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

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

BEIJING Feb (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - China faces acute environmental and resource strains that threaten to choke growth unless the world's second-biggest economy cleans up, the nation's environment minister said in an unusually blunt warning. In an essay published on Monday, Zhou Shengxian also said his agency wants to make assessing projected greenhouse gas emissions a part of evaluating proposed development projects. That could give China's Ministry of Environmental Protection more sway in climate change issues, an area dominated by agencies whose main interest is shoring up industrial growth. Zhou set environmental worries at the heart of China's next phase of economic development -- a theme in focus at the country's annual parliament session starting on Saturday. "In China's thousands of years of civilisation, the conflict between humanity and nature has never been as serious as it is today," Zhou said in the essay published in the China Environment News, his ministry's official newspaper. "The depletion, deterioration and exhaustion of resources and the deterioration of the environment have become serious bottlenecks constraining economic and social development." Zhou's words highlight the policy struggle in China between stoking growth and taming pollution and resource consumption. On Sunday, Premier Wen Jiabao also said the country should aim for slower, cleaner growth. "This is a crucial time for deciding policy, so he's trying to bring more urgency to getting more teeth for his ministry by making people grasp the huge challenges," said Yang Ailun, the head of climate and energy for Greenpeace China, an advocacy group, speaking of Zhou's essay. Chinese officials often promote the need to maintain fast economic growth to pull hundreds of millions of citizens out of hardship. But Zhou said prospects for growth could be threatened unless smoggy skies, polluted rivers and reckless exploitation of mine reserves are taken much more seriously in setting policy. "PRICE TO PAY" "If we are numb and apathetic in the face of the acute conflict between humankind and nature, and environmental management remains stuck in the old rut with no efforts in environmental technology, there will surely be a painful price to pay, and even irrecoverable losses," said Zhou. China is now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities that scientists say are causing global warming. It is the world's biggest polluter and biggest consumer of resources across a range of other measures. In 2009, nearly 20 percent of the length of China's monitored rivers and lakes had pollution worse than Grade 5, making the water officially unfit for even irrigating crops, according to government statistics. To double the size of the economy between 2000 and 2020 and keep environmental conditions at levels met in 2000, China will have to improve its efficiency in using resources by 4 to 5 times compared to 2000 levels, said Zhou, citing findings of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China aims to save 75 terawatt hours of power per year, the equivalent of 75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, by promoting energy-efficient air-conditioners and other home appliances. The government plans to raise the market shares of such appliances to over 30 percent by 2012 by subsidizing sales, the National Development and Reform Commission said. The appliances include air-conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, flat screen television sets, microwave ovens, rice cookers, electromagnetic ovens, water heaters, computer screens and electrical motors. China is widely believed to be the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the gas from fossil fuels, industry, farming and land clearance that is accumulating in the air, trapping more solar radiation and threatening to overheat the globe. It is drafting a long-term plan for climate change that will focus on raising energy efficiency, developing clean-coal technology and expanding carbon-absorbing forests. The commission has detailed the first batch of makers and types of air conditioners whose sales would be subsidized by 300 yuan ($44) to 850 yuan each by Beijing, a move which would alone save up to 6 terawatt hours of power a year if their market share rises to more than 30 percent from the current 5 percent. A terawatt equals one trillion watts. China has yet to detail subsidies for other household goods. Air conditioning consumes 20 percent of China's power and accounts for nearly 40 percent of power use during peak demand time in summer in cities, according to the commission. China produced more than 70 million air conditioners in 2008 and over 40 percent of them were exported. It also produced nearly 200 gigawatts in electrical motor power last year and over a quarter were shipped abroad. Electrical motors and the systems they drive consume 60 percent of China's power production but less than 2 percent of the motors sold on the domestic market are energy efficient.

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

The Berchtesgadener Land district in Bavaria, which borders Austria, became the latest region to be hit by record rainfall and ensuing floods. Sunday's death brought Germany's death toll to 156 in its worst natural disaster in almost six decades, and the European toll to 183. About 110 people have been killed in the worst-hit Ahrweiler district south of Cologne. More bodies are expected to be found there as the flood waters recede, police say. The European floods, which began on Wednesday, have mainly hit the German states of Rhineland Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia as well as parts of Belgium. Entire communities have been cut off, without power or communications. In North Rhine-Westphalia at least 45 people have died, while the death toll in Belgium stood at 27. The German government will be readying more than 300 million euros ($354 million) in immediate relief and billions of euros to fix collapsed houses, streets and bridges, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "There is huge damage and that much is clear: those who lost their businesses, their houses, cannot stem the losses alone," he said. There could also be a 10,000 euro short-term relief payment for small businesses affected by the impact of the floods as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told the paper. Scientists have long said that climate change will lead to heavier downpours. But determining its role in these relentless rainfalls will take several weeks to research at least, scientists said on Friday. NO ELECTRICITY In Belgium, which will hold a national day of mourning on Tuesday, water levels were falling on Sunday and the clean-up operation was underway. The military was sent in to the eastern town of Pepinster, where a dozen buildings have collapsed, to search for any further victims. Tens of thousands of people are without electricity and Belgian authorities said the supply of clean drinking water was also a big concern. Emergency services in the Netherlands remained on alert as water levels are still high throughout the southern province of Limburg where tens of thousands of people have been evacuated. In the southern part of Limburg, water levels in the Meuse river have dropped slightly, making dyke inspections possible. If the structures pass muster, people could be allowed to return home, the regional safety board said. "After the inspection we will speak with the affected towns that are considered safe enough," Hub Haenen of the regional safety board told local L1 radio. He added that a return would be very gradual, possibly even street by street. Tens of thousands of residents in the region have been evacuated in the past three days, while soldiers, firefighters and volunteers helped enforce dykes. The Netherlands has so far only reported property damage from the flooding and no dead or missing people. In Hallein, an Austrian town near Salzburg, powerful flood waters tore through the town centre on Saturday evening as the Salzach river burst its banks, but no injuries were reported. Many areas of Salzburg province and neighbouring provinces remain on alert, with rains set to continue on Sunday. Western Tyrol province reported that water levels in some areas were at highs not seen for more than 30 years. Parts of Switzerland remained on flood alert, though the threat posed by some of the most at-risk bodies of water like Lake Lucerne and Bern's Aare river has eased.

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

WASHINGTON, Jul 29, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States and China laid out a shared vision on Tuesday of how to lead the global economy out of recession but had little to show diplomatically from two days of talks on topics from climate change to North Korea. At the conclusion of the first round of what will be an annual "Strategic and Economic Dialogue," the countries agreed to take steps to rebalance the global economy and maintain stimulus spending until economic recovery is secured. They also signed a memorandum on climate change, energy and the environment without setting any firm goals, and pledged their support for free trade. "Laying this groundwork may not deliver a lot of concrete achievements immediately but every step on this path to create confidence and understanding is a very good investment," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a news conference. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment was that both countries agreed they need to reconfigure their economies so that China is less reliant on exports for growth and the United States resumes saving and investment to stop the boom-and-bust cycle. "China will rebalance toward domestic demand-led growth," US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said, while the United States had already learned the "importance of living within our means as a country and at a household level." Clinton lauded the discussions as a symbol of 30 years of progress between two countries with a history of deep diplomatic and ideological divides. Yet there were signs that the two sides were still struggling to bridge the gap. On issues from North Korea to human rights, Clinton said little more than that the two sides had talked. "Human rights is absolutely integral to the strategic and economic dialogue," she said. "We discussed a number of human rights issues, including the situation in Xinjiang, and we expressed our concerns." Clashes broke out in July between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese in western China's Xinjiang province, and around 50 Uighurs chanted slogans outside the White House on Tuesday demanding freedom and democracy. CURRENCY PROBLEM Washington at least publicly steered clear of one of the thorniest issues -- urging China to allow its currency to rise faster. However, Beijing did take a sharper tone, warning against letting the dollar slide too far. "As a major reserve currency-issuing country in the world, the United States should properly balance and properly handle the impact of the dollar supply on the domestic economy and the world economy as a whole," Vice Premier Wang Qishan said earlier on Tuesday. The United States would like to see a stronger yuan to help correct trade imbalances, but China remains dependent on its export sector, and would stand to lose from a dollar fall that would reduce the value of its substantial dollar holdings. "The currency issue is to some extent being back-burnered because that's a fundamental problem," Stanley Marcus, a trade expert with law firm Bryan Cave, told Reuters Television. "I think the administration's decided at least for now to subsume (currency) under some larger issues like economic reform, financial reform, and other important issues." With the United States trying to claw its way out of the longest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s and China suffering from a steep drop in demand for exports, a key focus of the talks was on restoring economic stability. Indeed, the economy seemed to be the spot where they found the most consensus, with both sides agreeing to reduce trade imbalances and maintain stimulus spending until economic recovery is assured. The United States is China's best customer for exports, and China is the United States' biggest creditor, holding $802 billion of US Treasury securities as of May 31. Washington needs Beijing to keep buying its debt to finance a budget deficit estimated to hit $1.8 trillion this year. People's Bank of China chief Zhou Xiaochuan said Beijing wanted to make sure the US economy was well on its way to recovery before China withdrew its stimulus spending, which has been widely credited with helping stabilize the world economy. "If we are confirmed that the recovery of the US economy is established and stable, if we see that the United States starts to exit its expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, then China will see what it will do at that time," he said. Obama turned to sports to try to find common ground, quoting Chinese basketball star Yao Ming in his opening statement on Monday. He also presented the Chinese delegation with a signed basketball on Tuesday, China's State Councilor Dai Bingguo said. Dai called the US-China dialogues successful and said the topics discussed included virtually "everything except for going to the moon."

US President Barack Obama on Saturday defended an international climate accord reached in Copenhagen as an "important breakthrough" but stressed that it was only a step toward curbing global carbon emissions. "For the first time in history, all of the world's major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action on the threat of climate change," Obama said in a statement after returning from the Danish capital overnight. United Nations climate talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement that fell well short of the conference's original goals after prolonged negotiations failed to paper over differences between rich nations and the developing world. Obama, who brokered an accord at the last moment with China, India, Brazil and South Africa to avoid coming home empty handed, acknowledged that talks had been tough. "After extremely difficult and complex negotiations, this important breakthrough laid the foundation for international action in the years to come," he said, speaking from a snow-bound White House as a winter storm blanketed Washington. "Going forward, we are going to have to build on momentum that we established in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time," Obama said. Critics complain the explicit deal struck in Copenhagen to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius provided no details of how this goal would be reached, and that the emission cuts that were promised would be insufficient to get there. Obama has staked significant political capital in pressing for climate change in Copenhagen while simultaneously pushing for healthcare reform back home, and he must contend with an increasingly climate-sceptical American public. A Washington Post-ABC News opinion poll published on Friday found 45 percent of those surveyed approved of his handling of global warming, down from 54 percent in June and 61 percent in April. Obama's broader approval ratings have also dipped as Americans contend with double-digit unemployment as the economy recovers from its worst recession in 70 years, and he sought on Saturday to link job creation with his climate policies. "At home, that means continuing our efforts to build a clean energy economy that has the potential to create millions of new jobs and new industries," he said. "If America leads in developing clean energy, we will lead in growing our economy and putting our people back to work."

