the film showed Golden Dawn lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris slapping a female communist lawmaker, Liana Kanelli, across the face on live TV, youths bellowed profanities against the victim. ""Golden Dawn's target is simple. We want the absolute majority in parliament so we can replace the constitution with our own,"" Kasidiaris told the crowd. ""It will then be easy to immediately arrest and deport all illegal immigrants."" Pollsters were ready to write off the party when Kasidiaris slapped Kanelli after she swatted him with some papers during a dispute he was having with a Syriza lawmaker. Kasidiaris says he was defending himself; Kanelli says she was coming to the aid of the Syriza lawmaker after Kasidiaris had thrown water at her. Painting Golden Dawn as an aberration stemming from the financial crisis, pollsters said the party's support would dwindle. The opposite happened - the party gained 3 to 4 percentage points in polls as a direct result of the Kasidiaris incident. ""In this slap, Greek society saw the whole, immoral political establishment get slapped,"" said Panagiotaros, a thick-set man with a shaved head and a goatee. ""People thought: finally!"" 'SPEAK GREEK OR DIE' In parliament Golden Dawn's 18 lawmakers cluster in a rear corner of the marble-covered hall, but make no attempt to hide their ideology. Recently, Panagiotaros asked the welfare ministry to find out which babies admitted to state day-care centers were actually Greek. Eleni Zaroulia, wife of party leader Mihaloliakos and also a lawmaker, described immigrants as ""every sort of sub-human who invades our country carrying all sorts of diseases."" Artemis Matthaiopoulos, another Golden Dawn lawmaker, was formerly the bassist for a heavy metal band called Pogrom, which produced songs such as ""Speak Greek or Die"" and ""Auschwitz"". Rights groups say racist attacks in Greece have been surging, but that many immigrants are reluctant to report them because of their illegal status or mistrust of the police. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other groups recorded 87 racist attacks in the first nine months of the year (comparable statistics for previous years are not available). Perpetrators often used clubs or crowbars and sometimes large dogs, say rights groups. In May an Albanian was attacked with a sword by a masked motorcycle rider; in August a young Iraqi was stabbed to death. ""This is not even the tip of the iceberg - there are even more attacks that are not recorded anywhere,"" said Daphne Kapetanaki of the UNHCR. Victims or witnesses sometimes identify Golden Dawn members as the attackers. Javied Aslam, head of the Pakistani Community in Greece organization, estimates that about 400 Pakistanis have been attacked in the past eight months by Golden Dawn supporters. ""There is a huge climate of fear,"" he said. ""People don't leave their houses and workers who leave for their jobs in the morning fear they may not come back home."" Golden Dawn strongly denies any involvement in racist attacks. Several of its members have been detained in relation to such assaults, but have been released for lack of evidence. One Nigerian victim, 31-year-old Confidence Ordu, said he was beaten up by Golden Dawn supporters in broad daylight in Athens in January as passersby looked on without intervening. Ordu, who was granted asylum when he came to Greece five years ago, said he was walking out of a central Athens subway station when four men dressed in black attacked him, shouting ""You don't belong here. Greece is for Greeks"". ""I tried to fight back but there were four of them,"" said Ordu. ""They kept punching and hitting me while I was on the ground. There was nothing I could do. So I acted like I was dead until they left. I had blood all over my face and arms."" Bleeding profusely, he went to a nearby police station. He says police first demanded to see papers proving he was a legal immigrant before taking down details of the assault. ""I'm scared all the time and I watch my back all the time,"" he said. ""I only go to places I know. I never go out at night."" Like other victims, he accuses Greek police of supporting Golden Dawn and hindering immigrants in reporting attacks. In a July report, advocacy group Human Rights Watch said gangs of Greeks were regularly attacking immigrants with impunity and authorities were ignoring victims or discouraging them from filing complaints. Greek police deny accusations they are soft on, or even sometimes work with, Golden Dawn. Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias has vehemently denied reports that police were beating up illegal immigrants and has threatened to sue British newspaper The Guardian over the issue. He is at such odds with Golden Dawn that the party ridiculed him during the youth festival at Goudi park. But a member of the police officers' union, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, admitted there was some sympathy for the party among the ranks. ""There are some among the police who ideologically support Golden Dawn and a handful that have been violent against illegal immigrants,"" the unionist said. ""But these cases are being probed by justice."" WEIMAR REPUBLIC With more than one million foreign nationals in Greece, a country of 11 million people, tensions are unlikely to ease any time soon. While the government regularly rounds up thousands of immigrants, only a few hundred are sent to specially-built detention centers. Many migrants pouring in from Asia and Africa, mainly through Greece's porous border with Turkey, dream of moving on to other European countries, but find themselves trapped in Greece by EU rules that return them to their point of entry. Aid groups say they are often forced into crime to survive. In one case that shocked the nation in 2010, two Afghans lethally stabbed a 44-year-old Greek on the street to steal his video camera as he was taking his pregnant wife to hospital. They were caught trying to sell the camera for 80 euros ($101) and were later sentenced to life in prison for murder. In another much-publicized case, a grandfather was killed on a bus for a handful of coins. Such incidents, unheard of in Greece a few years back, have fanned resentment against foreigners, who are also seen as stealing jobs while one in four Greeks is unemployed. The jobless rate among young Greeks is even higher - more than 50 percent for those under 25. Ahead of a visit to Berlin in October, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, leader of New Democracy, told German media that Greece's woes were similar to conditions that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic in Germany and ushered in the Nazis. Extreme leftist populism and ""an extreme right, you could almost say fascist, neo-Nazi party,"" were clashing in the same way that battles between communists and fascists marked the 1919 to 1933 Weimar years, he said. Syriza is already leading New Democracy in some opinion polls and Golden Dawn could grow stronger, say some observers. George Kyrtsos, an editor who managed the election campaign of the far-right LAOS party, said: ""If New Democracy shows signs of collapse, we may see outrageous situations... the two top parties fighting it out on the streets."" Golden Dawn, which gives few details of its finances beyond saying it is funded by supporters, is now opening offices across the country and in Greek communities overseas, including New York. Panagiotaros, the party spokesman, said he and his colleagues would even be ready for the top spot. The party's priorities for government, he said, would include eradicating corruption and jump-starting the economy, but most importantly closing the borders and expelling all illegal immigrants.",
"The country’s first blockbuster set in space, “The Wandering Earth,” opens Tuesday amid grandiose expectations that it will represent the dawning of a new era in Chinese filmmaking. It is one in a series of ambitious, big-budget films tackling a genre that, until now, has been beyond the reach of most filmmakers here — technically and financially. Those movies include “Shanghai Fortress,” about an alien attack on Earth, and “Pathfinder,” about a spaceship that crashes on a desert planet. “Filmmakers in China see science fiction as a holy grail,” said Raymond Zhou, an independent critic, who noted that Hollywood had set the technological standards, and thus audience expectations, very high. “The Wandering Earth,” shown in 3D, takes place in a distant future in which the sun is about to expand into a red giant and devour the Earth. The impending peril forces the world’s engineers to devise a plan to move the planet to a new solar system using giant thrusters. Things go very badly when Earth has to pass Jupiter, setting off a desperate scramble to save humanity from annihilation. The special effects — like the apocalyptic climatic changes that would occur if Earth suddenly moved out of its cozy orbit — are certain to be measured against Hollywood’s, as ever here. And the preliminary reviews have been positive. “It’s like the coming-of-age of the industry,” Zhou said. “The Wandering Earth” opens with the Lunar New Year, the beginning of an official, weeklong holiday that is traditionally a peak box-office period in China. It has a limited release in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At home, it will compete with “Crazy Alien,” a comedy inspired by “ET the Extra-Terrestrial” about two brothers hoping to capitalise on the arrival of a visitor from outer space. Both “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien” are adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015. His novels are sprawling epics and deeply researched. That makes them plausible fantasies about humanity’s encounters with a dangerous universe. Translating them into movies would challenge any filmmaker, as the director of “The Wandering Earth,” Guo Fan, acknowledged during a screening in Beijing last week. That has made the film, produced by Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism Co and the state-owned China Film Group Corp, a test for the industry. Guo, who uses the name Frant Gwo in English, noted that Chinese audiences have responded coolly to many of Hollywood’s previous sci-fi blockbusters. Studios, therefore, have been wary of investing the resources required to make convincing sci-fi. The film’s budget reportedly reached nearly $50 million, modest by Hollywood standards but still significant here in China. More than 7,000 people were involved in the production. Much of it was filmed in the new Oriental Movie Metropolis, an $8 billion studio in the coast city of Qingdao, built by real estate and entertainment giant Dalian Wanda. “I really hope that this movie will not lose money at least,” said Guo, whose previous film, “My Old Classmate,” was a romantic comedy. “As long as this one does not lose money, we can continue to make science-fiction films.” The popularity of Liu’s novels could help. So could two recent Hollywood films, “Gravity” and “The Martian.” Both included important plot twists that, not incidentally, cast China’s space program in a positive light, and both were huge hits here. The openings also come as China reached a milestone in space: the landing of a probe on the far side of the moon in January. Although decades behind Russia and the United States, China has now put astronauts in orbit and has ambitious plans to join — or even lead — a new age of space exploration. “I think there is a very close connection between Chinese cinema and the nation’s fortunes,” said Sha Dan, a curator at the China Film Archive, who moderated a discussion with Guo. He cited the most popular film in China last year: “Operation Red Sea,” an action drama loosely based on the Chinese rescue of several hundred civilians from Yemen when war erupted there in 2015. “When we have the ability to go to war, we can make movies like ‘Operation Red Sea,' ” he said, alluding to China’s military modernisation in recent years. “Only when China can enter the space era can we make works like ‘The Wandering Earth.' ” Unlike “Operation Red Sea” or the two “Wolf Warrior” movies, which featured a Rambo-like hero battling Western villains, “The Wandering Earth” is not jingoistic, though it does star Wu Jing, hero of the “Wolf Warrior” films, who put up his own investment in the project. He plays an astronaut aboard an international space station who has to contend with a HAL-like computer. Guo said he consciously avoided making Wu’s character a do-it-alone superhero. The fight to save Earth is fought instead by an ensemble, including an affable Russian cosmonaut who explains why his country prohibited alcohol in space, at least officially. (To say more would be a spoiler.) “The Wandering Earth” takes for granted China’s central role in future space exploration, but it also has a vision of the international collaboration necessary to cope with the threats facing the planet, a theme that runs deeply through Liu’s fiction. Liu, who attended a screening last week, noted that science-fiction films in China dated as far back as the 1930s, when director Yang Xiaozhong made ones like “Exchanged” and “Visiting Shanghai After 60 Years,” but those were largely forgotten here after the Communist revolution in 1949. A 1980 movie, “Death Ray on Coral Island,” was a campy, propagandistic flop. There have been few attempts since. “This is mainly because Chinese society is relatively closed and conservative,” Liu said in a written response to questions. “There were not the conditions for science-fiction movies to have an impact.” A film project based on Liu’s best-known work, the trilogy that began with “The Three-Body Problem,” was optioned and even filmed in 2015 but has since languished in postproduction, reportedly because of technical challenges and costs. The conditions now seem ripe. Seeing the “The Wandering Earth” on the screen, Liu said, was “soul shaking.”   © 2019 New York Times News Service",
" Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, took the oath of office on Monday and immediately signed documents to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, ending his country's decade of opposition to the global climate agreement. The move isolates the United States, which will now be the only developed nation not to ratify the agreement which sets binding limits on developed countries to curb the carbon emissions blamed for global warming. ""This is the first official act of the new Australian government, demonstrating my government's commitment to tackling climate change,"" Rudd said in a statement. Climate scientists said the development was a major step for Australia and sent a clear message to Washington. ""This has given America no excuse now. They are now the only country who won't ratify Kyoto, they are the ones most responsible for the problem and they are not living up to their responsibility,"" said Barry Brook, professor of climate studies at Adelaide University. Rudd, 50, led the centre-left Labor party to victory at the Nov. 24 election, ending nearly 12 years of conservative rule, by promising a new generation of leadership and committing to sign the Kyoto pact. The former conservative government refused to ratify Kyoto, saying it would unfairly hurt the Australian economy with its heavy reliance on coal for energy and export income, while countries like India and China were not bound by targets. But a new report from the environment think tank the Climate Institute, written by government and university scientists, found that Australia's economy could easily cope with strong cuts in greenhouse emissions. It said growth would fall by only 0.1 percent of gross domestic product annually if Australia set a target of 20 percent cuts in emissions by 2020 and aimed to be carbon neutral by 2050. ""Leading the way on climate is an affordable, prudent and achievable investment,"" Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said on Monday. Shortly after Rudd was sworn in, the Kyoto decision was approved by Governor-General Michael Jeffery, who represents Britain's Queen Elizabeth in Australia's constitution and who must approve all international treaties. Under UN guidelines, full ratification takes place 90 days after the United Nations receives the formal Instrument of Ratification, meaning Australia will be a full member of the Kyoto club by the end of March. The way is now clear for Rudd to play a stronger role at the UN climate talks in Bali, which opened negotiations on Monday on new carbon emission targets for beyond 2012. He is to lead a delegation of four Australian ministers at the conference. The previous government said Australia would meet its Kyoto targets, despite not ratifying the pact, but Rudd said the latest advice suggested it would miss its target to curb greenhouse emissions growth to 108 percent of 1990 levels by 2012. ""We are currently likely to exceed, or overshoot, our target by one percent,"" Rudd said, adding that Australia faced penalties under new targets beyond 2012. Rudd has set a long-term target of cutting carbon emissions by 60 percent of 2000 levels by 2050, but has yet to announce an interim target for emissions by 2020.",
" The Nobel Peace Prize panel on Thursday defended its award to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo as based on ""universal values,"" rejecting Beijing's accusation that it is trying force Western ideas on China. China maintained its combative tone on the eve of the prize ceremony in Oslo, and announced the award of its own ""Confucius Peace Prize"" to former Taiwan vice-president Lien Chan, though his office said he was unaware of the award. China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state. Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told a news conference the award of the prize to Liu was not a protest. ""It is a signal to China that it would be very important for China's future to combine economic development with political reforms and support for those in China fighting for basic human rights,"" he said. ""This prize conveys the understanding that these are universal rights and universal values, they are not Western standards,"" he added. His comments were unlikely to placate Beijing, where Communist Party ideologists consider ""universal values"" to be codewords for Western liberalization. CHINA ATTACKS U.S. CONGRESS Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu criticized the U.S. House of Representatives for calling on China to release Liu and his wife Liu Xia, who is under house arrest. Jiang told a regular news briefing any attempts to pressure or ""deter China from its development"" would not succeed. ""China urges the relevant U.S. lawmakers to stop the wrong words and activity on the Liu Xiaobo issue and to change their arrogant and rude attitude,"" Jiang said. ""They should show respect to the Chinese people and China's legal sovereignty."" ""The U.S. Congress' so-called resolution distorts the truth, it is widely meddling in China's internal affairs,"" she said. ""Liu Xiaobo was not convicted because of his remarks,"" she said. ""Liu wrote and published inflammatory articles on the Internet, organizing and persuading others to sign it, to stir up and overthrow China's political authority and social system. ""Liu's problem is that he has gone beyond general criticism; it was an act that jeopardized society,"" Jiang said. China's crackdown on dissidents, rights activists and friends and family of Liu has continued. Police barred lawyers, scholars and NGO representatives from attending a seminar on the rule of law at the European Union's embassy in Beijing, the EU's ambassador to China said. ""It is a pity and in fact it is a shame,"" Serge Abou said. China has flexed its economic muscle in drumming up support for a boycott of the Oslo award ceremony for Liu on Friday. Most of the 18 or 19 states joining the boycott have strong commercial ties with China or share its hostility toward Western human rights pressure. China said the ""vast majority"" of nations would boycott the ceremony. The Norwegian award committee says two-thirds of those invited would attend. ""WESTERN CRUSADE"" The Chinese delegation to UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, has refused to meet Oslo's team, led by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Environment Minister Erik Solheim. ""There is no doubt that China sees the Peace Prize as a part of a Western crusade against their form of government,"" Solheim was quoted as saying. Chinese state-run media accused the West of ""launching a new round of China-bashing."" A number of countries and international human rights organizations have criticized Beijing for its sweeping crackdown on dissent ahead of the Oslo ceremony, preventing Liu's friends and family from attending. ""The Chinese government should be celebrating this global recognition of a Chinese writer and activist,"" said Salil Shetty, secretary general of rights group Amnesty International. ""Instead, the government's very public tantrum has generated even more critical attention inside and outside China -- and, ironically, emphasized the significance of Liu Xiaobo's message of respect for human rights,"" Shetty said. Beijing has briefly blacked out BBC and CNN reports on Liu and his supporters over the past few days, though foreign news channels are generally only available in upmarket hotels and apartment buildings mostly inhabited by foreigners.",
"The stone sculpture, a nearly 1,200-year-old relic, was
voluntarily surrendered by an Italian collector to the Consulate General of
India in Milan on Thursday. “The climate is changing for restitution,” said Christopher
Marinello, a lawyer who specialises in tracking down looted and stolen art, who
helped negotiate the statue’s return. “Collectors are being criminally charged
worldwide and collections are being seized as more and more jurisdictions let
it be known that it is unacceptable to possess looted and stolen art.” Marinello tracked down the missing Buddha in partnership
with Vijay Kumar, founder of the India Pride Project, a nonprofit organisation
that works with the Indian government to retrieve looted artefacts. Four years ago, Kumar was searching for the sacred sculpture
when it appeared in the sales catalogue of a French dealer. He said this week
that regulations in France protecting good-faith buyers of stolen artefacts
made it difficult to act quickly. With only two weeks before the sale, Kumar
did not formally request an inquiry into its provenance, which he said would
have required him to notify Interpol and acquire police reports from when the
idol was looted almost 20 years ago. But the statue didn’t sell and the trail
went cold. Marinello joined the case last year and located the object
in an Italian collection. The owner of the Buddha, also known as an
Avalokiteshwara Padamapani idol, voluntarily relinquished the object when
presented with archival photographs showing it in the Indian temple. As a
condition of the handover, officials are not disclosing the owner’s identity. The statue depicts Buddha holding the stem of a blossoming
lotus in his left hand, the Indian government said in a statement, with two
female attendants below his feet. It was sculpted for the temple sometime
between the eighth and 12th centuries. The temple is near Kurkihar, a village
where a trove of more than 220 bronzes were unearthed in an archaeological dig
in 1930. Most of those sculptures are now held in the Patna Museum in Bihar. When it arrives in India, the sculpture will be sent to the
Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi for study. Kumar and Marinello are among a growing number of citizen
activists hunting for stolen antiquities on behalf of Asian countries. In
December, the pair also retrieved a 10th-century goat head yogini statue from a
garden in the English countryside. “Repatriation of our rightful artefacts continues,” the
Indian culture minister, G Kishan Reddy, said at the time. The work never seems to end. “We are still scratching the
surface,” said Kumar, who said he knows of thousands more looted Indian
artefacts. Nearly 250 artefacts were returned by US officials last year as part
of an investigation into a looting ring that authorities say was operated by
antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor. Kapoor is currently jailed in India on
smuggling and theft charges. “Each successful return is a deterrent,” Kumar said. “Now
criminals know that Indian art is no longer fair game.” © 2022 The New York Times Company",
" Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in India on Sunday, hoping to boost business and add more substance to the growing ties between two of the world's biggest developing nations. The three-day state visit is the latest in a series of high-level exchanges between the distant countries, which have forged a common stand in recent years on global trade and strategic issues. The two have been key partners within the G20 group of developing countries pushing rich nations for freer global farm trade and are also seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council along with Germany and Japan. ""The meaning of my visit to India is to reiterate our readiness to forge a strategic alliance between our countries,"" Lula wrote in an article published in India's Hindu newspaper on Sunday. ""The size of our respective populations, the economic vigour and the technological advances of both of our countries manifestly indicate how hard we still have to work in order to achieve our potential of cooperation and friendship,"" he said. Trade and business are expected to be on top of the agenda when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh holds talks with Lula, who arrived with a delegation of about 100 businessmen. Lula is also due to address a conference of business leaders in the Indian capital on Monday. Although bilateral trade has grown steadily it is seen to be nowhere near its true potential, with Brazil unhappy about New Delhi's hesitation to further open its markets to farm imports despite slowing Indian agricultural output. While total trade touched $2.4 billion in 2006, Brazilian exports to India fell 15 percent to $937 million, and Lula's team is expected to push New Delhi for easing investment and trading norms. The two countries aim to quadruple trade to $10 billion by 2010. Increasing the use of bio-fuels, an area in which Brazil is a world leader, would be a key area to push cooperation for India, whose energy needs are surging with its scorching economic growth, an Indian foreign ministry official said. New Delhi would also seek Brazil's support at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an organisation that governs global nuclear trade, which it needs to buy nuclear fuel and reactors after the conclusion of a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, he said. In addition, the two sides would prepare to forge a common stance on issues such as climate change and global trade talks ahead of this week's G8 meeting in Germany, which both Lula and Singh are attending. Analysts were optimistic Lula's India visit would help build stronger bonds between the two emerging market giants. ""I think both India and Brazil are beginning to recognise that distance should not matter and there should be greater trade between the two countries,"" said Rajiv Kumar, director of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations. ""It is also the coming together of intermediate or medium-sized countries for a greater role in global governance and international financial architecture,"" he said.",
"WASHINGTON, November21 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Rude immigration officials and visa delays keep millions of foreign visitors away from the United States, hurt the country's already battered image, and cost the US billions of dollars in lost revenue, according to an advocacy group formed to push for a better system. To drive home the point, the Discover America Partnership released the result of a global survey on Monday which showed that international travelers see the United States as the world's worst country in terms of getting a visa and, once you have it, making your way past rude immigration officials. The survey, of 2,011 international travelers in 16 countries, was conducted by RT Strategies, a Virginia-based polling firm, for the Discover America Partnership, a group launched in September with multimillion-dollar backing from a range of companies that include the InterContinental Hotels Group, Anheuser Busch and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The survey showed that the United States was ranked ""the worst"" in terms of visas and immigration procedures by twice the percentage of travellers as the next destination regarded as unfriendly -- the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent. More than half of the travelers surveyed said US immigration officials were rude and two-thirds said they feared they would be detained on arriving in the United States for a simple mistake in their paperwork or for saying the wrong thing to an immigration official. The survey was taken between Oct. 25 and Nov. 9 against the backdrop of growing concern in parts of the US business community over a steady decline in the number of foreigners visiting the United States. ""Between 2000 and 2006, the number of overseas visitors, excluding those from Mexico and Canada, has declined by 17 percent,"" said Geoff Freeman, executive director of the Discover America Partnership, ""and business travel in that period has dropped 10 percent."" Travel Industry Association statistics show that the US share in world tourism declined from 7.4 percent in 2000 to 6 percent last year. A one-percentage point increase, according to the association, would mean 7.5 million additional arrivals, $12.3 billion in additional spending, 150,000 additional US jobs, $3.3 billion in additional payroll and $2.1. billion in additional taxes. With about 50 million visitors a year, the United States is the world's third most-popular destination, after Spain and France. ""The problem is that since September 11, this country has viewed visitors more as a threat than an opportunity,"" Freeman said. ""The entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is keeping foreign visitors away."" ""Unless Congress understands there is a problem, nothing will be done ... though it wouldn't take much to make a change,"" Freeman said.",
"While some companies are preparing to call back workers to their offices, the amount of office space available for lease in Manhattan has soared to the highest rate ever, according to reports released Thursday, underscoring how the sudden shift to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic is upending the city’s commercial real estate industry. Across Manhattan, home to the two largest business districts in the country, 18.7% of all office space is available for lease, a jump from more than 15% at the end of 2020 and more than double the rate from before the pandemic, according to Newmark, a real estate services company. Many New York employers are offering greater flexibility to their workforce, allowing at least some remote work even as the pandemic recedes and recalculating their space needs. As a result, companies continue to end their leases or seek tenants to take over their existing leases at a steady pace. Some neighbourhoods are faring worse, such as Downtown Manhattan, where 21% of offices have no tenants, Newmark said. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business organisation, said that New York City was facing its biggest crisis since the 1970s, when half of the city’s 125 Fortune 500 companies moved out. “This is as close as we’ve come to that type of scenario where there’s an exodus from the city, and the recovery took 30 years,” Wylde said. “The city has to attract people for reasons other than going to the office.” No other city in the United States must confront the changing workplace more so than New York, whose offices, before the pandemic, had attracted 1.6 million commuters every day and helped sustain a swath of the economy, from shops to restaurants to Broadway theatres. The pandemic has also placed enormous pressure on the commercial real estate sector, a pillar of the New York economy, as landlords rush to redesign offices and dangle incentives like lower rent to retain and attract companies. Property taxes are the largest source of revenue for New York City, with commercial property accounting for the largest share of that at 41%. Commercial districts across the country are struggling, but office towers in Manhattan continue to empty out even as other cities, including Atlanta and Los Angeles, show signs that they have moved beyond the worst of the pandemic. While New York’s vacancy rate was higher than the national rate of 16.2% at the end of March, many other cities are also struggling to fill their offices. In Los Angeles, 24.1% of its offices are without tenants, and in Chicago, the office vacancy rate is 21.9%. But both cities also entered the pandemic with much higher vacancy rates than New York: In Los Angeles the rate was 18.1%, while it was 15.5% in Chicago. There are signs that the situation in New York could get worse. A third of leases at large Manhattan buildings will expire over the next three years, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company, and companies have made clear they will need significantly less space. The overall availability rate in New York City is the highest since it started to be tracked in the mid-1970s, when the city was plunged into a financial crisis and the Manhattan skyline was being transformed by the rise of towering office buildings like the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre. Franklin Wallach, a senior managing director for research at the real estate firm Colliers, said that the amount of available office space in Manhattan would most likely continue to climb, as new construction is completed and large companies complete relocation plans that were announced before the pandemic. About 14 million square feet of office space is under construction in New York City, which is equal to about double the size of Orlando, Florida. Just as the broader economic recovery has been uneven with some industries faring better than others, so too will the office market rebound in different ways in Manhattan, Wallach said. Neighborhoods close to major transportation hubs, like Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal, could recover faster than other parts of Manhattan. “The long-term, overall market will recover,” Wallach said, “but the when, where and how — that will vary where you are standing.” One real estate firm, Savills, said the Manhattan office market would not likely rebound to pre-pandemic levels until “late 2022 or beyond.” At the end of May, just 12%of Manhattan’s office workers had returned to their desks, according to a survey of companies by the Partnership for New York City. More than 60% of workers are estimated to return in September, the group said, but many companies will allow their employees to work remotely at least several days a week. Throughout the pandemic, just one industry — the technology sector — has signed significant leases in New York. But those companies, such as Facebook and Google, are also perhaps best equipped to shift seamlessly to remote work. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in June he planned to work outside the office for half of next year. Wylde said that the growth of the tech sector increasingly appeared to be a short-lived success, as employees in those companies demand that they be allowed to work remotely or on a hybrid schedule on a permanent basis. They are telling their employers that they do not want to pay expensive apartment leases in New York to work in the office only a few days a week, she said. “The other cities have become more competitive as a result of the pandemic and the whole remote-work phenomenon,” she said. “It’s going to require a real shift in public policy toward focusing on quality of life, a positive business climate and affordability.” © 2021 The New York Times Company",
"Tougher sanctions may jeopardize the latest detente between the two Koreas amid their preparations to create conditions appropriate to hold a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. A senior US administration official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, called the new penalties “the largest package of new sanctions against the North Korea regime,” without giving details. US Vice President Mike Pence had hinted at such a plan two weeks ago during a stop in Tokyo that preceded his visit to South Korea for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. 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 including his sister returned from the Winter Olympics. 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. The new US sanctions will be announced while Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is visiting South Korea to attend a dinner with Moon and the closing ceremony of the Games. In addition to the dinner which will feature a kosher menu for Ivanka’s dietary restrictions, the Blue House has planned a small traditional Korean music performance for her delegation. Her visit coincides with that of a sanctioned North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, blamed for the deadly 2010 sinking of a South Korean navy ship that killed 46 sailors. His delegation will also meet with Moon. The Blue House has said there are no official opportunities for US and North Korean officials to meet. “RIGHT PERSON” Kim Yong Chol is the vice-chairman of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee and was previously chief of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a top North Korean military intelligence agency which South Korea blamed for the sinking of its navy corvette the Cheonan. North Korea has denied any involvement in the sinking. South Korea on Friday said it approved the Winter Olympic visit by Kim Yong Chol in the pursuit of peace and asked for public understanding. “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. A South Korean lawmaker briefed by the country’s spy agency said on Friday that Kim was the “right person” for inter-Korean and denuclearisation talks. “Kim Yong Chol is the top official regarding inter-Korean relations and he is being accepted (here) as the right person to discuss various issues like easing military tension, improving inter-Korean ties and denuclearisation,” said Kang Seok-ho to reporters. Kim currently heads the United Front Department, the North’s office responsible for handling inter-Korean affairs. PROTESTS AGAINST NORTH KOREA DELEGATION 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.",
" India made its voice heard on global trade and climate change at a G8 summit in Italy this month, in a sign of growing diplomatic heft that can help it push for a bigger role in global governance. India's emergence is seen as a logical outgrowth of two of the world's biggest current challenges, the financial crisis and climate change, and its ability to help resolve those problems with a trillion dollar economy still growing at about 7 percent. While the slowdown spurred a shift towards economic inclusion, a landmark civilian nuclear deal with the U.S. last year also helped India's entry into the global order as it vies with a rising China for a say in international policymaking. Just two years ago Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned from a G8 summit in Germany complaining that India was a sideshow and attending such meetings as an invitee was a waste of time. Italy saw a far more strident India, speaking with authority on trade protectionism and climate change, which boosted hopes of Asia's third largest economy gaining a seat at the high table of global governance. ""What has changed India's profile is the relative dynamism of its economy -- its estimated 7 percent growth -- vis-a-vis the global economy"", said Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper. ""Any decision in the name of global community that leaves out China and India will not be seen as legitimate."" U.S. President Barack Obama said there was a need to include the big emerging players in policymaking, which India can count as a victory for its own aspirations. At the end of the summit, Obama said tackling global challenges ""in the absence of major powers like China, India and Brazil seems to be wrongheaded."" TRADE AND CLIMATE At the summit, India stirred the pot with a firm stand on climate change, refusing to give in to pressure from rich nations to sign up to carbon emission targets. While India seeks a climate solution that does not impede growth and efforts to pull millions out of poverty, its position, along with other developing nations, underlined the difficulties of securing a new U.N. climate pact in Copenhagen in December. The European Union has already hinted its frustration at what it sees as developing countries' unwillingness to play ball, and said negotiations have slowed because too many countries were asking others to do something without acting themselves. On the other hand, global trade talks, locked for almost a decade, got a boost at the summit after developing countries led by India and rich nations agreed to conclude the Doha Round by 2010, in a possible end to squabbles over tariffs and subsidies. ""It is the ability of India to bring some substance to the table which has put it in focus"", said Uday Bhaskar, a New Delhi-based strategic affairs expert and director of the National Maritime Foundation. But while such issues underscore India's growing relevance, the country's long-term goal is to find a place at the high table of global powers and be taken as seriously as China, government officials say. ""India doesn't want to be a one-issue or a two-issue country, but an equal partner in global decision-making"", said a senior Indian official. ""I think this summit shows India has begun moving towards that goal ... India's voice has been bolstered."" Singh -- not usually known to use tough diplomatic language -- called for reforming global institutions to recognise the relevance of major emerging economies. ""It is clear to me that meaningful global action on all these issues requires a restructuring of the institutions of global governance, starting with the U.N. Security Council,"" Singh said at the end of the summit in the central Italian city of L'Aquila. To that end, India is participating in alternative fora like the G20 group of industrialised and developing economies and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) gathering of the world's biggest emerging markets.",
" Japan plans to focus on its efforts to improve 21 technologies to help the world halve greenhouse gases by 2050, a trade ministry official said on Wednesday. The technologies that need to be improved to combat global warming include coal-fired power generation, power generation using natural gas, solar power, vehicles powered by fuel cells or biofuels, and hydrogen-based steelmaking, the official said. Without the envisaged innovative technologies, global greenhouse gas emissions could rise to up to 60 billion tonnes in 2050 from about 27 billion tonnes in 2005, he said. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Tuesday launched a panel of experts on environmental issues, nominating former Japan Business Federation chairman Hiroshi Okuda to head the panel. Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe proposed last year a global target to halve greenhouse gases by 2050. The target was shrugged off as too vague and lacking teeth without binding targets. Analysts say Japan is pushing to reassert its leadership on climate change issues ahead of the Group of Eight industrialised nations meeting this summer that Fukuda will chair, and where global warming will be a key issue. Because the current global deal for fighting climate change carries the name of Japan's ancient cultural capital, Kyoto, the prospect of failure is particularly embarrassing for Tokyo. Nor would a country famous for its efficiency, and high-tech ""green"" products such as the Prius hybrid car, relish the idea of becoming an international emissions pariah. But Japan, the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter, has been lagging its Kyoto Protocol commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.",
"The latest research suggests the Earth's average surface temperature is running at or near record levels so far in 2015 and the trend is not slowing down. Last year's temperature has already broken the record for the hottest year, Xinhua news agency reported.Researchers say shifts in key global climate patterns, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, an El Nino in the tropical Pacific and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation are underway.""With the potential that next year could be similarly warm, it' s clear that our climate continues to change,"" said Prof. Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre.""We can't be sure this is the end of the slowdown but decadal warming rates are likely to reach late 20th century levels within two years,"" he added. ",
" Vladimir Putin will be sworn in as Russia's president at a glittering ceremony on Monday, hours after clashes between police and protesters laid bare the deep divisions over his return to the Kremlin for six more years. The former KGB spy will take his oath before nearly 2,000 guests in the Kremlin's St Andrew Hall, the former throne room with sparkling chandeliers, gilded pillars and high Gothic vaults, before being blessed by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and taking charge of the nuclear suitcase. He will also deliver a short speech, inspect the Kremlin presidential guard and host a lavish reception featuring only Russian food and drink. Although he has remained Russia's supreme leader for the past four years as prime minister, Putin will take back the formal reins of power he ceded to his ally Dmitry Medvedev in 2008 after eight years as president. He is returning with his authority weakened by months of protests that have polarized Russia and left him facing a battle to reassert himself or risk being sidelined by the powerful business and political elites whose backing is vital. In the latest protests on Sunday, police detained more than 400 people, including three opposition leaders, after tensions boiled over at a rally attended by about 20,000 people across the Moscow river from the Kremlin. Police hit protesters on the head with batons as they tried to stop demonstrators advancing towards them, carrying metal crowd barriers and throwing objects. The crowd fought back with flagpoles before the police eventually restored order. ""Putin has shown his true face, how he 'loves' his people - with police force,"" said Dmitry Gorbunov, 35, a computer analyst who took part in the protest. A few kilometers (miles) across Moscow, several thousand people staged a rally supporting Putin, seen by his backers as the only leader capable of defending Russia's interests on the world stage and the guardian of the economy at home. While Putin's critics have tired of a political system that concentrates power in one man, many of his supporters welcome his domination of the country of more than 140 million. ""Democracy is the power of the majority. Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!"" Alexander Dugin, a Kremlin-aligned nationalist, told the pro-Putin crowd. RUSSIA HAS CHANGED The rival rallies underlined the rifts opened by Putin's return to the Kremlin and protests that were sparked by allegations of electoral fraud but fuelled by many Russians' frustration that one man continues to dominate the country. Some opposition activists plan to try to stage a protest outside the Kremlin before the inauguration ceremony. Although the protests had lost momentum before Sunday's rally, they have given birth to a civil society, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that is gradually chipping away at Putin's authority. Putin, who will be 60 in October, grew up in Soviet days and worked as a spy in communist East Germany, is under pressure to show he can adapt to the new political landscape. Few think he has changed much - if at all. Putin has eased up on the choreographtranquilizerics that burnished his image at his peak in Russia, such as riding horseback bare-chested and shooting a tiger with a tranquilizer gun. Harder to shake off will be his habit of seeking total control and learning to cope with political opponents and a middle class demanding more political freedom. He has to quell rivalries between liberals and conservatives battling for positions in the new cabinet under Medvedev, who is swapping jobs with Putin. The outcome of the struggle could help determine how far reforms go to improve the investment climate. The $1.9 trillion economy is in better shape than in most European countries but is vulnerable to any change in the price of oil, Russia's main export commodity. The budget is under pressure from Putin's lavish election spending promises. Putin has said he wants to attract more foreign investment by improving the business climate, reduce corruption and red tape, and end Russia's heavy dependence on energy exports. He has not spelled out how he will do this. Putin is likely, as in the past, to use tough anti-Western rhetoric on foreign policy to drum up support if times get tough in Russia. But he has never yielded his strong influence over foreign policy as premier, so a major policy shift is unlikely.",
"Bangladesh, she said, will continue its efforts to build cooperation among nations in order to solve economic, social, cultural or humanitarian problems and to contribute to worldwide peace and security. She made the comments in a message issued on the eve of the United Nations Day to be celebrated on Thursday across the world. The United Nations Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the ratification of this founding document by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United Nations officially came into being. The day is devoted to making known to peoples of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations Organization. United Nations Day is part of United Nations Week, which runs from Oct 20 to 24. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 24, the anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations, as which “shall be devoted to making known to the peoples of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations and to gaining their support for” its work. Since then Oct 24 has been celebrated as United Nations Day. This year the day is themed on ‘Greening the Blue’. The prime minister described the theme as a time befitting one saying, the present government has demonstrated “remarkable leadership in undertaking massive adaptation and mitigation measures against climate change.” She wished continuous strengthening of the engagement of Bangladesh with the UN system. She said Bangladesh joins the international community in reiterating its “firm conviction to uphold peace; ensure security; protect human rights and promote development across the globe, as enshrined in the UN Charter and the Bangladesh Constitution.” Bangladesh joined the UN in 1974 under the leadership of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, three years after independence in 1971. The prime minister recalled Bangabandhu’s first speech at the UNGA in 1974 when he stated: “The Bengali people have aspired to live in peace and friendship with all the nations of the world. The noble ideals enshrined in the United Nations Charter are the very ideals for which millions of our people have made supreme sacrifice.” She hoped that the UN system will continue to serve humanity and bring peace, harmony and sustainable development for all.",
" Rich nations must come up with billions in new money to help poor countries fight global warming and not just repackage development aid to score diplomatic points, environmentalists at a meeting of top polluters said on Friday. The three-day Japan meeting gathers 20 of the world's top emitters of greenhouse gases and includes rich nations the United States and other G8 states as well as rapidly developing China, India and Brazil. Funding schemes for clean energy projects and helping poor nations adapt to droughts, rising seas and more intense storms will be a major theme. But even as the talks were about to start, environmentalists spoke about poor nations' disillusionment about the management and lack of consultation about the funds, a key element in the global fight against climate change. ""What seems to be happening is that you have three announcements from Japan, Britain and the U.S. that have now been combined into a World Bank special strategic climate fund,"" said Jennifer Morgan of environmental institute E3G. But she said the multi-billion dollar scheme did not appear to have much new money, had left developing countries out of negotiations on how the money would be used until very recently, and had quite a number of conditions attached. ""It's been used by the Bush administration to promote their own major emitters' meeting process,"" Morgan said, referring to separate U.S. talks with big polluters outside U.N. discussions seeking a global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol. ""It is not creating a very good mood going into the G20,"" said Morgan. U.N.-led talks in Bali in December launched two years of negotiations on a successor to Kyoto, whose first phase ends in 2012 and so far binds only rich nations to make emissions cuts. Bali's final draft called for more financial resources and investment for developing nations, which demand rich countries cut their own emissions and pay for costly clean energy projects. ""RECYCLED AID"" Japan announced this year a $10 billion package to support developing countries' fight against climate change. U.S. President George W. Bush has pledged $2 billion for a clean technology fund, while Britain has pledged 800 million pounds ($1.6 billion) for a separate scheme. Britain has since asked the World Bank to administer its money and has teamed up with Japan and the United States. It is not clear how much of the Japanese and U.S. money would eventually go towards the World Bank clean technology fund. But Morgan said only the money from Britain appeared to be new and she described the Japanese money as recycled development aid. Congress has not yet approved Bush's $2 billion. The U.N. said in a report last year that the cost of returning greenhouse gas emissions to present levels by 2030 would be about $200 billion annually, through measures such as investing in energy efficiency and low-carbon renewable energy. ""Even if these funds by the Japanese, the U.S. and Britain represented real, new money that totals about $14 billion over the next five years, or about one percent of the need,"" Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the briefing. Ailun Yang of Greenpeace China said Beijing needed to do more to tackle global warming and that rich countries should cooperate. ""Climate change requires developing countries and developed countries to work in ways we have never done before,"" she said, adding China must balance development and protection for the environment. ""If China fails, we will see the biggest environmental disaster in human history."" ",
" The second meeting of experts' committee on SAARC Environment and Forestry began in Dhaka Monday to devise modalities for a regional environmental treaty and ensure water flow in the trans-boundary rivers. The meeting will prepare a ground for the ministerial meeting scheduled to take place in the capital on Wednesday. Prior to the ministerial conference, a meeting of senior officials of the SAARC-family will be held on Tuesday. Inaugurating the experts' meeting, Environment and Forest Minister Tariqul Islam called on the member states to extend cooperation and look forward to implement the directives of the 13th SAARC Summit held in Dhaka. ""I believe, there is a vast scope for cooperation in the various fields of environment, particularly in disaster and coastal zone management, arsenic contamination, water conservation, greening south Asia and sharing of trans-boundary flow,"" he said. He also called on to move forward to consider the modalities for establishing a SAARC environment treaty in furthering environmental cooperation among the member states. Meeting sources said experts, comprising from both GOs and NGOs, discussed the issues relating to develop a comprehensive framework on disaster management and disaster prevention, set modalities for environment treaty and plan to observe 2007 as Green South Asia Year. Experts had also discussion on ensuring minimum water in the trans-boundary rivers to prevent ecological disorder in the region. ""A minimum water flow in rivers is essential to ensure ecological balance. We need to set modalities for having reserving a water level in the trans-boundary rivers,"" said Ainun Nishat, Adviser of Bangladesh delegation and also Country Representative of the IUCN in Bangladesh. He said experts in the region are concerned over the deterioration of environment including soil erosion, landslide and climate change."" Establishment of the regional environment treaty will help the SAARC states to address environmental issues in more coordinated manner,"" he said.",
" US Senator John Kerry ratchets up the fight to pass his well-telegraphed bill to combat global warming on Wednesday, unveiling legislation just as the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster complicates the measure's already slim chances of passage. Kerry, a Democrat, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, are to unveil the bill at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT). Most of the details of the bill, which aims to cut planet-warming emissions in the United States by 17 percent in the next decade, already have been leaked. Crucially, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped write the bill but withdrew from talks over the immigration reform debate, will not attend the ceremony. The bill still has provisions to encourage offshore drilling but would allow US states to prohibit offshore oil activity within 75 miles of their coasts. But analysts said that may not be enough to win drilling opponents from coastal states as concerns mounts over the growing the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Backers of the bill had hoped to bring in wavering Democratic lawmakers, and Graham had been expected to help bring in other Republicans to reach the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. The White House on Wednesday promised to work to pass the bill into law. President Barack Obama's top energy and climate advisor, Carol Browner, told reporters in a conference call that the administration would review details of the bill. But it is unclear if Obama is willing put the same kind of political capital behind the climate bill as he did for healthcare legislation earlier this year, as some advocates have been seeking. Without a big White House push, the bill faces slim chances this year with the already clogged Congressional schedule, such as dealing with financial industry reform and a Supreme court nomination. Mid-term elections later this year also will distract many lawmakers from focusing on legislation that could boost prices for gasoline and electricity in coming years as the country struggles out of recession. ""Everyone knows this is Congress's last, best chance to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation,"" Kerry said late Tuesday. If it fails, he added, ""Congress will be rendered incapable of solving this issue."" POLITICAL TOXIN The bill includes provisions for boosting nuclear power and offshore drilling in order to help win votes from states where the economies depend on energy production. Earlier versions of the legislation relied more on boosting alternative energy such as wind and solar. Analysts said measures for drilling may hurt the chances of the bill. ""The Gulf of Mexico spill has turned offshore drilling -- an issue that once greased the wheels of the grand bargain -- into a political toxin,"" said Kevin Book, analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, who until a month ago had been optimistic about the bill's chances. Still, environmentalists said the bill must be passed this year to give businesses confidence to move forward with clean energy sources. Many utilities with big investments in low-carbon nuclear power, natural gas or wind and solar power hope to benefit from a crackdown on greenhouse gases. Utilities such as FPL Group, Duke Energy and Exelon have lobbied alongside environmental groups for the climate bill as has General Electric, a manufacturer of clean coal and natural gas systems for power plants and wind turbines. ""Enacting a strong federal clean energy and climate program will give business the certainty it needs to unleash significant investments that will create jobs and grow our economy,"" said Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.",
"Dhaka, June 3 (bdnews24.com)—Bangladesh and India will face instability if the latter goes ahead with its construction of Tiapaimukh dam and other proposed hydropower projects in the region, said the head of an environmental forum on Wednesday. ""India is planning to generate around 50,000 megawatts electricity by building dams across 48 different rivers in its seven northeastern states,"" said Mozaffar Ahmad, president of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA). ""They aim to export power,"" he said. ""But the entire region will face chaos with the construction of dams across the rivers."" Speaking to reporters at a round table on Climate Change and People, Mozaffar said: ""The rivers of Bangladesh will dry up during winter and overflow during the monsoon with the construction of Tipaimukh dam."" The former president of Transparency International Bangladesh stressed the need for raising public awareness about the negative environmental impacts. Referring also to infiltration by Indian separatists into Bangladesh territory in the past, he said,"" We will also fall into a volatile socio-political crisis if the proposed dam is constructed."" He said, BAPA would launch a movement against the Tipaimukh dam. Citing the example of displaced people during the construction of the Kaptai dam for power generation in Bangladesh, he said: ""Similarly, the people of northeastern India are also protesting against the construction of the Tipaimukh dam."" Indians against it too The Action Committee Against Tipaimukh Project (ACTIP) in India comprises academics, politicians, students and around 20 influential socio-political organisations. They fear the dam will bring more miseries than benefit to most people and severe damage to the environment. The project will be one of the largest hydroelectric projects in eastern India to date and will be located 500 metres downstream of the confluence of the Tuivai and Barak rivers in Monipur, near the Mizoram border. 'India won't hold back water Meanwhile, Indian high commissioner to Dhaka, Pinak Ranjan Chakrabarti, said Wednesday that although India will have sole control over water flow at the proposed dam site, it will not hold it back. The flow of river water and flood control will remain in the hands of India, he told reporters after a courtesy call with communications minister Syed Abul Hossain at the ministry. But, he said, Tipaimukh dam is a hydro-electric project that will generate electricity from the flow of water, and then will release the water back. India expects to generate around 1500 megawatts of hydropower from the project, which concerns many in Bangladesh as three rivers—the Surma, Kushiara and the mighty Meghna—lie downstream of the proposed dam. Experts say it will reduce the natural monsoon flood patterns of the Sylhet region adversely affecting cultivation and livelihoods in the area on a vast scale. They also fear India could hold up water flow during the dry season.",
" The decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was called into question by new Fifa executive committee member Theo Zwanziger on Sunday, with the German saying some of his fellow members had been pressurised by their governments to vote for the bid. The comments from the 66-year-old president of the German Football Association (DFB) to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper are significant as he was appointed last week by Fifa to head one of the new committees established to clean up the organisation. Accusations of bribery and corruption over the last year have dogged world soccer's governing body. Zwanziger, who has been a constant vocal critic of last December's decision to give the tiny Arab state the World Cup, pulled no punches. ""In my opinion the vote for Qatar was decided by some members of the executive committee who are in a very close relationship with their governments, who pushed the political case for Qatar,"" he said. ""I think the choice of Qatar from a sporting perspective is still questionable because, due to the summer climate and the size of the country, a World Cup should not be held there. ""This was also evident in the report of the evaluation committee,"" he added. Zwanziger, who was not on the exco when the decision was taken, replaced Franz Beckenbauer on the committee after this year's Fifa Congress but said the German chancellor had never tried to exert any pressure on his predecessor, although he doubted that was the case in other countries. He also referred to the infamous email, leaked by former executive committee member Jack Warner, that was sent to the Trinidadian by Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke. Valcke wrote that banned former executive committee member Mohamed Bin Hamman of Qatar ""thought you can buy Fifa as they (Qatar) bought the World Cup."" Zwanziger said: ""I have not forgotten this sentence - this must be cleared up. ""I think the word 'buy' does not necessarily mean that bribes to certain individuals were paid, but rather a political influence was meant."" After the email was made public by Warner, Valcke said he did not mean to suggest that bribes were offered, but rather Qatar used its ""financial strength"" to lobby for support. Qatar has denied any wrongdoing and believes it won the right to host the World Cup fair and square. NOT RIGHT Zwanziger also said it was time Fifa stopped thinking it was right about everything it did all the time and that all of its critics were wrong. ""We at Fifa are the 'good and the powerful', the others who are against us, are 'always the bad guys.' This kind of thinking needs to change,"" he said. Zwanziger also said it was time the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the game's law-making body which is made up of the four British associations and four representatives from Fifa, was scrapped. The IFAB, which was formed in 1886 - 18 years before Fifa came into existence, is seen by many as an anachronism in the modern game, although its supporters say its arch-conservatism regarding law changes ensures the game remains pure. But Zwanziger said: ""I am convinced that things can not continue. The methods are rather like the Empire and is not a modern democracy. You propose a sensible amendment and often you do not even get a proper answer."" He said the DFB had proposed a sin-bin experiment in amateur or lower league football but that it had been postponed ""without explanation."" He said: ""I don't think that's very transparent and democratic.""",
"“Iraq is between friends who are 5,000 miles away from us and a neighbour we’ve had for 5,000 years,” Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said in a New Year’s Day telephone call with Trump, according to a close adviser, Abdul Hussain al-Hunain. “We cannot change geography and we cannot change history, and this is the reality in Iraq.” Iraq is caught in a vise. Many Iraqis were furious that the United States violated their country's sovereignty by carrying out airstrikes on Iraqi soil. A spate of strikes in December killed at least two dozen members of a pro-Iranian Iraqi military unit, provoking the assault on the US Embassy. A separate strike last week killed Iran’s top military commander, the deputy chief of a coalition of Iraqi militias and eight other people, leading to a vote by Iraq’s Parliament to expel US forces from the country and a counterstrike by Iran on two US military posts in Iraq early Wednesday. But acceding to the political pressure to rid the country of US troops would be a “disaster” for Iraq, militarily and economically, a senior Iraqi official said. The main mission of the roughly 5,200 US troops stationed at a handful of bases around Iraq is to help the country fight the Islamic State group. If they leave, the official said, it would not only hamper that battle but also have a host of knock-on effects, from the departure of troops from other coalition countries to dire financial hardship if, as Trump has threatened, the United States imposed economic sanctions. 
 
 Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) 

“Yes, there is big pressure from our people to have the troops leave,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “But we can bear this big pressure much better than we can bear the departure of the Americans.”  Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)  For now, however, Abdul-Mahdi seems to be moving ahead with plans to implement Parliament’s will. On Friday, he said that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to send a delegation from the United States to discuss steps for withdrawal. Pompeo fired back that the United States would do no such thing, despite the military’s frequent refrain that it is a guest of the Iraqi government and will comply with its host’s demands. “We are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is,” he said at a news conference Friday. But the US mission in Iraq is to train Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State, he said, and “we’re going to continue that mission.” After the Iraqi Parliament vote Sunday, Trump threatened to impose “very big sanctions” on Iraq if it ousted US forces — “sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” He also said that Iraq would have to reimburse the United States for billions of dollars it had invested in a major air base there. But for many Iraqis, booting out the Americans was long overdue. Although many remain grateful that the United States ousted longtime dictator Saddam Hussein and fought alongside Iraqi forces to drive out the Islamic State, they are still pained by US military mistakes and decisions, including massive civilian casualties during the war that followed the US invasion and the humiliating abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The recent US airstrikes killed Iranian proxy fighters who were also members of the Iraqi security forces — and considered heroes by many Iraqis for their role in helping fight the Islamic State. The final straw appears to have been the US drone strike last week that killed the Iranian military leader, Gen Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, the armed groups that have fought against the Islamic State. 
 
 Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) 

“We are in a state of enthusiasm in Iraq,” al-Hunain said. “The process of the US withdrawal reclaims a part of Iraq’s dignity after the airstrikes and violations of Iraqi sovereignty.”  Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)  The feeling is especially strong among Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in Iraq; many have ties to Iran’s Shiite theocracy. Iran has long sought the ouster of US troops, which it views as a threat on its border. But the unanimous vote in Parliament — taken in the heat of the moment, with no consideration of the potential consequences and costs to the country — suggests more unity than may be the case. Only 170 out of 328 members voted, with most Sunni Muslim and Kurdish members refusing to attend. One of the few Sunni members who did attend the session, Ahmed al-Jarba, raised a red flag, saying that the departure of US troops might benefit Iran. After the Americans leave, he asked, “Are our neighbors our friends or our masters?” referring to Iran. “Are we going to hand the country’s wealth and decisions into the hands of neighboring countries?” Al-Hunain, the senior adviser to the prime minister, said that Abdul-Mahdi’s hope was that if the US forces left, Iran would no longer have security concerns about them and would leave Iraq alone. Senior Iraqi government officials, diplomats and scholars laid out the opposite scenario: Iraq, they said, could be forced into the arms of Iran, deprived of US dollars, and isolated from the West. As worrying — even for Iran — is the risk that the Islamic State might return if there are no Americans to help fight it. The Sunni extremist group no longer controls territory in Iraq and is much diminished, but it still launches near-daily attacks. A second senior Iraqi official and a senior Western diplomat said that if the Americans left, so would European and other coalition forces because they depend on US logistical and technical support. The US hospital at the Baghdad International Airport, for instance, treats the personnel of all 30 countries in the international coalition. The economic sanctions that Trump threatened would be intended not only to punish Iraq but also to effectively extend the administration’s pressure campaign against Iran. The two countries’ economies are closely entwined. Iraq would risk being cut off from its main source of dollars because its account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York could be frozen. Iraq deposits the proceeds of its oil sales there, withdrawing them to pay government salaries and contracts. The United States could also end the waivers that allow Iraq to buy Iranian gas to fuel its electricity generators in the south, which supply at least 35% of the country’s power. Iraq could seek another source, but it could be difficult to find one on short notice. The other option — making do with less electricity — could spawn unrest in the south as soon as the weather heats up, as electrical shortages did in 2018. American and other foreign companies might reduce or suspend operations if they become concerned about safety. A number of American contractors left in the days after Soleimani’s death because they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. So far, Abdul-Mahdi appears willing to face those potential consequences. If he harbors any thoughts of compromise, he has kept them to himself, perhaps wary of the anti-American political climate. “It looks like the decision making and opinion in the prime minister’s office is turning eastward,” a senior Iraqi official said. “They are almost in denial about what a drastic path they are going down.” The problem, said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, is that no one in the government is seriously considering possible compromises. “The Iraqis don’t want either the United States or Iran, but if they have to have one, they would rather have both because they balance each other out,” he said. “The US is a counterweight to Iran.” There are a few glimmers of potential ways out. Abdul-Mahdi’s adviser, al-Hunain, said that while the US forces are not welcome now, the government does want other international forces to stay. Talks with other coalition countries could open the door to keeping at least some Americans, those arguably needed to sustain the coalition and help fight the Islamic State. The Europeans, for their part, would like to preserve the ability to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, fearing that any relaxing of pressure would allow the group to reconstitute. A senior Western diplomat said the British and French were working to outline an alternative mission for the international forces relying on a smaller number of troops focused on ensuring that “the gains made against ISIS are not lost.” Perhaps the most promising sign that Abdul-Mahdi might be open to compromise was his request for a briefing paper from Iraq’s National Security Council on the options for proceeding with the parliamentary mandate. Abdul-Mahdi is an economist and has served as finance minister, a background that gives him an understanding of the price of economic isolation even if he now seems more swayed by political concerns. The council provided three options, according to a senior official who works closely with the council: The first was to require US troops to leave as quickly as possible, an approach that could at least deter Iranian-backed armed groups from attacking them. The second option was a negotiated withdrawal, which would slow the drawdown and potentially allow the fight against the Islamic State to go on in some places even as troops were withdrawing from others. The third was a renegotiation of the agreement with the US-led coalition that might allow for some troops to stay, which would open the door to having other international forces stay as well. The National Security Council recommended Option 3. © 2020 The New York Times Company",
"""Micronesia asks our American and Chinese friends to reinforce their cooperation and friendship with each other ... to achieve what is best for our global community,"" the Federated States of Micronesia President David Panuelo told the UN General Assembly in a video address. Micronesia - with a population of about 113,000 - and its Pacific Island neighbours have long been stuck in a diplomatic tug-of-war between the world's biggest economic powers as China takes on US influence in a region Washington has considered its backyard since World War Two. During his Friday address to the gathering of world leaders - pre-recorded due to the pandemic - Panuelo acknowledged that competition had been beneficial for some people in the Pacific. But he warned that the efforts ""also potentially threaten to fracture long-standing alliances within our Pacific community, and could become counterproductive to our collective desire for regional solidarity, security, and stability."" The US-Chinese showdown is now playing out at the 193-member United Nations, where Beijing has pushed for greater multilateral influence in a challenge to traditional US leadership. Tensions between the two superpowers have hit boiling point at the world body over the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Micronesia's plea stood out during the annual - yet virtual - gathering of world leaders at the United Nations this week because while most countries called for unity to combat COVID-19, other references to US and Chinese frictions were generally oblique. International Crisis Group UN director Richard Gowan said most leaders want to avoid getting entangled in the tensions. ""A lot of the UN's members think the US is destructive and China is power-hungry. They don't find either very appealing,"" he said. ""Ambitious Europeans like (French President Emmanuel) Macron see a chance to fill the leadership gap, so they are willing to challenge Beijing and Washington."" RIVALRY Macron addressed the General Assembly on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump demanded that China be held accountable for having ""unleashed"" COVID-19 on the world, prompting Beijing to accuse him of ""lies"" and abusing the UN platform to provoke a confrontation. ""The world as it is today cannot come down to simple rivalry between China and the United States, no matter the global weight of these two great powers, no matter the history that binds us together,"" Macron said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned the world is heading in a dangerous direction and ""cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a Great Fracture — each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities."" In the Pacific, China has been forging stronger economic ties with small island nations, and drawing countries out of their long-term alliances with Taiwan, winning over Kiribati and the Solomon Islands in the past year. China considers Taiwan its own territory with no right to state-to-state ties. Four of Taiwan's remaining 15 diplomatic allies are in the Pacific - Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. All four states spoke in support of Taiwan during their leaders' addresses to the United Nations. Though tiny in land mass, Pacific nations control vast swaths of highly strategic waters, forming a boundary between the Americas and Asia. As oceans warm and sea level rises, they are also on the frontlines of the global climate crisis. ""It is my hope ... that the United States of America and the People's Republic of China jointly champion global causes for global solidarity and cooperation, from climate change to COVID-19,"" Panuelo said.",
" Scientists who advise the United Nations about climate change will issue a report in Paris on Friday, the first of four this year outlining the risks from global warming. Following is a calendar for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 by the United Nations to guide governments. It draws on work by about 2,500 specialists from more than 130 nations and last issued reports in 2001. PARIS, Feb 2 - The first report will give evidence linking human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, to a warming in the past 50 years. It will also project likely climate changes to 2100. A draft of the report, 'The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change', says there is at least a 90 percent chance that human activities are the main cause of global warming since 1950, scientific sources say. The previous report in 2001 said the link was 'likely', or at least a 66 percent chance. It will also project a 'best estimate' of a temperature rise of 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The 2001 report projected a rise of between 1.4 and 5.8 Celsius, without saying which end of the scale was most likely. BRUSSELS, April 6 - The second report will detail the likely impacts of climate change around the globe and ways to adapt to warming. Australian newspaper The Age said a draft of the report, entitled 'Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability', projects that between 200 and 700 million more people could face food shortages by 2080 and that 1.1 to 3.2 billion more people could suffer water shortages. BANGKOK, May 4 - The third report, 'Mitigation of Climate Change', will analyse ways to fight global warming, including options and costs for reining in emissions of greenhouse gases. VALENCIA, Spain, Nov 16 - A fourth 'Synthesis Report' will sum up the findings.",
" A 190-nation UN climate meeting in Bali from Dec 3-14 is seeking to launch two years of formal negotiations meant to end with agreement on a broad new UN pact to fight global warming. About 10,000 delegates on the Indonesian island are considering a draft document, issued by Indonesia, Australia and South Africa, that lays out a ""roadmap"" of guiding principles for the talks on a UN treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. THE PROBLEM Kyoto, the current UN pact for slowing warming, binds 36 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 to curb ever more floods, droughts, a spread of disease and rising seas. But Kyoto countries make up only about a third of world greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, which are surging when scientists say they need to be axed. The United States is outside Kyoto and developing nations such as China, India, Brazil have no 2008-2012 targets. Many countries want a 2009 deadline to work out a broad new treaty -- that would give parliaments three years to ratify and help plan before Kyoto's first period runs out on Dec. 31, 2012. PRINCIPLES FOR TALKS The draft says: -- There is ""unequivocal scientific evidence"" that rich nations will have to cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst impacts. -- Global emissions will ""need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be reduced to very low levels, well below half of levels in 2000 by 2050."" -- ""The challenge of climate change calls for effective participation by all countries"", led by rich nations. Ending poverty will remain the top priority for developing nations. ACTIONS NEEDED The draft says that countries will step up actions to curb climate change, such as: -- For developed nations, ""quantified national emission objectives"". For poor nations, an easier goal of actions to ""limit the growth of, or reduce, emissions"". -- New policies and incentives to help reduce emissions from deforestation by developing countries, more sharing of green technologies, new financing and investment, more efforts to help countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. LAUNCH OF NEW TALKS The draft lays out three options: 1) Two years of informal talks that do not necessarily lead to a new treaty. 2) Global talks to lead to a new treaty at a conference to be held in Copenhagen in late 2009. In addition, there would be separate talks on new commitments by current Kyoto participants. 3) Twin-track talks among all nations, immediately merging with the Kyoto track, leading to a new treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. TIMETABLE The first talks will be held at a meeting of senior officials, now set for June 2008. That meeting would work out a detailed timetable. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/",
"Essa, 36, would often end up either using too much water on her 2-feddan (2-acre) plot outside Samalout city or hiring another farmer to take over the irrigation duties, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Then, in December last year, the mother of four joined a new government project that uses sensors to allow her to see exactly when the soil is dry and just how much water she needs - all from an app on her phone. ""When I first heard about the new system, I did not know exactly how it would benefit me. But when people showed me how it works, I found it really helpful and (it) would save me a lot of effort and money,"" she said in a phone interview. In the few weeks since she adopted the system, Essa has been using 20% less water and her labour costs have dropped by nearly a third. The system, developed by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation and Cairo's MSA University, uses a sensor buried in the soil to measure moisture levels and a transmitter to send the data to the user, who accesses it through a mobile app. Even if they are away from their fields, farmers can tell whether their crops need more water or have had enough. Essa is one of dozens of farmers who have started using the new system, launched in December, in Upper Egypt's Minya governorate and in New Valley governorate in the southwest. The project, in its pilot phase, is part of a nationwide strategy to encourage the use of modern irrigation methods, said Mohamed Ghanem, spokesman for the water ministry. The aim is to reduce water use, increase crop productivity and lower production costs as Egypt faces increasing water pressures, he said. ""The preliminary results indicate success in saving large quantities of water and reducing production costs,"" he said by phone, adding that the government is still in the process of collecting data on the project's impact. The ministry has so far provided 200 free devices to farmers, but after the trial period ends, it will start selling them countrywide, Ghanem added, without specifying the price. WATER 'POOR' At another farm near Essa's in Minya governorate, Gerges Shoukri said combining the new mobile system with the drip irrigation he and his wife installed early last year had been a big boost. Shoukri, 32, said he now uses 15% less water, while the quality of his vegetable crops has improved and production has jumped by about 30%. ""We have to be prepared in case of any water shortages by adopting new irrigation and agricultural methods,"" he said. A 2019 report by the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies noted that every year agriculture consumes more than 85% of the country's share of the Nile, which provides the bulk of Egypt's water supply. Officials say Egypt currently has about 570 cubic metres (150,000 gallons) of water per person per year. Experts consider a country ""water poor"" if its annual supply is less than 1,000 cubic metres per person. 
 
 A farmer passes with his cart at a wheat field in El-Dakahlya governorate, Egypt Feb 7, 2021. REUTERS 

