Datasets:

AriyanH22

/

data_6

like 0

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

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

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

WASHINGTON, Mon Nov 3,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - As the US presidential candidates sprint toward the finish line, the Bush administration is also sprinting to enact environmental policy changes before leaving power. Whether it's getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste or making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes have found little favor with environmental groups. The one change most environmentalists want, a mandatory program to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, is not among these so-called "midnight regulations." Bureaucratic calendars make it virtually impossible that any US across-the-board action will be taken to curb global warming in this administration, though both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have promised to address it if they win Tuesday's US presidential election. Even some free-market organizations have joined conservation groups to urge a moratorium on last-minute rules proposed by the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. "The Bush administration has had eight years in office and has issued more regulations than any administration in history," said Eli Lehrer of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "At this point, in the current economic climate, it would be especially harmful to push through ill-considered regulations in the final days of the administration." John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, which joined Lehrer's group to call for a ban on these last-minute rules, said citizens are cut out of the process, allowing changes in U.S. law that the public opposes, such as rolling back protections under the Endangered Species Act. WHAT'S THE RUSH? The Bush team has urged that these regulations be issued no later than Saturday, so they can be put in effect by the time President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20. If they are in effect then, it will be hard for the next administration to undo them, and in any case, this may not be the top priority for a new president, said Matt Madia of OMB Watch, which monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, through which these proposed regulations must pass. "This is typical," Madia said of the administration's welter of eleventh-hour rules. "It's a natural reaction to knowing that you're almost out of power." Industry is likely to benefit if Bush's rules on the environment become effective, Madia said. "Whether it's the electricity industry or the mining industry or the agriculture industry, this is going to remove government restrictions on their activity and in turn they're going to be allowed to pollute more and that ends up harming the public," Madia said in a telephone interview. What is unusual is the speedy trip some of these environmental measures are taking through the process. For example, one Interior Department rule that would erode protections for endangered species in favor of mining interests drew more than 300,000 comments from the public, which officials said they planned to review in a week, a pace that Madia called "pretty ludicrous." Why the rush? Because rules only go into effect 30 to 60 days after they are finalized, and if they are not in effect when the next president takes office, that chief executive can decline to put them into practice -- as Bush did with many rules finalized at the end of the Clinton administration. White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied the Bush team was cramming these regulations through in a hasty push. Fratto discounted reports "that we're trying to weaken regulations that have a business interest," telling White House reporters last week the goal was to avoid the flood of last-minute rules left over from the Clinton team. There is at least one Bush administration environmental proposal that conservation groups welcome: a plan to create what would be the world's largest marine wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean. That could go into effect January 20.

Madhavan's two acres (0.8 hectares) of land in Meenangadi village used to be lush with cash crops - coffee, black pepper and betel nut - but two decades of drought and unseasonally heavy rain have decimated his yields. Now the mahogany plantation is one of his only reliable sources of income, earning him up to 5,000 rupees ($67) a year - and all he has to do is keep the trees standing. The 84-year-old farmer is being paid to plant and protect trees through a "tree banking" scheme, the project at the heart of Meenangadi's campaign to become India's first carbon-neutral village by 2025. Madhavan got his saplings for free from Meenangadi's panchayat, or village council, which will lend him 50 rupees per tree for every year he does not cut it down until 2031. At that point, the loan is written off and he can do what he likes with the trees, including felling them to sell for timber. "Every morning, I spend some time looking after these trees. I am really happy to say that except for three (which died naturally), all are steadfastly growing," Madhavan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Sooner or later, my land will become a small forest filled with infinite greenery." Over the past decade, Kerala's farmers have faced an ailing business struggling with rising temperatures and erratic rains, while deforestation has caused soil degradation, making their land more vulnerable to flooding and mudslides. Wayanad district is suffering more than most, with the Kerala State Action Plan on Climate Change naming it as one of the state's four hotspots. Tree-planting initiatives are taking root worldwide as governments and corporations look for ways to cut planet-warming emissions, and fight pollution and land degradation - or simply to earn credits to offset their carbon emissions. But many projects fail when they rely on locals with little time or money to look after newly planted trees. Meenangadi's tree-banking project avoids that pitfall by giving farmers an ongoing incentive to protect trees, said C Jayakumar, executive director of Thanal, a local environmental group helping implement the village's carbon-neutral programme. "The message here is that climate change is being linked with climate justice," he said. "Usually, it will take a farmer one or two decades to get the financial benefits of planting a timber tree sapling. With this project, the farmer gets money from the start." MONEY GROWS ON TREES When Meenangadi started its carbon-cutting journey in 2016, an energy audit indicated the village population of 33,450 was generating 15,000 tonnes of excess carbon every day. To help bring that number down to zero within the next four years, the aim is to plant at least 350,000 trees to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, said K.E. Vinayan, president of the village council. A farmer who joins up is given tree saplings grown in the council's nursery or donated by the Kerala Forest Department. Ranging from trees for timber and fruit to bamboo, most are native species chosen for their ability to absorb large amounts of carbon and withstand wild weather swings, as well as to generate an income for farmers once they mature, Vinayan said. Three years after planting, the farmer can mortgage the trees for a 10-year interest-free loan from the council which only has to be paid back if any of the trees are cut down. If a tree dies due to disease, heavy rain or drought, the farmer continues to receive money for it, Vinayan added. So far, 780 farmers have enrolled in the scheme and the village has planted 172,000 saplings, including on vacant lots and those handed out to farmers who support the net-zero push but do not want to join the tree-banking project. It has already distributed 350,000 rupees in the first tranche of loans, with the second tranche coming soon, boosted by a 100 million-rupee grant from Kerala state. While a first survey is still underway, Vinayan said as far as he knows, none of the trees have been cut down. But it is vital that farmers be allowed to use their trees however they want at the end of their loan period, because "they are the real owners and custodians of the trees", he noted. "We don't want to permanently infringe on their rights," he said. The council will regularly review the project with a view to extending the mortgage period or launching a new scheme to incentivise farmers to preserve their plantations, he added. VILLAGE INSPIRATION Even if most farmers joining Meenangadi's project decide to leave their trees standing, many environmentalists warn tree-planting drives are not nearly enough to slow planetary warming. G. Balagopal, an environmentalist and committee member of scientific organisation Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad, said he supported the tree-banking scheme but it had limitations. "Climate change is a global phenomenon - it can't be mitigated by massive tree-planting in a particular region," he said. The benefits of planting trees are cancelled out if the carbon they pull from the air is replaced by greenhouse gases coming from cars, household heating and power sources, he said. "The need of the hour is new (green) technology like solar," he added. Meenangadi council members said they were looking at other ways to bring down carbon emissions, including shifting to solar lighting and electric vehicles and using high-efficiency stoves. And the village's climate ambitions are spreading. The governing council for Sulthan Batheri Block, the district sub-division where Meenangadi is located, launched its own net-zero programme in January. "Meenangadi's carbon-neutral mission has really inspired us," said C. Assainar, president of the Sulthan Batheri Block Panchayat. For Madhavan in Meenangadi, the village's plan offers hope that he and his fellow farmers could help calm the erratic weather that has turned Wayanad district from an agricultural champion to a region in crisis. "I hope the ongoing carbon-neutral campaign will help us recapture our past glory," he said.

The European Commission opted for a compromise to end a row over anti-dumping duties on Chinese energy-saving lightbulbs, proposing to extend the measures for one more year rather than scrap them immediately. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson had sought to eliminate the duties now. He had the backing of most producers in Europe, including Dutch electronics group Philips, which argued that keeping the measures would hurt EU attempts to be more energy-efficient as part of its plan to fight climate change. But Mandelson ran into opposition from European Enterprise Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, a German, who expressed concern that axing the duties would cost jobs at Osram, part of Germany's Siemens group. The one-year extension backed by the EU Commission on Wednesday is shorter than the usual five-year period for anti-dumping duties that was originally sought by Germany. The duties were introduced in 2001. The case has again highlighted the tensions within the 27-nation bloc between companies seeking better access to cheap imports from China and other low-cost exporting countries, and those that say they are being hurt by unfair trade practices. European Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger told reporters that the one-year extension would allow "a soft transition" for the European industry. The Commission proposal will now be put to EU member states for approval.

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

Officials said the bodies of five people were found in burned-out homes and the sixth was found in a vehicle in northern California's Camp Fire, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters on Sunday evening. Some 228 people are still unaccounted for, Honea said, while another 137 people have been located after friends or relatives reported being unable to contact them. The so-called Camp Fire in the northern part of the state has claimed at least 29 lives since it broke out on Thursday. Hundreds of miles to the south, at least two people have died in the Woolsey Fire threatening the wealthy beach community of Malibu, near Los Angeles. Looting was reported in the southern fire area and arrests were made, police reported. Hot dry winds expected to blow until Tuesday whipped up the flames and heightened the urgency of evacuation orders, officials said. It has been more than 210 days since the area received half an inch or more of rain, making it easy for spot fires to spread to fresh patches of tinder-dry vegetation, fire officials said on Sunday. An aircraft drops flame retardant as firefighters battle the Woolsey Fire as it continues to burn in Malibu, California, US, Nov 11, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer "We are entering a new normal," said Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen, noting at a news conference that California's fires in 2018 grow far more quickly than they did even 10 years ago. An aircraft drops flame retardant as firefighters battle the Woolsey Fire as it continues to burn in Malibu, California, US, Nov 11, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer "The rate of spread is exponentially more than it used to be," he said. Several officials urged residents to heed evacuation orders, noting they themselves had followed orders to leave their homes for safety. "Winds are already blowing," Chief Daryl Osby of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. "They are going to blow for the next three days. Your house can be rebuilt but you can't bring your life back." Crews pushed forward to achieve 25 percent containment of the Camp Fire in northern California, which had burned 111,000 acres (45,000 hectares) at the edge of the Plumas National Forest, according to Cal Fire's website. In Southern California, where the Woolsey Fire scorched at least 83,275 acres, the blaze was only 10 percent contained. The Camp Fire burned down more than 6,700 homes and businesses in Paradise, more structures than any other California wildfire on record. Its death toll now equals that of the Griffith Park Fire in 1933, the deadliest wildfire on record in California. Several of the bodies discovered earlier this week were found in or near burned out cars, police have said. The flames descended on Paradise so fast that many people were forced to abandon their vehicles and run for their lives down the only road through the mountain town. Winds of up to 40 miles per hour (64 km per hour) were forecast to blow in the north and gusts of up to 70 mph (113 kmph), the so-called Santa Ana "devil wind," were expected in Southern California. The Camp Fire burns along a ridge near Big Bend, California, US Nov 10, 2018. REUTERS/Stephen Lam The Woolsey Fire doubled in size from Friday night into Sunday, threatening thousands of homes after triggering mandatory evacuation orders for a quarter million people in the upscale Malibu beach colony as well as other communities in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Camp Fire burns along a ridge near Big Bend, California, US Nov 10, 2018. REUTERS/Stephen Lam Many celebrities live in the area. Despite earlier news reports, including by Reuters, that the fire had destroyed the home of Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender advocate and former athlete, her publicist said on Sunday that it had survived. The entire nearby city of Calabasas, home to more than 20,000 people, was placed under a mandatory evacuation order by city officials on Sunday evening. Governor Jerry Brown asked US President Donald Trump to declare a major disaster to bolster the emergency response and help residents recover. Trump, on a trip to France, said in a Twitter post early Sunday: "With proper Forest Management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California. Get Smart!" The Republican president has previously blamed California officials for fires and threatened to withhold funding, saying the state should do more to remove rotten trees and other debris that fuel blazes. State officials have blamed climate change and said many of the burn areas have been in federally managed lands.

Hurricane Katrina might have caused less damage if the Bush administration had completed a required report of US vulnerability to global warming before the storm hit, an environmental policy analyst said on Wednesday. The report, supposed to be finished in November 2004 and still undone, was meant to be a national assessment that should have turned up the various problems that added up to catastrophe, said John Coequyt, an analyst with the environmental group Greenpeace. "Part of what happened in Katrina is we didn't know how important it was to get some of these levees right," Coequyt said, referring to the barriers that broke and flooded parts of New Orleans after the hurricane hit two years ago on Wednesday. "If we had these national assessments pointing to these vulnerabilities, the chances that they get fixed are going to be higher," Coequyt said by telephone. "And if we know that hurricanes are going to get stronger and if we know that sea level rise is accelerating, then we can plan for these things. "If we choose to not actually complete these assessments, then the chances that we'll get that right are a lot less." Last week, environmental activists hailed a federal judge's ruling that orders the Bush administration to complete a global warming research plan and a national assessment as required by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. This act requires extensive reports on global warming's impact every four years. The last one was completed at the end of 2000 before President George W. Bush took office. US District Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled on Aug. 21 that a proposed research plan is due March 1, 2008, with a national assessment of the environmental, economic, health and safety impacts of global warming due May 31, 2008. The ruling was a victory for environmental groups that sued the federal government, including Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth. "This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn," Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement after the ruling, which he called "a stern rebuke of the administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming." A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy noted the ruling and said its deadlines were in line with what the US administration already has planned. The spokeswoman, Kristin Scuderi, said in a statement that the Bush administration plans to complete peer-reviewed reports that comprise the scientific assessment by the end of this year, five months before the court's deadline. However, these individual peer-reviewed reports are not equal to the overview of the science and policy envisioned by the act, according to Greenpeace's Coequyt. Rather than a deliberative process that involves the U.S. public, scientists and government, Coequyt said the administration might try to do "cutting and pasting" from the findings of the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change to meet the court-ordered deadline. "Whatever this administration does, I think it's now very likely that the next administration will begin a robust national assessment and that can be used ultimately to help guide federal and state policy," he said.

Some of the world's biggest pop stars from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Madonna and The Police played Live Earth concerts worldwide on Saturday to urge fans and governments to fight global warming. Tens of thousands partied at concerts in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg, Johannesburg, London, Washington, New Jersey and Rio de Janeiro to hear Bon Jovi, James Blunt, Linkin Park and Shakira and many other performers. Spearheaded by environmentalist and former US vice president Al Gore, the concerts spanned over 22 hours, ending at Rio's Copacabana beach and a New Jersey football stadium. 'You are Live Earth,' Gore told the crowd at New Jersey's Giants Stadium, on a stage made with recycled tires. With hand raised as if taking an oath, Gore took the seven-point pledge he wants others to endorse, binding them to cut carbon emissions and to lobby governments and employers to do more to save the planet. "Today 2 billion of us have come together in over 130 countries on seven continents," Gore said to cheers. "Times like these demand action: please sign the Live Earth pledge." Pop idol Madonna ended the show at London's Wembley stadium with a set including 'Hey You,' written for Live Earth, while screens behind her flashed images of environmental disasters. Madonna thanked Gore, "for giving the world the wake-up call it so badly needs and for starting an avalanche of awareness that we are running out of time." The New Jersey show had political moments. Roger Waters, running through hits from his Pink Floyd days including 'Money' and 'Another Brick in the Wall,' displayed an image of US President George W. Bush aboard an aircraft carrier in 2003 under a 'Mission Accomplished' banner to signal the end of major combat in Iraq, drawing loud boos from the crowd. And as The Police played 'Message in a Bottle,' rapper Kanye West joined the band on stage and rapped the lyrics 'We need some new leaders to follow ... Al Gore's got my vote.' Following the model of 1985's Live Aid and Live 8 in 2005, Live Earth hopes to reach up to 2 billion people through radio, television and the Internet. There has been widespread cynicism among music fans, campaigners and fellow rockers about the role of pop music, renowned for Learjets and limousines, to promote green living. Backstage in New Jersey, singer KT Tunstall said the first year sales of her debut CD generated 650 million tons of carbon emissions but she has tried to partially offset that huge carbon footprint through the planting of 6,000 trees. THE DEVIL AND CHIMPANZEES At Wembley, Corinne Bailey Rae sang 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),' Marvin Gaye's 1971 environment classic, also played by Alicia Keys in New Jersey. In London, mock rockers Spinal Tap reunited to perform 'Warmer Than Earth,' in which the Devil complains about high temperatures in Britain. Among the stranger moments was primatologist Jane Goodall telling the New Jersey crowd, "I'm going to start by giving you the greeting of the chimpanzee" before mimicking the animals she has lived with and studied since 1960. Gore wants world leaders to sign a treaty by 2009 to cut global warming pollution by 90 percent in rich nations and more than half worldwide by 2050. His Oscar-winning documentary on global warming 'An Inconvenient Truth' and now the Live Earth campaign have only added to chatter that the man who lost the 2000 election to Bush might mount a fresh White House bid, despite his statements that he has no plans to do so. A plane flew over the stadium towing a banner that read 'DRAFTGORE.COM,' apparently hoping to convince Gore to run. Not everybody has supported the concerts. Bob Geldof, the man behind Live Aid and Live 8, argues the world is already aware of global warming and the event lacked a 'final goal.' But many concert goers defended the gigs. "We could do a lot more for the environment, but I suppose we're lazy," teenager Robyn Raymond said in Johannesburg. About 30,000 people in Hamburg enjoyed performances by Yusuf, formerly known as Cat Stevens, and Shakira, despite rain. German comedian Elton joked about the bad weather: "We're here to fight against global warming in such crap weather." The Shanghai concert was seen as key to Live Earth's success, after the International Energy Agency said China could become the top emitter of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as early as this year, a claim disputed by officials. The free Rio show, almost canceled over security concerns, drew as many as 600,000 peaceful attendees. Near the stage, revelers in bikinis and swimsuits frolicked in the surf. In Antarctica the previously unknown band Nunatak played for 17 fellow researchers, allowing Gore to keep his promise to hold concerts on seven continents on the date 7/7/7. "Thank you for coming to Live Earth," Gore said as the series of concerts ended in New Jersey. "Harness the energy in your heart and help us solve the climate crisis."

European Union governments raised a string of objections on Thursday to the bloc's flagship plan on fighting climate change, promising tough negotiations on carbon dioxide emission curbs and the use of renewable energy. At an initial debate among energy ministers, most of the EU's 27 member states said the blueprint for moving to a low-carbon economy, as presented last month by the European Commission, was a good starting point for talks. But many raised questions over specific measures, such as overhauling the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme or national targets for the share of energy produced from renewable sources. The Commission's proposals aim to implement targets set by EU leaders last year to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least one-fifth by 2020 from 1990 levels, increase the share of renewables in power production to 20 percent and boost the share of biofuels used in transport to 10 percent by the same date. "The Commission's proposal provides a good starting point for our debate ... But it is essential that cost-efficiency is at the heart of our discussions," said Shriti Vedera, Britain's secretary of state for business and competitiveness. Marco Stradiotto, an Italian secretary of state for energy, said: "Energy efficiency was not given enough room in the Commission's proposal. He added there was a risk some industries would move out of the EU as a result of the scheme unless an agreement with major world powers was reached on curbing emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. APRIL 2009 TARGET EU governments hope to clinch a final deal on the package by April 2009 in negotiations with the European Parliament, but the debate on Thursday showed talks would be tough. Officials made few concrete demands at this stage, but the Czech Republic and Poland criticised plans that would force power plants to buy 100 percent of their emissions permits from 2013, when the overhauled Emissions Trading Scheme takes effect. "Because of our energy mix ... we would like the scheme to be phased in gradually," said Czech Industry Minister Martin Riman, adding that otherwise "our electricity prices could rise by several dozen of percent". He said his country's target for renewable energy use, 13 percent, would be very difficult to achieve. Similar doubts were voiced by Sweden and Greece. Finland said it would not achieve its renewable energy target if imports of lumber from Russia ended as a result, for example, of high duties. Some countries said provisions to ensure that biofuels are produced without harming the environment should be sharpened. Polish Economy Minister Waldemar Pawlak proposed creating pan-EU rules for subsidising plants from which biofuels are produced. "Nobody is entirely happy with our proposals, but this is a good sign, a sign that our proposal is a good basis for a compromise," said a senior Commission official.