If any country can claim to be pitched on the global warming front line, it may be the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland. On a purely physical level, this land of icecaps and volcanoes and home to 300,000 people is undergoing a rapid transformation as its glaciers melt and weather patterns change dramatically. But global warming is also having a profound effect on Iceland economically -- and in many ways the effects have actually been beneficial. Warmer weather has been a boon to Iceland's hydroelectric industry, which is producing more energy than before as melting glaciers feed its rivers. Climate change, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, has also focused attention on Iceland's energy innovations and created demand for its ideas and expertise in fields such as geothermal energy and fuel technology. Scientists from Africa to the Americas are exploring what Icelandic universities and energy researchers are up to. And foreign companies are teaming up with the small island's firms. Two-thirds of electricity in Iceland is already derived from renewable sources -- its plentiful rivers and waterfalls and the geothermal heat that warms 90 percent of Iceland's houses. Some observers say forward-thinking comes naturally on an island where climate change can already be seen in thawing ice and balmier winters. "People are already now planning for a future that will be different from the past," said Tomas Johannesson, a geophysicist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office. "We are in an unusual situation that many of the changes that are happening are maybe more beneficial than for the worse," he added. The increase in waterflow in the island's rivers, because of melting glaciers, is one example. "If you compare the hydrological data about how much energy is in the water for the last 60 years, and then the last 20 years, you see that there is an increase," said Thorstein Hilmarsson of the national power company Landsvirkjun. This extra energy is needed in an economy driven partly by power-intensive industries such as aluminium smelting. But Icelanders know that climate change is not a simple economic equation. "If something serious happens to other nations, this can easily have an effect here. So people are not exactly welcoming these changes," Johannesson said. CREATIVE JUICES Carol van Voorst, U.S. ambassador to Iceland, has made the promotion of energy ventures in Iceland part of her mission. "We're on the ground, we know the players, and we can be helpful in making the links and connections," she said. "You quickly notice how creatively Iceland is using its natural resources," she said. Among the initiatives that have caught her attention are a deep-drilling project to harness underground energy, technology to convert carbon dioxide into fuel and hydrogen-powered rental cars, which went into use in Reykjavik last year. The Iceland Deep Drilling Project, a multi-national venture including Landsvirkjun, will start drilling a hole this year between 4 and 5 km (2.5 and 3 miles) deep to learn about "supercritical hydrous fluid" at temperatures of between 400 and 600 degrees Celsius (750 and 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit). It might take decades to learn how to harness the energy, but it could radically change the way power is generated. Iceland is also pushing hard to become the first nation to break free from the constraints of fossil fuel -- this year, the first hydrogen-equipped commercial vessel was due to start sailing around Reykjavik. Iceland hopes to convert its entire transport system to hydrogen by 2050. RAIN NOT SNOW The flip side of this innovation, however, is concern. Last October, Nordic nations, including Iceland, sounded the alarm about a quickening melt of Arctic ice and said the thaw might soon prove irreversible because of global warming. The U.N. Climate Panel says temperatures are rising more rapidly in the Arctic because darker water and land soak up more heat than reflective ice and snow. Nonetheless, even with higher temperatures, it could take centuries for Iceland's glaciers to melt, the national energy company says. The Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland is Europe's largest and is big enough to cover all of Iceland with 50 metres (160 ft) of water. There are more immediate signs of climate change, though, and these are worrying Iceland's residents. This winter, Reykjavik experienced double-digit swings in temperature, as the normally sub-zero conditions suddenly turned balmy. The capital was flooded. "I don't think it's even a question," said Asta Gisladottir, asked whether the freak weather was caused by global warming. "We're so close to the North Pole," the 36-year-old hotel worker said. "It's just in our backyard." Gisladottir recalled winters during her childhood in the village of Siglufjordur, on the island's north, as very different. Then there was snow from November to April. Now, it is mostly rain. Geophysicist Johannesson, who has studied climate change since the early 1990s, said the evidence was not just anecdotal. "What we see here is an overall warming from a rather cold 19th century," he said. "

While the EU plans to impose carbon dioxide (CO2) taxes on imports of energy intensive goods, critics say the world's biggest gas importer is not targeting suppliers of the fuel hard enough in its methane strategy due to be unveiled this year. This comes despite an unlikely alliance of big oil firms, environmental activists, investors and researchers pushing the bloc to plug this hole in its methane plan and punish gas producers that fail to rein in their emissions. While the EU regulates methane emissions from gas burned in the bloc, it doesn't regulate emissions during the production or transport of gas imported by Europe. That means those emissions don't show up in the tally of greenhouse gases linked to Europe's gas-fuelled power plants, nor are they are counted in the EU's climate goals. The draft methane plan, which may be subject to change, says the European Commission will propose legislation requiring gas firms to better monitor and report methane emissions, but it does not include setting methane standards for imported gas. The Commission, the European Union's executive, declined to comment on unpublished documents. Campaigners say the omission of imported emissions risks undermining the EU's climate policy as methane is 100 times more potent than CO2 when it first goes into the atmosphere. "Setting clear product standard requirements on all gas sold in the EU's internal market is essentially a global climate opportunity with significant potential to curb global methane emissions from oil and gas quickly," said Poppy Kalesi, global energy policy director at the Environmental Defence Fund (EDF). It teamed up with seven European oil firms - BP, Eni , Equinor, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell , Total and Wintershall DEA - to ask Brussels to address what they see as a blind spot in its climate plans. Sources familiar with the Commission's thinking say it has not shifted its position on regulating methane emissions from imported gas since compiling the draft. Gas production is associated with emissions of methane, which leaches into the atmosphere from leaky pipelines and infrastructure at oil and gas fields. The EU imported about 80% of the gas it consumed last year. Almost three-quarters of its imports came from Russia, Norway and Algeria, with Russia's Gazprom by far the biggest non-EU supplier. Methane is 100 times more powerful than CO2 as a global warming gas, but it degrades while CO2 remains in the atmosphere. Over a 20-year period, methane is 86 times more powerful though that drops to 34 times over 100 years. SATELLITE FINDINGS Analysis of satellite imagery and other aerial surveillance over the past few years has shown that oil and gas industry leaks are responsible for far more of the methane in the atmosphere than previously thought. The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, whose members have 30 trillion euros ($34 trillion) of assets under management, wrote to the Commission in May asking it to propose rules this year to ban gas with a methane leakage rate in upstream supply chains of more than 0.25% by 2025. US lobby groups EDF and the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Florence School of Regulation research centre and the European oil companies also wrote to the Commission in May, recommending "a methane intensity-based performance standard applied to the upstream segment of the supply chains from 2025". Their letter called for: "A procurement standard to be applied from 2025 to incentivise the continual reduction of the methane emissions intensity of the gas entering domestic and import supply chains." A Commission official said by focusing its proposals on monitoring and reporting emissions, the aim was to get a handle on the issue. "The main thing is to get a good picture of where the methane is actually coming from," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Campaigners fear this approach could delay plans to regulate imported emissions and say there is sufficient data to design such policies. Andris Piebalgs, professor at the Florence School of Regulation and a former EU energy commissioner, said any indication that Brussels will integrate international methane emissions into its policy would be a substantial step forward. "Because at this stage, it's not ... much discussed at all." For European oil and gas firms, tackling methane emissions could help them make the case that gas can play a role in Europe's shift to "net zero" emissions by 2050 at a time when investors are increasingly focused on their climate performance. European oil companies that have invested to curb their own methane emissions may also be wary about being undercut by producers outside the bloc who haven't done the same. BENEFIT WIPED OUT Gas is far from being a zero emissions fuel but it produces roughly half the CO2 emissions of coal when burned in power plants and is seen by Eastern European countries such as Poland as a transition fuel to wean themselves off coal. But methane leaks can quickly dent this argument. "When you get to about 3% leakage, the entire benefit of gas as a lower-emissions fuel is entirely wiped out. So we're operating in a relatively small window of gas actually being better than coal," said Frank Jotzo, director of the centre for climate economics and policy at Australian National University. The International Energy Agency says a third of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry could be saved at no net cost, as the captured gas could be sold. However, EU methane standards for gas imports could rile large suppliers, especially if it restricts their access to the European market. "As 40% of EU gas imports stem from Russia, dealing with methane emissions means dealing with Gazprom," said Esther Bollendorff, EU gas policy coordinator at the non-profit Climate Action Network, referring to Russia's state-owned gas producer. Gazprom is Europe's largest gas supplier and owns pipelines transporting the fuel to Europe. Last year, it sold almost 200 billion cubic metres of gas to countries in Europe and Turkey. In a June 10 statement about emissions, Gazprom estimated that 0.29% of the 679 billion cubic metres of gas it moved through its pipelines escaped as methane in 2019 and said this corresponded to the best global practices. Some observers said the slump in EU gas consumption this year during coronavirus lockdowns meant the bloc was less dependent on gas suppliers and was in a stronger position to push them to tackle methane emissions. "The EU has the power now," said Lisa Fischer, senior policy adviser at the climate change think-tank E3G.

European Union leaders reaffirmed ambitious goals to combat climate change on Friday but stressed they must be affordable for governments and industry at a time of economic downturn and market turmoil. A draft final statement at a two-day summit, obtained by Reuters, called for cost-effective and flexible mechanisms to reach energy and climate policy objectives, adding the tell-tale phrase "so as to avoid excessive costs for member states". The leaders pledged to enact the necessary laws within a year to meet their goals of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and increasing the share of wind, solar, hydro and wave power and biofuels in their energy mix by the same date. But they stressed the need to ensure that the high cost of carbon trading, the EU's central instrument in the fight against global warming, should not drive sectors like steel, cement, paper and aluminium out of Europe or out of business. European Commission Vice-President Guenter Verheugen told Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio that measures would have to be taken to ensure European industries were protected against competition from countries with lower environmental standards. He said Brussels "doesn't rule out that we create some sort of compensation for our industries ... but tariffs are not the idea for that". Instead, importers might be included in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme to make them bear a share of the cost, he said. After chairing the first day of a two-day summit, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa told a news conference all 27 leaders agreed to adopt a liberalisation of the European energy market in June and a package of measures to fight global warming and promote green energy in December. "We must reach agreement in the first months of 2009 at the latest," said Jansa. GREEN TARIFF? French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was hopeful of reaching a package deal on climate change under France's presidency of the EU in the second half of this year. But several leaders said a deal would be difficult because of conflicting national priorities. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wanted early guarantees of special treatment for energy-intensive industries such as steel, cement, paper and aluminium, so they could plan investments. Diplomats said other countries backed her. However Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands opposed Merkel's demand that the EU agree in 2009 on conditions for big energy users, saying it would weaken the EU's hand in global negotiations on curbing emissions. "Everybody stated their priorities. Many were quite nervous about liberalisation and carbon leakage," a senior EU diplomat said. "Carbon leakage" occurs when production is transferred to countries with lower environmental standards. Sarkozy told reporters: "The main concern is implementing a mechanism that will hit imports from those countries that don't play the game." But Verheugen said Sarkozy was alone in calling for green import tariffs and had not pressed the issue at the summit. Failure to agree on the details by this time next year would delay EU laws and weaken the bloc in United Nations talks on curbing emissions with other countries, including the United States, in Copenhagen in November 2009. Leaders also approved a watered-down Franco-German plan for a Union for the Mediterranean to boost ties with the EU's southern neighbours after months of bitter wrangling. Highlighting threats to European economic growth, the euro hit another record high above $1.56 on Thursday and oil prices hovered near a peak of $110 a barrel. Jansa said the euro's rise was a "serious issue" but that the summit would not discuss in detail any possible steps to halt the trend. Aside from cutting emissions by at least one-fifth by 2020 from 1990 levels, EU states have agreed to use 20 percent of renewable energy sources in power production and 10 percent of biofuels from crops in transport by the same date. Jansa acknowledged growing debate among scientists and economists about the desirability of the biofuels target, saying: "We're not excluding the possibility that we'll have to amend or revise our goals."