In 2017, Egypt embarked on a 20-year strategy to tackle its water challenges, which experts say are becoming increasingly urgent in the face of a growing population, climate change-related drought and fears of losing much of its access to the Nile River's waters.  A farmer passes with his cart at a wheat field in El-Dakahlya governorate, Egypt Feb 7, 2021. REUTERS  According to Egypt's statistical agency, about 70% of the country's water comes from the Nile, which amounts to 55.5 billion cubic meters a year based on a 1959 deal with upstream Sudan. But the deal is not recognised by Ethiopia, which has now started filling the reservoir behind its new Grand Renaissance mega-dam upstream from Egypt. TOO HIGH-TECH? Some agricultural experts are sceptical about the effectiveness of the new mobile irrigation system, pointing to the cost and the fact that many farmers will not be familiar or comfortable with the technology. Abbas Sharaky, an associate professor of economic geology at Cairo University, said the system could benefit large commercial farmers, but would not be useful to many small-scale farmers. ""Some companies in Egypt are already starting to apply (mobile irrigation technology) in agriculture for better quality and management,"" he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. ""But applying it to individuals would be difficult because they would need training and adequate resources."" Youssef El Bahwashi, an agricultural engineer who has a farm in Giza city and has not installed the new system, said many farmers do not even use mobile phones. ""With their long experience in irrigation and agriculture, they cannot be easily convinced to use a new device which will cost them money and which most probably they will not be able to deal with,"" he said. Safaa Abdel Hakim, supervisor of the project in Minya city, said the farmers who receive the devices get training on how to use them. Essa said that, as someone who is not tech-savvy, it was quite difficult to keep up with all the changes. But, she believes that embracing new irrigation trends and evolving attitudes about water consumption will help Egypt's farmers deal with whatever comes down the line. ""Getting educated about the new technologies will not only help me better manage my land but also ... adapt to any changes in the future,"" she said.",
" Colombia's Marxist rebels called a two-month unilateral ceasefire on Monday, the first truce in more than a decade, as delicate peace talks began in Cuba to try to end a half century of war. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos' government reiterated, however, that there would be no halt to military operations until a final peace deal is signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC. The rebel group said it would halt all offensive military operations and acts of sabotage against infrastructure beginning at midnight on Monday and running through January 20. ""This decision by the FARC is a decisive contribution to strengthen the climate of understanding needed so the parties ... can achieve the purpose desired by all Colombians,"" lead rebel negotiator Ivan Marquez said, standing outside a convention center for the start of talks in Havana. The gesture is a sign that the rebels may be keen to push talks to a successful end - something that was thrown into doubt by long, drawn-out speeches by its leadership calling for major changes to Colombia's political system. The warring sides arrived at the talks in black luxury cars and will meet almost daily until negotiations end. A crush of journalists surrounded the bearded, bespectacled Marquez who stood with other FARC delegates, including Dutch national Tanja Nijmeijer in Havana's plushest neighborhood. Some FARC members wore caps and T-shirts of Simon Trinidad, an official guerrilla negotiator who is in prison in the United States. Others shouted ""Long Live the Army of the People."" The head of the Colombian government delegation, Humberto de la Calle, smiled and waved as he entered but made no comment. Speaking from Bogota, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon doubted the sincerity of the FARC's ceasefire pledge. ""Security forces have the constitutional duty to pursue all criminals that have violated the constitution,"" he said. ""Hopefully they keep their promise, but history shows that this terrorist group never complies with anything."" Colombia's war has dragged on for 50 years, taking thousands of lives, displacing millions more and causing damage to infrastructure in Latin America's longest running insurgency. A failure of the latest peace process would mean years of more fighting and further blight on the reputation of a country eager for foreign investment and regional clout, yet which has been unable to resolve its most serious domestic problem. Residents in western Cauca province, one of Colombia's most war-ravaged areas, celebrated the FARC ceasefire. ""We hope it's not just two months, we hope that it's definitive,"" Orlando Ramos, a resident in Miranda, Cauca, said on local television. 'GRAIN OF SALT' The announcement by the FARC could be a breather for oil and mining companies, the target of many FARC attacks in recent months as the group sought to hobble Santos' main source of international revenue. The war costs Latin America's fourth-largest economy 1 to 2 percentage points of gross domestic product every year, according to the government, and makes large tracts of arable land unsafe due to combat or landmines. ""A peace agreement with the FARC could entice more sectors and investors into Colombia,"" said Eurasia Group's Latin America analyst Heather Berkman. ""The opportunities for agriculture production in particular could reshape the country's export sector, particularly as both small-scale and larger farmers could produce on land long off-limits due to security troubles."" Santos wants an agreement within nine months, while the rebels say the process will likely take longer. The two sides face plenty of thorny issues in their five-point agenda, which will begin with rural development. Previous peace attempts have failed, but both the government and the FARC have expressed optimism that this time might be different. Not everyone is so upbeat though. ""You have to take this announcement with a grain of salt,"" Felix Lafaurie, head of Colombia's National Federation of Cattle Ranchers, said on Colombian radio. ""I hope this is going to be a sign of the FARC's good will and not that they'll then take swipes on substantive issues."" The vast majority of Colombians support the peace process, although they think it will ultimately fail. Even so, the talks are the biggest gamble in Santos' political career and their success or failure may decide the outcome of the next election in 2014. The conflict dates back to 1964 when the FARC emerged as a communist agrarian movement intent on overturning Colombia's long history of social inequality. During the 1990s, the FARC controlled large parts of the country. In the early 2000s, billions of dollars in US aid, improved intelligence and increased mobility began to turn the tide of the war in favor of the government. The FARC has lost at least half a dozen top commanders and been pushed back into remote jungle hideouts in recent years, though the rebels are far from a spent force and still wage attacks on security forces and economic infrastructure. Violence was among the reasons previous peace talks failed. In the last attempt from 1999 to 2002, the government broke off negotiations after the FARC hijacked an airplane. ""The FARC have heard the voice of many Colombians, that rightly have been skeptical about its willingness to reach an end to the war, given the past,"" said Juan Fernando Cristo, a senator for the Liberal Party. ""The decision for a unilateral truce should fill us with optimism about what's coming at the negotiating table.""",
" Dhaka will be home to the South Asian branch of a global network that works to ensure that public institutions are held responsible and accountable to the people for delivering public services. The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability-South Asia Region (ANSA-SAR) was officially launched in the capital on Sunday. It will be coordinated from the Institute of Governance Studies at BRAC University. ""We need to move from elections to what happens between votes,"" Gopakumar Thampi, chief operating officer of ANSA-SAR, said in the launching ceremony. Funded by the World Bank Institute, the network has already partnered with organisations from seven countries to focus on four areas including climate change adaptation and mitigation, right to information, procurement rules and citizen watchdogs (third party monitoring). Members from partner organisations in different countries came to attend the launching ceremony. They emphasised the need to share knowledge in an effort to enhance capacities for tackling corruption and ensuring accountability. The acting vice chancellor of BRAC University Md. Golam Samdani Fakir was also present at the launch at the Journalism Training and Research Initiative.",
"The deluge swept away most of the village in the Nuristan province, destroying around 200 homes, and caught most residents off guard because they were sleeping. By Thursday night, villagers had recovered around 80 bodies; as the search continues, local officials expect the death toll to surpass 200. “It is wiped out; nothing remains after floods,” said Abdul Naser, a resident of the district who visited the village Thursday. “No aid has arrived yet, and there are no measures for caskets, coffins and funerals.” The flash flood is the latest blow for Afghanistan, where fighting between government forces and the Taliban has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in recent months and pushed the country to the brink of a humanitarian crisis, aid agencies say. Since international troops began withdrawing in May, the Taliban have made a swift military advance, gaining control of more than half of the country’s 400-odd districts. But as the militant group presses on in its offensive, raising the possibility of a complete Taliban takeover, many have questioned whether they could effectively govern the war-stricken and foreign aid-dependent country if they seize power. The flood, in Kamdesh district, offered an early test for the Taliban’s ability to provide relief services — a sign of effective governance — in the areas they control. On Thursday afternoon, local officials called on the Taliban to grant aid groups access to the district to provide emergency services. But by the afternoon, search and rescue teams had still not been able to reach the remote village largely because the Taliban control the roads into the district, according to a statement from the Ministry for Disaster Management. Local disaster management committees in nearby Kunar and Laghman provinces were working on getting their rescue teams to the area. “The area is under Taliban control. If the Taliban allow us, we will take aid to the area,” said Hafiz Abdul Qayum, the governor of Nuristan province. In a statement Thursday evening, a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that the group welcomed aid organizations’ assistance. The casualty toll from the deluge in a Taliban-controlled district in Nuristan province was expected to rise as the search for victims continues. © 2021 The New York Times Company",
" Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States would ""engage vigorously"" in climate change talks when he is president, and he pledged to work to reduce emissions sharply by 2020, despite the financial crisis. The Democratic president-elect, who regularly criticized the Bush administration's attitude toward global warming, reiterated his plans to start a ""cap and trade"" system that limits carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from big industries. ""We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by an additional 80 percent by 2050,"" he said in a video address to a global warming summit in California attended by US governors and representatives from other nations. ""My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process,"" he said. Obama said he would not attend UN-sponsored climate talks in Poland in December as President George W. Bush will still be in office. But he sent a message to international delegates who have spent years battling Bush representatives over targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming. ""Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change,"" Obama said. The president-elect said he asked members of the US Congress who would be present in Poland to report back to him. European nations have pushed the United States for years to show more leadership on climate change so that China and India, developing nations whose emissions are outpacing the developed world's, will follow suit. PAINFUL ACTION Though Obama's remarks were a reiteration of his campaign promises, the timing signaled his commitment to potentially painful environmental objectives despite a teetering auto industry and a financial crisis. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hosted the conference, praised Obama's climate goals. Schwarzenegger backed Republican John McCain in the Nov. 4 election. ""This new administration is very much interested in adopting the same kind of regulations that we have adopted here in California,"" Schwarzenegger said, noting the state's landmark 2006 law to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Obama promised during his White House campaign to create an emissions trading system, similar to the European Union's, which sets limits on the amount of CO2 factories can emit and lets companies trade permits that allow them to pollute more. That system is known as ""cap and trade."" The president-elect said his plans to invest $15 billion every year in solar power, wind power and other renewable fuels would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and improve national security while helping the planet. ""It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis,"" he said, citing a frequently mentioned estimate of 5 million jobs that could be created in ""green"" or environment-related industries. Environmentalists welcomed his approach and saw significance in the timing of his words. ""As world leaders gather in the coming weeks in Poland to negotiate a pathway out of the climate crisis, the eyes of the world will be upon America and our newfound resolve to rejoin global efforts,"" National Wildlife Federation president Larry Schweiger said in a statement. ""With today's call for action on global warming, President-elect Obama has kicked the gears of change into motion."" ",
"CAPE TOWN, Mon Sep 22,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The ruling African National Congress will name party deputy head Kgalema Motlanthe as South Africa's caretaker leader after the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki, ANC members of parliament said on Monday. ANC leader Jacob Zuma made clear his backing for Motlanthe as he pledged that the party would ensure a smooth transition and economic policy continuity despite the biggest political crisis since the end of apartheid in 1994. ""We have in cabinet many experienced ministers, including the deputy president of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe. I'm convinced that if given that responsibility, he would be equal to the task,"" said Zuma, in his first public remarks since Mbeki announced he would resign in the face of ANC demands to quit. Motlanthe is a left-leaning intellectual, widely respected by both the radical leftists and business tycoons within the ANC. He is seen as a figure who could help heal the deepest divisions in the party's history. ""He's a very solid person and if you've read his statements he always avoids wild rhetoric. He seems to also avoid making enemies and in the present political climate that's a good thing,"" said Keith Gottschalk, a political analyst at the University of the Western Cape said. ""Certainly, most would regard him as presidential material."" ANC militants led the charge to force out Mbeki after a judge threw out graft charges against his rival Zuma and suggested there was high-level political meddling in the case. African National Congress parliament members told Reuters the party would name Motlanthe to replace Mbeki until the poll expected around April, which the ANC is widely expected to win. The opposition Democratic Alliance said parliament would elect Mbeki's successor on Thursday. FORMER PRISONER Motlanthe is a former student activist, a trade unionist and a former soldier in the ANC's disbanded military wing UmKhonto we Sizwe. In 1977 he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and was jailed on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and Zuma under the racist apartheid regime. Policy changes under Motlanthe in the short interim period would be unlikely but foreign investors eager for stability and a continuity of policy in Africa's biggest economy will be watching closely for clues on the ANC's future policy. ""In the short term, uncertainty will remain as the new political regime settles in, with some cabinet changes likely in coming weeks,"" said Mike Davies, Middle East and Africa analyst at Eurasia Group. The rand currency fell after Mbeki's resignation, but it recovered some losses on Monday and bonds and equities firmed. Zuma sought again to reassure markets that he will not give in to pressure from leftist union and Communist Party allies to shift away from Mbeki's business-friendly policies if he becomes president in 2009. Motlanthe's appointment is almost certain to be officially approved by the ANC-dominated assembly. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he was ""deeply disturbed"" by the ANC's ouster of Mbeki. ""It is good old-fashioned tit-for-tat. Our country deserves better. The way of retribution leads to a banana republic,"" the Nobel Peace Prize laureate told reporters. Uncertainty may still deepen if Mbeki supporters split from the ANC and contest elections as a breakaway party in 2009, as media reports suggest they will. Seeking to ease concerns that an exodus of pro-Mbeki ministers would hurt the country, Zuma said the party wanted all current cabinet ministers to remain in their posts. That suggests widely respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel -- a key figure for foreign investors -- will remain. Manuel indicted on Saturday he will not resign and has repeatedly said he will serve at the request of any president.",
" British Airways and American Airlines need to complete a transatlantic deal to link operations if they are to win the fight against high fuel costs and thwart rival alliances. The two are close to agreeing a revenue-sharing agreement that would create a major force controlling over 50 percent of the lucrative flights between London and the United States, a source briefed on the matter has told Reuters. The move is seen as a shot back at BA's archrival Air France KLM, which has forged a transatlantic alliance with Delta and Northwest. ""BA has been totally left behind in terms of the global consolidation of the industry. They need to come to the party and participate,"" Royal Bank of Scotland analyst Andrew Lobbenberg told Reuters. BA and AA still need regulators to grant the combined entity anti-trust immunity which would allow them to collude on transatlantic routes and pricing alongside a third partner, Spain's Iberia. Four analysts polled by Reuters think there is a better than 50/50 chance an approval will be granted. Fuel costs have soared as oil flirts with $145 a barrel, a trend likely to force all airlines to cut capacity and hike passenger fares to protect margins. ""This is a need to do deal,"" said Andrew Fitchie, an analyst at Collins Stewart. ""The high oil price makes many airline operations unsustainable, (and) this sort of deal allows them to get to grips with supply of seats and pricing."" He added that where the two airlines currently fly at similar times on the key London-New York route, they could now strip out the duplicate and save cash. Gert Zonneveld at Panmure Gordon added that the move would be both defensive against the current climate and an offensive strike against rivals. ""They can come up with a frequency and schedule that is better than what the others have, while also making cost savings,"" he said. HEATHROW SEEN KEY Two key issues are whether regulators will grant anti-trust immunity and subsequently how they will view the pair's dominance of the world's busiest airport, Heathrow, and some UK-U.S. routes. Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Charles told Reuters there were routes between London and U.S. cities such as Chicago and Boston that are only operated by BA, AA and Virgin -- thus reducing competition from three to two carriers in the event of an alliance. ""It would reduce competition and push up prices,"" he said. BA and American have tried twice before to gain immunity, but on both occasions were told they would only get it if in turn they divested a major part of their stranglehold on Heathrow -- a price they were unwilling to pay. But since the launch of the 'Open Skies' agreement earlier this year, any U.S. or EU airline may fly across the Atlantic to Heathrow, albeit at a high price for slots. Analysts suspect that this major industry change will make regulators more sympathetic. Andrew Lobbenberg said there is a good chance that approval would be granted, noting Air France had already won such backing. ""The combination of BA and American would have a lower market share than the 'Skyteam' immunized grouping,"" he said, referring to the Air France KLM-Delta-Northwest deal. The carriers may still be asked to forfeit some Heathrow slots, but fewer than on previous occasions, he said.",
"NEW DELHI, Fri May 29, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The government has started a pilot project to quantify climate benefits from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the anti-poverty scheme that could become one of the country's main weapons to fight criticism it is not doing enough to tackle global warming. The flagship anti-poverty plan, started three years ago, provides 100 days of employment every year to tens of millions of rural poor, a move that partly helped the Congress party-led coalition return to power in a general election this month. About 70 percent of works under the NREGA are ""green jobs"" such as water harvesting, afforestation and land development. ""Here is a programme which is an anti-poverty project that also yields co-benefits of adaptation to climate change and reduction of vulnerabilities against climate change,"" said Rita Sharma who heads the ministry overseeing the jobs scheme. The pilot project is being carried out in four states in collaboration with experts from the premier Indian Institute of Science. ""Within the next two years we should begin to get some handle on what kind of quantification is happening as a result of the NREGA works,"" Sharma said, adding some data could be available from smaller samples in about a month. India's current stand on climate change does not please Western countries, which want more commitment to curbing rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions from one of the world's top polluters. The top U.S. energy forecast agency said on Wednesday that much of the growth in CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels over the next two decades will come from developing countries, which already produce more than half of mankind's carbon pollution. By 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from developing countries should hit 25.8 billion tonnes, while the pollution from rich countries should be 14.6 billion tonnes, said the Energy Information Administration in its annual International Energy Outlook. PRIORITY New Delhi says priority must go to economic growth to lift millions out of poverty while gradually shifting to clean energy led by solar power as well as increased energy efficiency. Despite rapid expansion of renewable energy, such as wind turbines, coal is likely to remain a growing source of energy to power India's economy. Indian officials say the West must recognise the huge amount of benefit, such as carbon sequestration and emission reductions, achieved through projects such as NREGA. But some experts worry India could use such projects as a way to avoid additional investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. According to official figures, even if renewable energy was expanded 40-fold, carbon dioxide emissions could rise from one billion tonnes per year to 3.9 billion tonnes per year by 2031-2032. Under energy projections that assume an even higher rate of coal use, such emissions could rise to 5.5 billion tonnes per year by 2031-2032. So, experts say, climate benefits accruing from development projects would fall way short in fighting any exponential rise in pollution in India. ""At best, climate benefits from development schemes should be be treated as a supplementary effort to the main climate change plan,"" said K. Srinivas of Greenpeace's India climate change programme. But Sharma said such views only reflected a narrow Western outlook which did not have the required mechanism to recognise the climate contribution from social projects. ""The Clean Development Mechanism and other mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol are yet not fine-tuned enough so that programmes of this kind could be recognised,"" she said. Under the CDM, companies and governments can invest in emissions cuts made by projects in developing nations, and in return receive offset credits that can be used to meet Kyoto targets or sold for profit. ""There is both a need for us to do the quantification and on the other hand there is also need for the international community to be able to develop mechanisms that recognise and give credit for such programmes.""",
" These are the main challenges facing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was sworn in for a second term on Friday after the election victory of his Congress party-led coalition. ECONOMY * Faced with India's highest fiscal deficit since the early 1990s, Singh will have to decide how much to prioritise reforms such as labour laws and privatisations over pressure to spend more on social programmes that helped Congress win the election. * The new government must lift growth in Asia's third-largest economy amid a global slump and contracting domestic demand. Growth could be as low as 6 percent this year compared with nearly double digits in earlier years. Economists believe the economy may now have bottomed, with a return to vigorous likely towards the end of this year. * A stimulus through higher government spending will increase already-heavy borrowing, which is also crowding out private investment needed to expand factory capacities. * India's consolidated fiscal deficit is estimated at 9 percent of gross domestic product for 2009/10, and fresh stimulus measures would mean widening the deficit and higher borrowing. * Another key challenge for the new government and the central bank would be to urge commercial banks to reduce their lending and deposit rates. * Industry bodies are demanding cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates, and extension of tax breaks for infrastructure sectors. But there is little fiscal space for the new government to cut tax rates this year. REFORMS * Singh faces pressure to progress on a host of reforms, after years of being blocked by his communists allies during the last government. * Some reforms that had been blocked by the left will be relatively easy, such as opening up the pension and insurance sector to help access to credit across the economy. * The government could also move quickly to open up foreign investment in infrastructure projects and the defence sector. * Other reforms, such as allowing foreign investment in the the retail sector, could face more opposition from within the Congress party, mindful of the millions of small shopkeepers who could lose their jobs. * Laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers, long a demand of large corporations, could be put on the backburner due to a possible backlash from voters in the middle of an economic downturn. * Foreign investors may have opportunities in the auto, chemicals and white goods sectors. PAKISTAN * Remains New Delhi's biggest foreign policy challenge after the Mumbai attacks. The relationship between South Asia's nuclear powers is dogged by mutual suspicion and the fate of Kashmir. * India wants Pakistan to do more to crack down on militants operating on its soil, who have in the past crossed the border and launched attacks on Indian cities. New Delhi accuses its neighbour of egging on militants to destabilise India. * India may face pressure from the United States to resume a stalled peace process and start talks about Kashmir, as President Barack Obama needs Pakistan's focus to be on fighting a powerful insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan. DOHA TRADE TALKS * India must somehow negotiate a favourable deal at the Doha world trade talks. Rich countries have tried to lean on India to agree to open its markets more but India worries hundreds of millions of poor farmers will be hit. Years of negotiations on a deal ran into a brick wall as the United States and large developing countries, especially India, failed to agree on tariff cuts and subsidies. CLIMATE CHANGE * India, the world's fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, may face international pressure to impose legally binding cuts at the next climate change talks in Copenhagen. * New Delhi has so far refused to play ball, saying priority must go to economic growth and pointing out that it lags well behind rich countries on per-capita emissions. * India, however, is likely to be one of the biggest casualties of climate change that could dry up its rivers, affect the crucial monsoon rains and wipe out forests and glaciers.",
"Australia has 15 cases of the virus but has not had any new cases since the travel ban was first put in place on Feb.1, Morrison said. The ban will be reviewed each week. ""Our current measures are working, they are effective, they are doing the job,"" he told a press conference in Canberra. ""That's why this afternoon we have agreed to accept recommendations to maintain the ban on entry restrictions."" Australian citizens and permanent residents returning home are exempt from the ban but are required to isolate themselves for 14 days after their arrival. The health department said that all but one of the 15 cases in Australia involved people who had come from Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the outbreak was first identified late last year. Five people who had been ill have since recovered, the department said. More than 1,350 people have died in mainland China as a result of the epidemic, and authorities said that rate are some 60,000 confirmed cases.",
"According to the 5th assessment report of the IPCC, ""the urban areas will face increased risks among other things, for people, health, assets and economies."" On the other hand, the rural area will experience major impact on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure, agricultural income including the shifts in the production areas of food and non-food crops. This will affect the achievements in food and water security, poverty reduction, raising the income level of the people in the deltaic regions and coastal zones. At the ‘Dhaka Declaration’ of the Delta Coalition adopted after the second ministerial meeting ended on Saturday, they also acknowledged that financing is “indispensible” for implementation of sustainable delta solutions. “Responding to the climate challenge requires collective action from all countries, cities, businesses, and private citizen”. Delta Coalition is the world’s first international coalition of governments that have formed a partnership to deal with integrated management and sustainable development of the Deltas. The Coalition currently includes 12 members from four continents. Bangladesh is the current chair. Ministry of Water Resources and Ministry of Foreign Affairs jointly organised the meeting as the co-chairs of the Coalition. The theme of the Conference was ' Sustainable Delta for Life'. Member countries including Egypt, France, Japan, Mozambique, Philippines, Netherlands, South Korea and Vietnam participated in the Dhaka meeting which also adopted 'Terms of Reference of the Coalition'. According to the Dhaka Declaration, they decided to express their resolve to increase and demonstrate the visibility of the Coalition in various multilateral and international conferences and programmes. They showed commitment to raising awareness at national levels in the deltaic countries in tandem with the civil society, academia and experts, funding agencies and private sectors to promoting and deploying a pragmatic response to the pressing delta issues and climate change.   They also decided to launch a drive to include new members and observers and develop relations with civil society and academia to strengthen and enhance the knowledge base of the Coalition. The meeting also decided to include Argentina as a new member of the Coalition.",
"For a month of 10-hour days, Dr Amina Abdulkadir Isack, 27, tended to anaemic mothers, children with malaria and pregnant women as a volunteer in central Somalia, where record floods had left thousands of people in dire need of help the government could scarcely provide. But only days after coming home, on a hot Mogadishu morning in late December, terrorists detonated an explosives-laden truck in a busy intersection, killing 82 people and injuring nearly 150, including university students studying to become health specialists and doctors like her. Isack sprang right back into action, helping a youth-led crisis response team of volunteers who tracked the victims, called their families, collected donations and performed many services the government was too overwhelmed to manage on its own. “The youth are the ones who build nations,” Isack said. “We have to rely on ourselves.” Much like the floods before it, the attack in Mogadishu, the deadliest in Somalia in more than two years, underscored the feeble emergency response in a nation that is no stranger to natural and man-made disasters. The Somali government struggles to provide basic public services like health care and education, let alone a comprehensive response to emergencies. 
 
 Customers outside of Beydan Pastry coffee house in Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 2, 2020.  The New York Times 

Yet in the face of the country’s mounting challenges — from a changing climate to the indiscriminate violence of terrorism — young Somalis are increasingly getting organised and bootstrapping their way out of crises, rather than waiting on help from their government or its foreign backers.  Customers outside of Beydan Pastry coffee house in Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 2, 2020.  The New York Times  Government officials say they do respond to the country’s emergencies, including establishing a national committee to aid the victims of the Dec 28 attack. Turkey and Qatar airlifted dozens of the badly injured. But many youth activists in Somalia say that the response from the authorities is often tardy or inadequate, making it all the more essential for citizens like themselves to jump in and help fill the gaps. Somalia has experienced one degree or another of chaos for almost three decades, bedevilled first by clan infighting and then by violent extremism. But through it all, Somalis have found ways to not only establish thriving businesses, but also take on core state services like building roads and providing health care and education. 
 
 A view of Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 2, 2020. The New York Times 

This independent spirit was amplified after militants with al-Shabab, a terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaida, surrendered control of Mogadishu in 2011, effectively leaving the capital in the hands of an internationally-backed but weak government that has often been unable to secure the capital, much less the country.  A view of Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 2, 2020. The New York Times  Since then, young Somalis, including members of the diaspora who have returned home, have taken a leading role in the stabilisation and rebuilding process. They have worked on rehabilitating child soldiers, reviving domestic tourism, responding to humanitarian crises, organising multiple book fairs and even selling Somali camels to customers worldwide using bitcoins. When a truck bombing in Mogadishu in 2017 killed 587 people and injured 316 others, hundreds of volunteers marshaled to identify victims, launched social media campaigns to appeal for global attention and collected tens of thousands of dollars to assist the operations of Mogadishu’s only free ambulance service, Aamin Ambulance. Organisers of the response said they collected $3.5 million in donations; the government later contributed $1 million. The year “2017 was a turning point for us,” Isack said. “Everyone knew someone who was impacted. It showed us we could do something to save lives.” Despite their efforts, civilians can only do so much when attacks happen. And instead of learning from previous tragedies, the authorities remain disorganised and unprepared for the next one, said Saida Hassan, a Somali-American who previously worked with the ministry of education. After the big attack on Dec 28, Hassan said, she attended a government crisis meeting in which officials squabbled and didn’t have a plan of action. “I kept thinking ‘There are people dying every second we keep talking,’” she said. After leaving the meeting “so heartbroken,” Hassan helped form the Gurmad Ex-control rescue initiative — the volunteer group that Isack joined. “It’s frustrating,” Hassan said. “It often feels like we are crawling when we cannot only walk, but also run if we want.” 
 
 A staff member of Aamin Ambulance, who were the first responders after a truck bombing killed 82 people and injured 150, in Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 1, 2020. The New York Times 