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

The National Hurricane Centre issued a tropical storm warning, which indicates tropical storm conditions are expected within 36 hours, for St Vincent and the Grenadines on Thursday morning, joining Barbados, Martinique and St Lucia. A tropical storm watch — indicating that tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours — was issued Thursday evening for Jamaica and portions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The centre warned that many other islands in the region, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, should monitor the storm. The storm was about 260 miles east-southeast of Barbados on Thursday night, moving west-northwest at about 26 mph with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph. It was projected to pass near or over parts of the Windward Islands or the southern Leeward Islands on Friday, bringing as much as 10 inches of rain to those islands, as well as to Barbados. The system was also expected to move into the eastern Caribbean Sea on Friday evening and then move near Hispaniola on Saturday. Elsa was expected to produce 1-3 inches of rain as it moved over Puerto Rico, with localised amounts of as high as 5 inches on Friday into Saturday. This rain could produce flash flooding and mudslides, the Hurricane Centre said. Tropical storm-force winds Thursday extended up to 90 miles from the storm’s centre, mostly to the north, the Hurricane Centre said. The centre said it was too soon to determine what effect the storm might have on Florida, where a search for survivors of a collapsed condo building near Miami was halted Thursday out of concern that the portion of the building that remained standing could also fall. Forecasters said there was a risk of rain, wind and storm surge next week in South Florida and the Florida Keys. Ana became the first named storm of the season May 23, making this the seventh year in a row that a named storm developed in the Atlantic before the official start of the season on June 1. The links between hurricanes and climate change are becoming more apparent. A warming planet can expect to experience stronger hurricanes over time, and a higher incidence of the most powerful storms — although the overall number of storms may drop, because factors like stronger wind shear might keep weaker storms from forming. Hurricanes are also becoming wetter because of more water vapour in the warmer atmosphere. Scientists have suggested that storms like Hurricane Harvey in 2017 produced far more rain than they would have without the human effects on climate. Also, rising sea levels are contributing to higher storm surge — the most destructive element of tropical cyclones. Researchers have suggested that climate change is also causing some storms to intensify more rapidly, which, as a recent study in the journal Nature Communications put it, “can lead to disastrous scenarios when coastal areas are not given adequate notice to evacuate and prepare for an extremely intense” storm. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there would be 13 to 20 named storms this year, six to 10 of which would be hurricanes, and three to five major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher in the Atlantic. Last year, there were 30 named storms, including six major hurricanes, causing meteorologists to exhaust the alphabet for the second time and move to using Greek letters. It was the highest number of storms on record, surpassing the 28 storms in 2005, and included the second-highest number of hurricanes on record. © 2021 New York Times News Service

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

The Group of Eight rich nations will likely agree to an "aspirational" target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but shun mid-term goals at a July summit, the top UN climate official said on Sunday. Ministers and representatives from the G8 and major emerging countries gathered this weekend in Japan to try to build momentum for UN-led climate change talks, but remained at odds over who should do what when, and how much. "Given the stage that we are in the negotiations, it's going to be quite difficult to get an outcome of the G8 summit that is really strong," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters after talks among environment ministers from the G8 and major emerging countries. "For example, it's clear now that the consensus is for an aspirational goal for 2050 rather than a firm goal," he said. "I do not believe that it will be possible at the G8 summit to agree a range of reductions for 2020 for industrialised countries." About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto pact, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. But with wide gaps within the G8 and between rich and poorer nations over how to share the burden for fighting the climate change that is causing droughts, rising sea levels and more severe storms, some saw slim chance of a breakthrough in July. "I think it is difficult. We have not enough time," Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada told reporters. "But climate change is not waiting for any of us." Jos Delbeke, EU deputy director-general for environment, said ministers were likely to call for an "aspirational" target of halving global emissions by 2050 in a chairman's summary to be issued on Monday. "It is quite likely that on long-term targets we will see a clear message," he told reporters. MID-TERM AMBITIONS But big emerging countries like China urged the G8 to take the lead by setting ambitious mid-term targets before asking developing countries to make commitments of their own. "I think the most important issue for us that we think will unlock the process to reach an agreement by the end of 2009 is the issue of mid-term targets by 2020 of between 25-40 percent below 1990 for all developed countries," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters. "Countries that haven't committed themselves ... the United States especially, should now commit themselves," he said. G8 leaders agreed last year to consider seriously a goal to halve global emissions by 2050, a proposal favoured by Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada. Developing countries are putting priority on growth and balking at targets, and complaining that the United States, which with China is a top emitter, is not doing enough. The European Union has said the bloc aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, but the United States says only that it will halt the growth of its emissions by 2025 and expectations are low for bold US moves until a new president takes office next January. Advanced countries also disagree on the base-year for mid-century reduction targets, leading some to suggest the quest for long-term targets be shelved for now. "Our view is that since we cannot reach an agreement on the long-term, we can put it aside and focus on the mid-term goal, which is to identify what should be done by 2020, so we can take actions in time," Xie Zhenhua, China's vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters. Participants stressed the need for funds and technology transfers to help developing countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions, but some said much of the money would come from the private sector rather than from governments. The UN's de Boer said "hundreds of billions of dollars a year" would be needed over the longer term.

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

Days before the event, Bloomberg made blunt comments in an interview with The New York Times, expressing scepticism about the #MeToo movement and questioning sexual misconduct allegations against Charlie Rose, the disgraced news anchor. Senior Emily’s List officials seriously debated withdrawing Bloomberg’s invitation, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the end, the group concluded it could not risk alienating Bloomberg. And when he addressed the luncheon Sept 24, Bloomberg demonstrated why. “I will be putting more money into supporting women candidates this cycle than any individual ever has before,” he declared. FILE -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, in New York on Jan. 4, 2020. The former mayor’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Calla Kessler/The New York Times) It was not an idle pledge: Bloomberg spent more than $100 million helping Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Of the 21 newly elected lawmakers he supported with his personal super political action committee, all but six were women. FILE -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, in New York on Jan. 4, 2020. The former mayor’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Calla Kessler/The New York Times) The decision by Emily’s List to mute its misgivings and embrace Bloomberg as a mighty ally foreshadowed the choice Bloomberg is now asking Democrats to make by anointing him their presidential nominee. There are, after all, numerous dimensions to Bloomberg’s persona and record that give Democrats pause. A former Republican who joined the Democratic Party in 2018, Bloomberg has long mingled support for progressive causes with more conservative positions on law enforcement, business regulation and school choice. He has often given voice to views that liberals find troubling. Yet in a primary campaign defined by Democrats’ hunger to defeat President Donald Trump, Bloomberg is also offering himself up as a person singularly equipped to do so — a figure of unique standing and resources with a powerful set of alliances and a fearsome political machine to draw on. His political rise has become a test of the impact one man’s wealth can have when he applies it to the political system with driving sophistication. In less than three months as a candidate, Bloomberg has poured more than $400 million, and rapidly counting, into the campaign. But that figure pales in comparison with what he spent in prior years positioning himself as a national leader with presidential ambitions. A Times examination of Bloomberg’s philanthropic and political spending in the years leading up to his presidential bid illustrates how he developed a national infrastructure of influence, image-making and unspoken suasion that has helped transform a former Republican mayor of New York City into a plausible contender for the Democratic nomination. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. Since leaving City Hall at the end of 2013, Bloomberg has become the single most important political donor to the Democratic Party and its causes. His personal fortune, built on a financial information and news company, is estimated at more than $60 billion. It fuels an advocacy network that has directed policy in dozens of states and cities, mobilised movements to take on gun violence and climate change, rewritten election laws and health regulations, and elected scores of politicians to offices as modest as the school board and as lofty as the Senate. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. “Clearly, over the last several elections, there has not been a more important donor to the Democratic Party than Michael Bloomberg,” said former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who once chaired the Democratic National Committee. “He has led on guns. He has led on climate change. He has been involved in all these races.” In all, Bloomberg has spent at least $10 billion on his charitable and political pursuits. The vast majority has gone to philanthropy, for causes that reflect his personal interests and passions, including $3.3 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University. But the Times’ examination — based on a review of years of campaign and nonprofit tax filings as well as interviews with more than 50 people who have benefited from his support — illustrates how deeply that philanthropy is entwined with Bloomberg’s political preoccupations. In fact, in 2019, the year he declared his presidential candidacy, Bloomberg’s charitable giving soared to $3.3 billion — more than in the previous five years combined. And it is not simply goodwill that Bloomberg has built. His political and philanthropic spending has also secured the allegiance or cooperation of powerful institutions and leaders within the Democratic Party who might take issue with parts of his record, were they not so reliant on his largesse. In interviews with the Times, no one described being threatened or coerced by Bloomberg or his money. But many said his wealth was an inescapable consideration — a gravitational force powerful enough to make coercion unnecessary. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. The Philanthropy Flood Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. Early in his second term as mayor, Bloomberg bought a six-story beaux-arts mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and outfitted it as part-charity, part-governance laboratory. It has become the hub of his empire — headquarters of Bloomberg Philanthropies and until recently the seat of his political operation. It was during his 12 years at City Hall that Bloomberg wrote the playbook for propping up allies and co-opting opponents with a mix of political and charitable giving. Even as he spent $268 million on his three campaigns and made $23 million in campaign contributions to others, his philanthropy gave away $2.8 billion, much of it to civic and cultural groups around New York. His philanthropy actually comprises three separate streams of money. But only one of them, the Bloomberg Family Foundation, is publicly accounted for. The Times’ examination found billions of dollars in donations under the Bloomberg Philanthropies umbrella that had not been previously disclosed or itemised — corporate giving by his company, Bloomberg LP, and from his personal checkbook. In all, by his own accounting, Bloomberg has given away nearly $9.5 billion since 1997 at an annual rate that has increased more than a hundredfold. In 2018, the year before he announced for president, he spent nearly $770 million. Last year’s $3.3 billion figure probably included a $1.8 billion donation to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, announced in November 2018. Even without it, his charitable giving roughly doubled. His spending on electoral politics has also steadily increased, from about $11 million in 2013, his final year as mayor, to the more than $100 million during the 2018 midterms. All of those funds flow not just from Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg’s super PAC, Independence USA, but through an array of advocacy groups that rely on him for donations in the tens of millions of dollars. A number of them are cornerstones of liberal politics, including the Sierra Club, one of the country’s most influential environmental groups, Planned Parenthood and Everytown for Gun Safety. FILE -- Protesters at a demonstration organised by Everytown for Gun Safety, outside the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 10, 2019. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) The foundation, along with Bloomberg’s other entities, has become something of a talent stable for people he admires — public officials, business leaders and political strategists, among others. The foundation’s board looks almost like a shadow administration, including luminaries like former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as well as current or former executives from companies including American Express, Disney and Morgan Stanley. FILE -- Protesters at a demonstration organised by Everytown for Gun Safety, outside the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 10, 2019. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times) Much of his charitable giving has been focused in areas like the arts, higher education and global public health. But it has sometimes overlapped with his political agenda, tying him closely to powerful progressive interest groups and amassing reservoirs of gratitude, admiration and influence across the country. Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Bloomberg, said the former mayor tended to approach his large-scale causes by seeking out trusted partners — political leaders or organisations — and using various parts of his operation to support them. “When we identify strong, effective leaders, our view is that we should invest in them,” he said. The range and reach of Bloomberg’s spending, experts said, cannot but play to his advantage in the presidential race. “The fact that he can call in all these favors all over the country — a normal person can’t do that,” said Adav Noti, chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center. “A normal person will never be able to do that.” FILE -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, speaks at the Heritage Christian Center in Aurora, Colo., Dec. 5, 2019. The former mayor’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Chet Strange/The New York Times) Policy, the Bloomberg Way FILE -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, speaks at the Heritage Christian Center in Aurora, Colo., Dec. 5, 2019. The former mayor’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. (Chet Strange/The New York Times) On a national level, there is arguably no issue more closely associated with Bloomberg than gun control. On New Year’s Day 2006, Bloomberg declared that he saw an urgent duty “to rid our streets of guns and punish all those who possess and traffic in these instruments of death.” That April, he convened a Gracie Mansion summit of 15 mayors from across the country, marking the beginning of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which within a few short months included more than 100 civic leaders from 44 states. Soon enough, Bloomberg ramped up his spending on politics beyond New York. Frustrated at the flow of firearms from Virginia, a state with lax gun laws, Bloomberg tried to buoy candidates in the state’s 2011 elections who shared his views. After leaving office in December 2013, Bloomberg began expanding his advocacy operation. He founded a new group, Everytown for Gun Safety, which has since spent tens of millions of dollars pushing for gun control measures, with considerable success in swing states. The organisation came into existence through an almost corporate-style merger: Bloomberg already had a gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, but he needed a grassroots army to compete with the National Rifle Association. So it joined forces with an existing activist group, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, to form Everytown. Moms Demand Action had sprung up on Facebook after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Volunteers organised into local chapters, held protests and lobbied for legislation. After a year of working long hours for no compensation, many volunteers were running on fumes and well aware their organisation needed money. Bloomberg promised to infuse the movement with $50 million, bringing his mayors’ group and Moms Demand Action under the Everytown umbrella. According to his spokesman, Bloomberg has underwritten the gun control movement with a total of $270 million since 2007. But with his backing came a stark shift in culture, one that left some activists feeling they were pawns. People involved in the group described being forced to communicate exclusively in canned talking points. Other members greatly appreciated the new direction from Everytown. After the mass shooting last year at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, other groups organised protests to pressure the retailer to change its policies. But Moms members were discouraged from attending and told not to show any affiliation if they did. “Our goal is always to get results, and sometimes that means playing the outside game, and sometimes it requires playing the inside game and working with partners who have shown themselves to be amenable to change,” said Maxwell Young, chief of public affairs for Everytown. Bloomberg insisted on a strategy of bipartisanship, frustrating activists who saw the Republican Party as unalterably opposed to their goals. In 2016, he spent nearly $12 million to reelect Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican supportive of background checks but strongly conservative on nearly everything else. In 2018, even as Bloomberg was spending nine figures to defeat congressional Republicans, Everytown backed another Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, for reelection. A number of local volunteers, who said they had been assured that Everytown had no plans to support Fitzpatrick, quit to form their own gun control organisation. But at least a half-dozen former Everytown and Moms Demand Action officials have joined the Bloomberg campaign, including senior political and legal strategists and the deputy director of the Survivors Network. And when Bloomberg spent roughly $10 million on a Super Bowl commercial this month, he chose to focus his 60-second spot entirely on gun control. Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. Powerful Alliances Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy has been a boon for progressive causes, earning support from Democrats nationwide even as parts of his record give them pause. In the presidential race, Bloomberg has activated his sprawling network of allies to great effect — drawing on his foundation and its beneficiaries to build a campaign staff and calling on politicians he has supported in the past for their endorsements. It is that network, as much as the raw force of his campaign spending, that has propelled Bloomberg into contention in the Democratic race. He has climbed to the top rank of contenders, even catching up to former Vice President Joe Biden in some national polls. Since the start of his campaign, more than 50 employees of Bloomberg Philanthropies have moved across town to his Times Square campaign headquarters as paid staff members, including the foundation’s chief executive, Patricia Harris, a former New York deputy mayor, and James Anderson, previously the foundation’s head of government innovation. Overnight, Harris and Anderson went from providing cities around the country with grants to contacting mayors for support. Dozens of current and former mayors have since endorsed Bloomberg, including leaders from major cities like Houston; Memphis, Tennessee; Tampa, Florida; and Washington. Bloomberg has promised to spend aggressively to defeat Trump no matter who the nominee is. But advisers to Bloomberg acknowledged the scale and focus of his spending would differ depending on whether he is the Democratic standard-bearer. “If Mike Bloomberg is the nominee, he will ensure that the Democratic Party has the greatest funding in its history,” Wolfson said. If Bloomberg is not nominated, Wolfson suggested a narrower focus. “If you’re trying to defeat Donald Trump and you’re not on the ballot, you’re going to focus on the battleground states,” he said. There are places where Bloomberg’s past spending has left a less-helpful mark for his campaign. Pennsylvania may be one of them, since some Democrats there still resent his past support for Toomey. But in most places he has ventured as a candidate, Bloomberg’s many years of largesse have helped earn him a warm reception. During the week of the Iowa caucuses, he toured California with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, for whom Bloomberg spent millions in a 2018 gubernatorial race, and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a beneficiary of Bloomberg foundation grants. And he got an endorsement from Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, for whom Bloomberg’s super PAC spent more than $2 million in the last midterm elections. Some of his biggest endorsements have come out of cities that have been focal points for his philanthropy. In the Bay Area, Bloomberg’s foundation has distributed dozens of grants to museums, dance companies and climate organisations, while his political donations have funded school board candidates and referendums to tax soda and ban electronic cigarettes. San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, endorsed Bloomberg last month. Wolfson said no promises had been made to Bloomberg’s endorsers about what they could expect from him down the line. “I haven’t had a single conversation with anyone where I suggested or implied any future support, nor did anyone ask for it,” he said. ©2020 The New York Times Company

China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the United States. But delegates at UN climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favour as a major policy tool, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population. Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China's are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to about 9 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion now. "Population is clearly an important factor," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, at UN talks trying to plan a new deal to combat climate change after 2012. China, which rejects criticism that it is doing too little to confront climate change, says that its population is now 1.6 billion against 1.3 billion if it had not imposed tough birth control measures in the late 1970s. The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the United States. Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels. "This is only an illustration of the actions we have taken," said Su Wei, a senior Foreign Ministry official heading China's delegation to the 158-nation talks from Aug 27-31. He told Reuters that Beijing was not arguing that its policy was a model for others to follow in a global drive to avert ever more chaotic weather patterns, droughts, floods, erosion and rising ocean levels. But avoiding 300 million births "means we averted 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005" based on average world per capital emissions of 4.2 tonnes, he said. A country emitting 1.3 billion tonnes a year would rank just ahead of Germany on a global list of emitters behind only the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan. Beijing introduced its one-child policy in the late 1970s. The rules vary across the country but usually limit families to one or, at most two, children. "Population has not been taken seriously enough in the climate debate," said Chris Rapley, incoming head of the Science Museum in London. He favours a greater drive for education about family planning to avoid unwanted births and slow population growth. But tougher birth control runs into opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, and from some developing nations which favour rising birth rates and have per capita emissions a fraction of those in rich nations. Harlan Watson, the chief U.S. negotiator, said that high immigration to the United States makes it harder to slow its rising emissions. "It's simple arithmetic," he said. "If you look at mid-century, Europe will be at 1990 levels of population while ours will be nearing 60 percent above 1990 levels. So population does matter," he said.

A report by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed carbon dioxide levels surged to 413.2 parts per million in 2020, rising more than the average rate over the last decade despite a temporary dip in emissions during COVID-19 lockdowns. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the current rate of increase in heat-trapping gases would result in temperature rises "far in excess" of the 2015 Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average this century. "We are way off track," he said. "We need to revisit our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life," he added, calling for a "dramatic increase" in commitments at the COP26 conference beginning on Sunday. The city of Glasgow was putting on the final touches before hosting the climate talks, which may be the world's best remaining chance to cap global warming at the 1.5-2 degrees Celsius upper limit set out in the Paris Agreement. Under countries' current pledges, global emissions would be 16% higher in 2030 than they were in 2010, according to a separate analysis by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). That is far off the 45% reduction by 2030 that scientists say is needed to cap warming at 1.5 degrees and avoid its most devastating impacts. "Overshooting the temperature goals will lead to a destabilised world and endless suffering, especially among those who have contributed the least to the (greenhouse gas) emissions in the atmosphere," said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. "We are nowhere near where science says we should be," Espinosa said. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a news conference with children the summit was going to be "very, very tough". "I am very worried because it might go wrong and we might not get the agreements that we need and it is touch and go, it is very, very difficult, but I think it can be done," he said. The German government announced Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Glasgow to take part. Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend in person. He and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to make video appearances instead. Britain is seeking support from major powers for a more radical plan to tackle global warming. Johnson urged Putin, for instance, to bring forward by 10 years Russia's target for achieving net zero carbon emissions, from 2060 to 2050, Johnson's office said on Monday. The Kremlin said Putin promised that Russia's delegation to Glasgow "will contribute to a successful work of such an important international forum". 'SOURCE OF DEEP FRUSTRATION' The stakes for the planet are huge - among them the very survival of low-lying countries, the impact on economic livelihoods the world over and the future stability of the global financial system. Alok Sharma, the president of COP26, said developed nations are set to be three years late meeting a pledge to commit a total of $500 billion to help poorer countries tackle climate change. Rich nations vowed in 2009 to deliver $100 billion a year for five years, starting in 2020. But a plan on how to do so, prepared by Canada and Germany ahead of the summit, said the annual target would now not be met until 2023. "Understandably, this has been a source of deep frustration for developing countries," Sharma told a televised news conference. US President Joe Biden's climate envoy John Kerry, attending an event in Saudi Arabia, said the private sector must step in to help governments achieve emission targets. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saturday that the world's top oil exporter aims to reach "net zero" emissions of greenhouse gases by 2060 - 10 years later than the United States. He also said it would double the emissions cuts it plans to achieve by 2030. A Reuters poll of economists found that hitting the Paris goal of net-zero carbon emissions will require investments in a green transition worth 2%-3% of world output each year until 2050, far less than the economic cost of inaction. By contrast, governments since January 2020 have spent a total of $10.8 trillion - or 10.2% of global output - in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A "business-as-usual" trajectory leading to temperature rises of 1.6C, 2.4C and 4.4C by 2030, 2050 and 2100 respectively would result in 2.4% lost output by 2030, 10% by 2050 and 18% by 2100, according to the median replies to the survey. In London, climate activists restarted their campaign of blockading major roads by disrupting traffic in the city's financial district, while in Madrid a few dozen people staged a sit-in protest, briefly blocking the Gran Via shopping street. "Greenhouse gas emissions are provoking climate catastrophes all over the planet. We don't have time. It's already late and if we don't join the action against what's happening, we won't have time to save what is still left," said Alberto, 27, a sociologist who took part in the protest.