India and China have demonstrated commitment to a climate accord struck in Copenhagen last year and their refusal so far to "associate" with it should not be overblown, the UN's climate chief said on Friday. The Copenhagen Accord reached last year was not legally binding, but over 100 countries have already said they are willing to "associate" with it, which means their names are listed at the top of the document. China and India are yet to say if they will associate or not, but the head of the UN Climate Secretariat, Yvo de Boer, said he was unworried by that. "Both China and India, together with about 60 other countries, have submitted plans or targets on the actions they plan to take. In that sense, I think there is both a political and substantive commitment in the context of the Copenhagen Accord," he told reporters at a UN environment meeting in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali. "The Indian prime minister has indicated that he supports the Copenhagen Accord and India has submitted a national action plan in the context of the Copenhagen Accord. India has formulated eight national goals in different areas that are directly relevant to climate change. India is moving forward on this topic at the national level." People should focus less on the Copenhagen Accord and more on finalising the implementation of a legally binding agreement. Only after that, he said, would countries be expected to sign up. India's environment secretary, Vijai Sharma, on Thursday played down his country's reluctance to associate with the accord. "India has gone a step further. We are already taking action," he told reporters. De Boer, a Dutch national, will resign from the UN in July to join consultancy firm KPMG. When asked if he was interested in replacing De Boer as chief, Sharma responded by giving the thumbs up sign. De Boer said on Friday that Europe, Japan and the United States were looking at using existing financial institutions and mechanisms to distribute the $30 billion in climate aid promised by developed to poor countries in Copenhagen. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said on Friday that quick disbursement of this promised money was vital, but Norway's Environment Minister, Erik Solheim, said he was not aware of any progress being made on that front. "It's too much up in the air, still. Time is very short. It must be done in the next two months," he told Reuters.

Brazil, China, India and South Africa have urged wealthy nations to hand over $10 billion to poor nations this year to help fight climate change. The funds were pledged in a non-binding deal agreed at last December's Copenhagen climate conference. The group - known as BASIC - said the money must be available at once "as proof of their commitment" to address the global challenge. The plea was issued after a meeting of the four nations in Delhi on Sunday. The four nations, led by China, also pledged to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Environment ministers and envoys from the four nations met in New Delhi in a show of unity by countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest rising in the world. The bloc was key to brokering a political agreement at the Copenhagen talks in December and its meeting in India was designed in part to put pressure on richer nations to make good on funding commitments. "We have sent a very powerful symbol to the world of our intentions," the Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint press conference after seven hours of talks. The group discussed setting up a climate fund to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which it said would act as a wakeup call for wealthier countries to meet their pledges on financial assistance and give $10 billion in 2010. Rich countries have pledged $30 billion in climate change funding for the 2010-12 period and set a goal of $100 billion by 2020, far less than what developing countries had wanted. The group in New Delhi said releasing $10 billion this year would send a signal of the rich countries' commitment. The four said they were in talks to set up an independent fund for the same purpose, but gave no timeline or figure. "When we say we will be reinforcing technical support as well as funds to the most vulnerable countries, we are giving a slap in the face to the rich countries," Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said through a translator. The non-binding accord worked out at the Copenhagen climate summit was described by many as a failure because it fell short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heatwaves, droughts and crop failures. China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four. China was blamed by many countries at Copenhagen for obstructing a tougher deal and has refused to submit to outside scrutiny of its plans to brake greenhouse gas emissions. China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said the world needed to take immediate action to fight climate change. But in the wake of a controversial exaggeration by the U.N. climate panel on the threat of global warming to the Himalayan glaciers, he called for an "open attitude" to climate science. "(There is a) point of view that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of the nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research," he said through a translator. "We want our views to be more scientific and more consistent."

Energy and environment ministers from 20 of the world's top greenhouse gas emitting nations are meeting in Japan to discuss climate change, clean energy and sustainable development. Here are some questions and answers about the G20's fourth meeting focused on tackling climate change, known as the Gleneagles Dialogue. WHO IS ATTENDING? -- Energy and environment ministers from the Group of Eight, (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States) and emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India. -- The World Bank, International Energy Agency and NGOs. -- Former British prime minister Tony Blair. He initiated the Gleneagles Dialogue in 2005, calling climate change "probably, long-term the single most important issue we face as a global community." WHAT IS THE G20? -- A group of 20 energy and environment ministers comprising member nations of the Gleneagles Dialogue. It is different from the G20 grouping of finance ministers and central bank governors. WHICH COUNTRIES ARE MEMBERS? -- Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United States, and the European Union (represented by Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency). WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT TO THE CLIMATE DEBATE? -- The G20 emits almost 20 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or about 78 percent of global emissions. G8 nations contribute 45 percent of this, other members contribute 33 percent. -- The U.S. (23 percent) and China (16 percent) are the G20's greatest individual emitters. WHAT'S ON THE MEETING'S AGENDA? -- Host Japan is expected to push for a "sectoral approach" to cutting greenhouse gas emissions after 2012. -- Funding for clean energy projects in developing nations. -- Japan's goal to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Talks will also aim to try to thrash out fair and equitable emissions targets among the major emitters to take into account different levels of economic development among members. -- Technologies for energy efficiency and cleaner energy production. -- WHAT'S THE SECTORAL APPROACH? -- Industries with high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as electricity, cement, steel, oil refining and pulp/paper, reduce emissions by using the best available technology. -- Big developing countries such as China, for example, would agree to voluntary GHG intensity targets for each sector (e.g: GHG/tonne of steel). In exchange, they would receive clean technology incentives from developed countries. WHAT COMES NEXT? -- Results of the meeting feed into the G8 leaders' summit to be held on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido in July and could also help guide U.N.-led talks aimed at agreeing a global pact by end-2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2013. Sources: Reuters, Ministry of the Environment, Japan,

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wanted to offer developing countries a compromise climate change pact based on population size, but warned on Friday that negotiations will be tough. Merkel, who helped draw up the Kyoto Protocol on climate change as Germany's environment minister in 1997, made global warming and talks over a deal to succeed the protocol the focus of her three-day visit to Japan. "The question is: at what point can we involve developing countries, and what kind of measure do we use to create a just world?" Merkel said in Kyoto, the ancient Japanese capital where the 1997 protocol was agreed. Merkel suggested that developing countries should be allowed to increase their emissions per capita while industrialised national cut theirs, until both sides reach the same level. She brought up the proposal when she met officials in China before travelling to Japan, but the Chinese were sceptical, according to the German delegation. "Once (developing countries) reach the level of industrialised countries, the reduction begins," Merkel said. A similar idea was fielded by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the G8 summit with major developing countries in Germany in June. Under the Kyoto pact, 35 developed nations are obliged to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Developing nations, many of which have signed the protocol, are not obliged to make any reductions during the pact's first phase -- a concession that saw the United States and Australia pull out of the pact. Both nations, among the world's top per-capita polluters, say it's unfair that big developing nations such as China, India and Indonesia, are excluded and view the pact as bad for their economies. DIFFICULT ROAD AHEAD Many developing countries, in turn, are worried that strict environmental regulations will hamper economic growth. They demand industrialised nations, as chief polluters, bear the brunt of emission cuts. In turn, wealthy nations with relatively small populations and large industries fear a per-capita target could hurt them. Currently, per-capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are far higher in rich economies than in their poorer counterparts. The United States produces about 20 tonnes of CO2 a year per capita, Germany 11 tonnes and the European Union an average of 9 tonnes, according to the German government. China, on the other hand, churns out only 3.5 tonnes a year per head. The global average is 4.2 tonnes. Merkel repeated the aim was to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050. "That's a very big goal, but it's the consensus among experts. If we can't reach that, we'll pay for it dearly," she said. "If we don't do anything, we have to expect considerable changes in our climate." The United Nations is holding a major meeting on climate change in December on the Indonesian island of Bali. Backers want delegates to agree to launch talks on a new climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. Negotiators are aiming to hammer out the new pact by 2009, and Japan plays a crucial role since it is hosting the next G8 summit in Hokkaido in 2008. Merkel pointed out that targets included in the Kyoto Protocol had not been reached. The European Union has only achieved a 1.9 percent cut so far compared to a targeted 8 percent reduction, she said. Emissions have increased in Japan, which had pledged to cut them by 6 percent. About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are currently meeting in Vienna to discuss global warming.

"This builds on previous executive actions that have cleared the way for job-creating pipelines, innovations in energy production, and reduced unnecessary burden on energy producers," the official said on condition of anonymity. On Wednesday, Trump is expected to sign an executive order related to the 1906 Antiquities Act, which enables the president to designate federal areas of land and water as national monuments to protect them from drilling, mining and development, the source said. On Friday, Trump is expected to sign an order to review areas available for offshore oil and gas exploration, as well as rules governing offshore drilling. The new measures would build on a number of energy- and environment-related executive orders signed by Trump seeking to gut most of the climate change regulations put in place by predecessor President Barack Obama. A summary of the forthcoming orders, seen by Reuters, say past administrations "overused" the Antiquities Act, putting more federal areas under protection than necessary. Obama had used the Antiquities Act more than any other president, his White House said in December, when he designated over 1.6 million acres of land in Utah and Nevada as national monuments, protecting two areas rich in Native American artifacts from mining, oil and gas drilling. The summary also says previous administrations have been "overly restrictive" of offshore drilling. Late in Obama's second term, he banned new drilling in federal waters in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans using a 1950s-era law that environmental groups say would require a drawn out court challenge to reverse. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said during his January confirmation hearing that Trump could “amend” Obama’s monument designations but any move to rescind a designation would immediately be challenged. Last month, Trump signed an order calling for a review of Obama's Clean Power Plan, and reversed a ban on coal leasing on federal lands. In addition to the energy-related orders, Trump is also expected this week to sign an order to create an office of accountability in the Veterans Affairs department. He is also expected to create a rural America interagency task force to recommend policies to address issues facing agricultural states.

After four years of fraught UN talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperilled island states against rising economic powerhouses, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared the pact adopted, to the standing applause and whistles of delegates from almost 200 nations. "With a small hammer you can achieve great things," Fabius said as he gavelled the agreement, capping two weeks of tense negotiations at the summit on the outskirts of the French capital. Hailed as the first truly global climate deal, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in rising emissions blamed for warming the planet, it sets out a sweeping, long-term goal of eliminating net manmade greenhouse gas output this century. "It is a victory for all of the planet and for future generations," said US Secretary of State John Kerry, who led the US negotiations in Paris. "We have set a course here. The world has come together around an agreement that will empower us to chart a new path for our planet, a smart and responsible path, a sustainable path." It also creates a system to encourage nations to step up voluntary domestic efforts to curb emissions, and provides billions more dollars to help poor nations cope with the transition to a greener economy powered by renewable energy. Calling it "ambitious and balanced", Fabius said the accord would mark a "historic turning point" in efforts to avert the potentially disastrous consequences of an overheated planet. For US President Barack Obama, it is a legacy-defining accomplishment that, he said at the White House, represents "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got." The final agreement was essentially unchanged from a draft unveiled earlier in the day, including a more ambitious objective of restraining the rise in temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a mark scientists fear could be a tipping point for the climate. Until now the line was drawn only at 2 degrees. In some ways, its success was assured before the summit began: 187 nations have submitted detailed national plans for how they will contain the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, commitments that are the core of the Paris deal. While leaving each country to pursue those measures on its own, the agreement finally sets a common vision and course of action after years of bickering over how to move forward. Officials hope a unified stance will be a powerful symbol for world citizens and a potent signal to the executives and investors they are counting on to spend trillions of dollars to replace coal-fired power with solar panels and windmills. "This agreement establishes a clear path to decarbonise the global economy within the lifetimes of many people alive today," said Paul Polman, the CEO of consumer goods maker Unilever and a leading advocate for sustainable business practices. Polman said it will "drive real change in the real economy". Too much, or not enough? While some climate change activists and US Republicans will likely find fault with the accord - either for failing to take sufficiently drastic action, or for overreacting to an uncertain threat - many of the estimated 30,000 officials, academics and campaigners who set up camp on the outskirts of Paris say they see it as a long-overdue turning point. Six years after the previous climate summit in Copenhagen ended in failure and acrimony, the Paris pact appears to have rebuilt much of the trust required for a concerted global effort to combat climate change, delegates said. "Whereas we left Copenhagen scared of what comes next, we'll leave Paris inspired to keep fighting," said David Turnbull of Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organisation opposed to fossil fuel production. Most climate activists reacted positively, encouraged by long-term targets that were more ambitious than they expected, while warning it was only the first step of many. "Today we celebrate, tomorrow we have to work," European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said. From the outset, some criticised the deal for setting too low a bar for success. Scientists warned that the envisaged national emissions cuts will not be enough to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal reached in 1997, the Paris pact will also not be a fully legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the US Congress. In the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a dangerous endeavour that threatens to trade economic prosperity for an uncertain if greener future. Some officials fear US progress could stall if a Republican is elected president next year, a concern Kerry brushed aside. Destinies bound After talks that extended into early morning, the draft text showed how officials had resolved the stickiest points. In a win for vulnerable low-lying nations who had portrayed the summit as the last chance to avoid the existential threat of rising seas, nations would "pursue efforts" to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), as they had hoped. "Our head is above water," said Olai Uludong, ambassador on climate change for the Pacific island state of Palau. While scientists say pledges thus far could see global temperatures rise by as much as 3.7 degrees Celsius (6.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the agreement also lays out a roadmap for checking up on progress. The first "stocktake" would occur in 2023, with further reviews every five years to steadily increase or "ratchet up" those measures. It softened that requirement for countries with longer-term plans extending to 2030, such as China, which had resisted revisiting its goal before then. And for the first time, the world has agreed on a longer-term aspiration for reaching a peak in greenhouse emissions "as soon as possible" and achieving a balance between output of manmade greenhouse gases and absorption - by forests or the oceans - by the second half of this century. It also requires rich nations to maintain a $100 billion a year funding pledge beyond 2020, and use that figure as a "floor" for further support agreed by 2025, providing greater financial security to developing nations as they wean themselves away from coal-fired power.