Somalia’s government has made some strides toward developing the economy, reforming state institutions and improving security. Yet the country’s progress has been undermined by rampant corruption, the government’s tight resources and limited presence across the country, as well as a political stalemate between the central government and federal member states.  A staff member of Aamin Ambulance, who were the first responders after a truck bombing killed 82 people and injured 150, in Mogadishu, Somalia on Jan 1, 2020. The New York Times  For young people trying to build the nation’s future, the prospects for change sometimes look bleak. Sami Gabas is the founder of Saamionline, an online retailer that serves thousands of Somalis across the country. While the authorities in the various regions are quick to demand taxes, Gabas said, they barely understand the difficulties of setting up and running a startup, let alone offer help or incentives. “We just don’t want to do business,” he said. “We want to create and innovate and help move the country forward.” For those who defy all the odds, insecurity remains a serious impediment. Al-Shabab remains strong and continues to carry out deadly attacks against civilians and the government. Beyond that, activists and business people continue to be killed in mysterious circumstances. Mohamed Sheik Ali was a serial entrepreneur who opened a number of businesses, including Mogadishu’s first post-war flower store and dry-cleaning service. He also ran a mentoring program for local entrepreneurs, and participated in events and shows that helped turn their ideas into successful businesses. Six years after he launched his first business in Mogadishu, unknown assailants fatally shot Ali in August 2018. He was 31. In a country with a young population and high unemployment rates, his philosophy was all about self-reliance, his sister Sagal Sheikh-Ali said in an interview. When engaging with young people like himself, he used to tell them, “‘If you have an idea and a passion, just go ahead and do it,’” she recalled. Following his death, his sister said she felt angry and didn’t want to stay in Mogadishu. But afterward, she felt that it was her “duty” to step into his shoes and keep the businesses going. “If I leave, then I guess he died for nothing,” she said. “But if I stay, then it meant something. His name will always continue. His legacy will continue. His drive and passion will continue in others.” Still, the frequent attacks and at times tepid response from the authorities leave many feeling numb and discouraged, Hassan said. She said some of her friends have derided her for constantly wanting to act, when even the authorities seem resigned. The attacks from al-Shabab have become so normal that she and her friends try to guess when the next one will happen. Barely an hour after the interview, a suicide car bomb killed three people and injured 11 others near an intersection close to the Parliament building in Mogadishu. “I don’t think we should wait for the government,” Hassan said. “It’s become our reality and we know these attacks are coming. I just want us to be prepared so that we can save ourselves.” For volunteers like Isack, there is no option but to rush to the scene of the next disaster. In January, the Somali Medical Association recognised her efforts in saving lives during the floods. “I myself could face harm tomorrow,” Isack said. “So I am providing support to my people while I can.” © 2020 New York Times News Service",
"Just three months after centre-left Prime Minister Enrico Letta took office at the head of an uneasy coalition with Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL), Italy, the euro zone's third largest economy, is again mired in uncertainty.The 76-year-old billionaire reacted angrily to the decision by the supreme court to reject a final appeal against his conviction, protesting his innocence and accusing magistrates of persecuting him since his entry into politics 20 years ago.The ruling, confirming a sentence for tax fraud involving inflated invoices at his Mediaset broadcasting empire, was the first definitive sentence he had received after dozens of previous trials on charges ranging from tax to sex offences.""No one can understand the real violence which has been directed against me,"" he said in a video message broadcast on Italian television after the verdict. ""A genuine campaign of aggression that has no equal,"" he said.Berlusconi is unlikely to have to serve any time in jail because of his age, and the supreme court ordered part of the original sentence, imposing a ban on holding political office, to be reviewed. But the ruling has dealt an unprecedented blow to the man who has dominated Italian politics for two decades.""His conviction is like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,"" crowed Beppe Grillo, leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and a ferocious critic of Berlusconi.Berlusconi said he would continue his political activities under the ""Forza Italia"" (Go Italy!) name of his first party and press for a reform of the justice system, but he made no direct reference to the future of the coalition with Letta.Senior allies also reacted with bitterness, but said the ruling would not hit the coalition between Letta's centre-left Democratic Party and Berlusconi's People of Freedom.""This sentence will not affect the Letta government, which was created to serve the country and which will continue to serve it as far as we are concerned,"" former Justice Minister Nitto Palma said after a meeting in Berlusconi's Rome residence.CAUTIONAs millions of Italians head off for their sacrosanct August summer holidays and parliament prepares to go into recess, there was little expectation of an immediate government crisis that could trigger snap elections.But what might come over the next few months remains completely uncertain, with Letta struggling to contain increasing unhappiness in his own Democratic Party at the alliance with the scandal-plagued Berlusconi.President Giorgio Napolitano, the man who would have to decide whether to call new elections if the ruling coalition fell apart, urged calm and said the country needed ""serenity and cohesion."" His comments were echoed by Letta.""For the good of the country, it is necessary that, despite legitimate internal debate among political forces, a climate of calm and support for our institutions ensures that the interests of Italy prevail over party interests,"" he said in a statement.But the ruling added another obstacle to Letta as he struggles to lead Italy out of its longest postwar recession, reform its stagnant economy and cut its mountainous public debt. More challenges may lie ahead.As well as the tax fraud case, Berlusconi is also fighting a separate conviction for paying for sex with a minor, in the notorious ""bunga bunga"" prostitution case that tarnished his final months in office in 2011.With the European Central Bank promising support if needed, investors have so far shown little concern, with the main barometer of market sentiment, the spread between Italian 10- year bonds and their safer German equivalents at 270 points on Thursday, well below levels in previous crises.That could change if prolonged political instability fuelled doubts about Italy's badly strained public finances and created the kind of pressure that brought down Berlusconi's last government as the euro zone crisis peaked two years ago.",
"Although major crimes were down overall, an additional 4,901 murders were committed in 2020 compared with the year before, the largest leap since national records started in 1960. The significant rise in homicides has roughly coincided with the 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The high murder rate has continued into 2021, although the pace has slowed as the year has progressed. Overall, the toll of about 21, 500 people killed last year is still well below the record set during the violence of the early 1990s. Still, several cities — including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Memphis, Tennessee; Milwaukee; and Des Moines, Iowa — are recording their highest murder numbers ever, according to the report. There is no simple explanation for the steep rise. A number of key factors are driving the violence, including the economic and social toll taken by the pandemic and a sharp increase in gun purchases. “It is a perfect storm,” said Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque Police Department. He cited COVID, the fallout from social justice protests and bail-reform efforts that in some cities saw more incarcerated people released back onto the streets. “There is not just one factor that we can point at to say why we are where we are,” he said. The report from the FBI, which tabulates crime numbers reported by almost 16,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, also showed that murders were more widespread, occurring in all regions of the United States and not limited to major cities. Overall, the statistics indicated that the use of guns has become far more prevalent, with nonfatal shootings rising as well. About 77 percent of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, the highest share ever reported, up from 67% a decade ago, said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst based in New Orleans. Gun sales spiked during the pandemic, although experts noted that it often takes years for legal gun sales to filter into the illegal market for guns that plague cities such as Chicago. The wider geographic distribution differs from past decades, said Asher. In 1990, New York City and Los Angeles accounted for 13.8 percent of US murders, compared with 3.8% in 2020, he said. Murders so far this year rose about 10 percent from 2020 in 87 cities whose current numbers are available, Asher said. The FBI reports statistics for the previous year annually in September, so 2021 figures are not yet fully available this year. The pandemic undoubtedly played a significant role, causing economic and mental stress, forcing people together for longer periods and creating a climate of uncertainty and unease. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, businesses and in some cases their housing because of the pandemic. The widespread sense of desperation helped to fuel social friction and crime. Many Americans also experienced the trauma of losing loved ones. “People are desperate and they don’t have a lot of options, so they turn toward violence as a way to solve things,” said Enrique Cardiel, a community organizer and public health worker in the Albuquerque neighborhood with the highest number of murders in the city. The pandemic also meant that police departments sometimes struggled with the number of officers under quarantine, while the pandemic curbed public services such as mental health counseling and simultaneously aggravated related problems such as homelessness. “This is a country where everybody is suffering a little post-COVID traumatic syndrome, and not knowing what is going to happen,” said Peter Winograd, a professor at the University of New Mexico who works as a consultant for the Albuquerque Police Department. “That is huge.” The report also breaks down the murder victims by race, ethnicity and sex, with 9,913 Black people killed in 2020, 7,029 white people, 497 from other races and 315 of unknown race. There were 14,146 men killed and 3,573 women. While various medium-sized cities were rocked by a record number of homicides, certain major cities, while still enduring high murder rates, were well down from their worst years. New York City, for example, experienced about 500 murders in 2020, compared with 319 in 2019, but both figures were far below the city’s worst year, 1990, when there were more than 2,200. Chicago had 771 murders last year, compared with about 500 in 2019 and 939 in 1992, one of the city’s most violent years. There were 351 murders last year in Los Angeles, compared with 258 in 2019; its record is 1,010 murders in 1980. The protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd were also an important factor, although experts differ about why. Some argue that the police, under intense scrutiny and demoralized, pulled back from some aspects of crime prevention. Others put the emphasis on the public, suggesting that diminished respect for the police prompted more people to try to take the law into their own hands. “The distrust of police, the low morale among police, the fact that the police are being less proactive because they are legitimately worried about being backed up by their superiors” were contributing factors, according to Winograd. Law enforcement officers also cited what they called the revolving jailhouse door created by bail reform as a factor driving up violence, although critics of that hypothesis noted that violent crime also increased in places where those changes have not occurred. Other factors are more constant. The combination of drugs, money and guns, for example, has long provided a fuse for violent deaths among young men. “A lot of it really does go back to people stressed by poverty and mental health issues and by drug addiction, and resolving a lot of these disputes by firearms,” said Liz Thomson, who used to supervise homicide investigations for the Albuquerque Police Department. Even before the pandemic, people seemed more prickly, with minor disputes escalating into violent confrontations that ended in murder, law enforcement and other analysts noted. That tendency only deepened during the pandemic, they said, with perceived personal insults among the most common motivations for murder. There have been two murders this year in Haskell, Oklahoma (population 2,000), the kind of small town that did not used to appear on the murder map. One man was stabbed to death in an argument over money, and a young woman was shot dead in a car. “It is not something that we typically run into,” Haskell Police Chief Michael Keene said of the eight-officer department. Robberies were another common reason. And although domestic-violence killings dropped slightly from recent years, they were still a factor. In late May, the police in southwest Albuquerque were dispatched to an imitation adobe home to discover that Lee Marco Cuellar had murdered his wife during an argument, strangling her to death with a sleeveless white T-shirt. Cuellar, 41, an ROTC instructor at a local middle school, told the officers that after dinner with his wife — Rosalejandra Cisneros-Cuellar, 26, known as Ally — he became convinced that she was a demon who would hurt his family, so he had to kill her, according to the criminal complaint. Murders tend to have the most devastating impact of all crimes, and to attract the most attention, but they actually constitute a small percentage of major crimes, a classification that includes rape, armed assault, robbery and car thefts. Given that people were staying at home far more during the pandemic, some categories such as burglaries dropped in 2020, the FBI numbers show. Major crimes overall dropped about 5 percent. The downward trend in overall crime started for years before the pandemic. With murders still elevated in 2021, but slowing, it is difficult to predict how long the current wave of violent crime might endure. Crime patterns tend to be cyclical in nature. The FBI data shows that the gun violence driving much of the surge is concentrated among a relatively small number of people within communities where retaliatory shootings are more common. The pandemic curbed both the community outreach programs and the policing that helped to keep murders and other violent crime in check. “It is those people and places, the pandemic’s impact on those people that matters most,” said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice. “For the men who are at the highest risk of violence, living in poor communities of color, typically, they were already under pressure, they were already under strain, they were already marginalised and isolated, and the pandemic exacerbated that significantly.” © 2021 The New York Times Company",
"The renaming of India's tech hub and other cities coincided with Karnataka's 59th formation day.An official told IANS here: ""The state government late Friday notified that Bangalore and 11 other cities across the state will be pronounced and spelt in Kannada from Nov 1, following approval by the central government to rename them in the local language.""As the fifth largest city in the country, Bangalore drew global attention over the last decade, riding on the success of its resilient IT industry, talent pool, salubrious climate and cosmopolitan culture of its nine million denizens.Other well-known cities like Mysore will be pronounced and spelt Mysuru, Mangalore as Mangaluru, Belgaum as Belagavi, Bellary as Ballari, Hubli as Hubballi and Gulbarga in the state's northern region as Kalaburgi.The remaining five cities - Bijapur became Vijayapura, Chikmagalur Chikkamagaluru, Hospet Hosapeta, Shimoga in Malnad region as Shivamogga and Tumkur Tumakuru.Heralding the Karnataka Rajyotsava Day at a colourful cultural event in the city centre, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told the gathering that it was a proud moment for the 60-million people of the state to pronounce names of a dozen cities in Kannada and use them officially hereafter.He said: ""We propose to rename other cities and towns in the state in due course after assessing the impact of changes to the 12 cities with a population of 0.5-1 million.""Though old timers and majority of citizens, including locals speak and write Bengaluru in Kannada, they use Bangalore when conversing or writing in English.N Mahadevappa, a college teacher, told IANS: ""Bangalore has been Bangalored! Renaming has robbed the city's charming Anglican name and fame. It's official. We have no choice but follow and get used to it.""US Secretary of State John Kerry was the first politician who coined or used ""Bangalored"" in the run-up to the 2008 presidential poll to highlight how low-cost Indian software firms were taking away thousands of tech jobs from his country due to increasing outsourcing of services.The official said: ""Renaming states and cities is not new. We are behind other states like Maharashtra which made the historical Bombay into Mumbai, while Madras became Chennai, Calcutta Kolkata, Poona Pune, Baroda Vadodara and Orissa Odisha. We have done to popularise our cities' original names and respect the people's sentiments.""The renaming exercise began in 2006 when the state's first coalition government between Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) proposed to mark the state's golden jubilee (50 years) in response to the demand by social, cultural and political organisations. It was also endorsed by the state legislature during the former BJP rule.The state government will Monday direct corporations, departments and institutions to change their nameplates and stationery accordingly.Chief secretary Kaushik Mukherjee said: ""Private firms or organisations will not be compelled to change their registered names if there is reference to any of the 12 cities.""",
" Prime minister Sheikh Hasina asked world leaders gathered in Rome on Monday, if trillions of dollars could be spent to save collapsing financial markets, why a similar duty was not felt to feed the world's hungry. Hasina called on the leaders to adopt sustainable food policies, mobilise global funds and stressed the need for an equitable food governance system to fight world hunger. She also argued for preferential treatment for LDCs in transfer of technology and fair trade rules, in her address to the World Summit on Food Security. Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the summit hunger was ""the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet"". With the number of hungry people in the world topping 1 billion for the first time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation called the summit in the hope leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total (its 1980 level) from 5 percent now. Declaration disappoints But the Summit Declaration adopted on Monday included only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action. A pledge to eliminate malnutrition by 2025, one of the early aims of the summit, was also missing from the Declaration, which merely stated that world leaders commit to eradicate hunger ""at the earliest possible date"". Anti-poverty campaigners were writing the summit off as a missed opportunity, with most G-8 leaders skipping the event. The sense of scepticism had already taken hold ahead of the gathering as US president Barack Obama and other leaders backed delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later. Meanwhile, the United Nations opened the two-day conference by saying that a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month is crucial to fighting global hunger as rising temperatures threaten farm output in poor countries. Food, climate link UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there could be ""no food security without climate security"". ""Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change,"" he said. Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in potential agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the U.N. says. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed. Pressing issues for Bangladesh Both climate and food security are immense issues for Bangladesh. ""The threat to food security seems now to be more than ever before, in the backdrop of sudden scarcity of food and its price spiral in 2007-2008, the recent worldwide financial meltdown and the looming impacts of climate change,"" Hasina said in her address. ""The picture we see now is a cruel one for a world where one-sixth of its population, or over a billion, are faced with the spectre of hunger."" She said the vast majority of these people reside in Least Developed Countries facing food shortage, negation of development gains, and erosion of Millennium Development Goals. Only production of food alone cannot guarantee food security, said the prime minister. ""Available food must be accessible, particularly to the marginalised and the vulnerable. For which a fair and an equitable food governance system is required at both, national and international level."" Mentioning the Summit Declaration, adopted earlier in the day, Hasina said it provided all scope to strengthen global governance on food security, including enhanced role of the Committee on Food Security. She stressed provisions for sustainable agricultural policies, transfer of technology, equitable and fair trade rules for food and agricultural products ""with special and preferential treatment for LDCs"". 'Funds needed' She said implementing the provisions of the Declaration would require substantial funds. ""If developed countries could provide trillions of dollars to save collapsed financial markets, should they not feel any obligation to feed the starving millions?"" She welcomed a recent G-8 decision to mobilise $20 billion over three years for small farmers in food deficit developing countries. But she said the amount was insufficient. She said additional funds would be available if only the developed countries fulfilled their ODA commitment of 0.7% of their Gross National Income to developing countries, and 0.2% to the LDCs by 2010, as affirmed in the Brussels Program of Action. Hasina said food security was also directly related to climate change. ""Bangladesh stands out as a stark example where agricultural production has become hostage to frequent and erratic natural disasters, thereby, adversely affecting food production,"" sahe said. ""Significantly, the demands for meeting the adverse effects of climate change is diverting funds has also severely affecting sensitive social sectors as health, education, energy etc."" ""Shortage of fund has also severely restricted our research efforts in agriculture, particularly in food production."" She said her new government, on assuming power in January, had been confronted with all these challenges. She said agricultural policies were being put in place again, which helped Bangladesh attain food autarky once before. These include cutting production costs, striving for fair prices for farmers, and removing bottlenecks in the marketing chain, she said. It meant resurrecting agricultural research to find flood, drought, and salinity resistant food and cash crops, access for small farmers to sustainable technologies, social entrepreneurship, and financial credit. 'How to feed the world' FAO has convened the Nov 16-18 Summit in a bid to marshal political will behind increased investment in agriculture and a reinvigorated international effort to combat hunger. Three important events in October prepared the ground for the Summit, says FAO. A High-Level Expert Forum on How to Feed the World in 2050 examined policy options that governments should consider adopting to ensure that the world population can be fed when it nears its peak of nearly 9.2 billion people in the middle of this century. The Committee on World Food Security considered reforms that will enable it to play a much more effective role in the global governance of food security. The theme of World Food Day (Oct 16) this year was how to ensure food security in times of crisis.",
"The message was writt by Facebook’s own employees. Facebook’s position on political advertising is “a threat to what FB stands for,” the employees wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. “We strongly object to this policy as it stands.” For the last two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on Facebook Workplace, a software programme that the Silicon Valley company uses to communicate internally. More than 250 employees have signed the message, according to three people who have seen it and who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook’s 35,000-plus workforce, it was one sign of the resistance that the company is now facing internally over how it treats political ads. Many employees have been discussing Zuckerberg’s decision to let politicians post anything they want in Facebook ads because those ads can go viral and spread misinformation widely. The worker dissatisfaction has spilled out across winding, heated threads on Facebook Workplace, the people said. For weeks, Facebook has been under attack by presidential candidates, lawmakers and civil rights groups over its position on political ads. But the employee actions — which are a rare moment of internal strife for the company — show that even some of its own workers are not convinced the political ads policy is sound. The dissent is adding to Facebook’s woes as it heads into the 2020 presidential election season. “Facebook’s culture is built on openness, so we appreciate our employees voicing their thoughts on this important topic,” Bertie Thomson, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We remain committed to not censoring political speech and will continue exploring additional steps we can take to bring increased transparency to political ads.” Facebook has been struggling to respond to misinformation on its site since the 2016 presidential election, when Russians used the social network to spread inflammatory and divisive messages to influence the US electorate. Zuckerberg has since appointed tens of thousands of people to work on platform security and to deter coordinated disinformation efforts. But figuring out what is and isn’t allowed on the social network is slippery. And last month, Facebook announced that politicians and their campaigns would have nearly free rein over content they post there. Previously, the company had prohibited the use of paid political ads that “include claims debunked by third-party fact checkers.” This month, President Donald Trump’s campaign began circulating an ad on Facebook that made false claims about former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for president. When Biden’s campaign asked Facebook to remove the ad, the company refused, saying ads from politicians were newsworthy and important for discourse. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is also running for president, soon took Facebook to task. She bought a political ad on Facebook that falsely claimed Zuckerberg and his company supported Trump for president. Neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook have endorsed a political candidate. Warren said she wanted to see how far she could take it on the site. Zuckerberg had turned his company into a “disinformation-for-profit machine,” she said. But Zuckerberg doubled down. In a 5,000-word speech to students at Georgetown University in Washington this month, the chief executive defended his treatment of political ads by citing freedom of expression. He said Facebook’s policies would be seen positively in the long run, especially when compared with policies in countries like China, where the government suppresses online speech. “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a fifth estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Zuckerberg said at the time. Zuckerberg also said Facebook’s policies were largely in line with what other social networks — like YouTube and Twitter — and most television broadcasters had decided to run on their networks. Federal law mandates that broadcast networks cannot censor political ads from candidates running for office. Inside Facebook, Zuckerberg’s decision to be hands off on political ads has supporters. But dissenters said Facebook was not doing enough to check the lies from spreading across the platform. While internal debate is not uncommon at the social network, it historically has seen less internal turmoil than other tech companies because of a strong sense of mission among its rank-and-file workers. That has set it apart from Google and Amazon, which for the last few years have grappled with several employee uprisings. Most notably, 20,000 Google workers walked off the job in 2018 to protest the company’s massive payouts to executives accused of sexual harassment. Last week, Google employees again challenged management over new software that some staff said was a surveillance tool to keep tabs on workplace dissent. At an employee meeting Thursday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said he was working on ways to improve trust with employees, while acknowledging it was challenging to maintain transparency as the company grows. A video of Pichai’s comments was leaked to The Washington Post. Amazon has faced employee pressure for nearly a year to do more to address the company’s effect on climate change. Some employees worked on a shareholder resolution to push the company on the matter, and more than 7,500 Amazon workers publicly signed a letter to support the proposal. In September, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the company was accelerating its climate goals, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2040. In the Facebook employee letter to Zuckerberg and other executives, the workers said the policy change on political advertising “doesn’t protect voices, but instead allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy.” It added, “We want to work with our leadership to develop better solutions that both protect our business and the people who use our products.” The letter then laid out product changes and other actions that Facebook could take to reduce the harm from false claims in advertising from politicians. Among the proposals: changing the visual design treatment for political ads, restricting some of the options for targeting users with those ads and instituting spending caps for individual politicians. “This is still our company,” the letter concluded. c.2019 The New York Times Company",
"Dhaka, Nov 2 (bdnews24.com)—Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrived in Hanoi on Friday morning on a three-day official visit to Socialist Republic of Vietnam before going to Laos to attend the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit (ASEM9). A Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight carrying Hasina and her entourage had taken off at 7:30am from the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the capital. It landed at the Noi Bai International Airport at 10:50am local time where Deputy Foreign Minister of Vietnam Le Luong Minh and Bangladesh Ambassador in Hanoi Supradip Chakma received the Prime Minister. She was accorded a red-carpet welcome at the airport and two children presented bouquets to her. Hasina was taken to Sheraton Hanoi Hotel where she will be staying during her Nov 2-4 visit to Vietnam. Thenafter, she is scheduled to go to Laos to attend the 9th ASEM Summit of Heads of State and Government scheduled for Nov 5-6. Foreign Ministry officials said the Prime Minister on Friday would hold talks with Vietnamese leaders and also attend several agreements signing ceremonies between Bangladesh and Vietnam. She is also scheduled to make courtesy calls on Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong and Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Sinh Hung. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung will host a dinner and cultural programme in the honour of the Prime Minister. On Saturday, Hasina will visit the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh and monuments of national heroes and martyrs, and will pay her respects by placing wreaths. Later, she will also attend a business seminar and pay a field trip to the industrial zone and agriculture fields. She will leave Hanoi for Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on Nov 4. She will meet the leaders of Lao People's Democratic Republic at the Presidential Palace the same day. On Nov 5, she will join the opening ceremony of the 9th ASEM Summit at the National Convention Centre in Laos. The theme for this year's ASEM9 is ""Friends for Peace, Partners for Prosperity"". It is expected that the leaders of Asia and Europe would discuss regional and international issues of common interest and concern, including, food and energy security, sustainable development, financial and economic crisis, climate change, natural disaster response and socio-cultural cooperation. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, Ambassador-at-Large M Ziauddin and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Abul Kalam Azad, among others, are accompanying Hasina during her visit to Vietnam and Laos. A 36-member business delegation, led by Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) President AK Azad, is also part of the Prime Minister's entourage. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Agriculture Minister Begum Matia Chowdhury, Home Minister Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Muhammad Faruq Khan, Railway Minister Mujibul Haque and Chief Whip Abdus Sahid saw her off at the airport in the morning. Among others, Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hussian Bhuiyan, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Shaikh Mohammad Wahid Uz Zaman, chiefs of the three services, Home Secretary and the Vietnamese Charge d'Affaires in Dhaka were also present.",
" If there is anything Oscar voters love, it is a good drama. But as a key festival stop on the road to Hollywood awards got down to business on Friday, dramas were less on movie screens and more behind the scenes where the film genre is troubled. The Toronto International Film Festival, which has long been considered a starting point for movie awards -- Oscar winner ""Slumdog Millionaire"" got a big boost here last year -- opened on Thursday night with Charles Darwin drama ""Creation,"" which came into the event seeking a US distributor. The festival boasts more than 330 films screening over 10 days, and ahead of opening week about a third of them lacked key distribution, including titles such as Atom Egoyan's ""Chloe"" and Oliver Parker's ""Dorian Gray."" Facing the recession at home, audiences have flocked to escapist fantasies and comedies, causing distributors of the dramas that vie for Oscars to snap up rights for those genres, leaving serious-minded fare in the dust. Industry players say lovers of good dramas are not gone, nor is the genre dead. They see the issue as cyclical and more a marketing and cost problem than one of creative content. Still, if you are making movies like 2007's ""No Country for Old Men,"" which earned a best film Oscar, times are tough. Director Jon Amiel, whose ""Creation"" tells of Charles Darwin struggling with his theories of evolution in the 1850s, called ""drama"" the new ""five-letter word"" in Hollywood. ""If you're making a movie about a dead, bald Englishman, you're not making a movie that even the indie distributors are flocking to buy these days,"" Amiel said. ""There are just many, many movies that American audiences are not going to see."" BOX OFFICE BLUNDERS? The waning interest can be seen at box offices. Two big hits of the art house market this past summer were war drama ""The Hurt Locker,"" which earned $12 million -- a solid number for a low-budget film but far less than twice the roughly $29 million earned by romantic comedy ""(500) Days of Summer."" ""There's a real conservative attitude (and) dramas are viewed as risky in today's marketplace,"" said Steven Beer, an entertainment attorney with law firm Greenberg Traurig. Still, industry players say dramas can lure fans and make money. The key is devising the right production and marketing model that makes sense given today's movie going climate. In many cases, those marketing strategies call for grass roots campaigns that target key groups, lovers of science and period pieces for a movie such as ""Creation,"" for instance. Production costs must fall to account for lower box office and declining DVD sales, which have dropped by double-digits on a percentage basis due in large part to competition from other forms of home entertainment. ""These have always been tough movies and they'll always be tough movies. In a tough economic climate perhaps even tougher, which is why those models have to change,"" said Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films at The Weinstein Co. Industry watcher David Poland of MovieCityNews.com, said the drop in DVD sales had been a key factor in distributors' unwillingness to back expensive dramas but, like the other experts, he noted there remained an appetite for the genre. Still, distributors remain selective when looking at dramas, and that leaves little room for another breakthrough at Toronto 2009 such as ""Slumdog"" proved to be last year when it was acquired by Fox Searchlight ahead of awards season. ""You're going to have a lot of buyers coming to Toronto that are a lot more cautious than in the past, and I think that that's something that is different,"" said Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics.",
"“It was a little scary to, you know, rely on it and to just, you know, sit back and let it drive,” he told a US investigator about Tesla’s Autopilot system, describing his initial feelings about the technology. Geoulla made the comments to the investigator in January 2018, days after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, slammed into the back of an unoccupied fire truck parked on a California interstate highway. Reuters could not reach him for additional comment. Over time, Geoulla's initial doubts about Autopilot softened, and he found it reliable when tracking a vehicle in front of him. But he noticed the system sometimes seemed confused when faced with direct sunlight or a vehicle in front of him changing lanes, according to a transcript of his interview with a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator. He was driving into the sun before he rear-ended the fire truck, he told the investigator. Autopilot’s design allowed Geoulla to disengage from driving during his trip, and his hands were off the wheel for almost the entire period of roughly 30 minutes when the technology was activated, the NTSB found. The US agency, which makes recommendations but lacks enforcement powers, has previously urged regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to investigate Autopilot's limitations, potential for driver misuse and possible safety risks following a series of crashes involving the technology, some of them fatal. ""The past has shown the focus has been on innovation over safety and I’m hoping we’re at a point where that tide is turning,"" the NTSB's new chair, Jennifer Homendy, told Reuters in an interview. She said there is no comparison between Tesla's Autopilot and the more rigorous autopilot systems used in aviation that involve trained pilots, rules addressing fatigue and testing for drugs and alcohol. Tesla did not respond to written questions for this story. Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance feature whose current version does not render vehicles autonomous, the company says on its website. Tesla says that drivers must agree to keep hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles before enabling the system. LIMITED VISIBILITY Geoulla’s 2018 crash is one of 12 accidents involving Autopilot that NHTSA officials are scrutinising as part of the agency’s farthest-reaching investigation since Tesla Inc introduced the semi-autonomous driving system in 2015. Most of the crashes under investigation occurred after dark or in conditions creating limited visibility such as glaring sunlight, according to a NHTSA statement, NTSB documents and police reports reviewed by Reuters. That raises questions about Autopilot’s capabilities during challenging driving conditions, according to autonomous driving experts. ""NHTSA’s enforcement and defect authority is broad, and we will act when we detect an unreasonable risk to public safety,"" a NHTSA spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. Since 2016, US auto safety regulators have separately sent 33 special crash investigation teams to review Tesla crashes involving 11 deaths in which advanced driver assistance systems were suspected of being in use. NHTSA has ruled out Autopilot use in three of those nonfatal crashes. The current NHTSA investigation of Autopilot in effect reopens the question of whether the technology is safe. It represents the latest significant challenge for Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive whose advocacy of driverless cars has helped his company become the world's most valuable automaker. 
 
 A photo provided by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department shows emergency responders examining a Chevrolet Tahoe that was struck by a Tesla Model S as it was operating on Autopilot in Key Largo, Fla, in 2019. The crash highlights how gaps in Tesla’s driver-assistance system and distractions can have tragic consequences. (Monroe County Sheriff's Department via The New York Times) 