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

Officials from Britain, Germany, Italy and France have complained that despite Biden’s promises of consultation, there has been more diktat than conversation on Afghanistan. He is likely to hear more grumbling in an emergency videoconference call on Tuesday among the leaders of the Group of 7. The latest fiasco in Kabul, after earlier US missteps in Libya and Syria, not to speak of Iraq, has added greater urgency to a question that has dogged NATO virtually since the end of the Cold War, long before President Donald Trump happened on the scene: Will there be any serious shift in the way the NATO alliance operates, with the United States leading and Europe following? British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will ask Biden during the G-7 call to keep Kabul airport open for evacuation flights past the original deadline of the end of the month, and this time Biden seems likely to agree. But the allies’ demands for a “conditions-based withdrawal” were rejected by Biden, who insisted, perhaps a bit too hastily, on a firm deadline for leaving Afghanistan. No country stood up and said no, a senior NATO ambassador said. Biden took office with a chance to reset relations with Europe after the trauma of the Trump years. While Biden has said almost all the right things on issues of trade and climate change, the Afghanistan fiasco has left many Europeans more convinced than ever that they cannot rely on the United States to look after their security interests — no matter who is occupying the White House. Washington’s shift of foreign policy focus to countering the rising global influence of China has only deepened their anxieties. During NATO’s summit meeting in June, which Biden attended, the president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, called the decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan “a betrayal,” an official in the room later said. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, thanked him and moved on to the preferred American theme of challenging China. Knowing that they could not replace the American military or remain in Afghanistan without US troops, NATO allies largely left the withdrawal up to Washington. NATO had no evacuation-coordination plan, and the rapid victory of the Taliban surprised and embarrassed everyone, with key NATO officials on summer vacation and no American ambassador in place. Some of the calls for change do seem more serious than in the past. Armin Laschet, a German conservative aiming to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, called the US withdrawal “the greatest debacle that NATO has experienced since its foundation.” Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union foreign affairs chief, told the European Parliament that the departure was “a catastrophe for the Afghan people, for Western values and credibility, and for the developing of international relations.’’ Theresa May, the former British prime minister, who rushed to be the first foreign leader to see the newly elected Trump, asked in Parliament: “Was our intelligence really so poor? Was our understanding of the Afghan government so weak? Was our knowledge on the ground so inadequate? Or did we just think we had to follow the United States and on a wing and a prayer it would be all right on the night?” Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary-general from 2004 to 2009, said that European criticism of Biden was quite accurate, but also somewhat irrelevant, because “we Europeans have become addicted to US leadership.’’ Given the rise of China, he said, “the trans-Atlantic relationship as we have known it will never be the same.’’ Afghanistan should be a lesson for Europe, he told the BBC. America’s focus on China means that Europeans must “develop a capacity to stand on our own feet, militarily and politically,’’ and “should seriously think about what to do for our own defence and spend the money to make that happen.’’ But he added: “We’re very far from that now, unfortunately.” For all the renewed calls for European independence of action and “strategic autonomy,” some say there is scant evidence much will change. “Europeans are up in arms, but there are no alternative options, so I take this with a grain of salt,” said Rem Korteweg, a senior fellow at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch research institution. “It’s repeating the mantras of Europeans whenever things don’t go as we want,’’ he said. But the wars in Bosnia and Libya demonstrated “the inability of Europeans to do anything serious without the Americans.” To alter that would require a commitment of political will and taxpayer money that European leaders show little sign of providing. It is hard enough to get NATO’s European members to spend the 2% of gross domestic product on defence that they agreed, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to do by 2024. Even Laschet’s Germany, which is spending more, is up to only 1.53%. “It’s nice to talk of European strategic autonomy, but to do what?” Korteweg asked. “What problem do we want to solve without the Americans? On what problem do we not want them to lead? Or is European autonomy a way of protecting ourselves from the big, bad outside world, from migration flows and Chinese economic coercion?” Benjamin Haddad, a Frenchman who directs the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council, sees the debate reinforcing a call by French President Emmanuel Macron for a more autonomous European defence capacity in cooperation with NATO. But Haddad is sceptical. “Europe did damage control with Trump, to wait him out,” he said. “Now, there is a bit of a shock, and clearly the Trump years didn’t serve as the wake-up call we expected from Europeans.’’ Haddad sees no concern that Washington will renege on its commitment to NATO’s collective defence. “But there is a message to Europe that there is no US appetite to intervene in conflicts in the neighbourhood that could impact Europe,” he said. Anna Wieslander, a Swedish defence analyst and director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council, sees the Afghan pullout as a clear sign that NATO will shift again to focus on great-power competition with China and Russia, emphasising issues of deterrence, resilience, disinformation and climate change. European allies were tired of Afghanistan, too, she said, where the war against terrorism became mixed up with democracy promotion, nation building and social reform. “But NATO is not a development aid organisation,” she said. The withdrawal fiasco will revive the strategic autonomy argument, but the best result, she said, would be “a European pillar in NATO” that could — with major investment — provide some of the strategic airlift, surveillance, reconnaissance, and command and control that only the Americans now provide. “If we want more capacity and burden-sharing,” Wieslander said, “that could be a useful, if expensive debate.’’ Julian Lindley-French, a defence analyst at the Institute of Statecraft in London, says that the Europeans are doing a lot of “virtue signalling,’’ despite “the weakness of the European effort in Afghanistan over the past 20 years,’’ where most allies limited their operations with cautious rules of engagement. “European weakness,” he added, “is in fact European isolationism.’’ European complaints about the chaotic withdrawal are serious but could boomerang, warned Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “I’m sympathetic to European anxiety, given their reliance on the United States for the ultimate guarantee of their security, but also because it raises important questions about Biden’s judgment,’’ Schake said. NATO allies “stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Afghanistan for 19 years, and the US seems insufficiently appreciative of that long effort,” she said. “But I fear that there will be an American backlash to these European complaints when they could have done more.” Even as Americans “may feel disgraced by what will happen after our abandonment,’’ Schake said, “our European friends complaining loudly about our failures is unlikely to instil greater commitment by Americans to European concerns and interests.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

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

After a summer of demonstrating in the streets, outside municipal offices and in the airport, students refuted the government’s wishful assertion that once they returned to school the months of pro-democracy protests that have roiled the city would come to an end. “The government thinks it can quell the movement when students return to school, because we can only come out during the summer,” said Owen Lo, 16, a high school student. “But that’s not true.” He said he was afraid of the repercussions he and other students might face, but “seeing so many students selflessly gambling their future to express their demands to the government, it is infectious, and makes me want to come out and do something for Hong Kong.” Students who gathered at a plaza near the Central Business District were joined by thousands of workers holding a concurrent strike, exemplifying the multigenerational makeup of the protests. “Through these peaceful activities, many citizens are coming out to show their comrades on the front lines that public opinion has not turned against them,” said Peter Chui, a 24-year-old engineer. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined protests that began in June to oppose an unpopular bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to mainland China for trial. As the summer unfolded, the protesters’ demands grew to include a call for universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into accusations of police brutality. The protests have also become more violent, as a core group of demonstrators — many of them high school and university students — have fought with the police and damaged symbols of Chinese authority. A senior Hong Kong official on Monday warned for the first time that “elements of terror” were seen among the city’s pro-democracy protesters after a weekend of demonstrations punctuated by violence and vandalism. The Hong Kong authorities had previously rejected a mainland official’s description of “signs of terrorism” in characterising acts of violence by some protesters. But John Lee, the territory’s secretary for security, changed that stance Monday, as the local government escalated its criticism of the monthslong demonstrations. “The extent of violence, danger and destruction hae reached very serious conditions,” Lee said. “Radical people have escalated their violent and illegal acts, showing elements of terror.” Police officers attacked unarmed demonstrators inside a subway station Saturday, and protesters Sunday disrupted transit for thousands of travellers at Hong Kong’s international airport, the seventh-busiest in the world. Tensions on Monday, the first day of school for many students, ran high. Police officers monitored the student protests and riot police officers were deployed to subway stations — a sign of the fears that the weekend’s tumultuous protests would continue onto campuses. But the activism Monday morning remained peaceful. High school students around the territory protested in various ways across campuses, reflecting the diversity of the movement. They wore black shirts or eye patches to commemorate a first-aid volunteer who recently lost an eye to a projectile shot by the police. Others studied in the library or designated classrooms rather than participate in normal classes. A group of secondary school students from St Francis’ Canossian College, the alma mater of the city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, carried signs and donned construction helmets or gas masks, gear typically saved for more violent protests. One sign read: “Chief Executive, will you listen to the voices of the younger sisters from your school?” Tens of thousands of students from schools and universities across the city crammed the central commons on the campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong to listen to speeches from professors, lawyers and student protesters. Education and government officials said they were opposed to class boycotts in any form, saying in a letter to teachers that schools should remain politically neutral places. “Schools are absolutely not places for presenting political views or demands,” Matthew Cheung, the city’s chief secretary, said at a news conference Monday. Boycotts, he said, would disrupt normal classes, “extending the turmoil we see in society to the peaceful environments of school.” He added, “This holds no benefits for the mood of students as they study, or for the healthy growth of our next generation.” When asked why police had showed up at high schools, the education secretary, Kevin Yeung, said protests held by “unknown people” outside schools could not be treated like boycotts on campuses. “The schools clarified that they did not call the police,” he said. “When people see police in a place with a lot of people, they want to maintain order and ensure public safety.” He said officers should not be seen as a threat. Many striking students said they had exhausted other avenues of protests and that class boycotts were the most peaceful way of resistance. Some emphasised in a statement the principle of “boycotting classes but continuing to learn,” by more directly engaging in current affairs and in civic lessons. “This is more important than school,” said Krystal Hung, a university student who planned to boycott classes in the short term. “I can catch up on studies on my own even if I’d skipped classes. And if I don’t come out this time, I may not have another chance in the future.” Jessie Cheung, a 17-year-old high school student, said she felt drained after splitting her summer between attending protests and studying for college entrance exams. She has not skipped a single march since the movement began during her exams in June, she said. “It all adds up. I’m getting more tired and with the start of school, there will be more things to worry about,” she said. “On the one hand, I have to care about my grades, and on the other, I need to perform my civic duty.” The Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, which has a history of supporting pro-democracy protests, said in a statement that while its members believed that undergraduates had the maturity to decide whether to strike, the group would neither organise nor endorse high school class boycotts. Ip Kin-yuen, the vice president of the union and a lawmaker who represents the education sector, said he encouraged schools to accommodate the wishes of high school students boycotting classes within schools. Karen Yong, a 52-year-old teacher, said that she would follow the instructions of the school authorities, but felt helpless after watching students protest all summer without achieving their goals. “In this social climate, I don’t know what to tell my students. You could be very authentic, serious and engaged with society, but what happens to you could be quite tragic,” Yong said, referring to the arrests of protesters and prominent activists and lawmakers. “In the end, I may just have to tell them to get good test results, and find a good job and make good money — that’s all. Is that the point of education?” Joshua Wong, a prominent 22-year-old activist whose activism as a secondary student played a prominent role in citywide protests, said that class boycotts represented the most peaceful forms of resistance against Beijing. ”When we can’t see the future of our society, how can we see our personal future and our personal career?” he said in a phone interview. The class boycotts were not the “starting point and not the end point” of the protest movement, he added. “It just shows how our momentum keeps going forward.” © 2019 New York Times News Service

A vast network of research buoys across the tropical Indian Ocean is helping farmers better plan their crops and to unlock the climate secrets of one of the least studied expanses of water, a team of scientists say. The Indian Ocean was the most poorly observed and least understood of the three tropical oceans, the scientists say in study on the network published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Yet monsoon rains in the Indian Ocean region were critical to grazing and cropping that supported a third of mankind from East Africa and India to Southeast Asia and Australia. The ocean also had far-reaching climate influences, such as on Atlantic hurricane activity. "The Indian Ocean is one of the remaining great unknowns because historically we had little ocean data from that part of the world," Gary Meyers, one of the report's authors, told Reuters. "We haven't even had very good meteorological data from the Indian Ocean," said Meyers, director, Integrated Marine Observing System at the University of Tasmania in southern Australia. So far, instruments have been deployed at 22 of the 46 mooring sites that stretch in an arc from Sumatra in Indonesia to the east coast of equatorial Africa. FREE DATA A variety of ocean and weather measurements are beamed via satellite to researchers and the data is available free to the public, Meyers said. Countries including India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia and the United States are funding the array, which is expected to be finished by 2012. Meyers said the array would help improve weather forecasts and also improve the understanding of the impacts of climate change. Data from the network, called the research moored array for African-Asian-Australian monsoon analysis and prediction (RAMA), would also help scientists better predict the impacts of phenomena such as the Indian Ocean Dipole, a fluctuation in ocean surface temperatures. When it is in a negative phase, it creates cool water west of Australia and warm Timor Sea water to the north. In a positive phase, the pattern of Indian Ocean temperatures is reversed, weakening the winds and reducing the amount of moisture picked up and transported across Australia. Australian farmers were already using forecasting data about the dipole to plan their cropping.

Spiritual guru Sri Chinmoy, a peace activist who inspired his followers to feats of extreme physical endurance, has died at the age of 76 at his home in New York, a statement from his organization said on Friday. Chinmoy, who suffered a heart attack, died on Thursday. Chinmoy was born in India and in 1964 immigrated to New York, working in the Indian Consulate. He later started a meditation center that eventually spread around the world. A statement issued on behalf of Chinmoy's followers said he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to former US Vice President Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Friday. He was a strong supporter of the United Nations and his charities sent food and medicine around the world. Chinmoy's followers were said to take on a regimen of vegetarianism, humanitarian service and extreme physical challenges as a way to inner peace. He set an example by running ultra-marathons before switching to weightlifting. Acolytes said he was capable of lifting airplanes and had written more than 1,600 books of prose and poetry in his quest for world peace. One of his students, Ashrita Furman, set dozens of marks in the Guinness Book of World Records for oddball feats such as going up and down Japan's Mount Fuji on a pogo stick and riding a unicycle backward for 53 miles (85 km). Chinmoy's followers have also included guitarist Carlos Santana, saxophonist Clarence Clemons and singer Roberta Flack.

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

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

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world on Wednesday to agree a sweeping treaty to fight climate change by 2009, telling UN-led talks in Bali to act now on "the moral challenge of our generation". Ban also told more than 120 environment ministers at the Dec. 3-14 meeting that the threat of global warming had a "silver lining" because creative solutions could create jobs and ease poverty in developing nations from Africa to Asia. "The time to act is now," Ban told the ministers, split over the ground rules for starting formal negotiations on a new long-term global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. "This is the moral challenge of our generation," he said, saying there was a "desperate urgency" to act to slow rising seas, floods, droughts, famines and extinctions of wildlife. "Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future," he said. Earlier, Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd handed formal papers to Ban ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, isolating the United States as the only rich nation without binding caps on greenhouse gas emissions under the UN deal stretching to 2012. Ban said the Bali meeting should agree to a firm two-year deadline to agree a successor to Kyoto that would involve action by all nations, including the United States and poor countries led by China and India, whose emissions are soaring. "You need to set an agenda -- a roadmap to a more secure climate future, coupled with a tight timeline that produces a deal by 2009," he said. The United Nations wants a new pact adopted at a meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. Some developing nations, worried that any commitments to curb fossil fuel use might slow economic growth, want Bali to launch only non-binding talks. DEEPER CUTS And the United States opposes many other nations' hopes for the guiding terms for negotiations to include a non-binding range for rich countries to cut greenhouse gases by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won applause from delegates by saying the United States should be part of any new deal, as the world's biggest economy and top greenhouse gas emitter. "We are embarking on the biggest project in human civilisation," he said. "We must ensure that the United States ... is part of such post-2012 arrangements." He said a new agreement should also include aid to poor nations that slowed the rate of deforestation. Forests soak up greenhouse gases as they grow and release them when burnt. Ban said all nations should sign up because "our atmosphere can't tell the difference between emissions from an Asian factory, the exhaust from a North American SUV, or deforestation in South America or Africa." Australia's Rudd, whose Labor Party won a landslide election victory last month, handed over Kyoto documents to Ban after signing the pact last week as his first official act. He said that Australia was already suffering from climate change -- ranging from a drying up of rivers to disruptions to corals of the Great Barrier Reef. "What we see today is a portent of things to come," he said. Apart from Australia, 36 Kyoto nations have promised to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States argues Kyoto would hurt its economy and wrongly excludes 2008-12 targets for poor nations. Delegates at the opening of the talk's high-level session held a minute's silence for victims of car bomb attack in Algiers on Tuesday. Eleven UN employees are believed to have been among at least 26 people killed.

US President George W Bush on Friday called for a "strong and transparent" way for nations to measure progress on fighting climate change but said each country should set its own approach. In a speech to a U.S.-sponsored conference of major emitting countries, Bush also called for the creation of a global fund to promote clean technology that would be led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. A long-term goal for reducing global warming was needed, Bush said, but added "each nation will design its own separate strategies for making progress toward achieving this." Bush, who has been under pressure from the world's major economies to accept binding limits on emissions of greenhouse gases, continued to emphasize voluntary approaches to tackling climate change as he kicked off the closing day of the conference. Bush called the meeting as a precursor to United Nations talks in Bali in December, which will aim to launch a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that set limits on industrial nations' emissions. Environmentalists said the conference had produced nothing new and was an attempt to circumvent UN efforts on climate change, a charge Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied. German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the fact that Bush was speaking showed the White House would not return to its previous skepticism about the seriousness of the issue. "This is a big step," he told reporters. "The more you have official discussions about climate change ... the more difficult it is to go backwards."

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown said he and other people in authority should lead by example when it comes to tackling climate change, noting that he rarely flew overseas for fun and liked to drive a modest car. Brown, widely tipped to succeed Prime Minister Tony Blair when he steps down later this year, also stressed the need for all countries to work together to reduce global warming, saying this was his top priority. His comments late on Thursday came after Prime Minister Tony Blair incurred the wrath of environmentalists this week by saying he would be reluctant to give up long-haul holiday flights in the interests of saving the planet. "I don't think in the modern world any top-down solutions or any sort of pulling levers works anymore unless there is individual and social responsibility involved as well," Brown told Sky News television in a debate on climate change. "In other words you have got to take people with you and therefore I think you have got to show by your actions that you are not only doing what you expect other people to do but you can actually make a difference by these actions," he said. Asked if he offset his carbon emissions incurred through travel, Brown said: "I don't do actually at the moment very much international travel for leisure it is mostly for business." He added: "We do offset, the Treasury offsets, parliament offsets." Brown, who is married with two children, detailed how he tried to be careful with his private energy consumption. "I generally use a smaller car," he said. "What I try to do as an ordinary citizen is compost, is energy efficiency, insulation, all these different things." He continued: "We've got our personal responsibility. All of us should think of the consequences of our actions." As well as individual efforts, it was vital for governments to cooperate and hammer out a new global agreement for climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, Brown said. "I think over the next year we are going to have to work very hard at that so that all countries see the benefits of being part of a global system." He also repeated a call for the World Bank to give loans and grants to poorer countries to improve their energy efficiency. Brown was speaking in a televised debate alongside Shell UK Chairman James Smith and -- via satellite link -- European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other experts. Barroso said confronting climate change was an economic and security issue as well as environmental. "We have to act now. The costs of non-action are really immense," he told Sky. The European Commission presented an ambitious policy to fight climate change on Wednesday, challenging the world to follow Europe's lead in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Smith, for his part, insisted that energy giant Royal Dutch Shell was determined to be part of the solution. He predicted that carbon-emitting fossil fuels would remain a crucial part of the energy mix this century. "But what we need to do is respond with new technologies to make the fossil fuels what I call cleaner and greener," Smith said.

With his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in his family for more than a century, Biden took the presidential oath of office administered by US Chief Justice John Roberts just after noon (1700 GMT), vowing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Biden, 78, became the oldest US president in history at a scaled-back ceremony in Washington that was largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due both to the coronavirus and security concerns following the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump. The norm-defying Trump flouted one last convention on his way out of the White House when he refused to meet with Biden or attend his successor's inauguration, breaking with a political tradition seen as affirming the peaceful transfer of power. Trump, who never conceded the Nov. 3 election, did not mention Biden by name in his final remarks as president on Wednesday morning, when he touted his administration's record and promised to be back "in some form." He boarded Air Force One for the last time and headed to his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida. Top Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence and the party's congressional leaders, attended Biden's inauguration, along with former US Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, became the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president after she was sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's first Latina member. Harris used two Bibles, including one owned by Thurgood Marshall, the first Black US Supreme Court Justice. Biden takes office at a time of deep national unease, with the country facing what his advisers have described as four compounding crises: the pandemic, the economic downtown, climate change and racial inequality. He has promised immediate action, including a raft of executive orders on his first day in office. The ceremony on Wednesday unfolded in front of a heavily fortified US Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The violence prompted the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time. Thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city after the siege, which left five people dead and briefly forced lawmakers into hiding. Instead of a throng of supporters, the National Mall on Wednesday was covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light meant to represent people from US states and territories. 'SOUL OF AMERICA' Biden, who has vowed to "restore the soul of America," will call for American unity at a time of crisis in his inaugural address, according to advisers. His inauguration is the zenith of a five-decade career in public service that included more than three decades in the US Senate and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama. But he faces calamities that would challenge even the most experienced politician. The pandemic in the United States reached a pair of grim milestones on Trump's final full day in office on Tuesday, reaching 400,000 US deaths and 24 million infections - the highest of any country. Millions of Americans are out of work because of pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions. Biden has vowed to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear on the crisis. His top priority is a $1.9 trillion plan that would enhance jobless benefits and provide direct cash payments to households. But it will require approval from a deeply divided Congress, where Democrats hold slim advantages in both the House and Senate. Harris was scheduled to swear in three new Democratic senators late on Wednesday, creating a 50-50 split in the chamber with herself as the tie-breaking vote. Biden will waste little time trying to turn the page on the Trump era, advisers said, signing 15 executive actions on Wednesday on issues ranging from the pandemic to the economy to climate change. The orders will include mandating masks on federal property, rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending Trump's travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries. Although Biden has laid out a packed agenda for his first 100 days, including delivering 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations, the Senate could be consumed by Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, which will move ahead even though he has left office. The trial could serve as an early test of Biden's promise to foster a renewed sense of bipartisanship in Washington. Trump issued more than 140 pardons and commutations in his final hours in office, including a pardon for his former political adviser, Steve Bannon, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he swindled Trump supporters as part of an effort to raise private funds for a Mexico border wall. But Trump did not issue preemptive pardons for himself or members of his family, after speculation that he might do so.