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

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

Britain has dropped resistance to a mandatory European Union target of drawing 20 percent of power from renewable sources by 2020 and expects EU leaders to set that goal next week, a British official said on Wednesday. Britain was one of several countries, including prominently France, which opposed making legally binding the objective for low-polluting energy sources such as solar and wind power when EU energy ministers debated the issue on Feb 15. It argued at the time that member states should be free to choose how they achieved an agreed unilateral reduction of 20 percent in emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming from 1990 levels. But the official said Prime Minister Tony Blair had accepted after a telephone call with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso the need for a binding target to help establish EU leadership in the worldwide fight against climate change. "Unless you can demonstrate how you intend to get to 20 percent or 30 percent carbon dioxide reductions, it doesn't have credibility with (the media), with the markets or with industry," the official said. Diplomats said Britain's shift would not be enough on its own to persuade other resisters such as France and several central European countries to make the target binding, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will chair the March 8-9 summit, was working hard to clinch agreement. "I do expect it will be binding," the British official said, adding that the EU energy action plan to be adopted by leaders would have to reflect the different energy mixes and routes taken by member states. France has argued that a 20 percent renewables target could force it to diversify away from non-carbon nuclear power, which provides more than three-quarters of its electricity. Other sceptics are concerned about the cost of renewables and scientific arguments that switching to biofuels made from crops could actually generate more CO2 than it eliminates.

The European Union should speedily work out ways to help developing nations fight global warming to avert a "Catch 22" impasse that could brake action worldwide, the UN's top climate change official said on Monday. "This is a priority that all industrialised countries need to get moving on quickly," Yvo de Boer told Reuters of a message he would give to EU environment ministers at a meeting in Brussels later on Monday. About 190 nations agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December to set, by the end of 2009, a global plan to fight climate change, widening the UN's Kyoto Protocol binding 37 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gases until 2012. "As Bali indicated, we need some kind of real, measurable and verifiable additional flow of resources," de Boer said. Rich nations should step up aid to help the poor curb rising emissions of greenhouse gases. That in turn would encourage developing states to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies. Commitment by developing nations, led by China and India, is in turn a condition for many rich nations, led by the United States which worries about a loss of jobs, to curb emissions. The United States is the only rich nation outside Kyoto. "It's becoming a bit of a Catch 22 -- if you can't generate the resources to engage developing countries...then it makes it difficult for the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and then possibly the EU to move forwards," he said. "Then things become difficult," said de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat in Bonn. ' FLOODS, HEATWAVES The EU says it is a leader in fighting climate change that the U.N. Climate Panel says will bring more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas this century. De Boer said promising ideas for new funding include auctioning rights to emit carbon dioxide in the EU and using some of the proceeds to help developing nations. Another option was to increase a levy on a Kyoto project that allows rich nations to invest in cutting greenhouse gases in developing nations. And EU budgets for research and development could help curb climate change. De Boer said he would tell EU ministers: "If you don't generate the resources for developing countries then they won't engage and it will be difficult for you to engage." He also urged French President Nicolas Sarkozy to complete an EU package of climate measures during the French EU presidency in the second half of 2008. In January, the EU Commission outlined proposals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, raising use of renewable energy in power production to 20 percent and using 10 percent of biofuels in transport by 2020. "It's important that under the French presidency in the second half that the package is finalised so that it can go to (the European) parliament," de Boer said. France and Germany last week said that the plan might jeopardise European jobs. "The European Union has stepped into this with eyes wide open. And now it has to deliver" by sharing out the burden, de Boer said. "Signals about how the target is going to be achieved are important for (the EU's) international credibility." -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:

Abrams, a rising Democratic Party star, gained a national profile in her failed bid to become Georgia's governor in 2018 and is a leading voting rights advocate in the southern state. Biden, the former US vice president, has vowed to pick a woman to join his ticket and suggested he would consider her as a running mate. "Vice President Biden is the leader America needs — a leader who will restore dignity, competence and compassion to the Oval Office while restoring America's moral leadership around the world," Abrams said in a statement. She praised Biden's commitment to fighting climate change, pushing for an economic recovery for all, and protecting every American's right to vote. "While marginalized communities struggle under Donald Trump's failed leadership and people of color face disproportionate consequences of COVID-19, Joe Biden will take no one for granted," Abrams said. Other candidates likely being considered are Biden's former rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination, Senators Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. Others include Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has gained a high profile leading Michigan amid protests during the coronavirus outbreak and Representative Val Demings of Florida, a key battleground state.

Not to mention global warming, refugees crises and looming famines in some of the poorest places on earth, all amplified by the pandemic. President-elect Joe Biden is inheriting a landscape of challenges and ill will toward the United States in countries hostile to President Donald Trump’s “America First” mantra, his unpredictability, embrace of autocratic leaders and resistance to international cooperation. Biden also could face difficulties in dealing with governments that had hoped for Trump’s reelection — particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, which share the president’s deep antipathy toward Iran. But Biden’s past as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as vice president in the Obama administration has given him a familiarity with international affairs that could work to his advantage, foreign policy experts who know him say. “President Trump has lowered the bar so much that it wouldn’t take much for Biden to change the perception dramatically,” said Robert Malley, chief executive of the International Crisis Group and a former adviser in the Obama White House. “Saying a few of the things Trump hasn’t said — to rewind the tape on multilateralism, climate change, human rights — will sound very loud and significant.” Here are the most pressing foreign policy areas the Biden administration will face: The Challenge of US-China Relations Nothing is more urgent, in the eyes of many experts, than reversing the downward trajectory of relations with China, the economic superpower and geopolitical rival that Trump has engaged in what many are calling a new Cold War. Disputes over trade, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and technology have metastasised during Trump’s term, his critics say, worsened by the president’s racist declarations that China infected the world with the coronavirus and should be held accountable. “China is kind of the radioactive core of America’s foreign policy issues,” said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations. Biden has not necessarily helped himself with his own negative depiction of China and its authoritarian leader, President Xi Jinping, during the 2020 campaign. The two were once seen as having developed a friendly relationship during the Obama years. But Biden, perhaps acting partly to counter Trump’s accusations that he would be lenient toward China, has recently called Xi a “thug.” The Middle East: Shifts on Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran? Biden has vowed to reverse what he called the “dangerous failure” of Trump’s Iran policy, which repudiated the 2015 nuclear agreement and replaced it with tightening sanctions that have caused deep economic damage in Iran and left the United States largely isolated on this issue. Biden has offered to rejoin the agreement, which constricts Iran’s nuclear capabilities if Iran adheres to its provisions and commits to further negotiations. He also has pledged to immediately nullify Trump’s travel ban affecting Iran and several other Muslim-majority countries. Whether Iran’s hierarchy will accept Biden’s approach is unclear. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has said the United States is untrustworthy regardless who is in the White House. At the same time, “Iran is desperate for a deal,” said Cliff Kupchan, chair of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to US President Donald Trump during the second day of the G7 meeting in Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, Jun 9, 2018. Bundesregierung Handout via Reuters Still, Kupchan said, Biden will face enormous difficulties in any negotiations with Iran aimed at strengthening restrictions on its nuclear activities — weaknesses Trump had cited to justify renouncing the nuclear agreement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to US President Donald Trump during the second day of the G7 meeting in Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, Jun 9, 2018. Bundesregierung Handout via Reuters “The substance will be tough; we’ve seen this movie, and it’s not easy,” Kupchan said. “I think Biden’s challenge is that it will not end up blowing up in his face.” Biden’s Iran policy could alienate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who leveraged Trump’s confrontational approach to help strengthen Israel’s relations with Gulf Arab countries, punctuated by normalisation of diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. How Biden manages relations with Saudi Arabia, which considers Iran an enemy, will also be a challenge. “There’s a very hard square to circle here,” Kupchan said. Trump’s extremely favourable treatment of Israel in the protracted conflict with the Palestinians also could prove nettlesome as Biden navigates a different path in the Middle East. He has criticised Israeli settlement construction in occupied lands the Palestinians want for a future state. And he is likely to restore contacts with the Palestinian leadership. “Benjamin Netanyahu can expect an uncomfortable period of adjustment,” an Israeli columnist, Yossi Verter, wrote Friday in the Haaretz newspaper. At the same time, Biden also has a history of cordial relations with Netanyahu. Biden has said he would not reverse Trump’s transfer of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv — a relocation that deeply angered the Palestinians. Repairing Relations With Europe and Navigating Brexit While Trump often disparaged the European Union and strongly encouraged Britain’s exit from the bloc, Biden has expressed the opposite position. Like Obama, he supported close US relations with EU leaders and opposed Brexit. Biden’s ascendance could prove especially awkward for Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, who had embraced Trump and had been counting on achieving a trade deal with the United States before his country’s divorce from the EU takes full effect. Biden may be in no hurry to complete such an agreement. While many Europeans will be happy to see Trump go, the damage they say he has done to America’s reliability will not be easily erased. “We had differences, but there was never a basic mistrust about having common views of the world,” Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway, told The New York Times last month. Over the past four years, she said, European leaders had learned they could “no longer take for granted that they can trust the US, even on basic things.” Confronting North Korea’s Nuclear Threat Trump has described his friendship and three meetings with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, as a success that averted war with the nuclear-armed hermetic country. But critics say Trump’s approach not only failed to persuade Kim to relinquish his arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles, it bought Kim time to strengthen them. Last month the North unveiled what appeared to be its largest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile. “On Trump’s watch, the North’s nuclear weapons program has grown apace, its missile capabilities have expanded, and Pyongyang can now target the United States with an ICBM,” said Evans J.R. Revere, a former State Department official and expert on North Korea. “That is the legacy that Trump will soon pass on to Biden, and it will be an enormous burden.” Biden, who has been described by North Korea’s official news agency as a rabid dog that “must be beaten to death with a stick,” has criticised Trump’s approach as appeasement of a dictator. Biden has said he would press for denuclearisation and “stand with South Korea” but has not specified how he would deal with North Korean belligerence. A Likely Tougher Approach to Russia and Putin Biden has long asserted that he would take a much harder line with Russia than Trump, who questioned NATO’s usefulness, doubted intelligence warnings on Russia’s interference in US elections, admired President Vladimir Putin and said that improving US relations with the Kremlin would benefit all. Biden, who as vice president pushed for sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 — the biggest illegal land seizure in Europe since World War II — might seek to extend those sanctions and take other punitive steps. While tensions with Russia would likely rise, arms control is one area where Biden and Putin share a desire for progress. Biden is set to be sworn in just a few weeks before the scheduled expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. He has said he wants to negotiate an extension of the treaty without preconditions. A Return to the Paris Agreement and International Commitments Biden has said one of his first acts as president will be to rejoin the Paris Climate accord to limit global warming, which the United States officially left under Trump on Wednesday. Biden also has said he would restore US membership in the World Health Organization, which Trump repudiated in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, describing the WHO as a lackey of China. More broadly, Biden is expected to reverse many of the isolationist and anti-immigrant steps taken during the Trump administration, which are widely seen by Trump’s critics as shameful stains on America's standing in the world. Biden has said he would disband Trump’s immigration restrictions, stop construction of his border wall with Mexico, expand resources for immigrants and provide a path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally. Nonetheless, many of Trump’s policies had considerable support in the United States, and it remains to be seen how quickly or effectively Biden can change them. The convulsions that roiled American democracy and the divisive election have also sown doubts about Biden’s ability to deliver on his pledges. “There is relief at a return to some kind of normalcy, but at the same time, history cannot be erased,” said Jean-Marie Guehenno, a French diplomat who is a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program and a former undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations at the United Nations. “The kind of soft power that the United States has enjoyed in the past has largely evaporated.”   ©2020 The New York Times Company