Tesla charges customers up to $10,000 for advanced driver assistance features such as lane changing, with a promise to eventually deliver autonomous driving capability to their cars using only cameras and advanced software. Other carmakers and self-driving firms use not only cameras but more expensive hardware including radar and lidar in their current and upcoming vehicles.  A photo provided by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department shows emergency responders examining a Chevrolet Tahoe that was struck by a Tesla Model S as it was operating on Autopilot in Key Largo, Fla, in 2019. The crash highlights how gaps in Tesla’s driver-assistance system and distractions can have tragic consequences. (Monroe County Sheriff's Department via The New York Times)  Musk has said a Tesla with eight cameras will be far safer than human drivers. But the camera technology is affected by darkness and sun glare as well as inclement weather conditions such as heavy rain, snow and fog, experts and industry executives say. ""Today's computer vision is far from perfect and will be for the foreseeable future,"" said Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In the first known fatal US crash involving Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving technology, which occurred in 2016 west of Williston, Florida, the company said both the driver and Autopilot failed to see the white side of a tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky. Instead of braking, the Tesla collided with the 18-wheel truck. DRIVER MISUSE, FAILED BRAKING NHTSA in January 2017 closed an investigation of Autopilot stemming from that fatal crash, finding no defect in the Autopilot performance after some contentious exchanges with Tesla officials, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. In December 2016, as part of that probe, the agency asked Tesla to provide details on the company's response to any internal safety concerns raised about Autopilot, including the potential for driver misuse or abuse, according to a special order sent by regulators to the automaker. After a NHTSA lawyer found Tesla's initial response lacking, Tesla's then-general counsel, Todd Maron, tried again. He told regulators the request was ""grossly overbroad"" and that it would be impossible to catalog all concerns raised during Autopilot's development, according to correspondence reviewed by Reuters. Nevertheless, Tesla wanted to co-operate, Maron told regulators. During Autopilot’s development, company employees or contractors had raised concerns that Tesla addressed regarding the potential for unintended or failed braking and acceleration; undesired or failed steering; and certain kinds of misuse and abuse by drivers, Maron said, without providing further details. Maron did not respond to messages seeking comment. It is not clear how regulators responded. One former US official said Tesla generally co-operated with the probe and produced requested materials promptly. Regulators closed the investigation just before former US president Donald Trump's inauguration, finding Autopilot performed as designed and that Tesla took steps to prevent it from being misused. LEADERSHIP VACUUM IN NHTSA NHTSA has been without a Senate-confirmed chief for nearly five years. President Joe Biden has yet to nominate anyone to run the agency. NHTSA documents show that regulators want to know how Tesla vehicles attempt to see flashing lights on emergency vehicles, or detect the presence of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars in their path. The agency has sought similar information from 12 rival automakers as well. ""Tesla has been asked to produce and validate data as well as their interpretation of that data. NHTSA will conduct our own independent validation and analysis of all information,"" NHTSA told Reuters. Musk, the electric-car pioneer, has fought hard to defend Autopilot from critics and regulators. Tesla has used Autopilot’s ability to update vehicle software over the air to outpace and sidestep the traditional vehicle-recall process. Musk has repeatedly promoted Autopilot’s capabilities, sometimes in ways that critics say mislead customers into believing Teslas can drive themselves - despite warnings to the contrary in owner's manuals that tell drivers to remain engaged and outline the technology's limitations. Musk has also continued to launch what Tesla calls beta - or unfinished - versions of a ""Full Self-Driving"" system via over-the-air software upgrades. ""Some manufacturers are going to do what they want to do to sell a car and it’s up the government to rein that in,"" the NTSB's Homendy said.",
"“At this time of national mourning, I offer the support of the United Nations to work alongside the people of the island,” Efe news agency quoted Ban as saying. The UN chief, who is attending the Global Sustainable Transport Conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, extended condolences to the Cuban people and Fidel Castro’s family, particularly the late revolutionary leader’s brother, Cuban President Raul Castro. “I hope that Cuba will continue to advance on a path of reform and greater prosperity,” he added, referring to Raul Castro’s project of “updating” Cuba’s socialist economic model by allowing more scope for private enterprise and foreign investment. Ban said he met with Fidel Castro in January 2014, adding that they had discussed topics including sustainable development and climate change. Under the leadership of Fidel Castro, who passed away Friday night at the age of 90, Ban said that Cuba had “made advances in the fields of education, literacy and health”. Castro formally resigned as Cuba’s president in 2008, two years after falling ill with diverticulitis and ceding power to his younger brother.",
"WASINGTON, July 4 (BDNEWS)- President George W Bush has ruled out US backing for any Kyoto-style deal on climate change at the G8 summit. Speaking to ITV, he said he would instead be talking to fellow leaders about new technologies as a way of tackling global warming. But he conceded that the issue was one ""we've got to deal with"" and said human activity was ""to some extent"" to blame. Tony Blair is hoping for deals on climate change and Africa when he hosts the summit in Scotland this week. Mr Bush said he would resist any deal that would require countries to reduce carbon emissions - similar to the 1997 UN Kyoto protocol, which the US never signed. ""If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is no,"" he said in an interview with ITV's Tonight With Trevor McDonald programme. ""The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt.""
He said he hoped the other G8 leaders would ""move beyond the Kyoto debate"" and consider new technologies as a way of tackling global warming. The US was investing in developing techniques such as sequestration of carbon dioxide in underground wells, hydrogen-powered cars and zero emission power stations, he said. ""I think you can grow your economy and at the same time do a better job of harnessing greenhouse gases,"" he said. In the past, he has strongly opposed any action on climate change in favour of further studies on the issue. But he rejected the idea he should support British Prime Minister Tony Blair's G8 plan in return for his support during the war in Iraq. ""Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did,"" he told the programme. ""So I go to the G8 not really trying to make him look bad or good, but I go to the G8 with an agenda that I think is best for our country."" The G8 leaders - from Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US - meet in Gleneagles on Wednesday for the start of the three-day summit.I5",
"The failure by Obama and Republicans to agree to halt the $85 billion ""sequester"" cuts virtually guaranteed that fiscal issues would remain center stage in Washington for weeks, crowding out Obama's proposals to reform immigration, tighten gun laws and raise the minimum wage.The economic effects of the spending cuts may take time to kick in, but political blowback has already begun and is hitting Obama as well as congressional Republicans.A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showed neither Republicans nor Obama and his fellow Democrats escaping blame.Obama's approval rating dropped to 47 percent in a Gallup poll on Friday, down from 51 percent in the previous three-day period measured.While most polls show voters blame Republicans primarily for the fiscal mess, Obama could see himself associated with the worst effects of sequestration like the looming furloughs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers. He signed an order on Friday night that started putting the cuts into effect.In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Obama appealed for Republicans to work with Democrats on a deal, saying Americans were weary of seeing Washington ""careen from one manufactured crisis to another.""But he offered no new ideas to resolve the recurring fiscal fights, and there was no immediate sign of any negotiations.""There's a caucus of common sense (in Congress),"" Obama said in his address. ""And I'm going to keep reaching out to them to fix this for good.""At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal showdowns is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.The president wants to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts and tax hikes, what he calls a ""balanced approach."" But Republicans do not want to concede again on taxes after doing so in negotiations over the ""fiscal cliff"" at the end of last year.The president offered a litany of hardships in his radio address he said would flow from the forced spending cuts.""Beginning this week, businesses that work with the military will have to lay folks off. Communities near military bases will take a serious blow. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who serve their country - Border Patrol agents, FBI agents, civilians who work for the Defense Department - will see their wages cut and their hours reduced,"" he said.'IT'S CALLED LEADERSHIP'At Yellowstone National Park, a massive and costly annual operation to clear the roads of snow that was scheduled to start on Monday will be postponed due to the cuts,Park managers have to trim $1.75 million from Yellowstone's $35 million annual budget, which will delay the opening of most entrances to America's first national park by two weeks.It could mean millions of dollars in lost tourism and tax revenues for small, rural towns in Montana and Wyoming.""I think it's counter-productive, and I expect a lot of people to be raising hell,"" said Mike Darby, whose family owns the Irma Hotel in Cody, Wyoming, at the east gate of the park.Critics said Obama should have held meaningful talks with congressional leaders long before Friday's last-minute meeting at the White House, which failed to prevent the automatic cuts written into law during a previous budget crisis in 2011.""The president should call the senior representatives of the parties together to Camp David - or any place with a table, chairs and no TV cameras - for serious negotiations on replacing the sequester with firm, enforceable beginnings of a comprehensive long-term debt stabilization agreement,"" former Republican Senator Pete Domenici and fiscal expert Alice Rivlin said in a statement released on Friday.The budget veterans, who lead the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, called on Obama and congressional Republican leaders to ""be willing to tell those on the polar extremes of their parties that a central majority consensus will govern. It's called leadership.""After months of silence on political issues, Obama's Republican opponent in last November's election resurfaced to take a swipe at the Democrat's handling of the sequestration mess. ""No one can think that that's been a success for the president,"" Mitt Romney said in an interview to air on ""Fox News Sunday.""The former Massachusetts governor accused Obama of ""flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing,"" instead of striking a budget deal.Twenty-eight percent of Americans blame Republicans for the lack of a deal to halt sequestration, while 22 percent hold either Obama or the Democrats in Congress responsible, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Thirty-seven percent blame them all.The budget standstill has overshadowed Obama's aggressive set of policy goals ranging from boosting pre-school education to fighting climate change and reforming America's immigration system. But Obama vowed on Friday the fiscal troubles would not prevent him from advocating for those proposals.""I think there are other areas where we can make progress even with the sequester unresolved. I will continue to push for those initiatives,"" he told a news conference.",
"The revised
estimate reduces global sea level rise by 3 inches if all glaciers were to
melt. But it raises concern for some communities that rely on seasonal melt
from glaciers to feed rivers and irrigate crops. If glaciers contain less ice,
water will run out sooner than expected. While some
ice naturally melts throughout the year, rising temperatures due to climate
change are speeding up glacier retreat. Between 2000 and 2019, these rivers of
ice lost roughly 5.4 trillion tonnes. Countries
are already struggling with disappearing glaciers. Peru is investing in desalination
to make up for declining freshwater. And Chile hopes to create artificial
glaciers in its mountains. But,
""we've had quite a poor understanding of how much ice is actually stored
in glaciers,"" said lead study author Romain Millan, a glaciologist at
Université Grenoble Alpes. Past analyses, for example, double-counted glaciers
along the peripheries of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, overestimating
ice volume. The Nature
Geoscience study assessed how quickly glaciers were moving across the landscape,
or their velocity. Such measurements allow scientists to more accurately
measure volume, as the way glaciers flow indicates where ice is thick or thin.
But collecting this information has been limited by technology. High-resolution
satellites deployed in recent years, however, allowed for the first analysis of
how 98 percent of the world's glaciers are moving, ""from small glaciers in
the Andes up to massive glaciers in Svalbard and Patagonia,"" said Millan. The work
analyzed more than 800,000 pairs of images of glaciers taken between 2017 and
2018, and found that many were shallower than previously assessed. Scientists
now estimate there is 20 percent less glacial ice present with the potential to
melt into the ocean and raise sea levels. Currently, glaciers are responsible
for 1 mm of annual sea level rise, or 30 percent of the yearly increase. ""This
is one of the first really impressive results coming out"" from satellite
advances, said Daniel Farinotti, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich not involved in
the research. Millan and
his colleagues also found that Asia's Himalayas contain 37 percent more ice
than previously estimated, while South America’s Andean glaciers contain
roughly 27 percent less ice. Already, Peru's glaciers have lost 40 percent of
their surface area since the 1970s. ""This
will put more pressure on freshwater in the Andes,"" he said. ""On the
contrary, water will be more secure in the Himalayas.""",
"We Mean Business, a coalition of advocacy groups, said dozens of companies had joined the initiative in the two months leading up to a United Nations summit taking place on Monday, which aims to spur faster action on climate change. “Now we need many more companies to join the movement, sending a clear signal that markets are shifting,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. The coalition was launched in June with a call to action by the United Nations, business and civil society leaders. The first 28 companies to join announced the following month. We Mean Business said 87 companies are now involved, with total market capitalisation of more than $2.3 trillion. Some companies in the coalition have agreed to slash their carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, including Swiss food company Nestle, French building materials company Saint-Gobain, and French cosmetics maker L'Oreal . Others have stopped short of committing to go carbon neutral but say they will align their operations with a goal of limiting the increase in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This group includes Finnish telecoms company Nokia , French food group Danone and British drug maker AstraZeneca Plc, We Mean Business said. As accelerating climate impacts from melting ice caps to sea-level rise and extreme weather outpace climate models, scientists say the world needs to halve its greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade to avoid catastrophic warming. With fossil fuel companies still developing new oil and gas fields and many developing countries expanding coal-fired power, the coalition's pledges are minuscule relative to rising global emissions. Some experts have questioned whether publicly traded companies committed to maximising shareholder returns will be able to make the sweeping investments required to fight climate change. Yet many investors have been pressuring companies to act on climate risks, and chief executives also face pressure from an upsurge in youth-led activism, which mobilised millions around the world to protest on Friday. We Mean Business believes pledges by a core of mostly European, and some North American and Asian companies, to commit to independently-verified emissions targets will prompt others to follow suit. “These bold companies are leading the way towards a positive tipping point where 1.5°C-aligned corporate strategies are the new normal for businesses and their supply chains around the world,"" said Lise Kingo, chief executive of the UN Global Compact, which promotes responsible business practices. UN chief Guterres sees the private sector as crucial to securing more ambitious pledges at Monday's Climate Action Summit in New York, which aims to boost the Paris deal before it enters a crucial implementation phase next year. Companies such as Danish power group Orsted, Spanish energy company Iberdrola and German insurer Allianz are due to speak alongside governments at the one-day gathering, according to a draft agenda.",
"TAIPEI, Mon Jan 12, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global PC industry stood tall for most of last year as other technology sectors foundered, but it too has caught the bug of a deepening economic downturn that has hit demand from both consumers and corporate buyers. As recently as November, J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer, the world's No. 3 PC seller, was confident PCs were immune to global downturns due to the growing importance of computers in everyday life. ""Children will still need to go to school. They will need computers! Businesses will continue running. They too will need computers!"" Wang had said. Fast forward two months, when a slew of recent sales warnings and cuts in business forecasts signal the sudden downturn will last through most of 2009, if not longer. ""Demand is weak, and I don't think we're alone in forecasting negative growth in 2009,"" said Pranab Sarmah, an IT analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research. ""We may see demand picking up only in the second half of 2009, when the traditional back-to-school season begins and consumers start spending again."" Analysts' forecasts for global PC shipments in 2009 vary, but many expect sales to fall. Research firm IDC expects spending on PCs could drop 5.3 percent this year to about $267 billion, versus its previous forecast of a 4.5 percent increase. Brands such as Dell and Lenovo, the world's No. 2 and 4 PC sellers, could face more pain mostly due to their reliance on sales to businesses, which have cut back their spending more sharply than consumers, said Gartner analyst Lillian Tay. ""They've already been shifting their focus toward the consumer space, but can they reform in time? Anyway, even consumer spending is seasonal, trending upwards only during the festive and back-to-school periods, which is not now,"" she said. Shares in global leader Hewlett-Packard and Acer, both of which have a strong presence in the consumer sector, outperformed their benchmark indexes in 2008. Downward revisions to 2009 shipment forecasts from leading data tracking firms IDC and Gartner were the first hint of problems in the system. Those were followed by analyst downgrades and reorganization announcements by Dell and Lenovo. The latest bombshell came last week, when top chipmaker Intel Corp -- whose chips are the ""brains"" behind more than 80 percent of the world's PCs -- issued a revenue warning, saying demand for PCs was even worse than it feared. Q4 SLOWDOWN PC shipment growth in the fourth quarter of 2008 is likely to be soft, as the global recession led both companies and consumers to cut back on an item viewed as a discretionary item for many. Brands catering to corporate customers may be taking a harder hit than those chasing consumers with a wide array of low-cost computers, as companies reduce or delay new technology spending in the brutal economic slowdown, analysts said. HP and Dell have both lost market share recently to consumer-focused competitors such as Acer and Asustek, both of Taiwan. Last week, Lenovo forecast a quarterly loss as China's slowing economy hit sales, and said it will axe 2,500 jobs as part of a restructuring to cope with falling demand for computers. Lenovo has also been hit by its purchase of IBM's PC business in 2005, which focused on corporate customers. As times get leaner, Acer and Asustek have scored success with a new category of low-cost notebooks, called netbooks, which many others initially dismissed. With the dramatic slowdown in corporate spending, the big brands are also racing to focus more on consumers. Smaller players such as NEC and Sony have also embraced computers aimed at budget-conscious shoppers. ""Growth in the market has been in the consumer side, and Lenovo has been bogged down by their commercial business,"" said Bryan Ma, an IDC analyst. ""That's not to say they're doing badly, they're still great, but compare them to what Acer was doing on the consumer front and that's where you can see the difference."" But even consumer-focused names are beginning to hurt. Asustek, widely credited with helping create the wildly popular netbook market, said last week it will miss its shipment targets for the fourth quarter of 2008 as it reported a 20 percent year-on-year drop in December sales. Many analysts say the current climate is too volatile to forecast a specific recovery. That could mean good news in the form of lower prices for consumers but bad news for PC makers who will see their already-thin margins erode further. ""The price of technology will always go down, that goes without saying,"" said Daniel Chang, a PC analyst at Macquarie Securities. ""But with demand so weak, if PC brands want to sell their products, they're going to have to depress their average selling price even further sometime soon."" It's a prospect many consumers at Taiwan's popular Kuanghwa computer mart are eagerly waiting for. ""I'm going to hang in there for a while more,"" said student Nick Chen, as he examined one of Asustek's newest releases: the Eee Top touchscreen-enabled desktop. ""If nobody's buying, they'll just have to cut prices even more.""",
"Maruf Mallick
bdnews24.com's environment correspondent Copenhagen, Dec 16 (bdnews24.com)–Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has proposed that adaptation funding must be at least 1.5% of GDP of developed countries, separate from ODA as stipulated in the Brussels Program of Action. Addressing the main plenary meeting of the ongoing UN climate talks at Bella centre in Copenhagen on Wednesday, she said disbursement of fund for adaptation must take into account the extent of vulnerability to climate change, size of population exposed to risk, adaptation initiatives by countries concerned and immediate action. ""Developed countries must also allow transfer of eco–friendly technology, particularly to Most Vulnerable Countries (MVCs) and LDCs, at affordable costs. ""These must be kept outside the Intellectual Property Rights Regime. There is also need to establish an International Center for Adaptation, Research and Training under UNFCCC for bolstering capabilities through shared experiences on adaptation."" Shed said climate refugees are increasing by the day in Bangladesh. ""Visible sea level and temperature rise are destroying fish sanctuaries, and livelihood of our fishermen. ""Natural disasters, river bank erosions and salinity intrusion are taking toll on lives, and uprooting farming families in millions,""the prime minister said, describing the current situation of Bangladesh. ""They are swelling our cities and causing social disorders. Fund allocated for development are being diverted for their rehabilitation affecting our MDGs. In fact, climate change is costing us significant share of our GDP."" ""It is estimated that a meter rise in sea level due to global warming would inundate 18% of our land mass, force 20 million climate refugees with 40 million more losing their livelihood by 2050,"" she pointed out. Hasina said to meet climate change challenges, all nations must take immediate action on the basis of the Bali Action Plan on sustainable development for survival. Developed countries must commit to deep and legally binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. ""Indeed Annex One Parties must reduce emissions by 45% by 2020, below 1990 level, allow peaking by 2015, reduce greenhouse gas concentration to 350 ppm by 2100, and limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees or to no more than 2 Degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels."" She rattled off a list of initiatives Bangladesh has taken to adopt to climate changes. At national level, she said, Bangladesh has brought a paradigm shift from relief and rehabilitation, to disaster risk management. ""We have also adopted adaptation and mitigation programs comprising 134 action plans, and designated authorities for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The prime minister said Bangladesh's greenhouse gas contribution is negligible, but is one of its worst victims. Climate change, and increased frequency, ferocity and erratic pattern of natural disasters are causing havoc in Bangladesh. ""The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has ranked Bangladesh as the most vulnerable country to floods, third most to tsunami, and sixth most to cyclones in terms of human exposure. In addition, salinity intrusions in coastal areas are reducing our cultivable land and threatening the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sunderbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site"". Hasina said, an important development is developed countries' realization of their responsibility of unbridled greenhouse gas emissions, which have resulted in global warming and climate change. Important also is their readiness to cut emissions for reversing the present adverse climate trends. ""However, to achieve science recommended levels, political will and bold decisions are needed for investment of resources and technologies"" she said.",
"WASHINGTON, Fri Jun 26, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The US House of Representatives is poised to vote on Friday on one of the most significant environmental bills in history -- a sprawling measure that aims to wean industry off of carbon-emitting fuels blamed for global warming. Democratic leaders were working hard to ensure there were at least 218 votes in the 435-seat House to pass the legislation that is a high priority for President Barack Obama. ""It's all hands on deck,"" one House Democratic aide said of the work lawmakers and the Obama administration were doing to try to ensure passage of the climate change bill. With House Republicans mostly opposed and warning it would hit recession-weary consumers in their pocketbooks with higher prices for energy and other everyday goods, supporters were attempting to counter those arguments. ""It is a jobs bill,"" House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to the hoped-for growth in ""green technologies"" industries. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy agreed, saying, ""Savings from reduced energy use will be reinvested locally, creating a multiplier effect that will generate economic activity and jobs."" Both Pelosi and Obama also framed the climate bill as being important to national security by reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil in favor of developing domestically produced alternative fuels such as wind and solar energy and possibly ""clean coal."" At the core of the 1,200-page bill is a ""cap and trade"" plan designed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels. CHANGES DESIGNED TO WIN FARM-STATE SUPPORT Big polluters, such as coal-fired utilities, oil refiners, steel, paper, cement and glass manufacturers and other companies would receive government permits to emit lower amounts of carbon dioxide each year. Companies that end up with more permits than they need could sell them to companies that had not managed to adequately reduce their harmful emissions. Even if Obama and his fellow Democrats manage to pull off a victory this week, the legislation faces a difficult road in the Senate, where Republicans would have an easier time using procedural hurdles to block the bill. But passage by the House this year would let Obama attend a December international conference on climate change with a major victory in hand. That conference aims to lay out a global approach to dealing with climate change over the next few decades. In her quest to find enough votes for the bill, Pelosi has allowed several changes since it was approved in late May by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Those have included new protections for agriculture interests, resulting in House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson announcing his support -- a move that could also win the support of about two dozen lawmakers from farm states. Supporters of the bill received other breaks this week, including the release of a Congressional Budget Office analysis concluding the bill's impact on average households would be around $170 a year in higher costs -- far below the $3,100 or more Republicans have been warning. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found that three-quarters of the public think the US government should regulate climate-warming greenhouse gases that are being blamed for more severe weather patterns, melting polar ice and threats to animal and plant species. Even so, Pelosi and Obama were struggling to nail down victory, with the president personally courting a handful of undecided Democrats at the White House. Some won't be moved, however. Representative Artur Davis, a Democrat who is considering running for governor of Alabama, told Reuters he would vote against the measure. ""The bill has been improved, but this is the wrong time,"" he said, noting the hard economic times and the lack of commitment from heavy-polluting countries like China and India to significantly reduce their emissions.",
"Maruf Mallick
bdnews24.com environment correspondent Dhaka, June 5 (bdnews24.com)—With the global temperature gradually on the rise, Bangladesh being a tropical delta has also been experiencing comparatively higher humidity and temperature through the past couple of decades, threatening agriculture, climatologists have observed. The country's average temperature recorded an increase of 1 degree centigrade in the past 30 years, which, if continued, may cut the boro harvest per acre by 20 to 50 percent towards 2050, a study of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology said. ""To determine the possible impact of climate change trends on our agriculture in the 2030s, 2050s and 2070s, we researched with the climate data on precipitation, temperature and sunlight collected from SAARC Meteorological Research Centre,"" professor M Ashraf Ali of BUET civil engineering department, the guide of the study, told bdnews24.com. He said temperature changes will very much affect the cropping patterns. For example, the yield of the boro varieties now cultivated will be slashed by 20-50 percent due to higher temperatures. The north-western region will be specially affected, he said and added sowing a bit earlier might save losses to a minimum though. Ali said salinity-tolerant paddy species have been developed by Bangladeshi scientists. Bangladesh Rice Research Institute is working on species which will grow withstanding increasing temperatures too. Dr Nazrul Islam, head of synoptic division of SMRC, told bdnews24.com that Bangladesh would have to adopt region-specific planning to cope with the climate change menaces, because some regions might suffer from drought whereas zones may experience heavier rainfalls resulting in flash floods. The mean temperatures or other values will not be good to work with just at any place. The innovations instead have to be locale specific. The years 2013 and 2014, for example, will experience less rainfall on average, Islam said. Again, 2018 will have five percent more precipitation, the future scenarios indicate. Dr Jiban Krishna Biswas, another BRRI scientist, told bdnews24.com that the agricultural scientists have been working on developing crop varieties to suit the changing climate.",
"Investment in Russia has slowed to a trickle, capital flight has risen and the economy has been sliding into recession since oil prices tumbled last year and the West imposed economic sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. But in a 29-minute speech to a business forum and a question-and-answer session that lasted more than an hour, Putin ignored calls by many investors to unveil new plans to end the downturn. Instead, he warned the West not to meddle in Moscow's affairs and shifted blame for the conflict in Ukraine onto the West, primarily the United States. ""I would like to point out that at the end of last year we were warned - and you know this well - that there would be a deep crisis,"" Putin said in the speech in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg. ""It has not happened. We have stabilised the situation ... mainly because the Russian economy piled up a sufficient supply of inner strength,"" he told an audience including rows of foreign and Russian businessmen and much of the Russian government. Russia's central bank reduced its main interest rate by a percentage point to 11.5 percent on Monday, inflation has slowed from 16.9 percent in April to 15.8 percent in May, and the rouble has risen to around 54 to the dollar after briefly hitting 80 in December. Even though the bank expects the economy to contract by 3.2 percent in 2015, Putin said: ""With us are businessmen, people and new leaders prepared to work for Russia and its development. For this reason we are absolutely certain of success."" State Department spokesman John Kirby disagreed with Putin's assessment, telling a regular news briefing in Washington, DC: ""We know otherwise. We know that the costs have remained high on him and the economy, and that they will continue to do so."" Many US investors stay away Despite Putin's optimism, relations with the West are at their lowest ebb since the Cold War and former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Thursday Russia was still in the ""eye of the storm"". He recommended bringing forward the 2018 presidential election to give Putin a stronger mandate to reform the economy. The chief executives of many Western companies which would usually have attended Russia's annual showpiece economic forum stayed away for the second successive year, though the heads of some major oil companies were present. The US government urged US companies to shun last year's forum, soon after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine, but refrained from doing so this year. ""There is some wariness (about attending) but I think overall, Western companies want to continue working with the Russians because ... the opportunity space is very large,"" said Hans-Paul Buerkner, Chairman of Boston Consulting Group. Ian Colebourne, Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte CIS, said: ""Some of the anxieties perhaps that we were seeing last year have reduced. I mean certainly not gone away by any means, but the tension has been reduced."" Putin has turned to Asia to drum up business since the Western sanctions started biting, and he shared the platform with representatives of several Asian countries. Another guest was Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose country is building ties with Russia as it tussles with its European Union partners over its debt crisis. The two countries signed a memorandum deepening energy ties and one Russian official said Moscow might consider offering Greece financial aid if it requested it. Putin said he did not intend better ties with Asia and Greece to upset other countries, but made clear he believes it is up to the West, not Russia, to change its behaviour if it wants a better geopolitical climate. ""We will not be talked to in the language of ultimatums,"" he said.",
" Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the wife of Qatari Emir, made a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a five-star hotel in Dhaka on Monday morning. During the meeting, they discussed various issues of mutual interest. Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Abul Kalam Azad briefed the newsmen after the meeting. Sheikha Mozah expressed Qatar's interest to extend cooperation in more areas between the two countries including in education, health, and information and communication technology (ICT). She was highly appreciative of Bangladesh's tremendous successes in various fields under the able leadership of Sheikh Hasina, Azad said. The Prime Minister highlighted Bangladesh's remarkable development and progress in various fields including healthcare, education, agriculture and ICT. The issues of climate change and food security were discussed during the call on. Foreign Minister Dr Dipu Moni, Ambassador-at-Large M Ziauddin and Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad were also present on the occasion.",
"The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which a year ago refused to cut supply to retain market share against higher-cost rivals, in its 2015 World Oil Outlook raised its global supply forecasts for tight oil, which includes shale, despite a collapse in prices. Demand for OPEC crude will reach 30.70 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2020, OPEC said, lower than 30.90 million bpd next year. The expected demand from OPEC in 2020 is about 1 million bpd less than it is currently producing. Oil has more than halved its price in 18 months and sank to an 11-year low of $36.04 a barrel this week. The drop has helped to boost oil's medium-term use, although OPEC said the demand stimulus of low crude prices will fade over time. ""The impact of the recent oil price decline on demand is most visible in the short term,"" OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri wrote in the foreword to the report. ""It then drops away over the medium term."" OPEC is increasingly divided over the merits of the 2014 shift to a market-share strategy, which was led by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, and at a Dec 4 meeting failed to agree a production ceiling for the first time in decades. Nonetheless, the report shows that the medium-term outlook - from OPEC's point of view as the supplier of a third of the world's oil - has improved. In the 2014 edition, demand for OPEC crude was expected to fall to 29.0 million bpd by 2020. OPEC said it stopped modelling work on the report in mid-year, since when it has updated its forecast of 2016 non-OPEC supply to a decline. OPEC figures in the report do not include Indonesia, which rejoined in December. The main figures in the report showing OPEC medium-term market share under pressure are unchanged from those in a confidential OPEC report Reuters obtained in November. Resilient shale OPEC initially downplayed the impact of shale oil, although its annual outlook in 2012 acknowledged for the first time that the effect could be ""significant"". Years of high prices - supported by OPEC's former policy of cutting supply – helped make non-conventional oil such as shale viable. In a change of tack from previous reports, OPEC now says many projects work at lower prices too. ""The most prolific zones within some plays can break even at levels below the prices observed in 2015, and are thus likely to see continued production growth,"" the report said. Global tight oil output will reach 5.19 million bpd by 2020, peak at 5.61 million bpd in 2030 and ease to 5.18 million bpd in 2040, the report said, as Argentina and Russia join North America as producers. Last year's estimates were 4.50 million bpd by 2020 and 4 million bpd by 2040. Under another, upside supply scenario, tight oil production could spread to Mexico and China and bring supply to almost 8 million bpd by 2040, OPEC said. As recently as 2013, OPEC assumed tight oil would have no impact outside North America. The report supports the view that OPEC's market share will rise in the long run as rival supply growth fades. OPEC crude demand is expected to reach 40.70 million bpd in 2040, amounting to 37 percent of world supply, up from 33 percent in 2015. OPEC nudged up its medium-term world oil demand forecast, expecting oil use to reach 97.40 million bpd by 2020, 500,000 bpd more than in last year's report. But factors including slower economic growth, the limited share of the crude cost in pump prices and the falling value of some domestic currencies against the dollar will limit the demand response to lower crude prices, OPEC said. By 2040, OPEC expects demand to reach 109.80 million bpd, 1.3 million bpd lower than a year ago, reduced by energy efficiency and climate-change mitigation efforts. Only a gentle recovery in oil prices is seen. OPEC's basket of crude oils is assumed in the report at $55 in 2015 and to rise by $5 a year to reach $80 by 2020.",
"Sure, it isn’t all lexicographic fun and frolic. 2017 saw the triumph of “toxic.” Last year, the winner was “climate emergency.” But then came 2020, and you-know-what. This year, Oxford Languages, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, has forgone the selection of a single word in favour of highlighting the coronavirus pandemic’s swift and sudden linguistic effect on English. “What struck the team as most distinctive in 2020 was the sheer scale and scope of change,” Katherine Connor Martin, the company’s head of product, said in an interview. “This event was experienced globally and by its nature changed the way we express every other thing that happened this year.” The Word of the Year is based on usage evidence drawn from Oxford’s continually updated corpus of more than 11 billion words, gathered from news sources across the English-speaking world. The selection is meant “to reflect the ethos, mood or preoccupations” of the preceding year, while also having “lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” The 2020 report does highlight some zippy new coinages, like “Blursday” (which captures the way the week blends together), “covidiots” (you know who you are) and “doomscrolling” (who, me?). But mostly, it underlines how the pandemic has utterly dominated public conversation, and given us a new collective vocabulary almost overnight. Take, for starters, “pandemic”: Use of the term increased more than 57,000% since last year. “Coronavirus” — a word coined in 1968, but until this year little used outside medical contexts — also surged, breaking away from run-of-the-mill topical words. Back in January, it was neck-and-neck with “impeachment,” then surging because of the proceedings against President Donald Trump. But by April, “coronavirus” had become one of the most common nouns in English, overtaking even stalwarts like “time.” And that, Martin said, is highly unusual, perhaps even unprecedented (another word, by the way, whose usage soared, according to the report). Usually, when a topical word surges, she said, “it becomes more common relative to other topical words, but not relative to words we all say in English all the time.” The Oxford report also highlights words and phrases relating to social justice, including “Black Lives Matter,” “Juneteenth,” “decolonise,” and “allyship,” some of which surged dramatically starting in late May, amid the protests following the killing of George Floyd in police custody. But those increases, while notable, were nowhere near those of pandemic-related terms. And the pandemic may have actually reduced the frequency of other topical words. Last year, Oxford released an all-climate related shortlist, topped by “climate emergency.” But in March, as the pandemic took hold, the frequency of the word “climate” itself abruptly plunged by almost 50%. (Usage has since rebounded a bit, and the report also flagged the emergence of some new climate-related terms, like “anthropause,” proposed in an article in the journal Nature in June to describe the sudden drastic reduction in human mobility, and its impact on the natural world.) The pandemic turned once-obscure public-health terminology like “social distancing” or “flatten the curve” into household terms, and made words and phrases like “lockdown” and “stay-at-home” common. More subtly, it also altered usage patterns for ho-hum words like “remote” and “remotely.” Previously, the most common collocates (as lexicographers call words that appear most frequently together) of “remote” were “village,” “island” and “control.” This year, Martin said, they were “learning,” “working” and “work force.” The Oxford report also highlights increased use of “in-person,” often in retronyms, as lexicographers refer to a new term for an existing thing that distinguishes the original from a new variant. (For example: “land line” or “cloth diaper.”) In 2020, it became increasingly necessary to specify “in-person” voting, learning, worship and so on. Most years, a lot of the fun of Oxford’s shortlist comes from portmanteaus, or blend words, like “mansplain” or “broflake.” But this year, even the neologisms were a bit downbeat. For every “covidiot” and “Blursday,” there was a “twindemic” (the concurrence of two epidemics) and an “infodemic” (an anxiety-arousing explosion of pandemic-related information). So … is it fair to say that in 2020, even the words were, well, kind of terrible? Martin declined to be so negative. But she confessed to some nostalgia for the days of playful, dare-you-to-put-it-in-the-dictionary coinages like “lumbersexual,” from Oxford’s 2015 shortlist. She said she hoped 2021 would bring more “fun, positive words that didn’t seem to hold the weight of the world on their shoulders.”   © 2020 New York Times News Service",
"Of the more than 1.1 billion vaccinations administered globally, the vast majority have gone into the arms of people who live in the wealthiest countries. The United States, where nearly half the population has received at least one dose, sits on millions of surplus doses, while India, with a 9% vaccination rate, shatters records in new daily infections. In New York City, you hear cries of relief at the chance to breathe free and unmasked; in New Delhi, cries for oxygen. The vaccine gap presents an object lesson for climate action because it signals the failure of richer nations to see it in their self-interest to urgently help poorer ones fight a global crisis. That has direct parallels to global warming. Poor countries consistently assert that they need more financial and technological help from wealthier ones if the world as a whole is going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. So far, the richest countries — which are also the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — haven’t come up with the money. More immediately, this year’s vaccine shortages in the nations of the global South could hinder their ability to participate in the United Nations-led climate talks in Glasgow set for November, minimising their voice in critical policy decisions about how to wean the global economy away from fossil fuels. “Equity is not on the agenda,” said Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and a veteran activist for global access to AIDS drugs. “If we can’t do it for the worst pandemic in a century, how are we going to do it for climate change?” Gonsalves is among those who favour waiving drug-company patents for COVID-19 vaccines, sharing technology with vaccine manufacturers and ramping up production around the world. Pharmaceutical industry groups and their backers in the White House have opposed freely sharing intellectual property with rival drugmakers, and some in the administration have argued that vaccine raw materials are needed for production of vaccines for Americans. India has pushed to relax COVID-19 vaccine patents and United States export rules on vaccine raw materials to allow Indian companies to ramp up production. In Brazil, several lawmakers have recently sought to suspend patents for COVID-19 vaccines and medicines. The United States has so far blocked efforts at the World Trade Organization to relax patent rules. Of course, the devastation of the pandemic in countries like Brazil and India can’t be laid at the feet of rich-world patent holders alone. Brazil’s right-wing populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, scorned public health guidance and insisted that lockdowns and mobility restrictions would be a bigger threat to the country’s weak economy. Brazil now has one of the world’s highest death tolls and its economy is in tatters. India’s right-wing populist prime minister, Narendra Modi, who earlier this year boasted of conquering the virus, allowed large religious and political gatherings. And instead of securing vaccines for India’s 1.4 billion citizens, India began exporting Indian-made doses to other countries. Today, India has become the worst-hit country in the world, with close to 380,000 new infections daily over the past seven days. The long running global battle over intellectual property rights to medicines has a parallel to climate action, too, with the Paris climate agreement explicitly calling for the transfer of technology to develop clean energy infrastructure. Developing countries have long said they cannot cope with the effects of climate change if the rich world does not share money and technology, and that problem is only made more acute by the economic collapse brought on by the pandemic and the inequitable access to vaccines. Not least, the consequences of global warming are unequal, hurting the poorest people in poor countries hardest. “If this is the way rich countries conducted themselves in a global crisis — where they took care of their own needs first, took care of companies, did not recognise that this is an opportunity to reach out and demonstrate solidarity — then there’s no good track record for how they will conduct themselves in the face of other global crises, such as the climate crisis, where poorer countries will bear the highest burdens,” said Tasneem Essop, a former government official from South Africa who is now executive director of Climate Action Network, an advocacy group. Money is at the heart of the distrust. The Biden administration promised to double grants and loans to developing countries to $5.7 billion a year, a target that is widely seen as both insufficient and lagging behind the pledges of other wealthy industrialised nations, notably in Europe. Many low- and middle-income countries are carrying so much debt, they say it leaves them nothing left to retool their economies for the climate era. In addition, the rich world has yet to fulfil its promise to raise $100 billion a year that could be used for green projects, whether solar farms or mangrove restoration. “In both cases, it’s about a willingness to redistribute resources,” said Rohini Pande, a Yale University economist. In the case of coronavirus response, it’s about helping vaccine makers around the world manufacture billions of doses in a matter of months. In the case of climate change, huge sums of money are needed to help developing countries retool their energy systems away from dirty sources like coal. The next few weeks will be critical, as world leaders gather for meetings of the seven richest countries, the Group of 7, in June and then of the finance ministers of the world’s 20 biggest economies, the Group of 20, in July. Those meetings will then be followed by the UN-led climate negotiations in Glasgow in November. Those negotiations, known as the 26th Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, or COP26, to a significant degree could determine whether the world can slow down the rate of warming that is already causing Arctic ice melt, worsening wildfires and other crises. At that meeting, countries big and small are set to present more ambitious plans to keep the average global temperature from rising past 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. “We will not have a successful outcome at COP26,” said Christiana Figueres, a former UN climate diplomat who helped negotiate the Paris Agreement in 2015, “unless we have financial commitments that are commensurate with the impacts that many developing countries are feeling.” © 2021 The New York Times Company",
" World Bank has pledged a first phase donation of $100 million to assist Bangladesh in implementing the current fiscal budget, a WB official said Sunday. This first phase assistance will be provided for the government's food security programmes for the 2008-09 fiscal year, the new World Bank vice president for South Asia, Isabel Guerrero, told reporters after a meeting with finance adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam at the Planning Ministry. The WB official said that her organisation would continue its assistance in ensuring food security, as well as extending assistance in tackling the effects of climate change. The donor agency might end up doubling its assistance in the current fiscal year, she added. Guerrero said that the country was currently facing three major challenges: climate change, impact of worldwide inflation and food security. The WB would provide assistance to Bangladesh in all three areas, she said. Finance adviser Mirza Aziz said: ""The WB has ensured assistance in the food security sector to reduce budget deficit."" ""The development organisation also assured its assistance in tackling the losses due to climate change,"" he added. The WB vice president also mentioned an international conference titled Focus Bangladesh, to be held in London on Sept 10. The conference will discuss ways to extend assistance to Bangladesh in facing climate change, including an emphasis on food security. Guerrero arrived in Bangladesh Saturday night after replacing Praful C Patel in the post of WB vice president for the South Asia region. This was her first visit to Bangladesh. Donors recently pledged a total $340 million for food security programmes, with the Asian Development Bank committing half the amount. ""The World Bank, ADB and other donors will provide Bangladesh with food security assistance worth 340 million dollars, of which the ADB slice will amount to 170 million,"" outgoing ADB resident representative Hua Du announced on July 14 ahead of her departure from Dhaka.",
" US President Barack Obama is unlikely to sign climate legislation ahead of a UN global warming meeting in Copenhagen that starts in early December, the White House's top climate and energy coordinator said on Friday. ""We'd like to be (finished with) the process. That's not going to happen,"" Carol Browner said at a conference called the First Draft of History. She said the administration is committed to passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation ""on the most aggressive timeline possible."" Democratic Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer unveiled a climate bill this week but it remained unclear whether it would win the required 60 Senate votes for passage. Even if the bill does pass, the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives would have to reconcile their versions of the bill in committee. That would leave little time for Obama, who has made climate one of his top issues, to sign the bill before 190 nations are due to meet in Copenhagen from early December in hopes of hammering out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The U.S. Congress has been focused on health care legislation, delaying work on the Kerry-Boxer bill. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters later on Friday that Obama would consider attending the climate talks in the Danish capital if heads of state were invited. Browner said she did not know if a global agreement on binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions could be made in Copenhagen. But she had hope for progress saying the world's top leaders recognize global warming is a problem. ""Copenhagen isn't the end of a process, it is the beginning of a process,"" she said. The administration has been pleased with recent talks with China, the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, on tackling climate change, she added. STATES Browner expressed optimism Congress would pass the bill in due time but said the administration has options if that did not happen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could work with states that already have formed carbon markets to extend those programs, said Browner, former head of that agency. ""That may be a way in which you could form a regime using these models that are already out there,"" she said. Ten eastern U.S. states have formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In addition, California and several other states in the West plan to regulate six greenhouse gases from smokestacks and tailpipes beginning in 2012.",
"In one of the strongest criticisms of the COP26 draft deal, Yadav said developing nations had the right to use the remainder of the so-called global ""carbon budget"", or the amount of carbon dioxide the world can release before warming crosses the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold. ""Mr President thank you for your efforts to build consensus,"" he told Britain's COP26 president, Alok Sharma, at a so-called stocktaking plenary. ""I am afraid, however, the consensus remained elusive. ""In such a situation, how can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies when developing counties have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication?"" The issue of subsidies for oil, gas and coal has become a major sticking point at the summit, where negotiators have already missed a Friday deadline to strike an agreement aimed at keeping alive a goal to limit global warming to 1.5C. Earlier, a new draft of the agreement negotiated over the past two weeks called upon countries to accelerate ""efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies"". On Friday, two sources close to the negotiations said China and Saudi Arabia were among a group of countries seeking to prevent the deal in Scotland from including language that opposes fossil fuel subsidies. Yadav also criticised what he described as ""lack of balance"" in the agreement, an argument developing countries have made before when pushing for more money to better adapt their countries to deal with the effects of climate change.",
"Kuwait will also require incoming travellers
to quarantine at home for 10 days unless they receive a negative PCR test for
the coronavirus within 72 hours of their arrival.",
"Sadly, I was right. And as I also warned at the time, Obama didn’t get a second chance; the perceived failure of his economic policy, which mitigated the slump but didn’t decisively end it, closed off the possibility of further major action. The good news — and it’s really, really good news — is that Democrats seem to have learned their lesson. Joe Biden may not look like the second coming of FDR; Chuck Schumer, presiding over a razor-thin majority in the Senate, looks even less like a transformational figure, yet all indications are that together they’re about to push through an economic rescue plan that, unlike the Obama stimulus, truly rises to the occasion. In fact, the plan is aggressive enough that some Democratic-leaning economists worry that it will be too big, risking inflation. However, I’ve argued at length that they’re wrong — or, more precisely, that, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says, the risks of doing too little outweigh any risk of overheating the economy. In fact, a plan that wasn’t big enough to raise some concerns about overheating would have been too small. But how did Democrats get so bold? The answer is that they’ve learned some important things about both economics and politics since 2009. On the economic side, Democrats have finally stopped believing in the debt boogeyman and the confidence fairy, who will make everything better if you slash spending. There was a time when many Democrats — including Obama — accepted the proposition that public debt was a huge problem. They even took seriously warnings from people like Rep Paul Ryan that debt was an “existential threat.” But predictions of an imminent fiscal catastrophe kept being proved wrong, and at this point mainstream economists have become much more relaxed about debt than they were in the past. Some Democrats also used to worry that big spending programmes would hurt the economy by undermining business and investor confidence and conversely that caution would be rewarded with higher private investment. But this doctrine has also been belied by experience; austerity doesn’t instil confidence, it just imposes pain. But if Democrats have learned a lot about economic reality since 2009, they’ve learned more about political reality. Obama came into office sincerely believing that he could reach across the aisle, that Republicans would help him deal with the economic crisis. Despite the reality of scorched-earth opposition, he continued to seek a “grand bargain” on debt. He regarded the rise of the Tea Party as a “fever” that would break in his second term. He was, in short, deeply naive. Many progressives worried that President Joe Biden, who had served in the Senate in a less polarised era, who talks a lot about unity, would repeat Obama’s mistakes. But so far he and his congressional allies seem ready to go big, even if that means doing without Republican votes. One thing that may be encouraging Democrats, by the way, is the fact that Biden’s policies actually are unifying, if you look at public opinion rather than the actions of politicians. Biden’s COIVD-19 relief plan commands overwhelming public approval — far higher than approval for Obama’s 2009 stimulus. If, as seems likely, not a single Republican in Congress votes for the plan, that’s evidence of GOP extremism, not failure on Biden’s part to reach out. Beyond that, Biden and company appear to have learned that caution coming out of the gate doesn’t store up political capital to do more things later. Instead, an administration that fails to deliver tangible benefits to voters in its first few months has squandered its advantage and won’t get a do-over. Going big on COVID relief now offers the best hope of taking on infrastructure, climate change and more later. Oh, and Democrats finally seem to have learned that voters aren’t interested in process. Very few Americans know that the Trump tax cut was rammed through on a party-line vote using reconciliation, the same manoeuvre Democrats are now pursuing, and almost nobody cares. Finally, I suspect that Democrats realise that getting policy right is even more important in 2021 than it was in 2009 — and not just because of the economics. When much of the opposition party won’t acknowledge election results, condones insurrection and welcomes conspiracy theorists into its ranks, you really don’t want to pursue policies that might fall short and thereby empower that party in the years ahead. Put it this way: Debt isn’t and never was an existential threat to our nation’s future. The real existential threat is an illiberal GOP that looks more like Europe’s far-right extremists than a normal political party. Weakening policy in ways that might help that party’s prospects is a terrible idea — and I think Democrats realize that. So this time Democrats are ready to seize the day. Let’s hope it will be enough.   c.2021 The New York Times Company",
"As a presidential candidate, he urged moderation, suggesting that the country was not as progressive as some Democratic rivals insisted. As vice president, he was the White House emissary dispatched to negotiate with unbending Republicans in Congress, at times with too little success and too willing capitulation in the eyes of liberals. And across his decades in the Senate, Biden tended to find his way to the centre of the fray — civil rights debates, judicial hearings, the crime bill, the Iraq War — priding himself on a reputation as the lawmaker most likely to befriend Ted Kennedy and Strom Thurmond in the same lifetime. “For the man who will see, time heals,” Biden said in a generous 2003 eulogy for Thurmond, the avowed South Carolina segregationist whom he saluted for moving to “the good side” eventually. “Time changes.” Now, as Biden prepares to assume the presidency in a divided Washington, he will confront the ultimate test of how much times have changed and how much he has. While Democrats have retained hope that two runoff elections in Georgia might deliver them narrow control of the Senate after all, Biden allies have begun preparing for the prospect that Republicans will rule the chamber. Even an optimistic scenario for him — a 50-50 Senate with Kamala Harris supplying tiebreaking votes as vice president — would place a Biden administration at the mercy of the most centrist Democrats, like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. As a matter of policymaking, this is plainly a significant disappointment for the Biden team, instantly complicating the legislative path for priorities like health care and climate action and raising the chances that even Cabinet confirmations will require serious Republican cooperation. At the same time, it would be difficult to conjure a more consequential proving ground for the arguments Biden has made throughout his career: that compromise is good, that modest progress is still progress and that he is the man to help make it happen. “The vast majority of the 150 million Americans who voted — they want to get the vitriol out of our politics,” Biden said in a speech Friday night. “We’re certainly not going to agree on a lot of issues, but at least we can agree to be civil with one another. We have to put the anger and the demonization behind us.” Friends say the election results seem likely to reinforce Biden’s belief in his own style, if only because he sees no other course available. He recognises that the world has changed, they suggest; he is just less convinced that his worldview should. The realities of a Republican-led Senate might even lend Biden some cover with the left, delaying or at least dulling thorny intraparty tussles over contentious progressive proposals like Supreme Court expansion. “He won’t be so captive to a certain element in his own party,” said Chuck Hagel, who worked with Biden as Barack Obama’s defence secretary and as a Republican senator from Nebraska. “In a way I think that strengthens his hand for his style of governing and how he approaches governing. There’s no other option. He’s got to reach out and work with both parties.” 
 
 Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, gives an address in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Nov. 6, 2020. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times) 

Some younger Democrats have accused Biden of clinging to a bygone — and, they say, forever gone — vision of collaborative government.  Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, gives an address in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Nov. 6, 2020. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)  This was a week, after all, during which some Republican lawmakers indulged or even wholly embraced President Donald Trump’s baseless, dangerous claims of wide-scale election fraud. “Joe Biden will have defeated Donald Trump by millions of votes in a resounding victory,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a group that helped elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives to Congress. “And meanwhile, the Republican Party’s leadership is on television delegitimising the next four years.” Shahid urged Biden not to treat Republicans as good-faith governing partners. “We are just in a very different time now,” he said. But Biden has long held himself out as a figure with uncommon powers of persuasion, one determined to see the good in people and unencumbered by rigid ideology. He has often told audiences of advice he says he received early in his career from Mike Mansfield, the longtime Senate majority leader: “It’s always appropriate to question another man’s judgment,” Biden recalled him saying, in a 2015 address, “but never appropriate to question his motives because you simply don’t know his motives.” The trouble for Biden now is that Republican motives and incentives will almost certainly run counter to his much of the time. When Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, last faced a Democratic White House — the one in which Biden served — he said explicitly that his goal was to make Obama a one-term president. While Biden maintained a far more cordial relationship with McConnell in those years and has said he would work with the Republican “where we can agree,” he often strained in his 2020 bid to land on a compelling explanation for why a Biden administration would succeed in fostering bipartisanship where an Obama administration could not. His point often seemed to be that he had to try anyway. “We don’t talk to each other anymore,” Biden lamented last year, earning a scolding from some Democrats after warmly invoking the “civility” that defined his relationships with segregationist peers early in his Senate life. But then, this has always been the question for Biden in this campaign: Is he a man for this Washington moment or an old one? Is he too fixated on the latter to understand the former? 
 
 Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) listens during hearings for Judge Robert H. Bork during Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, in Washington, Sept. 18, 1987. Biden has spent his career devoted to institutions and relationships. And those are the tools he will rely on to govern a fractured nation. (Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times) 

The voters, at least, saw fit to find out.  Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) listens during hearings for Judge Robert H. Bork during Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, in Washington, Sept. 18, 1987. Biden has spent his career devoted to institutions and relationships. And those are the tools he will rely on to govern a fractured nation. (Jose R. Lopez/The New York Times)  In interviews, former colleagues seemed split on Biden’s capacity to transcend today’s pervasive partisanship, with some doubtful that the Republican posture would change much even with Trump out of office. “I don’t think it’s transferable,” former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who served with Biden through the 1990s, said of the chamber’s productive tenor in that age. “He was there for eight years under Obama. He knows that the Republicans can be very, very obstructionist if they want to be.” Still, Kerrey added, maybe it was useful to be “a little naive” and make bipartisan overtures regardless, in part to “get public opinion on his side for his big initiatives.” Carol Moseley Braun, a former Democratic senator from Illinois, said that much of Biden’s expertise in Washington power and procedure remained relevant. “He knows the levers of government better than anybody,” she said. She recalled his help in gaming out Senate dynamics in 1993, when she was a freshman senator seeking to block a request to grant the United Daughters of the Confederacy a renewed patent on an emblem with the Confederate battle flag. Of course, some snapshots of compromise and collegiality from Biden’s career around that time have aged poorly with Democrats. Among other reconsiderations, he has expressed regret for the Judiciary Committee’s treatment of Anita Hill at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, when many liberals say Biden, the committee chair, was too deferential to Senate Republicans who subjected Hill to demeaning and invasive questioning. 
 
 Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and his wife, Jill, at the announcement of his candidacy for president in Wilmington, Del., June 9, 1987. Biden has spent his career devoted to institutions and relationships. And those are the tools he will rely on to govern a fractured nation. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times) 

More relevant to Biden’s present mindset, those who know him say, are the Obama years. Their two terms were hamstrung by opposition from Tea Party Republicans who directed their fury at the nation’s first Black president and showed little interest in working with him. None of it caused Biden to abandon his instinct for consensus-building, whether or not such an aim was always possible.  Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and his wife, Jill, at the announcement of his candidacy for president in Wilmington, Del., June 9, 1987. Biden has spent his career devoted to institutions and relationships. And those are the tools he will rely on to govern a fractured nation. (Keith Meyers/The New York Times)  “It tested his faith in that kind of thinking,” said Matt Teper, a top speechwriter for Biden at the time. “But it never manifested itself in any kind of frothy animosity.” Several supporters cited Biden’s pledge this past week to be a president “for all Americans,” the sort of generically hopeful message they say the times demand. In remarks Wednesday, Biden said that once the election passed, the hour would finally come “to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation.” “This won’t be easy,” he said. “I’m not naive.” No one has challenged the first part.   ©2020 The New York Times Company",
"The data, published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science, shows that the oceans have experienced consistent changes since the late 1950s and have gotten a lot warmer since the 1960s, CNN reported. The oceans are heating up much faster than scientists calculated in the UN assessment of climate change released in 2014, the study said. For the new study, scientists used data collected by a high-tech ocean observing system called Argo, an international network of more than 3,000 robotic floats that continuously measure the temperature and salinity of the water. Researchers used this data in combination with other historic temperature information and studies. ""The ocean is the memory of climate change, along with melted ice, and 93 per cent of the Earth's energy imbalance ends up in the ocean,"" said study co-author Kevin Trenberth, part of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. ""Global warming is close to ocean warming, and 2018 will be the warmest year on record, followed by 2017, then 2015. ""Global warming is rearing its head,"" Trenberth said. A warmer ocean causes sea level to rise, bringing problems like dangerous coastal flooding. It leads to the loss of sea ice, heating the waters even further. It can affect the jet stream, allowing cold Arctic air to reach farther south, making winters more intense and endanger the lives of animals that depend on sea ice like penguins and polar bears. A warmer ocean also contributes to increases in rainfall and leads to stronger and longer-lasting storms like Hurricanes Florence and Harvey. Thursday's study fits within other reports like the UN warning in October that humanity has just over 10 years to act to avoid disastrous levels of global warming, CNN said. A US government report in November delivered a similar dire warning that the country could lose hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives by the end of the century due to climate change.",
"In a growing global movement, environmentalists are trying a new legal route to protect the planet - vesting rivers, reefs and threatened habitats with ""rights of nature"" that override the long-held human right to harm. Supporters say they are starting to notch victories and see momentum growing, particularly as the rising effects of climate change spur an openness to untried strategies. Critics call the efforts unwieldy, ineffective - or illegal. Take Toledo, a lake city in the US Midwest whose citizens have worried about the quality of their water since toxic algae seeped from Lake Erie into the city's system five years ago. Stymied residents - fed up with a lack of action - took matters into their own hands this year and voted to give their local water source, the massive Lake Erie, rights to stay clean. “It’s about saying Lake Erie has a legal right to exist, and that’s a right that we get to defend,” said resident Markie Miller. Miller said the 2014 algae outbreak in the world’s 11th-biggest lake left half a million people with no safe water over three stifling summer days. And it turned out that similar outbreaks had gone unchecked for years, a product of agricultural runoff, she said. “That bothered me — we’ve been watching and tracking this problem but not doing anything,” Miller told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. “We should be considering the whole health of the ecosystem, not just the burden on people.” Officials did little, she said, but organisers had heard about an idea that eventually went before voters: recognising Lake Erie as a legal entity, on whose behalf citizens could sue. “We’re working in a system that isn’t designed to allow us to win — it’s designed to regulate and allow harm,” she said. “So the idea behind all of this was that we wanted to change the system.” Ultimately, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which 61% of voters approved in February, would amend the Toledo city charter to state that Lake Erie had the right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve” and to do so free of violation. The effort received no support from the city, Miller said, and has been tied up in legal wrangling ever since. Lawyers for local farmer Mark Drewes called it “an unconstitutional and unlawful assault on the fundamental rights of family farms” that gave the people of Toledo authority over nearly 5 million Ohio residents. A spokesman for the Toledo mayor’s office declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. Other Ohio communities have since tried similar moves, but on July 17, state legislators outlawed all such action, saying: “Nature or any ecosystem does not have standing to participate in or bring an action in any court of common pleas.” 'IS IT THRIVING?' In Western law, the idea that nature has rights dates to the 1970s, when legal scholar Christopher Stone published a touchstone article that was cited in a Supreme Court case. It lay largely dormant until this past decade when the notion regained currency, in the United States and beyond. “It’s certainly having an effect internationally,” said Jay Pendergrass, a vice president at the Environmental Law Institute, a Washington think tank. “It’s accelerated in terms of the countries and places that are saying this is an important legal principle that they’re going to act on.” Bolivia and Ecuador have model “rights of nature” laws — the issue is even in the latter’s constitution. India has recognised rights on the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, while New Zealand has a similar agreement on the Whanganui river. In July, Bangladesh recognised all rivers in the country as having legal rights. Advocates want to use rights law to address some of the world’s worst cases of environmental destruction — be it the decaying Great Barrier Reef or the melting Himalayan glaciers. Seven countries have “rights of nature” laws, said Shannon Biggs, co-founder of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature, which runs 'tribunals' where judges hear cases on fracking, indigenous land rights and more. “Is that ecosystem regenerating itself? Is it thriving? Those are the benchmarks,” she said of the tribunal’s decisions. It also upends long-held ideas about the rights that come with a land title. As Biggs said: “Property ownership isn’t a permission slip to destroy the ecosystem.” While the tribunals’ decisions are not binding, Biggs points to a recent case that she said had helped halt construction of a proposed highway through the Bolivian rainforest. Proponents say word is spreading far and wide, influencing distant courts and guiding countries that lack their own laws. Mari Margil, associate director at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) - a player in several key pushes to win rights of nature - pointed to a 2016 Colombian suit over the Amazon as a case in point. ""Their own environmental laws weren’t able to offer protection,” Margil said, so the court sought outside precedent. “For the first time, they declared that an ecosystem in Colombia has rights,” she said, “and they did that without their own rights of nature law.” INDIGENOUS IMPETUS Although novel in the West, this idea has long roots in indigenous communities, be it Ecuador, Bolivia or 36 US areas, including tribal communities, with similar laws, said Biggs. “We lived within the natural law” generations ago, said Casey Camp-Horinek, a councilwoman for the Ponca tribe in Oklahoma. “We didn’t separate ourselves from nature.” Today, Camp-Horinek said, the tribe feels under threat from the energy industry: hit by water pollution, health problems and thousands of small earthquakes she links to nearby fracking. With a sense that US law had failed to offer protection, Camp-Horinek said, the tribe in 2017 created a rights of nature statute and resolved to prosecute in Ponca court those who “dishonour” those rights in tribal territory. In December, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota established legal rights not for a landscape but for a product of their declining landscape - wild rice, a grain central to tribal identity that needs clean water to grow. “It’s susceptible to a lot of things in the environment, and we believe it’s in decline because of poor maintenance,” said tribal attorney Frank Bibeau. “So we have to step in.” TOOL OR SYMBOL? CELDF’s Margil compared securing the rights of nature to sweeping social movements, such as ending slavery or securing women’s right to vote, both of which began locally. Yet achievements are thin, said Mihnea Tanasescu, a fellow in political science at Vrije University in Brussels. He knows of just two cases, both in Ecuador - and suggested 'rights of nature' was used only when it suited the government. He also criticised many laws as too broad and declarative - with the result that nobody is pinned into action or punished. “It is too early to say whether (rights of nature laws) are achieving things that we couldn’t otherwise,” Tanasescu said by email, but said they must be as specific as possible to succeed. Laws lacking a specific penalty risk failing, agreed Kieran Suckling, founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, a US advocacy group. Suckling said he likes the idea of giving nature rights but wants litigation that “defines these rights to be real, prescriptive and, in many cases, limiting. If your law doesn’t prescribe or limit, it’s just symbolic.”  ",
"The world's most prestigious political accolade will be unveiled on Oct 8. While the winner often seems a total surprise, those who follow it closely say the best way to guess is to look at the global issues most likely to be on the minds of the five committee members who choose. With the COP26 climate summit set for the start of November in Scotland, that issue could be global warming. Scientists paint this summit as the last chance to set binding targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions for the next decade, vital if the world is to have hope of keeping temperature change below the 1.5 degree Celsius target to avert catastrophe. That could point to Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, who at 18 would be the second youngest winner in history by a few months, after Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai. ""The committee often wants to send a message. And this will be a strong message to send to COP26, which will be happening between the announcement of the award and the ceremony,"" Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told Reuters. Another big issue the committee may want to address is democracy and free speech. That could mean an award for a press freedom group, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Without Borders, or for a prominent political dissident, such as exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya or jailed Russian activist Alexei Navalny. A win for a journalism advocacy group would resonate ""with the large debate about the importance of independent reporting and the fighting of fake news for democratic governance,"" said Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. A Nobel for either Navalny or Tsikhanouskaya would be an echo of the Cold War, when peace and literature prizes were bestowed on prominent Soviet dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Oddsmakers also tip groups such as the World Health Organisation or the vaccine sharing body COVAX, which are directly involved in the global battle against COVID-19. But prize watchers say this could be less likely than might be assumed: the committee already cited the pandemic response last year, when it chose the UN World Food Programme. While parliamentarians from any country can nominate candidates for the prize, in recent years the winner has tended to be a nominee proposed by lawmakers from Norway, whose parliament appoints the prize committee. Norwegian lawmakers surveyed by Reuters have included Thunberg, Navalny, Tsikhanouskaya and the WHO on their lists. SECRETS OF THE VAULT The committee's full deliberations remain forever secret, with no minutes taken of discussions. But other documents, including this year's full list of 329 nominees, are kept behind an alarmed door protected by several locks at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, to be made public in 50 years. Inside the vault, document folders line the walls: green for nominations, blue for correspondence. It is a trove for historians seeking to understand how laureates emerge. The most recent documents made public are about the 1971 prize, won by Willy Brandt, chancellor of West Germany, for his moves to reduce East-West tension during the Cold War. ""The Europe you see today is basically the legacy of those efforts,"" librarian Bjoern Vangen told Reuters. The documents reveal that one of the main finalists Brandt beat out for the prize was French diplomat Jean Monnet, a founder of the European Union. It would take another 41 years for Monnet's creation, the EU, to finally win the prize in 2012.",
"The penalty imposed on the lawyer, Hossam Bahgat, was relatively modest, but the prosecution was just the latest chapter in a legal odyssey that has brought him to near ruin. It began more than five years ago, when the authorities opened an investigation into his activities and subjected him to an open-ended travel ban that he says crippled his career and sent him into depression. On Monday, Bahgat was spared jail time and fined about $650 — an outcome that experts said appeared calculated to serve two purposes: a guilty verdict that would intimidate government opponents into silence while simultaneously presenting a more reasonable face to the audience abroad by not imprisoning him. “It gets harder, it doesn’t get easier,” Bahgat said as he walked out of the courthouse. “They think they can change the rhetoric and leave everything as is. And so far it’s working.” As the host of a major global climate summit next year, COP27, the country’s president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is showing signs of growing increasingly conscious of global opinion when it comes to human rights. But for all the appearance of a softer tone, the reality on the ground in Egypt remains grim for critics of his rule. The conviction of Bahgat, who runs one of the few remaining independent human rights groups in Egypt, followed a series of convictions with harsher penalties than the one imposed on him. In June, Ahmed Samir Santawy, an Egyptian researcher and graduate student of anthropology in Vienna, who was detained during a visit to Egypt and questioned about anti-government posts he had made on social media, was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of spreading false news. And this month, five activists and politicians, including a former member of Parliament, were sentenced from three to five years in prison, also on charges of spreading false news and using their social media accounts to undermine national security. More trials of other researchers, activists and bloggers are expected in coming weeks. Rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of dissidents who have been incarcerated in the past few years, many without a trial, still languish in Egyptian prisons. The continuing trials and jailings of activists underscore the increasingly authoritarian direction the country has taken under the leadership of el-Sissi, who became president in 2014. “I see darkness,” said Mohamed Anwar Sadat, a former head of the human rights committee in Parliament, who has more recently played an informal role mediating between civil society groups and the state. “We thought the trial would bring a better end to these cases and serve as a way out of the crisis, but we’re in shock.” Bahgat, the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, was on trial under a cybercrime law for a Twitter post last year accusing a government official who had presided over the elections authority of overseeing a fraudulent parliamentary election. The official was a judge who had died. Monday’s conviction came shortly after el-Sissi made several announcements that had appeared to suggest the state would ease its stranglehold on political opposition and freedom of expression. In September, he said that Egypt would honour all “obligations toward human rights and fundamental freedoms.” And in October, he declared an end to a 4-year-old state of emergency that had given the government and its security forces sweeping powers to crush dissent and detain citizens. The announcements had led to some hope in Egypt that the country might be adopting a more tolerant approach that would allow civil society groups to operate without police harassment and the continuous threat of detention. Sceptics, however, pointed to the introduction of other laws that strengthened the grip of the authoritarian government, and dismissed el-Sissi's assurances as hollow, made to fend off criticism from the West. “That discourse seemed to signal an opening, but the reality shows the opposite,” said Khaled Ali, a former politician and lawyer who represents some of the activists still on trial. “It’s a huge contradiction.” Going after Bahgat, critics said, is the latest evidence of a state that is not willing to let up on its efforts to quash free speech and the political opposition, often in the name of maintaining order and stability in a region rife with conflict. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there were “issues of concern” in Egypt before the bilateral talks that took place earlier this month. “Making tangible and lasting improvements on human rights is also essential to strengthening our bilateral relationship,” Blinken said, as he highlighted the issues he planned to cover with his Egyptian counterpart during the meetings. First on the list, and before human rights, was regional stability. Bahgat is still embroiled in a separate criminal case against a number of nongovernmental organisations and dozens of their members that the authorities have accused of receiving foreign funding illegally. He came under investigation in 2016 and has since been banned from travel and had his assets frozen. Before Monday’s verdict, 46 human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, issued a statement calling on Egypt to “cease the harassment and persecution” of Bahgat. “This represents the unprecedented state of oppression that we’ve been living under,” said Nasser Amin, a former member in the National Council for Human Rights. “There are no practical or realistic measures that point to any real intention or desire to improve the state of human rights in Egypt.” ©2021 The New York Times Company",
" The prime minister said on Monday he wanted to lower the average age of his cabinet, a remark that could signal a greater role for young and reformist ministers in a team dominated by a socialist old guard. Prime Minister Manmohan's Singh's comments came ahead of a possible cabinet reshuffle before the winter parliament session begins in November. Several elderly and powerful ministers have been criticised for scuttling new thinking in the government, frustrating Singh's efforts toward rapid reforms, like opening up retail to foreign investors, after last year's resounding election victory. ""I would like to reduce the average age of my cabinet,"" Singh was quoted by the semi-official Press Trust of India news agency as saying after the 77-year-old leader met newspaper and television editors in New Delhi. The Congress party-led government's term has seen the rise of some younger figures like Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, who who created a stir last year by suggesting that India could be more flexible in its negotiating stance at the Copenhagen climate change summit. He soon backed down under pressure. Singh's drive for youth is also backed by Rahul Gandhi, 40-year-old son of Congress party head Sonia Gandhi and a likely future prime minister. ""Younger people are more dynamic, they are open to newer ideas and can be more flexible -- all these are things investors will like,"" said DH Pai Panandikar, head of the New Delhi-based private think-tank RPG Foundation. The average age of Singh's cabinet is almost 64 -- old compared with that of Britain at about 51 years or even the United States at just above 57 years. Most ministers heading top ministries are about 70 years old or more. The younger ministers have been in the headlines, for trying to push established norms of policy-framing or even the use of modern technology such as Twitter. But any attempt at building a younger cabinet may mean Singh will only bring in more young faces rather than drop ageing ministers, most of whom remain powerful. He may give more responsibilities to incumbent junior ministers who are young.",
" Germany's Social Democrats have leaned to the left ahead of a party congress starting on Friday to win back voters angry at painful economic reforms. The SPD's support has slumped below 30 percent and chairman Kurt Beck, after months of criticism of weak leadership, pounded his fist on the table last week and put forward proposals to change a pillar of the coalition government's ""Agenda 2010"". Beck's plan to extend the length of jobless benefits for older workers to 24 months is not a major shift but it cheered the SPD's left wing which has felt ignored in the SPD's coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats. Beck will likely win a comfortable majority for the proposal from the congress in Hamburg, where 525 delegates will also vote on Beck and three deputy chairs who are all running uncontested. The government's plans to partially privatise the railways and Germany's participation in a peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan are also key themes at the three-day meeting. Extending jobless benefits was an about-face for the SPD that adopted reform policies favourable to business under ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder four years ago. They have since suffered a string of electoral defeats as a result. Beck, a centrist and the SPD's likely candidate for chancellor in 2009, says the SPD is fed up with Merkel's CDU grabbing the glory for the coalition's achievements. ""Merkel and the conservatives even try to claim credit for the accomplishments of SPD ministers,"" said Beck. ""That's not good for the coalition's climate. ""There's been a lack of fairness,"" the 58-year-old, a trained electrician, added in an interview with the Neue Presse newspaper. ""It's a mistake and endangers the ability of the coalition to function."" Merkel's conservatives criticised the shift left and Beck's complaints about the climate in the coalition. It is far from clear if his plan to extend jobless benefits will become law. Manfred Guellner, managing director of the Forsa polling institute, said Beck's change of stance is going down well with the party's shrinking membership but will turn mainstream voters off. The SPD has, however, recovered slightly in recent polls. ""Beck has decided to satisfy the party's soul by rolling backwards to the left,"" Guellner said. ""But it's unlikely to help them with the electorate."" Guellner said the SPD needs 20 million votes in 2009 if it wants to beat the CDU. By shifting left, he said it will keep the 11 million core SPD voters happy but lose the middle ground. ""An SPD renaissance under Beck seems unlikely,"" he said.",
" Leaders from some of the largest Western powers rallied support Tuesday behind a US plan to build a more balanced global economy and warned against returning to business as usual once recovery takes hold. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there was substantial backing among the Group of 20 nations for creating a new framework to shrink surpluses in export-rich countries such as China and boosting savings in debt-laden nations including the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also supported the idea of a rebalanced global economy, to be monitored by the International Monetary Fund, saying world growth can no longer hinge solely on ""overextended"" US consumers. But French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said she feared growing signs of economic recovery could undermine commitments to rework and regulate the world financial order. ""We are currently seeing, notably in the United States, sufficient signs of recovery that numerous players are saying ... let's go back to our old habits and carry on with our business as we did in the past,"" she told a news conference. Brazil, one of the emerging heavyweights of the developing world, spoke out against the US rebalancing proposal, saying the IMF already played a role in monitoring economies. ""The way it is, this proposal is obscure and we do not agree with it,"" Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters in New York. The G20 club of rich and developing economies holds a two-day leaders summit in Pittsburgh from Thursday and the United States wants to see rebalancing high on the agenda. Also up for discussion are the issues of how to nurture an economic recovery, rein in risk-taking by banks and bankers, and save the planet from global warming. It is the third leaders' meeting since the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers a year ago and they are moving now from ways to end the worst global recession since the 1930s to discussing ways to prevent it happening again. The G20 wants to figure out how to build a lasting economic recovery which is less prone to painful boom-bust cycles. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the world's biggest economy was at the ""beginnings"" of a recovery, and the key was to ensure that the recovery was self-sustaining. ""To make sure that as we recover from this crisis we are laying the seeds for a more balanced, more sustainable recovery: That is the agenda,"" Geithner said. BROAD SUPPORT US plans for a more balanced global economy could meet resistance from China, which is unlikely to agree to reforms that would threaten its growth, analysts said. It was also unclear whether Germany and Japan, two other big exporters, would back the proposal. But Britain's Brown, currently chairman of the G20, said there was broad backing. ""I have been talking to many countries in Asia, as well as in Europe, and I have been talking to President Obama and others, and I believe that there is support for that framework,"" he said. ""We are looking at how we can put in place for the future the mechanism or path that can lead us to making decisions about better ways of creating growth."" A document outlining the US position ahead of the summit said big exporters should consume more while debtors like the United States ought to boost savings. The G20 must also address the sensitive issue of reforming the IMF, to win full support from emerging economies, said Ouseme Mandeng, head of public sector investment advisory at Ashmore Investment Management in London. ""They are the two sides of the same coin,"" he said. ""There are opportunities to present a new vision in the post-crisis world. I'm not sure if they have the courage to do so."" China and other fast-growing nations are clamoring for more say at the IMF and other international financing institutions. The United States has backed a plan to shift 5.0 percent of voting power to certain emerging economies from rich nations. However, Europe has yet to fully support that proposal and the emerging economies have pushed for a 7.0 percent shift. In an interview with Reuters, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said European countries ""understand it is time to move"" on reforming voting power in the IMF, and he expected China to be the biggest beneficiary. BANKING AND CLIMATE CHANGES Curbing huge pay packages for bankers is also high on Europe's to-do list for the summit. At a meeting of G20 finance leaders in London this month there was general agreement on the need to change the risk-taking culture of banks to ensure employees are not rewarded for making risky investments that later collapse. G20 officials also concurred that there should be tighter restrictions on how much capital banks must hold to absorb losses when loans go bad, but offered no specifics. Britain's top financial regulator said the G20's regulation coordination arm, the Financial Stability Board, would ask leaders to back its guidelines on how banks must structure pay policies to avoid big, risky bets by traders. The FSB will state ""it is essential that priority use of high profits should be to rebuild the capital needed to support lending, allow official measures to be removed, prepare institutions to meet higher capital requirements, and that bonus and dividend policies should be consistent with this priority,"" Financial Services Authority Chairman Adair Turner told bankers in London. On climate change, rifts remain between rich and developing economies over how quickly to cut carbon dioxide emissions and who should foot the bill. However, there were signs of progress Tuesday as Chinese President Hu Jintao announced goals to slow growth in his country's emissions. The G20 is under pressure to show progress before 190 nations gather in Copenhagen in December to try to reach a deal to slow climate change.",
"Typhoon Lingling struck the island of Jeju and southern port cities overnight, knocking out power and damaging buildings as it moved north at 49 kph (30 mph), the Ministry of Interior and Safety said in a statement. A 75-year-old woman was killed in Boryeong, southwest of Seoul, and at least two other people were injured. A total of 124 flights were cancelled, the ministry said. The storm is expected to pass by the capital Seoul and reach North Korea by about 6pm local time (0900 GMT), a ministry official told Reuters. The centre of the typhoon is expected to pass over the North Korean capital Pyongyang, according to a tracking map by the Korea Meteorological Administration posted on its website. North Korea held an emergency meeting on Friday under the guidance of leader Kim Jong Un to discuss ""urgent emergency measures to cope with the typhoon,"" state media reported on Saturday. Kim criticised senior officials for being ""helpless against the typhoon, unaware of its seriousness and seized with easygoing sentiment,"" the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, adding that Kim called for full emergency measures. KCNA said in a separate statement that government officials and the armed forces were preparing to ""urgently dispatch forces to damaged areas by using various kinds of alarm and communications means, and secure relief goods and building equipment and materials and mobilise transport"".",
"About 80% of the trees razed each year in the tropics are cleared to make space for growing cocoa, soybeans, palm oil and cattle that are the raw materials for chocolate, cereal, leather seats and thousands of other products. Ten years ago, some of the world’s largest companies, including Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Walmart and Mars, pledged to change their practices to help end deforestation by 2020. Some, like Nestle and Carrefour, went even further, saying they would eliminate deforestation from their supply chains altogether. The 2020 deadline arrived, and some companies reported advances toward their goal. No company, however, could say it had eliminated forest destruction from its supply chain. Many others did not even try, said Didier Bergeret, sustainability director for the Consumer Goods Forum, an industry group of more than 400 retailers and manufacturers that organised the pledge. And annual deforestation in the tropics, where trees store the most carbon and harbour the most biodiversity, has lately been on the rise. Do companies know what’s in their supply chains? Many companies that committed to achieving “net zero” deforestation at first assumed the goal could be accomplished by buying from certified sustainable sellers, said Justin Adams, director of the Tropical Forest Alliance, an organisation that helps companies meet their commitments. Looking back, Adams said, that was a naive approach to a complex problem. For one thing, companies have to figure out exactly where their commodities come from. Mars, for example, is one of the world’s largest users of cocoa, which it buys from suppliers like Cargill. But those suppliers buy their cocoa, too, and at the beginning of the chain are the growers, some of whom are small farmers in Ivory Coast, Ghana and elsewhere. By the end of 2020, Mars said that it was able to trace about 43% of its cocoa to specific farms. The company has had better luck mapping its palm-oil supply chain. When it did, it discovered that its oil came from 1,500 palm-oil mills, a number the company described as “far too complex to manage.” It has since reduced that number to 87. Along with a nonprofit organisation called the Earth Equalizer Foundation, it uses satellite imagery to monitor land use on the plantations it sources from to ensure they aren’t cutting down forest. Nestle reported in 2020 that its suppliers of palm oil, pulp, soy, sugar and meat were 90% deforestation-free. The company did some on-the-ground and satellite monitoring, but the determination largely drew on the fact that the commodities came from “low-risk regions” like Europe or the United States, where there is unlikely to be deforestation for products like soy. The company did not include cocoa or coffee in its original goal but said those crops would be part of its next effort to reach zero deforestation in 2025. If companies can’t track a commodity’s origin, they can’t be certain that it was grown without eliminating trees. As The New York Times recently documented, ranchers in Brazil operating on illegally deforested land sold at least 17,700 cattle over 3 1/2 years to intermediaries, who then sold them to giant meatpackers. The original illegal farm did not appear in the supply chain documents. All of these factors make it difficult to rate the success of companies’ efforts. Are there other ways to make a difference? The companies that have voluntarily made progress on this front are in the minority, but some are pushing for these standards to be more widely adopted, and for governments to enact legislation that would force change across the entire industry. Laws and public pressure have already made a difference. Brazil is backsliding now — a result of President Jair Bolsonaro’s aggressive development policies in the Amazon — but just a few years ago, it was being hailed as a conservation success story. Between 2004-12, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 84%. Brazil brought more of the forest under legal protection and stepped up enforcement of illegal logging laws. In 2006, following an uproar from groups like Greenpeace, the Brazilian government also brokered a voluntary moratorium with major soy buyers like Cargill, which significantly reduced deforestation for soy. “What Brazil did to reduce deforestation could happen in other countries, and has happened to some extent in Indonesia,” said David Gibbs, research associate at the World Resources Institute. “But those reductions in deforestation are always potentially temporary and can be reversed.” “So in that way,” he added, “Brazil is both a hopeful tale and a cautionary tale.” In Indonesia, tropical forests and peatlands fell to the palm oil industry, which exploded in response to biodiesel incentives in the US and Europe. The catastrophic environmental damage that followed galvanised new efforts to limit the clearing and burning of forest. Indonesia’s annual deforestation rate is now the lowest it has been in nearly 20 years, according to Global Forest Watch. This striking reversal shows what can happen with enough motivation. But recovering from damage is not nearly as easy as inflicting it. New trees can be planted, but it takes decades for trees to develop the “photosynthetic machinery” needed to sequester carbon at high rates, said Mark Harmon, a forest ecologist at Oregon State University. “It is not an instantaneously renewable resource,” he said. What do promises accomplish? There is cause for hope, said Nadia Bishai of CDP, a nonprofit group that tracks and ranks companies that have the greatest influence on tropical deforestation. In the past, biodiversity was the main argument for preserving tropical forests. But “forests have become central to the climate discussion,” she said. And trees’ carbon sequestering powers motivated European Union rules aimed at curbing deforestation as well as the recent pledge by leaders of more than 100 countries, including Brazil, China and the United States, to end deforestation by 2030. The signatory countries are home to about 85% of the world’s forests, making it the most sweeping agreement yet on forest conservation. “I think we’re a bit more hopeful this time around,” Bishai said. “This collective action is the key for the future.” As companies’ 2010 pledges make clear, a vow is not an outcome. But it can at least point the way. © 2021 The New York Times Company",