ROME July 4 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Officials from a 17-member body which account for the lions share of the world's carbon emissions will hold urgent talks next Tuesday to iron out differences on the eve of a July 8-10 summit of the G8. Group of Eight diplomats and climate change officials told Reuters the meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) was called to narrow the gap between rich countries and developing nations such as India over long-term targets on global warming and emissions. Leaders of MEF nations, which account for 80 percent of global emissions, are due to meet on July 9 on the sidelines of the G8 summit in the central Italian city of L'Aquila. There are hopes that they could take a decisive step forward in talks for a U.N. climate change pact due to be signed in December. But officials said persistent differences, particularly over the size of reductions in carbon emissions and the base year for comparisons, could scupper efforts to agree a joint declaration and result instead in a chairman's summary of countries' views. "If there is no agreement...then what we will have in the end is a chairman's summary. The meeting (on Tuesday) has been called to see if there can be an agreement of some sort," said a senior Indian official involved in the negotiations. The current draft statement, discussed at talks in Mexico last month, omits a base year for the emissions reduction target and there is disagreement over language and nuances on long-term goals, Indian diplomats said. Developing countries, including India, would like a base year of 1990 because this would force rich nations to cut back their emissions more sharply, leaving them more carbon space to expand their economies. But wealthy nations, such as Japan, are pushing for a more recent base year. European diplomats confirmed the technical meeting would take place in Rome, focusing on differences over the base year and emissions targets. While G8 countries have agreed a "vision" of a 50 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050, developing nations say it is too little and should be 80 percent. "We are not keen on numbers like 50 percent reduction by 2050 by (rich) countries, which will freeze the existing imbalance in the distribution of the carbon space," Dinesh Patnaik, a top Indian negotiator, told Reuters. "The Europeans and the United States were not too keen (on Tuesday's meeting) as they feel it will only add further pressure. But India insisted as they don't want anything in brackets brought to the table in L'Aquila," said one European G8 source.

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

Australian Prime Minister John Howard urged government lawmakers on Tuesday not to be spooked by slumping opinion polls at the start of an election year, saying history still favoured a conservative victory. After 11 years in power and four election wins, Howard's government saw its support slipping to its lowest level in six years on Tuesday as the centre-left Labour opposition recorded a sustained boost under new leader Kevin Rudd. With an election due in the second half of 2007, Howard told a meeting of ruling lawmakers on Tuesday that the government could win another term by promoting strong economic management and its tough stand on national security. "History is on our side in that there has been no change of government since World War Two without the loss of confidence in the government," a party spokesman quoted Howard, 67, as telling the closed meeting of government lawmakers. "People think we run the economy well, and they broadly agree with us on national security," he said, adding that the youthful Rudd was still enjoying a "honeymoon" period with voters. The latest Newspoll found support for Labour continued to surge in February, giving the party its biggest lead since early 2001 on the back of Rudd's promises to bring Australian troops home from Iraq and sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change. Newspoll, published in the Australian newspaper, found Labour held a 12-point lead with 56 percent support compared to 44 percent for the government on a two-party basis, where minority votes are distributed to the main parties and ultimately decide the election. The poll found Labour, which last won national government in 1993, also held a strong primary or first-count vote lead, with 47 percent support to 38 percent for the government. Howard's conservatives won a 27-seat majority at the last election in October 2004 with 44.1 percent of the primary vote and 52.7 percent of the two-party preferred vote. The poll also found Rudd, 49 and just two months in the job, trailing Howard by just one point, 39 to 40 percent, as preferred prime minister, eroding Howard's long-term solid lead on the issue. Rudd played down the significance of the polls on Tuesday and said Labour had a lot of work to do ahead of the election. "I know that there's a huge amount of work still to be done but we've got our sleeves rolled up," Rudd told Australian radio. The next election is due in the second half of 2007 and Howard is widely expected to call it for October or November. Labour must win 16 more seats in parliament to win power. Howard faced a similar slump in the polls in early 2001 but clawed back support to win the election that November, driven by his tough stand on illegal immigration and on national security in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks on the United States.

TOKYO, Thu Aug 30, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States must support a global deal to cut carbon dioxide emissions and combat climate change as time is running out in the fight against global warming, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. In a speech during her first visit to Japan as chancellor, Merkel said both developing and industrialised economies need to agree on specific targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. "I think America will cooperate - America must cooperate. If we can't find a regulatory regime that is accepted by the USA, then China and India will never agree to reduction targets," she told participants of a conference organised by the Nikkei daily. Many developing countries are worried that strict environmental regulations will hamper economic growth. They demand that industrialised nations, the chief polluters, bear the brunt of emission cuts. Merkel suggested that as a compromise, developing countries should be allowed to increase their emissions per capita while industrialised national cut theirs, until both sides reach the same level. Japan is hosting the next G8 summit in Hokkaido in 2008. Negotiators are aiming to hammer out a new climate pact by 2009, succeeding the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which Merkel helped draw up as Germany's environment minister in 1997. Merkel said detailed targets needed to be set soon if the world wants to slow global warming. "The question is, how do we distribute (reduction targets) in the world? I don't believe that it's enough to just agree that everyone will do their best. I don't believe that would yield an impressive result," she said. About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are currently meeting in Vienna to discuss global warming. The United States' chief climate negotiator in Vienna on Wednesday praised developing countries for their efforts to curb greenhouse gases, a marked shift from the US' usual call for big emitters such as China and India to do more to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

It could produce the ultimate "hot chick flick", or it may erupt as a boiling international rant against the threat of global warming. But whichever way it goes, producers of an all-women directed interactive mobile phone film say it will be a "cinematic symphony of women's voices from around the world". The project -- entitled "Overheated Symphony -- is part of the Birds Eye View film festival taking place in London next month which showcases the work of female film-makers. Women across the world are being asked to make a short film -- a "quick flick" -- between 40 seconds and four minutes long on a mobile phone and then send it via the internet to a London-based film director who will pull them all together. Apart from the overall theme "Overheated", there is no restriction on content or subject matter. "If it's hot, we'd like to see it," the project's Web site declares: "Ladies, wherever you are, whoever you are, we want you to join in." According to Sarah Turner, the British film director whose task it will be to create a final edit from the mobile phone contributions, the inspiration for "Overheated Symphony" was the 1927 film by German filmmaker Walter Ruttmann called "Berlin - Symphony of a Great City", which used a montage of still pictures from many sources to document city life. Like that work, Overheated Symphony will be "very abstract", says Turner. It will give those who contribute the chance to engage in a "dialogue of ideas" with women across the world. "Because they are films made by women, women's themes and issues are bound to be an integral part of the finished piece," she told Reuters. "I expect some of them to be quite intense, because this is quite an intense thing to respond to. We all have overheated moments, when we are angry about something, or upset, or when we are sexually hot. We might even end up having some menopause films, you never know." Turner is gathering the mobile films ahead of the March 2 deadline and will then produce a live edit of the symphony to be aired on March 9 at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Rachel Millward, director of the Birds Eye View festival, which is now in its third year, says the film is as much about new technology as it is about women and heat. "The way film and media are going is very much towards interactivity and multi-platform projects," she said. "We wanted to develop a project along those lines, and also one that had a kind of gamey feel to it -- the sense that everyone can join in and have a play." "Making a film from all these female voices around the world is quite a beautiful thing, but also it's about shooting down the idea that women are not up to date with technology." Contributors are being asked on www.birds-eye-view.co.uk to upload their cinematic efforts onto the festival's own YouTube channel to be edited. And while Millward admits the end result is as yet unknown, she is confident it will be far more than the sum of its parts. "The great thing about this film is that you can't predict what it will be," she says. "It could be about climate change, or it could be about passion. I imagine it will be all of those things and more."

The world should widen the fight against global warming beyond curbing CO2 emissions, the UN Environment Programme said on Friday as climate talks in Geneva established a Global Framework for Climate Services to strengthen availability and application of science-based climate prediction and services. The World Climate Conference-3 in Switzerland, which brought together more than 2000 climate scientists, sectoral experts and decision-makers from Aug 31 to Sept 4, adopted the global framework in its high-level segment on Thursday. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina, in her address to the high-level segment, also stressed the need for adaptation funds and transfer of green technologies for developing countries to combat the threat of climate change. She backed the proposal for a World Climate Services System, but said the system would only work with international support and alongside funding for climate change adaptations. The prime minister said Bangladesh is eager to collaborate with the world community, in the areas of mitigation, adaptation, financing, investment, and transfer of technology for facing the threat of climate change on mankind. But, mentioning the threat of rising sea-levels, she said the challenge to countries like Bangladesh in facing natural disasters from global warming and climate change is "monumental". "It is clear all must acknowledge their sacred duty to save our climate system, and hence our planet as a habitable place for future generations," Hasina said. UN's Ban fears sea rise UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his address on Thursday, also warned of the threat of rising seas, saying inaction could spell a rise in seas levels of up to 2 meters (6.5 ft) by 2100. "By the end of this century, sea levels may rise between half a meter and two meters," he said. That would threaten small island states like Mauritius, river deltas like Bangladesh and cities such as Tokyo, New Orleans or Shanghai, he said. His sea level projection is above the range of 18 to 59 cms (7-24 inches) given in 2007 by the UN's own panel of experts. Their estimates did not include the possibility of an accelerated melt of vast ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland. Ban said greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, were still rising fast. "Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading toward an abyss," he said. Climate Services Ban also welcomes the Climate Services initiative. "Scientific knowledge must be the basis for global climate policy, both for mitigation and adaptation to inevitable climate impacts," he said. "The Global Framework for Climate Services is an important step toward strengthening the application of climate science in local, regional, national and international decision-making." Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, which convened WCC-3 with partners including the UNEP, said, "The work to implement the Global Framework for Climate Services goes beyond WCC-3 and beyond climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December." "Society will need information tools to adapt as the climate will continue to be variable and to change notwithstanding steps taken to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases." The climate services pact has five essential components including a Global Climate Observing System, the World Climate Research Programme, and Climate Services Information Systems taking advantage of existing national and international arrangements. Curbing a string of pollutants Meanwhile, the UNEP has said the fight against global warming should be widened by curbing a string of pollutants other than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Heat-trapping methane, nitrogen compounds, low-level ozone and soot are responsible for almost half of the man-made emissions stoking climate change in the 21st century. A wider assault on pollutants, twinned with cuts in carbon dioxide, would help toward a new UN climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December and have other benefits such as improving human health, raising crop yields and protecting forests. "The science is showing us that global warming is happening faster and on a greater scale than anticipated," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told Reuters on the sidelines of the WWC-3 in Geneva. "There are other avenues by which we can move forward" than cutting carbon dioxide, the main focus of a planned new UN climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. Soot or 'black carbon', for instance, is among air pollutants blamed for killing between 1.6 and 1.8 million people a year, many from respiratory diseases. Ozone, a component of smog often linked to emissions of fossil fuels, has been blamed for loss of billions of dollars worth of crops. Nitrogen compounds, from sources such as sewage and inefficient use of fertilizers, stoke global warming and can cause "dead zones" in the oceans that cut fish stocks. And methane, which comes from sources such as deforestation and livestock, contributes up to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. "We believe that those involved in the negotiations (on a new climate pact) should broaden their field of vision," Joseph Alcamo, UNEP chief scientist, told a news conference. "It's not just a matter of carbon dioxide and energy." Many of the non-carbon dioxide pollutants are not regulated by international treaties.

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

Ban Ki-moon formally asked members of the United Nations on Monday to support his candidacy for a second five-year term as UN secretary-general -- a goal he looks almost certain to achieve. Ban, 66, a former South Korean foreign minister, already had assurances of support from the United States and other key members of the UN Security Council, diplomats said in March. Ban's first term ends on December 31. He is unopposed for re-election so far. "As I approach the end of my term of office as the secretary-general of the United Nations, I am humbly submitting my name for the consideration of the members of the Security Council for a second term," said Ban's letter to Gabon's UN ambassador, Nelson Messone, this month's council president. He sent a similar request for support to the 192-nation General Assembly. In the letter to Messone, Ban said he and the 15-nation council had "found common ground on critical global issues of peace and security -- from Somalia to Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) to Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East and far beyond." "I am proud of all we have done together, even as I am mindful of the formidable challenges ahead," he wrote. RUBBER-STAMP PROCESS Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters, Ban cited his push to make climate change a top concern for governments as one of his major accomplishments since he took the helm of the world body in January 2007. On his watch, he said, the United Nations "responded quickly and effectively to a series of devastating humanitarian emergencies" in Myanmar, Haiti, Pakistan and elsewhere. Ban said his team also worked to keep attention on the world's poorest people during the global economic crisis. Officially, UN secretaries-general are elected by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. In reality, it is the five permanent veto-wielding council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- that decide who gets the job. In recent months, Ban has met leaders of all five of those countries and many more to confirm their support. Ban's formal re-election process should be over by the end of June, UN diplomats said. France backed a second term for Ban, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington welcomed Ban's announcement but did not say whether it would vote for him. "The UN faces an array of daunting challenges and we have worked constructively with Secretary-General Ban on many of them," he said. "We will have more to say in the coming days." Western envoys say they have been pleased with Ban's strong support for the "Arab Spring" movements. Ban backed NATO military intervention in Libya and vocally supported pro-democracy protesters in North Africa and the Middle East. Ban met earlier on Monday with the so-called Asia Group, a cluster of UN member states that also includes some nations from the Middle East, to announce and discuss his candidacy for a second term, diplomats said. Chinese UN envoy Li Baodong told reporters the Asia Group endorsed Ban's candidacy, adding he has demonstrated "strong leadership" and shown he is a "person of action." Ban's understated approach and less-than-perfect English set him apart from his more outspoken predecessor, Kofi Annan, who ran afoul of the administration of then-US President George W. Bush for declaring the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq "illegal." Over the past 4-1/2 years, Ban has been accused by human rights groups of putting too much faith in quiet diplomacy. They have criticized him for not taking powerful states like China to task for what they say are rampant rights abuses.

The race was for New Zealand’s Bird of the Year, an annual competition that gives New Zealanders an opportunity to rank their favourite birds from the country’s 200-odd native species and raises awareness of their ecological plight. But this year, a long-tailed bat, one of New Zealand’s two native land mammals, flew away with the top prize, contest organisers said last week. The audacity of the bat, known as pekapeka-tou-roa, led some on social media to call the competition a farce and rail about a stolen election. But other voters applauded the victory. “Real steal yo girl/take yo job energy,” said one Aucklander in a post on Twitter. Another user saw the upset as a potential source of inspiration, writing: “If pekapeka tou roa can win Bird of the Year despite not being a bird then you can ask out your crush, anything is possible.” Bird of the Year, a two-week campaign run by the conservation charity Forest and Bird, is conducted like New Zealand’s electoral system through an instant-runoff system. The competition has a long history of ballot stuffing, rigged polls and even rumours of Russian interference. Last year, a hacker slipped more than 1,500 fake votes into an election database, sending one flightless bird to the top. But this year’s result was the subject of no such skulduggery, organisers said. They had included New Zealand’s two native bat species among the avian contenders for the first time to help raise awareness. Laura Keown, a spokeswoman for the contest, said: “Because of New Zealand’s lack of mammals, Bat of the Year was going to be a very boring competition. It just felt like a nice opportunity to highlight this critically endangered native species and bring them from the darkness into the light.” The country’s two bat species face many of the same difficulties as more famous creatures such as the kiwi, which won the bird competition in 2009. The land mammals are at risk from pests like rats, cats and possums, as well as from the destruction of their forest habitats and climate change. The population is declining by about 5 percent a year. For a long time, a bat led the bird contest “by quite a lot,” Keown told reporters. The lesser short-tailed bat was the only other contender giving the long-tailed bat a run for its money with voters. Behind them was a kakapo — a large, flightless parrot — which was last year’s champion. Perhaps drawn by the lure of the cute, fuzzy faces of New Zealand’s native bats, nearly 57,000 voters around the world weighed in for this year’s online competition — the most in the contest’s 16-year history. “I like to think that it’s because Kiwis just love their native bat so much, and they just really revelled in this chance to get to vote for the bat — especially for New Zealand’s highest honour, the Bird of the Year,” Keown said. Most New Zealanders have never seen the shy, nocturnal mammal, which is roughly the length of a thumb and able to flit from tree to tree at top speeds of more than 35 mph. “They don’t really interact with people at all,” said Kerry Borkin, a bat ecologist at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. “Because of that, there’s so much that we’re still learning about bats, which actually makes them really exciting.” Once bats have been pushed out of an area, it is exceptionally difficult to bring them back, Borkin said. “We need to keep those trees that we have already and plant more so that there are more in the future for the bats to use.” Keown could not confirm whether bats will make another appearance in next year’s competition. “Bird of the Year is no stranger to controversy, I’ll say that,” Keown said. “We always ruffle some feathers.” ©2021 The New York Times Company

MANAUS, Brazil, Nov 27, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The presidents of France and Brazil said on Thursday that rich countries must immediately boost aid for developing nations to fight global warming if they want to reach a climate accord in Copenhagen next month. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who hosted a climate summit of leaders from the Amazon region in Manaus, said progress had been made with pledges by China and the United States this week to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But he said poor countries needed more aid to cope with climate change and help meet their own targets. "The poor need to be supported without any country giving up its sovereignty," Lula said. Brazil has opened an investment fund to help conservation in the Amazon rainforest but insisted donor countries would have no say in it. So far, Norway has donated the largest amount. Climate negotiators have made little visible progress in sorting out the thorny issue of how rich countries should help poorer ones fight global warming. "We need numbers, not only to reduce the temperature. Copenhagen also needs to provide funds from developed countries for developing countries," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was invited because French Guyana forms part of the Amazon basin. "That needs to happen now," he said through a translator. Sarkozy welcomed the target Washington announced this week to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020. The European Union says the cost to help developing nations fight global warming is about $100 billion annually. But developing countries say rich countries should pay between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of their gross domestic product. Brazil, which has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 and 38.9 percent from projected 2020 levels, has been seeking a growing role in climate talks and wanted to forge a common position of Amazon countries to take to Copenhagen. But only one other South American president took part at the Manaus summit - Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.

Humble, established technologies including natural gas and energy efficiency are top picks to lead a clean energy race through 2020, policymakers and senior executives told Reuters this week. But a longer fight to avoid dangerous climate change including droughts, floods and rising seas may require multiple breakthroughs in nuclear power, farming, biofuels, as well as today's top renewables -- solar and wind energy. Industry and banks are placing bets on the climate-friendly energy of the future in a contest that may have many winners, business and policy leaders told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit. "If one wins and others lose, we've all lost," said Google Inc Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl. Coal, maligned for its emissions of greenhouse gases that stoke global warming, won't give up its dominance in electricity generation easily. Competing priorities such as U.S. healthcare and global recession threaten fast movement and decisive action at a major U.N.-led climate meeting in Copenhagen in December. Both Californian and British officials saw energy efficiency as top priority. Efficiency actually makes money, by cutting fuel bills, unlike expensive solar power, for example. Britain's minister for energy and climate change, Joan Ruddock, said efficiency "is the most critical thing" to meet Britain's 2020 goal to cut greenhouse gases by more than a third. California's chief climate official, Mary Nichols, said efficiency would contribute most carbon cuts from electricity generation -- not renewable energy. The United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said energy efficiency was a no-brainer. "We're rather stupid not to be driving that revolution more forcefully than we are anyway," he said. "The odd thing for me to say is that you don't need Copenhagen to drive a revolution in energy efficiency." But not enough people are actually buying efficiency. "It's a failure of economics," rued Richard Kauffman, chief executive of green venture investment firm Good Energies. The head of Deutsche Bank's global asset management Kevin Parker saw another existing fuel -- natural gas -- as a sure winner because of new reserve finds, low prices, and an established supply network. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but burns much cleaner than oil or coal. BREAKTHROUGH Longer term, transportation may usher in the biggest changes in energy use -- especially if they run on electricity instead of biofuels. "The key thing that will look different is we will be consuming a lot more electricity as we substitute electricity for heating and transport," said Paul Golby, chief executive of the UK arm of German utility E.ON AG. "Potentially, the road ahead is a golden age for electricity ... because of a shift to transport," said HSBC's Nick Robins. "That is where the potential for disruptive breaks occurs, for costs -- particularly in solar -- to come down considerably." Beyond 2020, electricity would also have to be supplied by an untested technology to trap and bury carbon emissions from coal plants, called carbon capture and storage (CCS), said the head of Britain's science academy, Martin Rees. "Unless CCS can be implemented in the 2020s there is no chance whatever of turning around the graph where carbon emissions are rising," he said. "In 20 years we are not going to phase out coal completely, no way," said Google's Weihl, agreeing carbon capture was an important bet to make. "Biofuels, genetic (crop) modification, fourth generation nuclear power, fusion, battery technology should all be developed with urgency," Rees added. In developing countries with no power grids, roof-top solar power generation could leap-frog centralized power plants, said Carl Pope, executive director of Sierra Club. "In very many parts of the world we haven't begun to tap the solar potential," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme. "We are just beginning to tap the wind power potential."