After he vanquished Sen Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as he ran on unifying the country. When moderate Democrats came to call, he used the tones of centrism to assure them of his conciliatory bona fides. But when Biden ventured to the Capitol on Friday to help House Democrats out of their thicket, he had to choose sides. He effectively chose the left. “The way he is governing doesn’t reflect the skills I know he must have from his years as a legislator,” said Rep Stephanie Murphy, who had been one of the moderates demanding an immediate vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, convinced that was what the president wanted — or at least needed. She called Biden’s refusal to push harder for legislation he had embraced “disappointing and frustrating.” “I’m not clear why he came up to the Hill,” she grumbled. Since the president claimed his party’s nomination last year, he has nurtured the fragile peace between his party’s fractious centre and left by convincing both sides he is their ally. Unified first by their shared disdain for former President Donald Trump, and then by Biden’s adoption of an expansive platform, the two factions remained in harmony into this year. They responded to the pandemic by passing a sweeping stimulus package in the spring. Now the two factions are at loggerheads — one flexing its power but as yet empty-handed, the other feeling betrayed, both claiming they have the president on their side — and the outcome of their battle over Biden’s proposals could determine Democrats’ fate in the midterms and the success of his presidency. That agenda consists of two sweeping domestic proposals resembling a modern Great Society: the “American Jobs Plan,” spending $1 trillion over 10 years on traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges and tunnels; and a bigger and more controversial “American Family Plan,” which the Democrats labelled “soft infrastructure,” including universal prekindergarten and community college, paid family and medical leave, child care and elder care support, and an expansion of Medicare. But liberals feared that moderate Democrats would vote for the infrastructure bill, claim victory and peel away from the social policy measure, so they refused to support the smaller infrastructure bill until the larger social policy package had been passed. Heading into last week, both the moderates and the progressives felt as if they had ironclad promises: the moderates, that a vote on infrastructure would happen before October; the liberals, that the bill, a crucial part of the president’s domestic agenda, was inextricably twinned with their higher priority, the more expansive measure addressing climate change and the frayed social safety net. The liberals, however, used their larger numbers to blockade the infrastructure bill — and they said they did it for Biden. Rep Ilhan Omar, one of the left-wing leaders of the blockade, stood before reporters last week and said the blockaders were the ones “trying to make sure that the president has a success.” “If we pass the infrastructure bill alone, we are not even accomplishing 10% of his agenda,” said Omar, the vote-counter in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a bloc of Democrats nearly 100 strong, who showed their cohesion in last week’s showdown. This enraged both the nine centrist lawmakers who had forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promise an infrastructure vote by the end of September, and a larger, quieter group of backbench House Democrats, many from swing districts, who were eager for the president to sign the public works bill and start trumpeting the funding for roads, bridges and broadband in their districts, at a time when Biden’s approval ratings were sagging. “I don’t think it’s good for the Joe Biden administration, and I don’t think it’s good for Democrats,” said Rep Henry Cuellar suggesting that Biden was effectively siding with the left by not lobbying for passage of the infrastructure package. In part, that anger stemmed from Biden’s go-along-to-get-along style. “You got the feeling that Uncle Joe is for everybody, he likes everybody,” said Rep Emanuel Cleaver. Members of the moderate wing were explicit Friday, blaming the liberals but also insisting that they themselves were Biden’s true torch bearers. Rep Josh Gottheimer denounced a “small faction on the far left” that he said had employed “Freedom Caucus tactics” to “destroy the president’s agenda” — a reference to the hard-right faction of the House that bedeviled Republican leaders when they were in charge. “We were elected to achieve reasonable, common-sense solutions for the American people — not to obstruct from the far wings,” Gottheimer fumed in a statement released late Friday night. “This far-left faction is willing to put the president’s entire agenda, including this historic bipartisan infrastructure package, at risk. They’ve put civility and bipartisan governing at risk.” Given the range of the party’s suburbanites-to-socialists coalition, it may have been inevitable that Biden would eventually anger one wing of his party. What was striking, and perhaps equally surprising to both blocs, was that he alienated the moderates who had propelled him to the nomination while delighting the progressives who vociferously opposed him in the primary. The president is not backing off the public works measure so treasured by the moderates. But as he told House Democrats on Friday, he believes it’s “just reality” that the infrastructure legislation will not pass without assurances from two centrist senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, that they will support the more wide-ranging bill. Although, as Biden conceded in the Capitol, that will not happen until the more expansive bill is pared back to meet the two senators’ approval. Rep Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. and the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said her bloc wants to move forward, as does 96% of the Democratic Caucus. It is the 4% — especially Manchin and Sinema — that are the problem. “We understand that we don’t always get to vote on things that we’d like 100%. It’s the other folks, the 4% that are blocking the president’s agenda, the Democratic agenda that we ran on, who need to recognize that.” The decision to keep the fate of each bill tied to the other’s measure amounts to a gamble. Infrastructure was the bird in hand; it passed the Senate with bipartisan bonhomie in August with 69 votes. Together, they are in trouble, which deepens with every new demand by Manchin and Sinema that pulls the social policy bill further from the liberals’ vision. If the two factions cannot agree on that measure, Biden might end up with nothing — a catastrophic blow for his party and its leader. Delaying the infrastructure bill is not, as Rep Dean Phillips put it, “the linear and expeditious path to which most of us would aspire.” Phillips, a well-liked moderate who captured a Republican district in 2018, expressed hope earlier in the week that Biden could serve as a bridge between the party’s factions. But he acknowledged Friday that those chances had “been sadly diminished” in light of what he called the president’s “nothing-burger” of a visit to the Capitol. Rep Stephanie Murphy speaks to reporters outside of the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday, Sept 30, 2021. The New York Times Phillips said he thought both bills would still get done. But privately, other lawmakers from competitive seats were disconsolate that they would not be able to spend the remainder of this fall holding up evidence of bipartisan achievement in Washington. Rep Stephanie Murphy speaks to reporters outside of the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday, Sept 30, 2021. The New York Times Biden is eager to sign both bills. One of his aides Friday likened them to children he loves equally. That has not, though, stopped both factions of the party from claiming that they are the ones seeking to assure passage of his agenda. The result is quite a turnabout. “We are fighting for the Build Back Better agenda,” said Omar, employing Biden’s preferred slogan — which would have been shocking at this time two years ago, when she rallied early to Sanders’ candidacy. Throughout 2019 and in the first months of 2020, Biden was an object of scorn from the left. He was too old, too moderate and an obviously bad fit for an increasingly young, diverse and progressive party, they said, often mocking him in harsh terms. Biden believed liberals were the ones out of step with the Democratic center of gravity. And he effectively proved it by assembling a multiracial coalition that was animated by defeating Trump more than by any bold policy agenda. Yet because his primary had largely centred on ousting Trump and unifying the country, he had little in the way of firm policy plans. And in making peace with progressives after he secured the nomination, he adopted a number of their ideas. That has allowed left-wing Democrats to say, with wide smiles, that they are only trying to fulfill Biden’s vision. The question now is whether his attempt to pass both bills will pay off — or if his decision to not push for quick passage of the infrastructure bill will leave him with a protracted standoff or nothing at all. What is certain, however, is that after Biden’s all-things-to-all-people campaign, he has committed himself to many of the policies that his liberal critics were sceptical he would embrace. “For all of the progressives who kept telling me there was no difference between Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg,” said Rep Brendan Boyle an early Biden supporter, “where Biden has come down in this internal debate shows how absurd that claim always was.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