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

As negotiators from more than 190 countries fought over details of a climate deal on Tuesday, US political celebrities stole the limelight with high profile calls for action. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Vice President Al Gore, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg drew crowds of journalists as UN officials inside the talks warned there was not enough progress towards an agreement. Television cameras, photographers and reporters chased them through the Copenhagen conference centre and journalists had to obtain tickets to attend speeches by Gore and Schwarzenegger. Normally, a press pass is the only ticket required. Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tried using his influence to ease the political deadlock, calling on the U.S. Congress to finish work on a climate change bill by April 22, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. And he urged the world to complete a global deal by July, assuming the Copenhagen summit ends this week with a political agreement by all the countries. Describing a "runaway melt" of the Earth's ice, rising tree mortality and prospects of severe water scarcities, Gore told a UN audience: "In the face of effects like these, clear evidence that only reckless fools would ignore, I feel a sense of frustration" at the lack of agreement so far. LOCAL LEADERSHIP Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger warned that with or without a global deal, states and cities would go forward with their own programs to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. "Certainly it would be terrific if the world's governments reached an agreement and put hard caps on greenhouse gases while generously helping poor nations" fight climate change, Schwarzenegger said. But he added: "The world's governments cannot do it alone," touting automobile fuel emissions standards and other carbon-reduction steps California has pioneered in the United States. Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire who last month won a third term in office, warned: "We can't sit around and wait for the federal governments to act." "If we, who represent half the people in the world living in cities ... (take action) we will get the national governments to follow. They are not going to be the leaders in this, we are." Despite that go-it-alone message, a meaningful reduction in the world's carbon pollution is not seen as achievable without an agreement by the more than 190 countries meeting in the Danish capital. And so when the biggest U.S. political star of the moment, President Barack Obama, arrives early on Friday, it may become clearer whether he and some 110 other leaders can shake hands on a political deal to control climate change.

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

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

Battered by a major storm, Sacramento on Sunday logged its wettest day since record-keeping began in the 1800s. Eight days prior, Sacramento broke a different record — the longest dry spell in the city’s history, with 212 days without rain. It’s a study in contrasts playing out across California. San Francisco, Redding and a handful of other cities have shattered rainfall records in recent days, during a year that has overall been one of the driest and hottest in state history. Experts say the takeaway from the past few days should not be that the drought is over — the state would need far more rain for that — but that this is a glimpse into the future of California. Santa Barbara residents experience rainfall as an “atmospheric river” moves through the California coast in Santa Barbara on Monday, Oct 25, 2021. Mike Kai Chen/The New York Times The total precipitation that California receives each year is unlikely to change significantly this century, but the state will probably experience longer dry seasons and shorter, but more intense, wet seasons because of global warming, according to a 2018 study in the journal Nature Climate Change. Santa Barbara residents experience rainfall as an “atmospheric river” moves through the California coast in Santa Barbara on Monday, Oct 25, 2021. Mike Kai Chen/The New York Times These bursts of rain can be highly destructive. In the winter of 2016-17, an extreme rainy season in California caused mudslides, the collapse of a major bridge in Big Sur as well as flooding that forced more than 100,000 people near Sacramento to flee their homes. Though rain is usually welcome in a state prone to drought, downpours immediately after dry spells can be particularly damaging, even deadly. Droughts parch the land and contribute to more severe fire seasons. So when rain comes, vegetation that would typically hold the soil in place has been either charred or dried out, allowing water to wash the land away. The South Fork of the American River flows through the Caldor Fire burn scar in Phillips, Calif, on Monday, Oct 25, 2021 as an “atmospheric river” brings record amounts of precipitation to Northern California. Max Whittaker/The New York Times The deadliest mudflow in recorded California history was in January 2018, when rains slammed a region of Santa Barbara County that had been devastated by a large fire the month before. Mudflows as high as 15 feet carried branches and boulders through Montecito. Twenty-three people were killed. The South Fork of the American River flows through the Caldor Fire burn scar in Phillips, Calif, on Monday, Oct 25, 2021 as an “atmospheric river” brings record amounts of precipitation to Northern California. Max Whittaker/The New York Times Already, this week’s storm has led to a debris flow that closed a highway in a region destroyed by the Dixie fire this year. People living close to the burn scars of the Alisal fire, which broke out near Santa Barbara this month, have been issued mandatory evacuation orders. Scientists call these rapid shifts from extreme dry to extreme wet conditions “precipitation whiplash.” And by the end of the century, such events are expected to increase in frequency by 25% in Northern California and to double in Southern California, the study found. As Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the study’s lead author, wrote on Twitter this week: “It is worth noting that this exact situation — an extremely strong atmospheric river bringing brief period of record rainfall in midst of severe and temperature-amplified drought—is what we expect to see in California with #ClimateChange.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

NEW DELHI, Dec 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Japan's prime minister, who has promised to forge a new place for east Asia in international diplomacy, opened three days of talks in India on Monday focusing on engineering a further thaw in relations and boosting trade. Yukio Hatoyama took office in September after 50 years of almost uninterrupted rule by the conservative, pro-US Liberal Democratic Party, but has since seen his popularity ratings slide to 50 percent in a survey published on Monday. Japan and India, Asia's largest and third largest economies, have been working at improving ties since Japan slapped sanctions on India in response to its 1998 nuclear tests. Hatoyama launched his visit by meeting Indian industrialists, including Tata group chairman Ratan Tata and Reliance Industries head Mukesh Ambani, at a Mumbai hotel which was one of the targets attacked by gunmen in November 2008. He was due later to hold talks with his Indian opposite number, Manmohan Singh. India, long a top recipient of Japanese aid, wants details of Hatoyama's foreign policy, particularly Tokyo's attempts to pursue a foreign policy more "independent" of Washington and improve ties with China, New Delhi's longtime rival. New Delhi will want to know more about India's place in Hatoyama's proposed East Asian community with a single currency, inspired by the 27-nation European Union. "Yukio Hatoyama ... is unlike any other Japanese leader that the Indian side has dealt with in the past decade," wrote Siddharth Varadarajan, a senior editor at The Hindu newspaper. "Hatoyama's vision of an East Asian Community and his desire to work with China provides India and Japan with an opportunity to build their bilateral relations on ground firmer than the quicksand of 'balance of power'," he said. That was a reference to a view in New Delhi that looks at Japan as a hedge against a rising China. BOOSTING TRADE, MILITARY TIES Trade, analysts say, is one way of cementing that partnership underscored by closer recent military ties and Japanese support for last year's landmark U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal. "The two sides...are in the process of concluding discussing a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA)," said India's foreign ministry spokesman, Vishnu Prakash. Twelve rounds of talks on the agreement had already taken place, he said. Japan is India's sixth largest investor. Bilateral trade, more than $12 billion in 2008-09, is targetted to climb to $20 billion by next year. Hatoyama's talks in India could also focus on climate change policies -- with the two countries on opposite sides of the debate, particularly on expanding the scope of Japanese support for renewable energy projects in India. Indian officials said the sides would also discuss Japan's offer to train former Taliban fighters as part of a $5 billion Japanese aid package for Afghanistan. India remains uncomfortable about co-opting the Taliban into any power structures in Kabul. Hatoyama's government will likely seek to present the visit as a success as domestic criticism rises. Last week he approved a record trillion dollar budget, which will further inflate Japan's massive debt as the government struggles with the weak economy. Japanese voters are also expressing growing doubts about Hatoyama's ability to make tough foreign policy decisions, and the arrest of two former aides has spurred calls for more explanation of a scandal over false political funding records.

By 2017, that number — about 1 in every 16 children — was nearly cut in half, even as the world’s population increased by more than 1 billion people. The sharp decline in childhood mortality reflects work by governments and international aid groups to fight child poverty and the diseases that are most lethal to poor children: neonatal disorders, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. But a research report shows the results are also highly unbalanced. In some places, children’s health has improved drastically. In others, many still die very early. From 2000 to 2017, all but one of the 97 low-to-middle-income countries that account for the vast majority of deaths of young children lowered their child mortality rates. (The exception was Syria, which has endured a devastating civil war.) The report was released Tuesday by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with a research team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, led by Stephen Lim, the institute’s senior director of science and engineering. The data reveal a wide disparity of outcomes in early child mortality both across countries and within them. The researchers project that if current rates of progress continue, nearly two-thirds of children in the poorest countries will still live in districts that won’t meet United Nations development goals by 2030. “The inequality in that progress is still quite stunning,” Bill Gates said in a call with reporters. By combining detailed survey data with statistical models, the researchers were able to map child mortality in much greater geographic detail than previous estimates. Experts say reduced childhood mortality is also a marker of healthier, more stable conditions for adults. Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown and director of the World Health Organization’s centre on global health law, described it as a health version of “the canary in the coal mine.” Mothers who lose fewer young children tend to have fewer children, reducing their own risk of death in childbirth and increasing their ability to improve the economic prospects of their households, said Ashish Jha, a physician with the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “It has huge implications for the family,” he said. The overwhelming majority of child deaths are preventable. Adequate nutrition, water, sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics can save many lives. And it’s not always a matter of money; often there are cultural or political roadblocks. Malnutrition was a contributing factor in nearly half of these deaths. Dean Jamison, a professor emeritus of global health at the University of California, San Francisco, cautioned against assigning too much precision to the estimates or using them to measure the success of specific health policies. But for a big-picture sense of how things have changed over time and place, estimates like these are “probably the best you can do,” he said. Here’s a look at what’s behind changes in five parts of the world. More than a quarter of the global drop in child mortality reflects progress in India, the world’s second-most populous country. There, 1.2 million fewer children died in 2017 than in 2000. But the gains are not distributed evenly. Southern India has experienced tremendous improvements. Thanks to a combination of economic growth and state policy, as few as 1 in 50 children under age 5 die. States in northern India have comparatively high rates of child death, closer to 1 in 10. “If you look at the health statistics of India, I can point to places that look like Eastern Europe, and I can point to places that look like sub-Saharan Africa,” Jha said. “It’s not that southern India is so wealthy. They’ve made massive investments in women and girls’ education.” Regional inequality is especially pronounced in Nigeria. A child born in districts around Lagos, the country’s largest city, has about a 1 in 16 chance of dying before age 5. But things are very different for children in the country’s far north, along the border with Niger, who experience death rates higher than nearly anywhere else in the world. There, 1 in 5 children die before age 5. The divergent experiences of Nigeria reflect trends that experts say permeate the map of child mortality. Northern Nigeria has endured prolonged violence and political instability, displacing many residents. “If they’re being forced from their homes and communities because of violence, it’s more difficult for them to access essential services they need like health care if they get sick,” said Christopher Tidey, a spokesman at UNICEF. “If they are on the move, that has implications for food security.” Northern Nigeria, part of the Sahel Belt, has also suffered from drought and food shortages, in part due to climate change. Thailand, by contrast, is a leader in national equality among the countries surveyed. Each of its districts meets the development goal of no more than 1 in 40 children dying before age 5. Thailand’s economy is stronger than those of its neighbours. But it also owes some of its success to its investments in health care and its focus on primary care for its citizens. Thailand’s regional neighbours have also made significant improvements. Vietnam, in particular, has relatively similar child mortality rates in most parts of the country. In many southern African countries, reductions in HIV deaths have made a difference. South Africa and Botswana saw some of the largest reductions. In 2017, an estimated 77,000 children died from HIV worldwide, compared with about 246,000 in 2000. The earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 was a big setback for the country’s childhood mortality rate. It worsened many of the factors that can lead to child deaths: more infectious disease risk; less food and safe housing; greater difficulties getting medical care. Li Liu, a population health researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said the country’s experience was an opportunity for scholars to understand how natural disasters can influence public health. “Global health has limited experience in understanding child mortality in that setting,” she said. Continued progress in early childhood mortality may depend not just on health systems but also on the politics and environmental stability of countries that are still struggling. Jha said he worried that the experience in northern Nigeria might be a cautionary tale. Climate change may make access to good nutrition harder in some parts of the world and could prompt violence. He said he was concerned that progress was “going to slow or even reverse if climate change goes unabated.” Still, the overall trend is a positive one. And the new, granular data could help governments and development groups better focus their resources to address the inequality within countries. “It’s not a very long list of things that kill kids in large numbers,” Jamison said. “Most of the items on that list can be addressed inexpensively.” ©2019 The New York Times Company

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

British department stores group Debenhams said first-half sales fell more than expected and it sees the retail environment remaining tough, but its shares rose on relief profit for the period would meet forecast. The retailer, which runs around 145 stores across the UK and Ireland, said like-for-like sales fell 0.7 percent in the six months to March 1, compared with a sales drop of around 0.5 percent forecast by four analysts polled by Reuters. Debenhams, which also has around 40 international franchises in 16 countries outside Britain and Ireland, had said in January that like-for-like sales were flat in the first 18 weeks of its financial year, reflecting poor market conditions. Underlying sales over the key Christmas period -- the four weeks to Jan. 5 -- rose by 2.2 percent. "Following a good performance over Christmas and the January sale, market conditions were tough through the remainder of January and February," Chief Executive Rob Templeman said in the trading update on Tuesday. "The macro economic climate leads us to expect the retail environment to remain challenging," he said, adding first-half profit would be in line with market forecasts. Britain's department store owners have struggled as indebted shoppers cut back on spending amid higher energy and food bills and a cooling housing market. Retail bellwether Marks & Spencer Group Plc reported its worst quarterly performance in two years in January, when it warned that the pain for retailers could extend into 2009. Shares in Debenhams, which returned to the stock market in May 2006 at 195 pence and have since slumped amid poor trading conditions, were up 8 percent at 57.5 pence at 0820 GMT, valuing the retailer at around 541 million pounds ($1.1 billion). "Current trading though weak could have been a lot worse, and the market will be relieved that H1 profit is expected to be in line with consensus," Panmure Gordon analyst Philip Dorgan said in a note. "We believe the stock is oversold, and that the investment in the store base will pay off as the market picks up," he said, retaining a 'Buy' rating on the stock and 80p price target. H1 PROFIT SEEN IN LINE Debenhams' Finance Director Chris Woodhouse told reporters the market consensus for first-half pretax profit was around 90 million pounds and 118 million for the full-year. Debenhams had reported headline profit before tax and items last year of 131.4 million pounds. Templeman said in January that gross margin -- a measure of profitability -- would be flat or slightly up for the year, and said he saw no reason to change that guidance on Tuesday. Templeman told reporters that as along the market does not become more challenging or competitive, "we are looking to hit those sort of numbers" for the year. However, Templeman said that in the current tough market Debenhams would only refurbish around three stores in the second half of its financial year, down from nine originally anticipated and compared with 18 refits in the first six months. "I'm pleased with the performance of the refits ... but in this present market where trade is challenging I don't want to take the disruption on those refits," he told reporters. Debenhams has benefited from bid speculation with Milestone Resources, an investment group linked to Dubai-based retailer Landmark and headed by Micky Jagtiani -- holding a 9.13 percent stake, while Icelandic investment group Baugur had 13 percent. "Nothing's changed since we spoke last time," Templeton told reporters. In January, he had said Landmark was just an investor as far as the board was concerned.

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

Near Gainsborough, a river town 150 miles north of the capital, one of Britain’s last coal-fired power plants still spews carbon dioxide and other gases into the air. Another 150 miles north, off the coast of the seaside port of Blyth, the slender blades of five turbines in an offshore wind farm turn lazily in the breeze. The two plants, both owned by French utility giant EDF, illustrate how far Britain has come. The coal station, restarted recently to cover a shortfall in electricity, is scheduled to be taken out of operation next year, while the company plans to install experimental floating turbines in the waters off Blyth. “We’re talking about a huge transition,” said Paul Spence, director of strategy and corporate affairs at EDF, referring to Britain’s goal of being a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. “A lot of things need to happen to keep the lights on.” Britain is not just the host of the climate meeting, known as COP26; it has a credible claim to being a global leader in climate policy. The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Britain became the first country to legally mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the Climate Change Act in 2008. Its high-tech windmills and superannuated smokestacks are only the most visible evidence of a three-decade campaign. Having built the world’s largest offshore wind industry, Britain has reduced emissions by 44% from 1990 levels. Its target to cut them by at least 68% by 2030 is one of the most ambitious of any major economy, according to the Climate Action Tracker, a scientific analysis of the policies of countries. If Britain achieves that target, which is far from clear, it would be one of a handful of countries doing enough to fulfill the key goal of the Paris Agreement: limiting the long-term rise in the planet’s temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To hit its headline number, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has set out a series of attention-grabbing goals: End the sale of all gasoline- and diesel-fuelled cars by 2030; end the use of all coal and gas-fired power plants by 2035; and end the sale of all fossil-fuelled home heating systems by 2035. “The UK was first out of the blocks with the climate act, and it inspired Sweden and then Germany,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “The UK has successfully been able to phase out coal, which is very symbolic because it first started in England.” The temporary restart of the coal plant near Gainsborough — made necessary by low winds on the North Sea that slowed the turbines — shows that this transition is not without hiccups. A lack of wind or sun can stymie renewable energy sources. Coal reserves behind a power station in Drax, England, Sept 18, 2020. England is hosting a landmark climate summit this week in Glasgow. The New York Times Local resistance has constricted the development of the onshore wind industry. Fears about energy reserves have led Britain to consider allowing drilling in a vast new oil field off the Shetland Islands. There is even a proposal for a new coal field in Cumbria, in northwest England. Coal reserves behind a power station in Drax, England, Sept 18, 2020. England is hosting a landmark climate summit this week in Glasgow. The New York Times Climate experts also fault Johnson for not laying out a realistic road map to achieve his ambitious emissions goals. Britain has failed to raise adequate funds to finance clean-energy projects. It has not shown farmers, key drivers in reducing emissions, how they can contribute by cultivating peat lands and other conservation techniques. Nor is Britain the diplomatic dynamo it once was. When Johnson convenes more than 100 countries in Glasgow, he will push some vaulting goals, including a global end to the use of coal. But he will do so as the leader of a country that divorced itself from the European Union and has so far been unable to galvanize the world’s biggest emitters: China, the United States and India. Still, for all the fears of backsliding, Britons evince genuine pride about being pioneers in the transition to a carbon-neutral future. After all, said Alice Bell, a London-based climate change campaigner, “We led the world into this problem.” The country that was synonymous with the belching factories of the Industrial Revolution, that once darkened its skies and fouled its rivers, that gave the world the phrase “coals to Newcastle,” now produces slightly more than half its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources, predominantly wind. While BP, Shell and other energy giants lobby the government to keep burning gas, there is no analogy in Britain to Sen Joe Manchin, who has financial ties to the coal industry and pressured the Biden administration to scrap core elements of its climate legislation. Unlike in the United States, where climate change is a partisan issue, green policies win broad support on the left and right. The Climate Change Act, which stipulated an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, passed Parliament by a vote of 463-5. Nearly a dozen countries and the EU now have similar laws on the books. In 2019, Johnson’s predecessor, Prime Minister Theresa May, went even further, making Britain the first major economy to commit to being net-zero by 2050, meaning it would remove as much greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as it produces. To some extent, Britain’s leadership is an accident of history, rooted in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s bitter showdown with striking coal miners in 1984. By crushing the union and slashing subsidies for the coal industry, Thatcher accelerated Britain’s search for alternative energy sources, namely natural gas. “She got rid of the coal miners for a combination of political and economic reasons,” said Tom Burke, chair of E3G, an environmental think tank, and a former government adviser. “But it gave the UK a degree of freedom of action that wasn’t available to other countries.” Though Thatcher later came to view climate activism as a left-wing preoccupation, she gave two speeches in 1989 that historians say were the first significant statements on climate change by a world leader. “What we are now doing to the world — by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate — all this is new in the experience of the Earth,” she said to the United Nations. Thatcher planted the seed for a bipartisan cause, as Conservative and Labour governments sought to burnish their green credentials. British diplomats played key roles in brokering climate deals in Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto, Japan. Britain installed climate attachés in its embassies around the world. In 2006, a British government adviser, Nicholas Stern, produced a seminal study of the economic effects of climate change, which framed the debate before the 2009 summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, and set the stage for the Climate Act, passed under a Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. When the Conservatives came to power in 2010, they viewed climate policy as a way to appeal to younger voters, many of whom viewed the Tories as a tightfisted party in thrall to business interests. Parliament created a climate change committee, which prodded the government to adopt policies that would help Britain meet its goals. Several of its policies were mimicked by fellow EU members. “We basically ran the EU on climate policy,” Burke said. Then came the Brexit vote, and “we lost our most important tool for influencing other countries, which was the EU,” he said. Johnson, who once scoffed that wind farms would “barely pull the skin off a rice pudding,” now speaks about climate change with the zeal of the converted. They say he has been convinced of the need for action by his third wife, Carrie Johnson, who campaigns against plastic pollution. But critics say Johnson’s bracing words are belied by his actions. The Climate Action Tracker, while praising Britain’s ambitions, criticised its financial commitment to achieving them, calling it “highly insufficient.” “It’s accurate to say that this is a betrayal of a national commitment by the current government,” Burke said. Johnson’s pro-Brexit government, he said, depends on support from the libertarian wing of the Tory party, which opposes far-reaching climate initiatives, while his anti-business messaging hinders partnerships with the private sector. For private companies, the government’s messaging has been muddled. EDF said it would like to build more onshore wind farms, but local resistance and lack of incentives has made it less attractive. And the government has struggled to line up financing for a new generation of nuclear plants. “We’re only a quarter of the way toward the decarbonized energy system that the prime minister set as a goal for 2035,” said Spence, of EDF. For all of Britain’s agenda-setting, there is also a sense among activists and experts that there is only so much a midsize country can do to solve a planetary problem. Its total emissions account for barely 1% of the world’s total. China accounts for nearly 30%, and the United States for 14%. “Imagine if these policies had been picked up in 1997 by the United States,” said David King, a former climate envoy and scientific adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “The world would be a very different place.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Their study, guided by maternal DNA data from more than 1,200 people indigenous to southern Africa, proposed a central role for this region in the early history of humankind starting 200,000 years ago, nurturing our species for 70,000 years before climate changes paved the way for the first migrations. A lake that at the time was Africa's largest - twice the area of today's Lake Victoria - gave rise to the ancient wetlands covering the Greater Zambezi River Basin that includes northern Botswana into Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east, the researchers said. It has been long established that Homo sapiens originated somewhere in Africa before later spreading worldwide. "But what we hadn't known until this study was where exactly this homeland was," said geneticist Vanessa Hayes of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney, who led the study published in the journal Nature. The oldest-known Homo sapiens fossil evidence dates back more than 300,000 years from Morocco. The new study suggests that early members of our species as represented by the Morocco remains may not have left any ancestors living today, the researchers said. "There is no contradiction between the presence of an early Homo sapiens-like skull in northern Africa, which may be from an extinct lineage, and the proposed southern African origin of the Homo sapiens lineages that are still alive," added study co-author Axel Timmermann, a climate physicist at Pusan National University in South Korea. The ancient lake Makgadikgadi began to break up about 200,000 years ago, giving rise to a sprawling wetland region inhabited by human hunter-gatherers, the researchers said. "It can be viewed as a massive extension of today's Okavango Delta wetland area," Timmermann said. Changes in Earth's axis and orbit caused climate, rainfall and vegetation shifts that set the stage for early migrations of this ancestral group of people away from the homeland region, first toward the northeast 130,000 years ago, then toward the southwest 110,000 years ago, Timmermann added. "Our study provides the first quantitative and well-dated evidence that astronomically driven climate changes in the past caused major human migration events, which then led to the development of genetic diversity and eventually cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity," Timmermann added.

This year is set to be among the three warmest since records began in 1850 and caps a record-warm decade that is a new indication of man-made climate change, the United Nations said on Thursday. "The trend is of very significant warming," Michel Jarraud, head of the World Meteorological Organization, told a news conference on the sidelines of a meeting of almost 200 nations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun trying to curb global warming. He said 2010 so far was slightly warmer than both 1998 and 2005, the previous top two, but could slip if December is a cool month. The WMO said that land and sea surface temperatures so far in 2010 were 0.55 degree Celsius (1 F) above a 1961-1990 average of 14 degrees C (57.2 degrees F). The years 2001-10 were the warmest 10-year period, it said. "There is a significant possibility that 2010 could be the warmest year," he said. A final ranking for 2010 is due to be published early in 2011. Asked if the data were new evidence that human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels were warming the climate, he said, "Short answer: yes." "If nothing is done ... (temperatures) will go up and up," he said, saying the findings would guide negotiators meeting in Cancun from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10. Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degree C since pre-industrial times. CURRENT PROPOSALS 'ARE NOT ENOUGH' The Cancun talks are trying to build on a nonbinding deal at the Copenhagen summit last year to limit overall temperature rises to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). Curbs promised by emitters led by China and the United States are too little to reach the goal. "It's becoming ever more clear that the current proposals are not enough to stay below 2 degrees," said Peter Wittoeck, head of the Belgian delegation in Cancun that holds the European Union presidency. Cancun will seek a modest package of measures, including a new "green fund" to help channel aid to developing nations, a new mechanism to share clean technologies and to protect carbon-absorbing tropical forests. The WMO said warming had been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia and parts of the Arctic. Pakistan, hit by devastating floods, recorded a record temperature of 53.5 degrees C (128.30 F), the warmest in Asia since 1942. The findings, which confirmed a report by Reuters last week, coincided with a cold snap across northern Europe, where heavy snow caused travel chaos. The report said a few places had below-normal temperatures, including parts of Siberia and the southeastern United States. Environmentalists said the data should spur action in Cancun. "This is yet another warning from the planet that it is feeling the heat," said Wendel Trio, international climate policy director for Greenpeace. Jarraud said that the decade-long trend was most relevant to negotiators in Cancun seeking to avert more floods, droughts, desertification and rising sea levels. Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, which helps collect temperature data, said that 1998 had been warmed by a strong El Nino event that heated the eastern Pacific. This year had only a moderate El Nino, but was equally warm.

ROME, Nov 16(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - World leaders and government officials at a UN food summit agreed on Monday to boost agricultural aid to poor nations, but set no target nor a timeframe for action on how to help developing countries feed themselves. A final declaration adopted on the first day of the Rome summit made no mention of a proposal to raise farm aid to $44 billion a year, as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is requesting. Anti-poverty campaigners were already writing off the three-day U.N. summit as a missed opportunity. The sense of scepticism deepened at the weekend, when U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, though European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the food summit saying there could be "no food security without climate security". "Next month in Copenhagen, we need a comprehensive agreement that will provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change," he said. Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in potential agricultural productivity if temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, the U.N. says. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed. With the number of hungry people in the world topping 1 billion for the first time, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation called the summit in the hope leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total -- its 1980 level -- from 5 percent now. That would amount to $44 billion a year against $7.9 billion now. Farmers in rich countries receive $365 billion of support every year. But the summit declaration adopted on Monday included only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action. A pledge to eliminate malnutrition by 2025, one of the early aims of the summit, was also missing from the statement, which merely stated that world leaders commit to eradicate hunger "at the earliest possible date". Last year's spike in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat sparked riots in as many as 60 countries. Rich food importers have rushed to buy foreign farmland, pushing food shortages and hunger up the political agenda -- but also raising fears of a new colonialism in poor countries. Food prices have fallen back since their 2008 record highs but remain high in poor countries. The FAO says sudden price rises are still very likely. A summit of the Group of Eight leading powers in July pledged $20 billion over the next three years to boost agricultural development, in a big policy shift towards long-term strategies and away from emergency food aid. But FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said those were "still promises that need to materialise". Apart from Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, G8 leaders skipped the summit, which looked more like a gathering of Latin American and African heads of state.

The United States, the European Union and emerging economic heavyweights will try again on Tuesday to line up the long-elusive trade-offs needed to save a deal to dismantle export barriers around the world. The United States resisted calls on Monday to announce a cut in its ceiling for farm subsidies as a critical week of talks opened, saying it was ready to act as long as others do likewise, especially developing economies like Brazil and China. The World Trade Organisation's Doha round of negotiations risks years of further delay without a breakthrough this week. But some top trade officials doubted that would be possible, given the range of issues to be resolved and the fundamental differences that still separate rich and poor countries. "I have to say that after today's meeting I am less optimistic than before," said Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid after WTO chief Pascal Lamy summoned more than 30 ministers to spell out what they can do to secure a deal. He told Reuters more talks might have to be scheduled in the coming two weeks, before Europe shuts down for the summer. After that, the U.S. presidential election campaign is likely to put the Doha round on ice and it could be a year or two before it can be revived, officials say, dashing hopes for a rare piece of good news for the slowing global economy. The round was launched shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to bolster the global economy and offer a chance to poor countries to export more and fight poverty. But the negotiations remain bogged down, largely because many poor countries insist their rich counterparts must bear the brunt of the concessions by scaling back farm protections while Brussels and Washington are leaning increasingly on big emerging nations to open up their economies. TRADE NOW, CLIMATE TOMORROW? The battle at the WTO is seen by many as a test of how other global deals can be done, notably next year on climate change, given the shifting balance of power as new heavyweights such as India and China grow in confidence. Many ministers in Geneva will be seeking a lead from the United States on Tuesday when it will again come under pressure to say how far it will lower its ceiling on farm subsidies. "I'm sure it will come tomorrow...Otherwise it will be difficult to move a bit forward," said European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. But U.S. trade chief Susan Schwab said Washington would not be rushing into playing its key card in the negotiations without signs that the big emerging economies were ready to move too. "When we address the...domestic support issue, it will address our desire to invite others to also participate in a 'can do' type of conversation, instead of a 'can't do' conversation," she told reporters. Latest WTO proposals would require the United States to cut trade-distorting farm subsidies to a range of $13 billion to $16.4 billion a year from a current ceiling of $48.2 billion. The range is above current U.S. spending on subsidies of about $7 billion although the handout figure is low because global foods prices are so high. The EU is under pressure to cut its farm tariffs and limit the number of "sensitive" products that would be shielded from the deepest tariff cuts. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the EU's offer on farm tariff cuts now represented an average cut of about 60 percent which represented a "further iteration" on a previous estimate of a reduction of 54 percent.

The Colorado Fire, which has been active since Friday, was 5% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said. A 20-mile stretch of State Highway 1, a scenic north-south route on the Pacific Coast, was closed from near the beach town of Carmel-by-the-Sea to Andrew Molera State Park. About 400 people in Monterey County were evacuated from 1,100 structures, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross said, citing county reports. Four people and a pet stayed overnight at a shelter in a local school, the Red Cross said. California has long had an active wildfire season, but in recent years, fuelled at least in part by climate change, it has grown longer and more punishing. Last year, the wildfire season started unusually early amid an ongoing drought and low reservoir levels, Cal Fire said. In January 2021 alone, the state battled 297 fires on 1,171 acres, the office said. The Colorado Fire is the only fire listed on Cal Fire's incident list so far in 2022. This year, California is also grappling with the Santa Ana winds. A high wind warning was in effect for the area, with possible gusts of up to 70 miles per hour (112.65 kph), according to the National Weather Service. But winds had improved and were forecast to remain light throughout the weekend, the Red Cross said.

Jan 12 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The symbolic Doomsday Clock calculated by a group of scientists was moved a minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, with the group citing inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and climate change. The clock was moved to five minutes to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said, the first adjustment since the beginning of 2010, when it was moved back one minute to six minutes from midnight -- or "doomsday". "Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed," the group said in a statement. The Bulletin (www.thebulletin.org) is a periodical founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. They created the Doomsday Clock two years later to symbolize how close humanity was to self-annihilation, with an initial setting of seven minutes to midnight. Initially the clock was focused on nuclear war, but it has been broadened in recent years as the scientists, who include a range of Nobel laureates, added other risks to humanity. The scientists said world leaders had failed to sustain the progress in nuclear disarmament that had seen them move the hands back on the clock two years ago. As well, the major global challenge now was a warmer climate that threatens to bring droughts, famine, water scarcity and rising seas, said Allison Macfarlane, an associated professor at George Mason University near Washington, who chairs the group's committee that helps set the clock. "The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth's atmosphere," Macfarlane said in the statement. The last time the group moved the hands closer to midnight was in 2007, by two minutes due to a North Korean nuclear weapon test, Iranian nuclear ambitions and a renewed U.S. emphasis at the time of the military utility of nuclear weapons. The closest the clock ever came to midnight was 1953, the year of the first test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States.

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

The government billed it as the greenest budget ever, but on Wednesday British finance minister Alistair Darling failed to deliver on most counts, climate campaigners said. Darling announced an attack on plastic bags, plans to penalise the most polluting cars and reward the greenest through changes in car tax, tinkered with taxes on new green homes and said a climate levy on business would continue. "We need to do more and we need to do it now," Darling said presenting his first budget. "There will be catastrophic economic and social consequences if we fail to act. But he delayed a planned rise in duty on road fuel, backed further airport expansion -- aviation is the fastest growing source of climate changing carbon emissions -- and simply announced a fresh consultation on boosting renewable energy. "Darling's safe pair of hands have dropped the ball on climate change," said Greenpeace director John Sauven. WWF's chief climate campaigner Keith Allott said: "This budget contains some small potentially welcome tinkering but no big vision and no sense that this will do anything to put Britain onto a low-carbon trajectory." Friends of the Earth chief Tony Juniper was equally scathing. "This was billed as the greenest budget ever. But we didn't get anything like what is necessary to tackle what is the greatest challenge the world faces," he said. Darling, whose room for manoeuvre has been restricted by a faltering economy and struggling government finances, said Britain wanted all future allocations of carbon emission permits to power generators to be auctioned. The current phase of European Union emission permits for the power generators were all allocated free, handing them billions of pounds in profits as they passed on the notional cost of the permits in higher energy costs to consumers. Darling also repeated the government's wish that aviation be included in the next phase of the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme. In any case neither decision is up to the British government alone but must be agreed by all EU member states and at the same time Darling said the government backed the planned expansion of London's Heathrow and Stansted airports. "Despite all the pre-budget spinning from Treasury this was not a green budget and fell painfully short of what was required," said Russell Marsh of the Green Alliance lobby group. "The chancellor says that our greatest obligation to future generations must be to tackle potentially catastrophic climate change, but there is nothing in this budget to indicate that he means it. This was just tinkering at the edges."

Al Gore and his campaign against global warming won big at the Oscars as Hollywood went green on Sunday night. If only politics were that simple. The former vice president, who inspired the box-office hit 'An Inconvenient Truth' with a slideshow on climate change, took every opportunity to drive home his message that people need to act now to save the environment. "My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis," Gore told the audience as the film's director and producers accepted their Oscar for best documentary feature. "It's not a political issue, it's a moral issue." The Gore documentary also won best original song with "I Need to Wake Up" by Melissa Etheridge. "Mostly I have to thank Al Gore for inspiring us, inspiring me and showing that caring about the earth is not Republican or Democrat," Etheridge said in her acceptance speech. Hollywood was more than willing to listen to Gore, the Democrat who narrowly lost out to Republican George W Bush in the race to be president of the United States in the 2000 elections More stars arrived than ever before in environmentally friendly limousines, like plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars, hoping to educate Americans on alternatives to fossil fuels blamed for producing heat-trapping gases. Earlier in the show, Gore and the hybrid-driving actor Leonardo DiCaprio took the stage to announce the Academy Awards had "gone green" with environmentally sensitive methods incorporated into every aspect of putting on the show. The greening of the Oscars included using recycled paper, doing an energy audit for the Kodak Theatre and serving organic food at the Governors Ball, said the Natural Resources Defence Council, the advocacy group that worked with organizers. Many in Hollywood, impressed by Gore's persuasive message on the climate crisis, have wanted him to run for president again in 2008. But Gore ruled that out once again on Sunday and even played with the pressure to run with a well-timed joke that won raucous laughter from the audience. "Even though I honestly had not planned on doing this, I guess with a billion people watching, it's as good a time as any. So, my fellow Americans, I'm going to take this opportunity right here and now to formally announce..," Gore said. And then loud music from the pit orchestra -- the kind used to cut short run-on acceptance speeches -- drowned out Gore and he and DiCaprio walked off stage arm-in-arm.

The goal, unveiled at the start of a two-day climate summit hosted by Democratic President Joe Biden, comes as the United States seeks to reclaim global leadership in the fight against global warming after former President Donald Trump withdrew the country from international efforts to cut emissions. It also marks an important milestone in Biden's broader plan to decarbonise the US economy entirely by 2050 - an agenda he says can create millions of good-paying jobs but which many Republicans say they fear will damage the economy. The emissions cuts are expected to come from power plants, automobiles, and other sectors across the economy, but the White House did not set individual targets for those industries. "No nation can solve this crisis on its own, and this summit is a step on a path to a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future," Biden said in a tweet minutes before the summit began. The new US target nearly doubles former President Barack Obama's pledge of emissions cut 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Sector-specific goals will be laid out later this year. How the United States intends to reach its climate goals will be crucial to cementing U.S. credibility on global warming, amid international concerns that America's commitment to a clean energy economy can shift drastically from one administration to the next. Biden's recently introduced $2 trillion infrastructure plan contains numerous measures that could deliver some of the emissions cuts needed this decade, including a clean energy standard to achieve net zero emissions in the power sector by 2035 and moves to electrify the vehicle fleet.   But the measures need to be passed by Congress before becoming reality. Biden focused on restoring US climate leadership during his campaign and in the first days of his presidency after Republican Trump, a climate change sceptic, removed the United States from the Paris agreement on global warming. The new administration has come under heavy pressure from environmental groups, some corporate leaders, the UN secretary general and foreign governments to set a target to cut emissions by at least 50% this decade to encourage other countries to set their own ambitious emissions goals. Biden will announce the number at the start of a climate summit on Thursday that will be attended by leaders from the world's biggest emitters, including China. World leaders aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold scientists say can prevent the worst impacts of climate change. One of the administration officials said with the new US target, enhanced commitments from Japan and Canada, and prior targets from the European Union and Britain, countries accounting for more than half the world's economy were now committed to reductions to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal. "When we close this summit on Friday, we will unmistakably communicate ... the US is back," he said.

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

"We're like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing," Trump said at a press conference shortly before leaving the gathering of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Japan. "It's going to stop now or we'll stop trading with them (other nations)." German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged differences between the United States and the six other members of the G7 remained, but said a joint statement on trade was expected to be issued at the end of the two-day summit in La Malbaie, Quebec. "For us, it was important that we have a commitment for a rule-based trade order, that we continue to fight against protectionism and that we want to reform the WTO," Merkel told reporters. Germany along with other European Union members, Canada and Mexico were stung last week when Trump imposed tariffs on imports of their aluminium and steel to the United States. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel listens to US President Donald Trump speak as they meet with France's President Emmanuel Macron and the other leaders during a plenary session at the G7 summit in the Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. Reuters The German leader said there was broad agreement among G7 leaders that tariffs and other trade barriers should be reduced. "These are jointly shared principles, although the pitfalls lie in the details," she said. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel listens to US President Donald Trump speak as they meet with France's President Emmanuel Macron and the other leaders during a plenary session at the G7 summit in the Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. Reuters "For us, it was important that we have a commitment for a rule-based trade order, that we continue to fight against protectionism and that we want to reform the WTO," Merkel said. Trump, who repeated that the tariffs are meant to protect US industry and workers from what he describes as unfair international competition, said he had suggested to the other G7 leaders that all trade barriers, including tariffs and subsidies, be eliminated. He denied that the summit had been contentious, a remark that contradicted what one G7 official described as an "extraordinary" exchange on Friday. Trump repeated a list of grievances about US trade, mainly with the EU and Canada, a French presidency official told reporters. "And so began a long litany of recriminations, somewhat bitter reports that the United States was treated unfairly, that the trading system was totally unfavorable to the United States, the American economy, American workers, the middle class," the official said. "In short, a long, frank rant which is undoubtedly very unusual in this kind of formats," the official added. US President Donald Trump listens as he sits beside Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and France's President Emmanuel Macron during a session of the G7 Summit in the Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. Reuters French President Emmanuel Macron responded in a "courteous but very firm tone" to present the European side of the story, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe chimed in as well, the official said. US President Donald Trump listens as he sits beside Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and France's President Emmanuel Macron during a session of the G7 Summit in the Charlevoix city of La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. Reuters EARLY EXIT Trump left before the end of the summit on Saturday. He will fly to Singapore to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which he described as a "mission of peace." Apart from trade, there also was disagreement over the G7's position on climate change and Trump's suggestion that Russia be re-admitted to the group. Russia was suspended in 2014 because of its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Merkel said on Saturday there must first be progress on a Ukraine peace plan before there is any talk about readmitting Moscow. Trump's presidency has been clouded by a federal investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and possible collusion by his campaign. Both Moscow and Trump have denied the allegations.