As presidents and prime ministers arrive in Glasgow, Scotland, this week for a pivotal climate summit, the outcome will determine, to a large extent, how the world’s 7 billion people will survive on a hotter planet and whether far worse levels of warming can be averted for future generations. Already, the failure to slow rising temperatures — brought on by the burning of oil, gas and coal — has led to deadly floods, fires, heat and drought around the world. It has exposed a gaping chasm between the scientific consensus, which says humanity must rapidly reduce the emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases to avert climate catastrophe, and what political leaders and many corporate executives have been willing to do. “That we are now so perilously close to the edge for a number of countries is perhaps the tragedy of our times,” said Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados. Tensions loom over the 12-day summit. Some poor countries hard hit by climate disasters are holding out for money promised, and yet to be delivered, by the industrialised nations that fueled the crisis. Polluting countries are pressing each other to cut their emissions while jockeying for advantage and wrestling with the impacts on their own economies. Complicating matters, the need for collective action to tackle such an urgent, existential global threat comes at a time of rising nationalism. This makes the talks in Glasgow a test of whether global cooperation is even possible to confront a crisis that does not recognise national borders. “I don’t think you can solve the climate crisis on your own as a nationalist leader,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations official and now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “You depend on the actions of others.” The science is clear on what needs to be done. Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases driving up global temperatures need to be cut by nearly half by 2030, less than a decade. In fact, they are continuing to grow. The World Meteorological Organization warned last week that the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had reached a record high in 2020 despite the pandemic and is rising again this year. As a result, the average global temperature has risen by more than 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The scientific consensus says that if it rises by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, it will significantly increase the likelihood of far worse climate catastrophes that could exacerbate hunger, disease and conflict. Limiting temperature rise to within the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold has become something of a rallying cry for many powerful countries, including the United States. That is not within reach: Even if all countries achieve the targets they set for themselves at the 2015 Paris Agreement, average global temperatures are on track to rise by 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The US climate envoy, John Kerry, who had recently described the summit as “the last best hope” last week tried to manage expectations. “Glasgow was never, ever going to get every country joining up in Glasgow or this year necessarily,” he said Thursday. “It was going to galvanise the raising of ambition on a global basis.” The goals of the summit are to have countries nudge each other to rein in their emissions, commit financial support to low-income countries to deal with the impacts, and iron out some of the rules of the Paris Agreement. The agreement stipulated that countries come together every five years to update their climate action plans and nudge each other to do more. The five-year mark was missed because of the pandemic. The climate summit was postponed. Climate disasters piled on. The pandemic is important in another sense. It offers a grim lesson on the prospects for collective action. Countries turned inward to protect their own citizens, and sometimes their own pharmaceutical industries, resulting in a starkly inequitable distribution of vaccines. Half the world’s population remains unvaccinated, mainly in countries of the global south. “We’ve just experienced the worst part of humanity’s response to a global crisis,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, an activist group. “And if this is going to be the track record for addressing the global climate crisis, then we are in trouble. I’m hoping this is a moment of reflection and inflection.” Meanwhile, anger is mounting against official inaction. The streets of Glasgow are expected to fill with tens of thousands of protesters. Who Wants What? The main battle lines shaping up at the Glasgow talks, known as the 26th session of the Conference of Parties, or COP26, have to do with who is responsible for the warming of the planet that is already underway, who should do what to keep it from getting worse and how to live with the damage already done. The venue is itself a reminder. In the mid-19th century, Glasgow was a centre of heavy industry and shipbuilding. Its power and wealth rose as Britain conquered nations across Asia and Africa, extracting their riches and becoming the world’s leading industrial power, until the US took the mantle. The largest share of the emissions that have already heated the planet came mainly from the US and Europe, including Britain, while the largest share of emissions produced right now comes from China, the world’s factory. In some cases, the divisions in Glasgow pit advanced industrialised countries, including the US and Europe, against emerging economies, including China, India and South Africa. In other cases, they set large emerging polluters, like China and India, against small vulnerable countries, including low-lying island nations in the Pacific and Caribbean, which want more aggressive action against emissions. Tensions over money are so profound that they threaten to derail cooperation. In 2010, rich countries had promised to pay $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries address climate change. Some of that money has been paid but the full amount will not materialise until 2023, three years late, according to the latest plan announced by a group of industrialized countries. Even more fraught is the idea of industrialised countries also paying reparations to vulnerable nations to compensate for the damage already done. Known in diplomatic circles as a fund for loss and damage, discussions about this have been postponed for years because of opposition from countries like the US Kerry this week said he was “supportive” of the idea of assisting countries who can’t adapt their way out of climate change, but remained concerned about opening the floodgates of liability claims. Then there are tensions over whether countries are doing their fair share to reduce their emissions. The Biden administration has pledged that the US will slash emissions by about half by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. But President Joe Biden’s ability to reach that target is unclear, as legislation has been watered down and stalled in Congress, partly by a single Democratic lawmaker with ties to the fossil fuel industry. The US has been leaning hard on China to set more ambitious targets in Glasgow. But so far, Beijing has said only that its emissions will continue to grow and decline before 2030. China is wary of the United States’ ability to fulfil its emissions and finance targets, a scepticism only fueled by Biden’s inability so far to get his climate agenda through Congress. Besides, the two countries are locked in bitter tensions over a host of other issues, from trade to defence to cybersecurity. While Biden is in Glasgow, President Xi Jinping of China is likely to appear only by video, precluding any face-to-face discussions. President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil also plans to stay home. President Vladimir Putin of Russia is not going, either, but may offer remarks remotely. India is unlikely to commit to phase out its heavy reliance on coal power to meet its growing energy needs, although it is quickly expanding solar power in its energy mix. The most optimistic diplomats say countries will be forced to come around and cooperate. “Because of the global nature of this threat,” the Danish environment minister, Dan Jorgenson, said, “you will see countries, in their own interest, work with countries they see as their competitor.” What Is Success? No matter what happens at the summit, success in battling climate change will be measured by how quickly the global economy can pivot away from fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas interests, and their political allies, are fighting that transition. But a transformation is visible. The global use of fossil fuels, which has been on a steady march upward for 150 years, is projected to peak by the middle of this decade, assuming that countries mostly hew to the promises they’ve made under the Paris accord, according to projections by the International Energy Agency. Wind and solar have become the cheapest source of electricity in some markets, coal use is set to decline sharply by midcentury, despite an uptick this year driven by increased industrial activity in China, and electric vehicles are projected to drive down global oil demand by the 2030s. Global temperature rise has also slowed since 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed. Some see that as evidence that climate diplomacy is working. Most countries are doing what they signed up to do, which is to set their own climate targets and “egg each other on” to do better, said Ani Dasgupta, president of World Resources Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “The ratcheting up of ambition, we do see it happening,” he said. “It’s not happening fast enough.” From her home in Barbados, Mottley sees another promising sign: pressure on leaders of countries in the global north, as the dangers of climate change increasingly afflict their citizens. That includes the floods that killed nearly 200 people in Germany, Europe’s richest country, and the fires that scorched homes in California, America’s richest state. “It is the populations of the advanced countries coming to the recognition that this is a serious issue that is causing the needle to move,” she said. “It is that kind of domestic political pressure from ordinary people that is going to save the world in my view.” ©2021 The New York Times Company

A free trade agreement with the European Union could create new export opportunities worth $9 billion for Indian industries, EU trade chief Karel de Gucht said on Thursday. De Ducht, on a visit to India, said he expected good progress in the coming months on trade negotiations between the second most populous country in the world and the 27-nation EU. "With India we will conclude a deal that benefits us both, or there will be no deal," De Gucht wrote in an editorial piece published in the Economic Times of India. India began negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU, its largest trading partner, in 2007, but the talks have run into a wall of differences, especially over EU efforts to link trade with sensitive topics which India wants to keep off the table. Disagreements over market access, intellectual property rights, a dispute over generic drugs and the EU's desire to include issues such as climate change and child labour have stalled the talks. De Gucht said he was aware of the difficulties in overcoming some of the hurdles but added an agreement could increase Indian exports to the EU by a third from the current level and Indian firms could also benefits from the opening of services and investment markets. Trade between India and the EU has grown by 16 percent annually and currently stands at 78 billion euros ($106.4 billion), but is still less than one-fifth of the EU's trade with China, India's Asian rival. De Gucht said successful trade deal could make India a much more attractive destination for European investment.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's expected absence from the talks could indicate that the world's biggest CO2 producer has already decided that it has no more concessions to offer at the UN COP26 climate summit in Scotland after three major pledges since last year, climate watchers said. Instead, China will likely be represented by vice-environment minister Zhao Yingmin along with the veteran Xie Zhenhua, who was reappointed as the country's top climate envoy earlier this year following a three-year hiatus. "One thing is clear," said Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with Greenpeace in Beijing. "COP26 needs high-level support from China as well as other emitters." The head of the world's third-biggest source of climate-warming emissions, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has committed to attending the COP26 summit, which runs from Oct 31 to Nov 12. Like other leaders, he will come under pressure from summit organisers to commit to quicker emissions cuts and set a target date to reach carbon neutrality - a target set by Xi for 2060 in a surprise move last year. But China will be unwilling to be seen yielding to international pressure for more ambitious goals, according to one environmental consultant, especially as it grapples with a crippling energy supply crunch at home. Beijing is "already maxed out", said the consultant, speaking on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the matter. Though there has been no official announcement, analysts and diplomatic sources said few had been expecting Xi to attend COP26 in person. He has already missed several high-profile global summits since the COVID-19 outbreak began in late 2019, and didn't physically attend the Global Biodiversity Conference in China's Kunming earlier this month. They also said Xi was unlikely to lend his physical presence - a virtual video appearance remains a possibility - to a meeting that had little prospect of any significant breakthrough, especially after China brushed off US attempts to treat climate as a 'standalone' issue that could be separated from the broader diplomatic disputes between the two sides. Rather than making more concessions, China and India's top priority is to secure a strong financing deal allowing richer countries to meet their Paris Agreement commitment to provide $100 billion per year to help pay for climate adaptation and transfer clean technology in the developing world. Xi did attend the Paris summit in person in 2015. DOMESTIC CONCERNS Although Xi has not travelled outside China since before the pandemic, he has made three major climate announcements on the international stage. His unexpected net zero commitment came in a video address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2020. That announcement encouraged enterprises, industry sectors and even other countries to respond with their own net-zero action plans. Xi also said in a message to the US-led Leaders Summit on Climate in April that China would start cutting coal consumption by 2026. And he used this year's UNGA to announce an immediate end to overseas coal financing, a major bone of contention. Like India, China has been under pressure to add more ambition to its updated "nationally determined contributions" (NDCs) on climate change, which are due to be announced before the Glasgow talks begin. However, the revisions are expected to focus on implementing the targets that have already been announced, rather than making them more ambitious. China has repeatedly stressed that its climate policies are designed to serve its own domestic priorities, and will not be pursued at the expense of national security and public welfare. Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based non-government group that monitors corporate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, said China already had enough climate challenges to deal with and has little leeway to go further in Glasgow. "With all the headwinds and all the pledges that have been made, it is important to take stock and consolidate," he said. "It's not enough to put these (commitments) on paper," he added. "We have to translate them into solid actions."

The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heatwaves, droughts and torrential rains are only set to become more frequent and extreme as the earth warms further. It is the first time that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quantified the likelihood of these extreme events in a wide variety of scenarios. The report found that once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are now 1.3 times more likely and 6.7 percent wetter, compared with the 50 years up to 1900 when major human-driven warming started to occur. Previously once-in-a-decade droughts could happen every five or six years. Scientists emphasized that these effects of climate change are already here, with events like the heatwave in the US Pacific Northwest killing hundreds in June and Brazil currently experiencing its worst drought in 91 years "The heatwave in Canada, fires in California, floods in Germany, floods in China, droughts in central Brazil make it very, very clear that climate extremes are having a very heavy toll," said Paulo Artaxo, a lead author of the report and an environmental physicist and the University of Sao Paulo. The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events. Heatwaves show stronger increases in frequency with warming than all other extreme events. Twice in a century heat waves could happen roughly every six years with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, a level which the report says could be surpassed within two decades. Should the world become 4 degrees Celsius hotter, as could happen in a high-emissions scenario, those heat waves would happen every one to two years. Carolina Vera, another report author and a physical climate scientist at University of Buenos Aires and Argentina's main agency for science research (CONICET), said there is also an increasing likelihood that multiple extreme weather events could happen at the same time. For example, extreme heat, drought and high winds - conditions that could feed wildfires - are more likely to happen at the same time. A protester carries a sign depicting the earth during the Peoples Climate March near the White House in Washington, U.S., on April 29, 2017. REUTERS The IPCC has a medium or high-level confidence that many important agricultural regions around the world will see more droughts or extreme rain. That includes parts of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil that are major growers of soybeans and other global commodities. A protester carries a sign depicting the earth during the Peoples Climate March near the White House in Washington, U.S., on April 29, 2017. REUTERS "It is scary, sure, with the risk that fires, heat waves, droughts will affect humans in the form of weather and food insecurity, energy insecurity, water quality and health - mainly in poor regions," said Jose Marengo, a climatologist at the Brazilian Science Ministry's disaster monitoring centre. Marengo was not involved in the IPCC report. For example, regions that are already prone to drought are likely to experience them more frequently, including in the Mediterranean, southern Australia, and western North America, said Friederike Otto, IPCC author and climatologist at University of Oxford. Increased frequency of drought and heavy rain also are not mutually exclusive and are predicted in places like Southern Africa, she said. The projections on extreme weather events laid out in the report reinforce the importance of curbing climate change to the levels laid out in the Paris Agreement, scientists said. "If we stabilize at 1.5 degrees, we can stop them from getting much worse," Otto said.