A weak U.N. climate deal, agreed on Saturday after two weeks of talks pulled back from near collapse, underscored the vulnerability of a process depending on global consensus. The U.N.'s top climate official Yvo de Boer said it was exactly the job of a multilateral process such as the United Nations to forge a solution to a global problem which may impact the least politically powerful first. But the principal negotiations took place among about 30 countries and the biggest breakthrough involved just five -- the United States, China, Brazil, South Africa and India. The final deal was not legally binding and left it for countries to choose to participate, marking a departure from its umbrella U.N. climate convention. "Heads of state came in and crafted a deal a bit independently of the U.N. process," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resource Institute's climate and energy program. "I don't think it's the end of the U.N.'s climate role but it's a new model inside of it," she said. The "new model" was bitterly criticised by a number of nations, however, who felt the deal had been imposed by a handful of powers on others. De Boer points out that part of the reason for the U.N. "is to ensure that we address global issues like climate change equitably, taking the concerns of all into account." "You could argue that it would be far more effective to just address climate change in the G20," whose members account for most carbon emissions, he said. "(But) it's not correct from an equity or from an environmental point of view" because that would exclude many countries "already on the front lines of impacts of climate change." STAND OFF U.N. decisions have to be made by unanimity, between countries as different as the United States and the tiny Pacific island of Tuvalu with a population of just over 12,000. That rule threatened to derail the December 7-18 Copenhagen conference, as developing nations insisted any text be reviewed in a plenary session of 193 countries. Sources said that the Danish hosts were reluctant to do that, fearing that it would take too long for the whole group to draft one text, leading to days of lost negotiation in a tense stand-off. On the last night, a plenary meeting illustrated exactly that problem of reaching unanimity on a final text. The countdown to a final deal on Friday involved 28 nations, sources told Reuters, including developed countries such as the United States and Europe, big emerging economies, India and China, and small island states Grenada and the Maldives. That grouping whittled down to the largest economies, a climate negotiating group reminiscent of the Major Economies Forum originally convened by former U.S. President George W. Bush as a parallel track to the U.N. talks, that some critics said undermined them. Saturday's decision supported a "goal" for a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help poor countries fight climate change, and recognized the scientific view of the importance of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius. There were no emissions cuts targets, however, and no commitment that all countries would one day sign up to a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol. UN CHIEF RESCUES DEAL It needed the direct intervention of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to rescue the flimsy Copenhagen Accord. Ban mediated with reluctant countries including Venezuela and Bolivia. The flawed Copenhagen outcome demonstrated the "underlying weakness" in the United Nations climate process, said Andrew Light, coordinator of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress. "We need to start investigating other options, or at a minimum start using some alternative forums," he said, suggesting the G20 and the Major Economies Forum. But several developing countries vehemently supported the role of the United Nations, exactly because it preserved their voice. "You won't get an agreement involving only a limited number of countries," said Brazil's climate change ambassador Sergio Serra. "Perhaps on some occasions they can be a driving force to mobilize the others, but they will never close a deal by themselves, because this deal will lack legitimacy. So the U.N. will certainly remain at the heart of it." "The U.N. process is secure," said Dessima Williams, head of the 43-member alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). "I think there may have been confidences jolted but the process is not going to be derailed. What is necessary now is some fence mending and yes some confidence building around the outcome of the conference."

The first formal talks to draw up a replacement to the Kyoto climate change pact wound up in Thailand on Friday with plans for another seven rounds of negotiations in the next 18 months to tackle global warming. As expected, no major advances were achieved at the meeting, which was mainly intended to flesh out a roadmap from a breakthrough agreement in Bali last year to kick off the talks through to a culmination in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. "The train to Copenhagen has left the station," said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. "Not only do we have the certainty that critical issues will be addressed next year, we now have bit-sized chunks which will allow us to negotiate in an effective manner," he told a news conference at the conclusion of the week-long Bangkok talks. The next meeting, to be held in Germany in June, will address the issue of funding and technology to mitigate climate change, a key demand of developing nations who argue that rich countries should foot much of the bill. A suggestion pushed by Japan in Bangkok to take a sectoral, rather than purely national, approach to emissions cuts was deferred to the third round of talks. United Nations climate experts want the new treaty that emerges from Copenhagen to go beyond Kyoto by getting all countries to agree to curbs on emissions of the greenhouse gases that are fuelling global warming. Under Kyoto, only 37 rich nations are bound to cut emissions by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2012. A U.N. climate panel agreed last year that the world needs to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in order to stave off potentially catastrophic changes to the weather system, that will bring more storms, droughts and higher sea levels. Negotiators will also have to work out how to deal with the United States -- the only rich nation not to have signed up to Kyoto -- given that President George W. Bush will be leaving the White House after November's election. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying the pact would hurt the economy and was unfair since it excluded big developing nations from committing to emissions cuts. The White House has since moderated its stance by saying it would accept emissions targets if all other big emitters do as well based on their individual circumstances.

It was not a fluke. Subsequent seasons yielded more remains — a skull, fingers, parts of legs. Guides increasingly believe that their findings fit into a broader development on the world’s highest mountain: A hotter climate has been unearthing climbers who never made it home. “Snow is melting and bodies are surfacing,” said Sherpa, who has summited Everest 24 times, a world record. “Finding bones has become the new normal for us.” In the last few seasons, climbers say they have seen more bodies lying on the icy slopes of Everest than ever before. Both the climbers and the Nepalese government believe this is the grim result of global warming, which is rapidly melting the mountain’s glaciers and in the process exposing bones, old boots and full corpses from doomed missions decades ago. The Nepalese government is struggling with what to do. More than 100 bodies may be lying on Everest, and there is an open debate about whether to remove them or leave them be. Some climbers believe that fallen comrades have become a part of the mountain and should remain so. A number of the bodies are remarkably preserved: Sun-bleached parkas outline faces frozen into the colour of charcoal. Gelje Sherpa, a guide and six-time summiteer, said that when he first climbed Everest in 2008 he found three bodies. During a recent season, he saw at least double that number. “They often haunt me,” he said. Over the past six decades, about 300 climbers have died during Everest expeditions, mostly from storms, falls or altitude sickness. This season has been one of the deadliest, with at least 11 fatalities, some of them partly attributable to an excess of climbers on the mountain. The Nepalese government said Wednesday that it was considering changing the rules on who could climb the mountain to avoid traffic jams and unruly behaviour at the summit. Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, estimated that the bodies of at least one-third of all who have died on Everest remain there. Some of them are in pieces, pulled apart by avalanches, he said. It is very dangerous to remove remains from the top of the mountain. A frozen body can weigh over 300 pounds. To carry that extra weight over deep crevasses with precipitous drops and erratic weather would put even more climbers in life-threatening binds. Still, some families have insisted on recovering the bodies of their loved ones, which entails a separate mission that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Generally, the bodies of climbers who die above 21,000 feet are left in place. “On the mountain, everything is weighed against the risk of death,” Ang Tshering Sherpa said. “It is better to bring down the bodies if possible. But climbers should always give first priority to safety. Dead bodies can claim their lives.” The emerging bodies are part of a bigger change on the mountain. In the last decade, climate change has quickly reshaped the whole Himalayan region. The snow line on Everest is higher than it was just a few years ago. Areas once coated in dense ice are now exposed. Climbers are trading ice axes for rock pitons, spikes that are hammered into cracks on the mountain wall. In 2016, Nepal’s army drained a lake near Everest after rapid glacial melting threatened to cause a catastrophic flood downstream. This year, a study found that the growing area of ponds on top glaciers across the Everest region — which can both signal melting and accelerate it — had greatly increased in the last three years, far outpacing the rate of change from the first decade and a half of the 2000s. Kami Rita Sherpa worried that scaling Everest, which sits near a major glacier and straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet, was becoming more complex — a troubling development as the mountain continues to be commercialised and to attract inexperienced climbers. “It will be harder to summit in the coming days if the ice continues to melt,” he said. The forecast looks grim. In a study on high-altitude warming released in February, scientists warned that even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, one third of Himalayan glaciers will melt by the end of the century. If global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the number could jump to two-thirds, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. The report touches on elevation-dependent warming. It is well known that temperature changes from greenhouse gases are amplified at higher latitudes, such as in the Arctic. But there is growing evidence that warming rates are also greater at higher elevations. In October, a landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change found that if greenhouse gas emissions continued at the current rate, the atmosphere would warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040. Under the same scenario in the Himalayas, that figure could reach 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.1 degrees Celsius), the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment found. Dandu Raj Ghimire, the director general of Nepal’s department of tourism management, which oversees mountain expeditions, said the emergence of bodies indicated how the region had already changed. After Sherpas reported finding several bodies last year, Ghimire’s office started looking for ways to safely remove them. Ahead of this year’s spring climbing season, which typically stretches to the end of May, Nepal’s tourism ministry asked expedition operators to compile lists of deceased mountaineers who were left on Everest and other peaks. This year, volunteers have collected more than 20,000 pounds of trash — plastic bottles, old ropes, tents, food tins — from Everest. The exercise was also billed as an opportunity to remove bodies. In April, four more unidentified people were found on the mountain. Ghimire said that the remains had been moved to Kathmandu for autopsies. If they cannot be identified, the police will cremate them. “We will absolutely bring down all objects that have emerged from the ice,” he said. Their work is unlikely to extend to the upper reaches of Everest, where summertime temperatures routinely dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit (nearly minus-18 Celsius) and oxygen levels are a third of those at sea level. At that altitude, some bodies have become sobering markers. For years, an American woman who died while descending was a fixture near the summit, until a climber wrapped her body in a flag and moved it out of sight in the 2000s. The body was commonly called “Sleeping Beauty.” At 27,900 feet above sea level, people have also trudged past “Green Boots,” a body curled under a limestone rock and named for the climber’s neon-coloured footwear. The body is thought to be that of an Indian mountaineer who died in 1996 during the blizzard that inspired the best-selling book “Into Thin Air.” For many climbers, the bodies are a jarring reminder of the mountain’s perils. During her 2017 expedition, Vibeke Andrea Sefland, a Norwegian climber, said she had passed four bodies, including a friend’s. “It for sure affects me,” she said. “It is very intense when you meet them for the first time, when your headlamp catches them. I always halt and give them a little prayer.” © 2019 New York Times News Service

A surge of climate activism is flooding Australia as the country falls behind on its promise to reduce emissions — effectively ignoring the Paris Agreement the Trump administration just abandoned. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has responded with a threat that’s alarmed scientists and free speech advocates, arguing that the government should outlaw “indulgent and selfish” efforts by environmental groups to rattle businesses with rallies and boycotts. “The right to protest does not mean there is an unlimited license to disrupt people’s lives,” Morrison said, adding, “I am very concerned about this new form of progressivism.” Australia’s “climate wars,” once confined to election campaigns, are now spilling into the streets with some of the biggest protests the country has ever seen. An increasingly outraged public is demanding action while the conservative national government refuses to budge, relying on the police to squelch dissent. Australia, of course, is not alone. There have been large climate protests around the globe this year. But while many nations seem willing to tolerate the boycott campaigns and civil disobedience, Australia appears determined to suppress the activism, even as heat waves, drought and fires make the country’s vulnerabilities to climate change ever clearer. Why has Australia become such an intense climate battleground? The forces defining the conflict are wrapped up in national identity, economics and a growing divide between government and public opinion. Coal-loving politicians Two years ago, when Morrison was Australia’s treasurer, he stood up in the House of Representatives with a hunk of black coal in his hand. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared,” he said. “It won’t hurt you.” His shiny prop had been shellacked to keep his hands clean, but the point he made then is one he and his governing coalition stand by: Coal is good. Scientists strongly disagree, warning that the world stands little chance of averting the most dire effects of climate change without ending its reliance on burning coal for energy. But Australia has an emotional and historical connection to it that continues to shape its politics. The combustible rock was first mentioned in government records soon after British settlement. Now, Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter. It is also a major exporter of natural gas, making for a resource-driven country that is “rich, dumb and getting dumber,” according to one recent headline summarising the findings of a Harvard study that ranked Australia’s economy 93rd in complexity, behind Kazakhstan, Uganda and Senegal. The mingling of mining interests with national interests is perpetuated through a revolving door: Lawmakers frequently work for the coal industry after leaving office. And for some, defending coal has come to be equated with defending the country. Even the opposition centre-left Labour Party is hooked, pushing for emissions cuts while continuing to support more coal mining. “They’re trying to play both sides,” said David Ritter, chief executive of Greenpeace Australia. “They’re avoiding the work that’s necessary to create a clean energy economy.” An increasingly angry public Poll after poll shows growing concern about climate change among Australians of all ages and political persuasions. In September, a survey by the Australia Institute found that 81% of Australians believe climate change will result in more droughts and flooding (up from 78% in 2018). Two out of three Australians agreed that the government should plan for an orderly phaseout of coal, while 64% said Australia should aim for net-zero emissions by 2050. And researchers continue to sound the alarm. A paper co-written by an Australian scientist and signed by 11,000 other experts warned on Wednesday of a clear “climate emergency.” “There is high concern in Australia about climate change, but the political process doesn’t seem to be responding at all,” said David C Holmes, director of Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub, which focuses on climate literacy. As a result, he added, “certain segments of the population get very frustrated — more and more of them are willing to come out and march.” The so-called climate strike in September, part of a global effort led by children, was the largest mass demonstration in Australian history. It was quickly followed last month by the Extinction Rebellion protests, and then came last week’s anti-mining protests in Melbourne. “Decades of lobbying have gotten us nowhere,” said Edward Plowman, one of the anti-mining organisers. “So we’re committed to using direct action.” Protests designed to disrupt Morrison is not alone in noticing that disruptive acts have become increasingly common. Extinction Rebellion encourages activists to get arrested so they can use the courts as a platform to call for climate action. Some delay their removal and draw the media by locking or gluing themselves in place. In Brisbane, one activist harnessed himself below a bridge with a “climate emergency” sign. Other countries have dealt with these tactics through persistent arrests. Over 10 days of protests in London, police arrested more than 1,700 Extinction Rebellion protesters. Australia aims to go further. A law passed last year allows the military to break up protests. The Labor government in Queensland is fast-tracking a law to add new fines for protesters who use locking devices to prevent their removal. Morrison has also focused on an indirect form of disruption: boycotts or other efforts to pressure businesses, including banks, to cut ties with companies that environmentalists oppose. He said he was looking to prevent boycotts from spreading to any industry with a significant carbon footprint, such as airlines. Robyn Eckersley, an expert on the politics of climate change at the University of Melbourne, said Morrison’s statements fit the government’s playbook of deflecting and dividing to preserve policy inaction. “When they talk about climate change and criticise protesters, they tackle it not in terms of the problem,” she said. “What they do is aim for the person and what they stand for in a way that will appeal to their people, to their base. Exaggeration and ignorance As the climate conflict intensifies, activists and their opponents are fighting hard to win over public opinion — often with misconceptions used to maximise alarm. Take coal. Reduced coal mining would not hurt the economy as much as people think. According to the Australia Institute poll from last month, Australians believe coal mining accounts for 12.5% of Australia’s economic output and employs 9.3% of its workforce. “In reality,” the report says, “coal mining employs only 0.4% of workers in Australia and is 2.2% of Australia’s GDP.” Of the roughly 238,000 jobs that mining provides in Australia, only around 50,000 are tied to coal, according to government figures. “The government relies on ignorance,” Eckersley said. “It’s a very toxic politics.” Portrayals of extreme activism are exaggerated. The vast majority of protesters demanding climate action are not radical disrupters. They are more like Jemima Grimmer, 13, who asked adults to “respect our futures” at the Sydney climate strike in September, or Vivian Malo, an Aboriginal woman attending last week’s protest in Melbourne, where she said the experience of being pepper-sprayed felt like chemotherapy “on the outside.” Here in a country rapidly losing its laid-back image, the future of Australia’s climate battles could be seen in her bloodshot eyes as she stood near a line of stone-faced police officers, describing their use of force as “scary.” “The insatiable drive for resource extraction,” she said. “It’s out of control.” © 2019 New York Times News Service

- about 14 percent of Pakistan's entire cultivated land, have been damaged. A major factor that led to the massive flooding is illegal logging in the northwest province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, experts said. Jamshed Ali, Secretary-General of Sarhad Awami Forestry Ittehad (SAFI), an organisation meant to protect forests in the province, said in parts of Malakand district more than 70 per cent of forests had been felled by a well-connected "timber mafia" that was difficult to stop. In the militant-infested Swat region, the Taliban were behind much of the illegal logging, he said. The lack of trees leads to soil erosion and exhaustion because tree roots help bind soil, naturally retaining water. Over-grazing by livestock -- common in rural Pakistan -- can also remove layers of topsoil and stunt plant growth, reducing the soil's ability to hold water, said Asad Jarwar Qureshi of the International Water Management Institute. Abdul Qadir Rafiq of the United Nations Development Programme says without vital topsoil, flash-flooding in northern, mountainous areas can result, sending silt downstream which then reduces the amount of water the river channel can hold. Diverting the Indus through irrigation channels to increase land for agriculture, may have further contributed to the human toll because it encouraged people to build closer to or even in the river channel. "We need to clear the river channels of silt every four to five years and stop people living within a kilometre of the river channel. There are irrigation channels built using techniques from the 18th century. We need to react to the present-day," Qureshi said. UNUSUAL WEATHER PATTERNS Extreme weather patterns may also have played a part, another expert said. Just ahead of the floods, warm temperatures normally experienced across the Middle East were felt over Russia, Ghassem Asra, director of the World Climate Research Programm, said. To the east, heavy monsoon rains overwhelmed the ground's ability to absorb them. Asrar said warming over the Indian Ocean may have increased evaporation rates and water in the air, encouraging a period of more intense rainfall. "Climate change is almost always a factor - but one in a number", said journalist Stephan Faris, author of "Forecast: The Surprising - and Immediate Consequences - of Climate Change." "The United Kingdom, which saw heavy flooding last year, has the reserves to react - a country like Pakistan does not. The areas flooded have factors that make it more difficult to deal with something like this."

Australia's conservative opposition leader pledged on Sunday to jail people-smugglers for a minimum 10 years, formally launching his campaign for an August 21 election with an appeal for tougher border protection. Illegal immigration could be a decisive issue in what is tipped to be a close election, with opinion polls showing that voters in key marginal seats are concerned that Canberra is not doing enough to turn back boatloads of asylum seekers. Opposition leader Tony Abbott, speaking to party faithful in the key political battleground of Queensland state, said people-smugglers who repeatedly offended would go to jail for 10 years or more -- sentences more akin to rape and manslaughter. "We are determined to send a strong message to people smugglers that their cruel and callous trade in human cargo must stop," Abbott said, launching his campaign under the banner "Stand up for Australia, stand up for real action." Abbott also promised to kill off the government's proposed 30 percent mining tax on the first day of a conservative government, and produce a national economic blueprint within his first month. He also pledged to announce his own reform agenda within 12 months, having reviewed a recently published tax inquiry which came up with more than 100 recommendations for reforming the nation's complex tax system. "From day one under a coalition government, the mining industry could again do what it does best: creating wealth and employing hundreds of thousands of Australians without the threat of an investment-killing, jobs-destroying great big new tax," he said. The broader mining industry is campaigning against the government's tax on iron ore and coal operations, despite global heavyweights BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata agreeing to the tax. Abbott also promised to set up a carbon-emissions reduction fund in his first three months to combat climate change. He opposes the government's plan for a carbon-trading scheme. Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Sunday dismissed the opposition's boatpeople policy, saying her government had already toughened penalties for people smuggling. The government introduced new border protection laws this year, including a maximum penalty of 20 years' jail and a maximum of 10 years' jail for assisting people smugglers.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts Aug 7(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The fate of a US climate change bill will send signals to the rest of the world as to whether upcoming global climate talks will be "serious or not," one of the bill's co-authors said on Thursday. The bill, which aims to cut US emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, passed the House of Representatives and Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey said he hopes to see it make its way through Senate by the year's end. "This bill is a bill the world is waiting for to make a determination as to whether or not the negotiations that we will be undertaking in Copenhagen will be serious or not," Markey said in a speech at Harvard University in Cambridge. "The Chinese are looking at it, the Europeans, the rest of the world ... The bill is now pending in the Senate and my great hope is that we will see passage of that before the end of this year." Negotiators from about 190 countries are scheduled to meet in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in December for a round of talks aimed at getting rich nations to agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions sharply and to help emerging economies -- which are rapidly becoming major emitters as they consumer more energy -- do the same. The climate bill, written by Markey and Representative Henry Waxman, to reduce US emissions of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. One of the challenges facing the climate bill is the crowded legislative agenda. US President Barack Obama has also made health care reform a top priority -- leaving Congress to take on a thorny and emotional issue that Americans have been debating for decades. "These are the top two priorities of the President and the Congress and so they're going to be moving along simultaneously this fall within the legislative process," Markey told reporters after his speech. "Each of them will require, to some extent, success on the other. It's important for us to move forward on these together because the opponents of them are using both bills as reasons why President Obama is taking us in the wrong direction and we have to make the counter-argument that it's why he's taking us in the right direction." The climate bill, which uses a cap-and-trade system to lower emissions, made it narrowly through the House, carrying by just seven votes. The Senate is expected to try to produce its own version of the bill, which if passed would need to be harmonized with the House version.