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

The River Thames burst its banks on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of homes in the university city of Oxford in Britain's worst floods for 60 years. About 350,000 people faced two weeks without running water and insurance companies said the bill could soar to 3 billion pounds ($6.2 billion). Farmers say harvests have been badly hit and that farm animals in flood-hit areas could die unless water supplies are restored soon. Visiting the worst-hit area in Gloucestershire, western England, Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged more cash for stricken areas and more tankers and bottled water to ensure supplies. Oxford became the new frontline when rivers feeding into the Thames spilled over into its streets, forcing police to evacuate 250 homes. Aerial pictures showed flood waters not far from some of the city's historic college buildings. Heavy rain is expected overnight and Environment Agency officials warned that the river had not yet peaked. As the flooding spread along the river, officials said Queen Elizabeth's residence at Windsor Castle was not threatened and no property flooding was expected in London -- although heavy storms could always cause flash flooding. "There are six severe flood warnings in place. It looks as if we are going to get up to 20 millimetres (0.8 inch) of rain across the board tomorrow," an Environment Agency spokesman said. COUNTING THE COST The insurance bill for floods in June and July could hit 3 billion pounds, insurers say, sparking fears of price hikes. Milk shortages hit some areas with flooded roads making collections from dairy farms impossible. The rain brought harvesting of barley and rapeseed to a halt in many regions. One power substation in Oxford was closed as a precaution, after it was partially flooded at the weekend, but customers have not been cut off because supplies were re-routed. Sandbags were piled up to protect other substations in the area. Economists say the floods will trim back economic growth and are likely to trigger a short-term spike in food prices, but the overall economy is likely to weather the storm in the long run. One beneficiary of the bad weather was the airline industry. British Airways said seat bookings for long flights were up as holidaymakers escaped the British summer. "We need to invest more in preventing floods," Brown told parliament. Less than a month into the job as Britain's new premier, he said everything had to be looked at from infrastructure and drainage to where utilities were located. In a stark reference to how 21st century weather had changed, finance minister Alistair Darling said: "Climate change is not a passing trend. "It is a reality we must factor into everything we do. If we do not, threats to our everyday life -- like the floods this week -- risk becoming common."

The agreement commits nations to work on a broad and legally binding treaty that would not only aim to improve recycling and clean up the world’s plastic waste, but would encompass curbs on plastics production itself. That could put measures like a ban on single-use plastics, a major driver of waste, on the table. Supporters have said that a global plastics treaty would be the most important environmental accord since the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, in which nations agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiators are now set to meet this year for the first of many rounds of talks to hammer out the details of a treaty on plastics, with a target of sealing a deal by 2024. “We are making history today,” said Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s climate and the environment minister and president of the United Nations Environment Assembly, which took place for the past week in Nairobi, Kenya. In an earlier interview, he said that, given Russia’s war in Ukraine, it was particularly significant that “this divided world can still agree on something, based on science.” The sheer volume of plastics the world produces is difficult to comprehend. By one measure, the total amount ever produced is now greater than the weight of all land and marine animals combined. Only 9% has ever been recycled, the UN Environment Program estimates. Instead, the bulk is designed to be used just once (recycling symbols are no guarantee of recyclability) after which it ends up in landfills, dumps, the natural environment or is incinerated. Scientists say plastics cause harm throughout their life cycle, releasing toxic as well as planet-warming greenhouse gases during production, landfill and incineration. Plastics, which are manufactured from fossil fuels, caused 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2015, one recent study estimated, more than all of the world’s aeroplanes combined. Wednesday’s agreement drew heavily from a joint proposal submitted by Peru and Rwanda, reflecting how, in recent years, developing nations have been at the forefront of efforts to tackle plastics pollution. Rwanda, for example, more than a decade ago adopted strict bans on the import, production, use or sale of plastic bags and packaging. “Plastic pollution is a planetary crisis, a threat that affects all of us,” Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, the Rwandan environment minister, said at the meeting. “The real work now begins.” In much of the world, the task of collecting, sorting and recycling plastics often falls to informal waste pickers who work among fires and toxic vapours for little pay. In a landmark move, the agreement in Nairobi for the first time formally recognised the importance of waste pickers in the plastics economy. “We waste pickers have to be involved in this process,” said Silvio Ruiz Grisales of Bogotá, Colombia, who began working at dump sites at the age of 12. Now he is a leader in the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Waste Pickers, a group that advocates for better pay, working conditions and recognition. “We work the trash 12, 14 or 16 hours a day,” he said. “It’s a poverty trap.” Among other requisites, Wednesday’s agreement specifies that any global treaty must be legally binding, and that it must address the full life cycle of plastics, from production to disposal, recycling and reuse. Delegates said they hoped to model the treaty on the Paris climate accord, under which countries set binding targets but are able to meet those goals using a range of policies. The treaty must also address packaging design to cut down on plastic use, improve recycling and make technical and financial assistance available to developing nations. According to Wednesday’s agreement, it must also address microplastics, the tiny plastic debris created by the breakdown of plastics over time. Microplastics have been detected by scientists in deep ocean waters, shellfish, drinking water and even falling rain. In the course of negotiations, some of those points faced objections from countries including the United States, Japan and India, according to three people close to the talks who were not authorised to speak publicly about negotiation details. Japan had initially submitted a competing resolution focused on marine plastics. India threatened to derail negotiations on the final day, urging that any action needed to be on a “voluntary basis,” according to a list of demands privately submitted by India’s delegation and reviewed by The New York Times. A reference to concern over chemicals in plastic was taken out of the agreement after objections from delegations including the United States, the three people said. But in a victory for supporters of stronger policies against plastics, Wednesday’s agreement mentions the importance of considering plastic pollution’s risk to human health and the environment. Monica P. Medina, an assistant secretary of state who headed the US delegation in Nairobi, told delegates that the agreement was “the beginning of the end of the scourge of plastics on this planet.” She added, “I think we will look back on this as a day for our children and grandchildren.” The Japanese delegate, Yutaka Shoda, ultimately hailed the agreement. “The important thing is that we are united in developing an international, legally binding instrument,” he said. The Indian delegation did not respond to requests for comment. A global plastics pollution treaty would add to existing, albeit limited, global agreements that address trade in plastic waste. In 2020, more than 180 nations agreed to place limits on exports of plastic waste to poorer countries from richer ones under a framework known as the Basel Convention. The United States has yet to sign on to the new rules, and the Basel Action Network, an environmental watchdog, has said violations are rampant. Tadesse Amera, an environmental researcher based in Ethiopia and co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a nonprofit group, said a focus on the health and climate effects of plastics was critical. “When we talk about plastics, we’re really talking about chemicals and carbon,” he said. The role of the private sector — for example, industry’s contribution to the technical and financial assistance to developing nations — is likely to be one big point of debate in the treaty negotiations. In the United States and elsewhere, the cost of recycling is typically borne by cash-strapped municipal governments, as opposed to manufacturers. But there has been a move among environmental groups to require that producers shoulder more of the cost. “Africa is not a major producer of chemicals or plastics,” Amera said. But companies are flooding the continent with plastic “with no thought about after-use,” he said. “That should be the responsibility of the producer or importer.”

As the war of words threatened to spin out of control, Merkel and other senior German politicians stressed the importance of Germany's Atlantic ties, with Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel suggesting the spat was just a rough patch. Trump took to Twitter early in the day in the United States to attack Germany, a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel ramped up her doubts about the reliability of Washington as an ally. "We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change," Trump tweeted. The tit-for-tat dispute escalated rapidly after Trump, at back-to-back summits last week, criticised major NATO allies over their military spending and refused to endorse a global climate change accord. On Sunday, Merkel showed the gravity of her concern about Washington's dependability under Trump when she warned, at an election campaign event in a packed Bavarian beer tent - that the times when Europe could fully rely on others were "over to a certain extent". Those comments, which caused shock in Washington, vented Europe's frustration with Trump on climate policy in particular. And while German politicians sided with Merkel, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel signalled that it was time for cooler heads to prevail. "The United States are older and bigger than the current conflict," he said, adding that relations would improve. "It is inappropriate that we are now communicating with each other between a beer tent and Twitter," he said in Berlin. Merkel had already begun finessing her message on Monday, stressing that she was a "convinced trans-Atlanticist", a message she repeated after a meeting with visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Berlin. But Martin Schulz, leader of Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats, was less emollient earlier in the day when he told reporters Trump was "the destroyer of all Western values". He added that the US president was undermining the peaceful cooperation of nations based on mutual respect and tolerance. In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said he agreed with Merkel that Europe needed to forge its own path. "This takes nothing away from the importance of our trans-Atlantic ties and our alliance with the United States. But the importance we put on these ties cannot mean that we abandon fundamental principles such as our commitment to fight climate change and for open societies and free trade," he said.

Tides affect the speed at which an Antarctic ice sheet bigger than the Netherlands is sliding toward the sea, adding a surprise piece to a puzzle about ocean levels and global warming, a study showed on Wednesday. The Rutford Ice Stream of western Antarctica slips about a meter (3 ft) a day toward the sea but the rate varies 20 percent in tandem with two-week tidal cycles, it said. And the effect is felt even on ice more than 40 km (25 miles) inland. "We've known that (twice-daily) tides affect the motion of ice streams but we didn't know it happened on this two-weekly time scale," said Hilmar Gudmundsson, an Icelandic glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. Tides rise and fall about twice a day but also vary in a two-week cycle of high "spring" tides, when the sun and the moon are aligned with the Earth, and low "neap" tides, when they are at right angles to the planet. "For such a large mass of ice to respond to ocean tides like this illustrates how sensitively the Antarctic Ice Sheet reacts to environmental changes," he said of a report published in the scientific journal Nature. The speed of other ice streams may also change with tides. Computer models of how Antarctica's ice may be affected by rising seas and global warming, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels, will now have to factor in tides, he said. "We have to be careful when we make measurements that we know that an ice stream can speed up or slow down -- that's just part of its dynamics and natural variability," he told Reuters. Some past scientific reports have wrongly interpreted changes in the rate of the ice slide as part of longer-term shifts, he said. Gudmundsson said the speed of the Rutford ice when it left solid ground to become part of the floating Ronne Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea was fastest just before spring tides at 1.2 meters a day and slowest before neap tides at 0.9 meters. Even 40 km inland, at a height of almost 200 meters above sea level, the ice's daily speed varied between 1.07-0.95 meters. "That was the furthest inland measurement but I expect the tidal effect could be felt 75 km inland," he said. Gudmundsson said it was unclear whether a projected long-term rise in world sea levels, like a rising tide in slow motion, might accelerate a run-off of ice from Antarctica. Around Antarctica, the tidal effect may be strongest around the Ronne Ice Shelf, where there is a big twice-daily rise and fall in tides. The Rutford Ice Stream is bigger than the Netherlands or US states such as Maryland or Hawaii. "The next thing to do is to follow up and to measure this on other ice streams," he said. "If the sea level changes ... we want to know how sensitive the system is." Climate scientists who advise the United Nations project that seas will rise by 9 cm and 88 cm by 2100 because of a warming they say will also spur more droughts, heatwaves, desertification and floods.

- the age of green economics," Ban said. "Businesspeople in so many parts of the world are demanding clear and consistent policies on climate change -- global policies for a global problem," he said.

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

World leaders and top officials on Monday renewed pledges to help Africa dramatically reduce poverty, but African governments told rich nations they are lagging on previous promises of increased aid. In a political declaration after a U.N. meeting on Africa's development needs, countries pledged to mobilize resources to end poverty, hunger and underdevelopment. "We stress that eradicating poverty, particularly in Africa, is the greatest global challenge facing the world today," they said. The meeting expressed concern that commitments by rich industrialized nations of doubling aid to Africa by 2010 will not be reached, while also welcoming new aid flows from emerging economies and the private sector. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the meeting on Africa to draw attention to a danger that the region would fail to meet U.N.-agreed Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 to halve global poverty by 2015. Ban urged concerted global action, warning that not one African country was on track to meet all of the goals, although he noted some progress on health and education. He said soaring food and fuel prices and the effects of climate change on food production were new challenges that could set African countries back. Ban said it would take $72 billion a year to help Africa. "This price tag may look daunting but it is affordable and falls within existing aid commitments," he said, noting that the world's industrialized countries spent an estimated $267 billion last year on agricultural subsidies alone. A $700 billion rescue plan announced by the U.S. government for troubled Wall Street firms is 10 times the annual aid Ban called for in his speech. African Union Chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete said while he was concerned that the financial crisis in markets could escalate, wealthy countries had made commitments to help Africa and should keep them. "We want the developed nations to perform their moral obligation of assisting the poor," Kikwete said at a news conference. "We want the developed countries to deliver on the rest of their commitments that they have not honored." He said money was especially important at a time when many African economies are growing at their strongest levels in five years and need more roads, railway lines and electricity. "Where there is a will, there is always a way," Kikwete said. "There may not be easy answers but I believe the U.S. will overcome the crisis." UNDEVELOPED WEALTH African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka said a slowdown in growth in developed countries would affect Africa, especially if demand for its commodities declined sharply. "This crisis is serious, but frankly, I hope it doesn't lead to reduced efforts to help developing countries because that would be a disappointment," said Kaberuka. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Africa was at a turning point but needed to guard against running up debts that would require cancellation later by rich countries. "Let us not set the stage today for a new debt crisis in 2030," Sarkozy said. He questioned why some new lenders restricted funding to investment in projects when Africa needed budget support. Large emerging lenders like China are ramping up financing for power and transport projects in Africa, most of it in countries endowed with natural resources. "Europeans and Africans have agreed on untying aid. Why then go back on this principle with donors from other continents?" Sarkozy said, without naming China. China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said it was important to respect the sovereignty of African nations and assistance should be geared to Africa's basic and long-term needs. "To achieve long-term development, African countries must rely on their own capacity," he said, adding that China planned to increase its assistance to Africa in agriculture, education, health and clean energy development. Jeffrey Sachs, a development campaigner and professor at New York's Columbia University, said the $72 billion a year needed for Africa "is not an outlandish price tag." "The U.S. Congress is about to vote $1 trillion for Wall Street this week," he told a U.N. panel. "That is no joke, and shows money is there when it's an emergency."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Friday that the global economic crisis could lead to a political crisis and social unrest and called on the world's leading economies to act. "I am concerned that if we do not properly address this issue swiftly, this may develop rather alarmingly into political instability, into a political crisis," the U.N. chief told diplomats in Moscow. Ban, who was speaking less than a week before he attends a crisis meeting of leaders of the G20 group of industrialised and developing nations in London, spoke of the impact of the economic crisis on Russia and Eastern Europe. Latvia's government collapsed last month after a wave of protests, while Greece, Bulgaria and Lithuania have seen popular anger explode into riots. "Looking around the world we see a growing list of political instability. If we do not manage it properly, this crisis, I am concerned that this crisis may develop into global political instability," he said. "If life goes much like this and harder ... social unrest will surely increase," he said. "That is why in London I will speak out forcefully for action to prevent the potential catastrophe in human development." The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on Monday said the crisis would push millions into poverty and unemployment, risking social unrest and even war. Ban used his Moscow speech to call on countries to use anti-crisis stimulus packages to help fight climate change. "My answer is it would be very smart to invest a certain proportion of this stimulus package in green growth and by doing this we can catch two birds with one stone," he said. "If we are going to spend trillions of dollars on the global stimulus packages let us be smart and tackle climate change at the same time."

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

Rich and poor differed on Sunday over how to open up trade in green goods, with Brazil fearing a major US-EU proposal raised on the fringes of climate talks in Bali was a protectionist ruse. Officials from 32 nations, including 12 trade ministers, are meeting for the first time on the sidelines of an annual UN climate conference, opening a new front in the global warming battle. About 20 finance ministers will also meet on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Monday and Tuesday. Pakistan and Brazil voiced reservations on Sunday over a move to cut tariffs on clean technologies, such as wind power and solar panels, meant to help reduce the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. They suspect the measure's real intention is to boost exports from rich nations. Brazil, a big producer of biofuels from sugar cane, has said the proposal did not include biofuels nor biofuels technologies. "The protectionism is like the serpent's head. The serpent will always try put its head up," Brazil's Minister of External Relations, Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim, said in Bali. "What are we here for? Are we here to make three things mutually supportive, development, trade and climate change, or are we here to discuss about protectionist ways to slow down the process?" Pakistan objected to the US-EU proposal because most developing nations don't have the money or know-how to build competitive green goods. "This is obviously against us, because we have not the capacity to produce goods in the environmental friendly way," said Pakistan's Ambassador to Indonesia, Ali Baz. About 190 countries are meeting at a luxury Indonesian beach resort in Dec. 3-14 talks to try to launch negotiations on a broader climate change pact to succeed or replace the Kyoto Protocol from 2013. Kyoto only binds 36 industrialised countries to emissions curbs between 2008-2012. World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy said developing countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, were leaders in some clean technologies and would benefit from free trade in environmental goods. CARBON TAXES He also said trade rules could be tweaked to help curb the output of greenhouse gases, for example taking into account carbon taxes and subsidies, or minimum environmental standards. But that would have to be under the framework of an international climate change pact, he said. "The relationship between international trade and indeed the WTO and climate change would be best defined by a consensual, international agreement on climate change that successfully embraces all major polluters," Lamy said. The Bali climate talks aim to find ways to include outsiders such as top carbon emitters the United States and China in the fight against rising greenhouse emissions scientists say will lead to more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising seas. Developing nations say rich countries need to do more to cut their own emissions, blaming Europe, the United States, Japan and other industrialised nations for much of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to date. On Saturday, a draft proposal at the UN-led talks said all nations must do more to fight climate change, and rich countries must make deep cuts in emissions to avoid the worst impacts. The four-page draft, written by delegates from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa as an unofficial guide for delegates, said developing nations should at least brake rising emissions as part of a new pact. In Europe, several thousand protesters demanding urgent action on global warming held street marches on Saturday. German authorities turned off the lights for five minutes at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) at tourist sites including Berlin's Brandenburg Gate as part of a government-backed campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues. In London, posters carried a picture of US President George W Bush and the words "Wanted for crimes against the planet". -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

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

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

The company is developing autonomous tractors, a goal that equipment companies like Case IH, John Deere and Kubota are chasing as well. But the business model of Bear Flag, based in Sunnyvale, California, has a twist — it does not build the tractors. Instead, it adapts the sensors and actuators needed for driverless plowing to existing tractors produced by major manufacturers. That step is not as sci-fi as it might seem. From equipment automation to data collection and analysis, the digital evolution of agriculture is already a fact of life on farms across the United States. Auto-steer systems, which use GPS receivers to keep rows straight and avoid gaps or overlap, are available for equipment ranging from tractors to harvest combines to sprayers with 100-foot-wide booms. Precision seeders and fertilizer systems can be satellite-guided to accuracy of an inch or less. The difference: For the most part, those operations still depend on an operator at the controls. “Autonomous operation will be a service in agriculture before it’s a product,” said Igino Cafiero, Bear Flag’s chief executive, during a break from his work in a test field of cilantro about 60 miles southeast of the company’s headquarters. The company’s niche is providing secondary tillage, deploying its equipment after a harvest is complete to prepare the fields for the next planting. The need for driverless farming equipment is intensifying, Cafiero said, because of a crushing labour shortage, which drives up wages and worker mobility. Tractors equipped with Bear Flag technology are able to work fields around the clock, without a driver, using sensors similar to those in autonomous road vehicles under development: lidar, radar and digital video. tractor in autonomous mode on a farm in Hollister, Calif, Aug 30, 2019. From equipment automation to data collection and analysis, the digital evolution of agriculture is already a fact of life on farms across the United States. The New York Times The sensory devices provide more than what Cafiero calls situational awareness, vital for safe operation where workers and livestock may be nearby, also collecting data on the land to improve efficiency. While Bear Flag pursues expanding capabilities to tasks like planting and spraying that have long demanded human supervision, it also plans to expand to the labour-intensive harvest duties of crops including tree nuts and row crops. tractor in autonomous mode on a farm in Hollister, Calif, Aug 30, 2019. From equipment automation to data collection and analysis, the digital evolution of agriculture is already a fact of life on farms across the United States. The New York Times The drive to increase productivity is urgent in all phases of agriculture. Feeding a world population expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 faces dire challenges, according to the summary of a UN report released in August. The effects of climate change — extreme weather, soil loss, migration pressures — will strain land and water resources, potentially disrupting food supplies. Yet growing crops has historically been an uncertain enterprise, a livelihood that increasingly depends on forecasts of weather conditions, commodity prices and complex factors like maturity index and projected yield. Agriculture is seen as an industry ideally suited to large-scale data collection and analysis, and technology companies more closely associated with databases and computer hardware are seeing opportunities. IBM, for example, made its move into the cloud — not the virtual data repository, but the puffy ones in the sky — in 2016 with the purchase of The Weather Co., bringing supercomputer prowess to what once depended on the centuries of record-keeping by trusted prediction tools like The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Jeff Keiser, a manager for agribusiness solutions at The Weather Co., knows more than agriculture analytics. He also farms corn and soybeans in Indiana, where he has encountered many of the same conditions as the wide range of food producers who can make use of IBM’s Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture. “With the cold spring followed by high temperatures and a lot of rain, it’s been a very challenging year,” Keiser said. “I got some planting done in April, but it wasn’t finished until June.” The decision platform, which will mark its first anniversary in October, is designed to ingest data from satellite imagery and from sensors on farm equipment that monitor, among other things, seed counts, nutrient levels and fertilizer flow, said Cameron Clayton, chief executive of The Weather Co. A sensor-equipped farm of 1,000 acres requires vast analysis and storage capabilities on the scale of what IBM can provide. With more than 2 million acres of farmland around the world covered, the platform provides hyperlocal six-month weather predictions based on satellite and atmospheric data. The system makes extensive use of IBM’s experience in artificial intelligence to build management models for corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and other crops. Each model takes IBM six months to a year to assemble and accounts for issues that include pest control and fertilizer requirements. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution: The models are tailored to the specific crops, geared to produce longer potatoes for french fries or barley for malting in beer production. Humans are not becoming obsolete on the farm by any means, a point that Cameron, raised on a New Zealand sheep farm, is sensitive to. “We make recommendations,” he said. “We don’t want to be in the business of full automation.” IBM’s intent, rather, is to provide farmers with a dashboard of controls. A farmer inspecting field conditions can take an image from a smartphone or iPad, automatically uploaded to the decision platform, to diagnose crop health. The system provides a quick analysis and suggested remedy, sort of a WebMD service for crops. The longer-term goal is to deliver real-time growing advice; partnerships with equipment makers also hold the potential to make better use of sensors, equipment monitoring and drones to make remote inspections less labour-intensive. The benefits of automation scale down to some smaller growers as well. Penny Gritt Goff, the third-generation operating manager of Gritt’s Midway Greenhouse in Red House, West Virginia, takes advantage of computerised monitoring to keep tabs on temperature, humidity, nutrient levels and other conditions for 3 acres of hydroponic greenhouses where lettuce grows in flowing water and tomatoes are raised in a bed of coconut husks. The computer system can send alarms when it gets too hot inside the greenhouses, but it also takes action on its own, spreading a shade cloth covering to cut down on sun exposure (or retain heat in the winter), opening and closing vents, and regulating irrigation. “The automated controls narrow the chances of failure,” Goff said, and lessen the need for some aspects of the operation’s human monitoring. “We could add more advanced equipment, but at this size it’s not economically feasible.” Will tomorrow’s digital farmers spend more of their long days at the keyboard than in the field or the barn? You might think things are headed that way, given that a recent convention of the National FFA Organisation (what used to be called the Future Farmers of America) devoted display space to its FFA Blue 365 initiative, an online educational platform, and tech advances in areas that include beekeeping and autonomous vehicles. A focus of the organisation, which has 700,000 members of mainly high-school age, is to prepare them for the coming transformation in agriculture, according to Blaze Currie, a senior team leader for the FFA. But the goal is not so much to promote the changes as to teach the mechanisms to accomplish efficiency advances like remote monitoring of an irrigation system. “When innovations are introduced on the farm, it’s often the younger generation of operator who gets handed the new technology,” Currie said, noting that when a sales representative arrives with a device like a field monitoring drone, he’s often directed to the family’s next generation of farmer, a digital native. “Give him the drone,” the conversation typically ends. © 2019 New York Times News Service

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