A deep freeze holding 90 percent of the world's ice, Antarctica is one of the biggest puzzles in debate on global warming with risks that any thaw could raise sea levels faster than UN projections. Even if a fraction melted, Antarctica could damage nations from Bangladesh to Tuvalu in the Pacific and cities from Shanghai to New York. It has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 metres (187 ft) if it melted, over thousands of years. A year after the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected sea level rises by 2100 of about 20 to 80 cms (8-32 inches), a Reuters poll of 10 of the world's top climatologists showed none think that range is alarmist. Six experts stuck by the projections, saying the response of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland was still unclear, and four other experts, including one of the authors of the IPCC report, projected gains could be 1 or even 2 metres by 2100. "Most people looking at it are thinking more in terms of a metre," said John Moore of the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland. "Insurance companies don't know to a factor of 100 where to set their insurance premiums for coastal areas in Florida." Some island nations, such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, are building defences costing millions of dollars and want to know how high to build. "I think it will be...certainly at the high end of the range," said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, at the Troll Station 250 km (155 miles) from the coast in Antartica. Set amid jagged mountains like the mythical homes of troll giants, this part of east Antarctica is the world's deep freeze with no sign of a thaw. Temperatures were about minus 15 Celsius (5.00F) at the height of the Antarctic summer. "It's my view that more than a metre of sea-level rise can't be ruled out," said Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He said many experts "think the IPCC range is unfortunately not the full story". MORE ICE Even so, most experts said it is still impossible to model how the ice will react. Antarctica may accumulate more ice this century because of warming, blamed by the IPCC mainly on human use of fossil fuels, rather than slide faster into the sea. "The crux of this problem is that we are moving into an era where we are observing changes in the climate system that have never before been seen in human history," said Gerald Meehl, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Ice sheets fall into that category. Quite simply, at this time we don't have a good upper-range estimate of 'how much sea- level rise and how fast'," he said. Meehl, a coordinating lead author of the IPCC report, said that gave the best view. The core prediction for sea-level rise by the IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, is for a gain of 18 to 59 cms (7-23 inches) in the 21st century, after 17 cms in the 20th. The forecast rate includes faster ice flow from Antarctica and Greenland observed from 1993-2003 but the IPCC said this could increase or decrease in future. If the flow grows in line with temperature rises, it would add a further 10 to 20 cms. "The IPCC range only takes into account things that can be modelled," said Jonathan Gregory of the University of Reading, who was also among authors who stuck by the conclusions. "There are lots and lots of reasons why you can say there will be large changes. But you can't say it without more evidence," he said. Among worrying scenarios is the chance Antarctica will slide faster into the sea, perhaps if a ring of sea ice melts away in warmer oceans. Or melt water might flow under the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, and act a lubricant to speed a slide. But glaciers can slow down as well as speed up. "We don't know much about changes in the speed of outlet glaciers. Some of these in Antarctica and Greenland tend to speed up -- or slow down. Nobody knows," said Philippe Huybrechts at the Free University of Brussels. Another factor that could dampen any rise is that warmer air can absorb more moisture -- which may paradoxically bring more snow to Antarctica that would thicken the ice sheet and contribute to lower sea levels this century. Most of the projected sea-level rise by 2100 will be because water in the oceans expands as it warms, with little being added by the ice sheets. Beyond 2100, the IPCC said sea-level rises are likely to go on for centuries. "In the long term we are in trouble...Greenland is close to a 'tipping point'," or an irreversible meltdown that would last hundreds of years, Huybrechts said. Greenland has enough ice to raise world sea levels by 7 metres if it all vanished. One IPCC author said the uncertainties are stacking up towards rising seas. "I firmly believe sea-level estimates are conservative," said Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, Canada. "The lower bound should probably be more like 25 cm and the upper bound closer to a metre if you take everything into consideration now," he said. Moore at the University of Lapland said a so-far unpublished study by his centre showed seas could rise by 1-2 metres by 2100, based on observational records of sea level in the last 150 years. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

Ugandan police have found an unexploded suicide vest and made a number of arrests after coordinated bomb blasts ripped through two bars and killed at least 76 soccer fans watching the World Cup final on Sunday. Somali al Shabaab Islamists linked to al Qaeda said on Monday they had carried out the attacks, but an official from the militant group said on Tuesday there had been no suicide bombers involved. The vest was found on Monday in Makindye, a suburb of Kampala, and was consistent with evidence found at the other blast sites in the capital, Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura told reporters. Ugandan police said the vest was designed so it could be planted, rather than worn, and be used as an improvised bomb. "Rage blessed those who carried the attack and expected a long life for them. That shows there was no suicide bomb. These were planted," a man who identified himself as Yonis, assistant to al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, told Reuters by telephone. Coordinated attacks are a hallmark of al Qaeda and groups linked to Osama bin Laden's militant network. If confirmed to be the work of al Shabaab, they would be the first time the militants have taken their push for power internationally. Analysts have questioned whether they might have been helped or funded by elements in Uganda, or foreign militants within al Shabaab itself. "Somalis or foreigners, the effect is nonetheless the same. It is the foreign elements that now dominate the al Shabaab project," Abdi Samatar, a Somalia expert at the University of Minnesota, said. Kayihura gave no further details on how many suspects had been detained or where they were from. He also revised up the death toll to 76 from 74. "NO PEACE TO KEEP" The al Shabaab militants have threatened more attacks unless Uganda and Burundi withdraw their peacekeepers from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia (AMISOM). They control of large areas the south and center of the anarchic country. But regional bloc, IGAD, said it would not cower in the face of threats and would continue to support the Western-backed government in Somalia. "We shall continue with our plans to increase peacekeepers in Somalia to over 8,000 and we hope to have the extra troops in the country by the second week of August," executive secretary Mahboud Maalim told journalists in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Last week IGAD members Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti said they eventually wanted 20,000 troops from the AU and United Nations deployed in Somalia. Uganda's opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party urged President Yoweri Museveni to pull his peacekeepers out and said it planned a withdrawal if it won elections in 2011. "There is no peace to keep in Somalia and Uganda has no strategic interest there. We're just sacrificing our children for nothing," FDC spokesman Wafula Oguttu told Reuters. Analysts say any sustained bombing campaign would damage Uganda's investment climate, but a one-off attack was unlikely to deter major companies such as British hydrocarbons explorer Tullow Oil from investing. Foreign direct investment into east Africa's third largest economy has surged, driven by oil exploration along the western border with Democratic Republic of Congo. An American was among the dead, and the US State Department said it had three FBI agents on the ground collecting evidence. An additional team was on standby to deploy. Opolot said there was no suggestion an African Union summit to be hosted by Uganda this month would be canceled following the bombings.

The critique sought to portray China and its leader, Xi Jinping — who is notably absent from COP26 — as large-economy laggards in the race to limit rising temperatures. It was also aimed at shifting criticism away from America’s domestic struggles in pushing to reduce emissions. Briefing reporters on Air Force One, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called the Chinese “significant outliers” among countries that have made commitments in an attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Sullivan said that China had “an obligation to step up to greater ambition as we go forward.” Asked about how the tense US-China relationship was affecting climate talks globally, Sullivan heaped blame on Beijing, calling the country’s climate steps “deeply asymmetrical.” “The United States, despite whatever difficulties we have with China, is stepping up,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to do 50% to 52% reduction by 2030. We’re coming forward with all of our commitments — we’re filling our end of the bargain at COP.” China is “a big country with a lot of resources and a lot of capabilities,” he added, “and they are perfectly well capable of living up to their responsibilities.” Diplomats from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries have avoided openly criticising China. When asked about the new target that Beijing announced last week, which is largely indistinguishable from its 2015 target of peaking emission before 2030, many diplomats said only that all Group of 20 nations must be more ambitious. “The world needs more,” Tina Stege, a climate ambassador for the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. “China can do more, and it should, as should all members of the G-20.” Alf Wills, a former chief negotiator for South Africa, said that developing nations were loath to publicly criticise China for several reasons. For one, Chinese diplomats can be instrumental in pushing wealthy nations to deliver funding for poor countries. For another, China now far outpaces the United States in delivering aid to the developing world. “To a large extent China represents, from an economic perspective, pretty much an economic superpower,” Wills said, “particularly among developing countries.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, agreed on Saturday to start two years of negotiations to seal a broader pact to fight global warming. As part of the meeting among 188 nations, a range of other pressing issues to aid the developing world were discussed. Following is what has been agreed, or not agreed, at the talks. TWO-YEAR DIALOGUE Negotiators agreed to start two years of talks on a new climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the main deal for fighting climate change until 2012, to bind outsiders led by the United States, China and India. The talks will start with a first meeting by April 2008 and end with adoption of a new treaty in Copenhagen in late 2009. A U.S. U-turn allowed the deal to go ahead after a dramatic session in which Washington was booed for opposing demands by poor nations for the rich to do more to help them fight warming. AMBITION TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE The Bali talks were never expected to set firm greenhouse gas emissions targets but the Bali agreement did set a global aim for "deep cuts in global emissions" to avoid dangerous climate change. The final text distinguished between rich and poor countries, calling on developed nations to consider "quantified" emissions cuts and developing countries to consider "mitigation actions". ADAPTATION FUND The Bali meeting agreed to launch a U.N. fund to help poor nations cope with damage from climate change such as droughts or rising seas. The Adaptation Fund now comprises only about $36 million but might rise to $1-$5 billion a year by 2030 if investments in green technology in developing nations surges. The accord, enabling the fund to start in 2008, broke deadlock on management by splitting responsibility between the Global Environment Facility, which funds clean energy projects, and the World Bank. The fund would have a 16-member board with strong representation from developing nations. PRESERVING TROPICAL FORESTS A pay-and-preserve scheme known as reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries (REDD) aims to allow poorer nations from 2013 to sell carbon offsets to rich countries in return for not burning their tropical forests. The 189 nations recognised the urgent need to take further action to cut carbon and methane emissions from tropical forests. The draft decision encourages parties to undertake pilot projects to address the main causes of deforestation. CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE The meeting postponed until next year any consideration of a plan to fund an untested technology which captures and buries the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, emitted from power plants that burn fossil fuels. Some countries want capture and storage to qualify for carbon offsets for slowing global warming. HFCs Bali failed to agree whether or not to allow companies to sell carbon offsets from destroying new production of powerful greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Benefiting factories have been the biggest winners under a U.N. scheme to reward companies which cut greenhouse gas emissions. TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER The final draft called for more financial resources and investment for developing countries on adaptation, mitigation and technology cooperation, especially for the most vulnerable. Technology transfer is a key demand of developing nations. They say they should not have to sacrifice growth to fight warming, but cannot afford the clean technologies that would allow them to expand their economies while curbing emissions.

Insurance companies can drive positive changes towards more environment-friendly behaviour, an expert has said. Richard Lord, a commercial litigator and an observer of the Oxfam's mock climate tribunal, on Sunday said, "Insurers could drive behaviour change." Specialising in insurance claims for over 20 years, Lord added, "In many ways, industries are much ahead of governments in dealing with climate change." He told bdnews24.com that unlike government, industries are more aware of climate change and have acted far more responsibly. "There is pressure from their shareholders. There is pressure from the activists. And then there are the regulators." "Insurance companies are taking this quite seriously," said Lord, who works for the Brick Court Chambers in London. His recent experiences include settling claims related to Hurricane Katrina victims. "They are quite serious about the issue simply because they have to be aware of all the risks." Lord said that the insurance companies have an active interest in understanding climate change risks and also litigation risk so that they fully understand the implications. "So, for instance, if a homeowner has to pay higher premiums for insuring a house because it is in an area prone to flooding, then that individual is more likely to question the reasons behind it." Lord says that insurances go about collecting such information in as much detail as possible so they can understand the risk better, which has an impact on people's behaviour. He also mentioned that the insurance industry being larger than oil, gas or other typically large sectors, could have significant influence across the world. "Indeed, it is the economic muscle of insurers that really underpins a huge amount of commercial life." Regarding the tribunal that he has come to observe, the commercial litigator was reluctant to comment on the issue because of his unfamiliarity with Bangladesh laws. Stressing that he was not an environmental or human rights lawyer, Lord pointed out that although litigation was one of the tools to address climate change, it was perhaps quite a blunt one. "But increasingly, as the problem worsens and the failure to perceive its consequence in many quarters continues, people will inevitably take to different ways to address climate change." He said it was interesting to see that the 'still infant' atmospheric trust litigation invokes certain ancient principles, traditionally applied to "assets of such fundamental importance to society as a whole that right to those assets is considered inalienable, that the government is the sovereign owner and must act to protect them". "This has typically been used for natural assets like water." However, Lord said there were no such cases of climate litigation that he was aware of. "Many nations enshrine the right to clean environment in their constitutions directly, or indirectly, through the reference to more general rights or under human rights." He explained that the problems of Bangladesh, although moving in the emotional sense, are not so compelling in terms of evidence. "And without such compelling evidence, based on scientific research, it would not be possible to establish a cause and effect." Thus, the litigator explained, this kind of mock tribunal turning into a real tribunal brings up complicated issues. He said that the notional defendant, Bangladesh government for instance, could easily turn around and tell the plaintiff that it is already doing enough to prevent climate change, citing the nation's low carbon footprint of 200 kilograms of carbon per head compared to 8600kgs for every British citizen. "On the other hand, a legal action between nations could see the notional defendant, presumably a developed country, shrug off any historical responsibility, claiming that it has developed in the same manner that Bangladesh seeks." "I can't say, I see a mechanism under which the Bangladesh authorities could readily bring a case against the government of, say, the United States." "That is perhaps one of the reasons that people have been approaching the matter indirectly by blocking permits and brining injunctions or demanding environmental impact assessments of certain entities, which in a way are also affecting positive changes."

With the launch of its sleek e-motorbikes, startup Yatri Motorcycles believes it can convert Nepalis to electric vehicles that can clean up the country's toxic air, save money, reduce petrol imports and help to achieve its climate goals. "We need to switch to electric vehicles," said Ashim Pandey, founder of Yatri, which means traveller. "It is only a matter of time when battery technology surpasses the energy density hurdle to make internal combustion engines obsolete." Across the world, manufacturers are competing to develop affordable, low-emission vehicles as a growing number of countries have announced plans to ban the sale of new fossil fuel-powered cars in a bid to combat global warming. At risk from glacier melt and torrential monsoon rains, Nepal pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change that 20% of its vehicles would be electric by 2020, but this is currently 1%, according to the Climate Action Tracker website. Nepal is a small emitter of carbon globally, with 40% of the country under forest cover and most of its electricity coming from hydropower. But emissions are rising, with a surge in petrol and diesel vehicle imports and fossil fuel consumption. The government has set out ambitious plans to transition to e-vehicles through reduced taxes and customs duties on imports and the installation of more charging stations. But implementation is slow, despite a pledge that e-vehicles will make up 90% of all private passenger vehicle sales by 2030. The country currently has about 700 electric cars, 5,000 electric scooters, and 40,000 electric rickshaws, according to the Electric Vehicle Association of Nepal, a lobby group. WORLD-CLASS Yatri Motorcycles was set up in 2017 with the dream of designing, engineering and manufacturing world-class electric vehicles from the ground up in Nepal. "We are looking into markets beyond the borders of Nepal," said Pandey. "We have to start exporting cutting-edge technology and capital goods and not be limited to handicrafts and boutique items," he said, referring to Nepal's traditional exports. Pandey, who moved to The Netherlands to train as an aerospace engineer in 2010 and designed hydrogen-powered race cars when he was a student at the Delft University of Technology, has an ambitious 10-year plan. He kicked off in 2019 with Project Zero, a top-end motorbike with a digital dashboard, in-built 4G connectivity, a keyless start, a range of 240km and a maximum speed of 140km/ hour that recharges in two hours. It easily outclasses most two-wheelers on the market, which are made in China and India and have a lower range and speed but costs almost 2,000,000 Nepalese rupees ($16,797) - almost seven times that of a petrol motorbike. In April, Yatri launched a more affordable model, Project One, for 500,000 rupees and received 50 orders within a week. "The initial price will come down once we start producing them on a larger scale," Pandey said. "We are well on track to meeting our 200 unit sales milestones for 2021." Motorcycles are key to the switch to e-vehicles because they make up 80% of Nepal's registered vehicles, government data shows, providing commuters with an affordable alternative to Nepal's crowded, often chaotic, public buses. But e-motorbikes alone cannot decarbonise Nepal's transport. The country's top three emitters are trucks at 29%, cars and vans at 26% and buses at 19%, with two-wheelers trailing behind at 8%, according to 2011 government figures. With this in mind, Yatri's ultimate goal is to launch e-vans and e-buses for fleet operators by the end of the decade. "To solve the problem of modern cities, you need to address the problem of space," he said. "A safe, comfortable and pleasing public transportation system that is appealing to use is what will solve the problem of modern urban mobility." CHARGING STATIONS Nepal has a long history of experimenting with e-vehicles, from trolleybuses brought by China in the 1970s to three-wheeled minibuses, known as Safa Tempos, which were introduced in the 1990s by the United States Agency for International Development. But the electric buses folded due to mismanagement and the Safa Tempos have been edged out by diesel vehicles because of their inefficient batteries. The government is seeking to reintroduce electric vehicles by buying 300 electric buses. One of the most urgent challenges in boosting e-vehicle sales is to provide more charging stations, said Manish Pandey, a popular YouTuber who travels the country by motorbike. Six months ago, the 23-year-old planned to film himself making a long-distance trip using an e-scooter but ended up cancelling. "There were no charging stations on the route and the range of electric vehicles is too low, so I couldn't complete the journey," he said. "With the present availability of charging stations, I would definitely not choose to ride an electric motorbike." He also pointed to the high cost of the vehicles as a major obstacle to convincing ordinary motorcyclists to go green. "In a poor country like Nepal, with people having poor environmental awareness, almost every customer sees the price first, rather than whether the technology is environmentally friendly," he said.

The name was approved by the cabinet at a meeting in the Secretariat on Monday presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.  Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam told the media that the name change proposal had been submitted before. The government agreed to add ‘Climate Change’ along to the name following an agreement with neighbouring countries.   Form now, the name of the ministry will be ‘Poribesh, Bon o Jolbayu Poribartan’ in Bangla and ‘Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’ in English. On Aug 6, 2017, the decision of the change was passed at 4th meeting of the National Environment Committee. The new name will be effective after a notification signed by the Bangladesh president is issued.   Bangladesh is one of the countries most at risk from the climate change.  Global warming is one of the biggest challenges for Bangladesh. Researchers believe that if it continues a large amount of land will be covered by water and approximately 2 billion people around the world could be displaced.      Since coming to power in 2009, the Awami League government has created two separate climate change alleviation funds. The funds are named Bangladesh Climate Change Trust (BCCT) and Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF).

South Africa urged Zimbabwe on Tuesday to respect the rule of law and the rights of opposition leaders amid a worldwide outcry over police treatment of detained Zimbabwean opposition figures. Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, in Pretoria's first detailed statement on the situation in its northern neighbour since an opposition demonstration was crushed on Sunday, said South Africa was concerned. "South Africa urges the Zimbabwean government to ensure that the rule of law including the respect for rights of all Zimbabweans and leaders of various political parties is respected," Pahad said in a statement. "Similarly, we appeal to leaders of opposition political parties to work towards a climate that is conducive to finding a lasting solution to the current challenges faced by the people of Zimbabwe." South Africa, the region's economic powerhouse, has long maintained a policy of "quiet diplomacy" toward Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, arguing that public confrontation with him over allegations of human rights abuses and economic mismanagement could be counterproductive. Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and dozens of other people were arrested on Sunday for attempting to protest against Mugabe's rule. Tsvangirai and the others appeared in court on Tuesday but were immediately sent to hospital for treatment of injuries which party officials said were sustained in police custody. Pahad said South Africa would continue to work with all sides in Zimbabwe "to ensure the objective of dialogue among all political parties is realised."

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 U.N.'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."

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed Rank's departure, but said she was unable to verify Twitter posts that said he resigned as he felt unable to deliver a formal notification to China of the US decision last week to quit the agreement. "He has retired from the foreign service," said Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the department's East Asia Bureau. "Mr Rank has made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department." Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, President Donald Trump's pick as the next US ambassador to Beijing, is expected to take up the post later this month. A tweet from China expert John Pomfret quoted unnamed sources as saying that Rank had resigned as he could not support Trump's decision last week to withdraw from the Paris agreement. Another tweet from Pomfret said Rank called a town hall meeting to announce his decision to embassy staff and explained that he could not deliver a diplomatic note informing the Chinese government of the US decision. A senior US official confirmed the account given in the tweets but added that after Rank announced his intention to retire on Monday in Beijing, he was told by the State Department to leave his post immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. On Jun 1, the US State Department accepted the resignation of its top personnel officer, who had been among its few remaining senior Obama administration political appointees, another US official said. Arnold Chacon had served as the director general of the foreign service and director of human resources. The official said Chacon had tendered his resignation when Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, along with all presidential appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president and secretary of state. The acceptance of Chacon's resignation was first reported by the DiploPundit website. It was not immediately clear whether he would be offered another post at the department. Other than Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his deputy John Sullivan and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, the third-ranking US diplomat, most of the State Department's senior posts are currently vacant or filled by acting officials. Chacon and Rank, a career foreign service officer who took over the post of deputy chief of mission in Beijing in January 2016, could not immediately be reached for comment. Jonathan Fritz, the embassy's economics councillor, would serve as chargé in his place, Richey-Allen said. Rank had been with the department for 27 years and served as the political councillor at the US Embassy in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012. Trump's announcement on Thursday that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, saying the agreement would undermine the US economy and cost jobs, drew anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

But times are changing. During a meeting last June, a producer suggested that the show, which was hosted by Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield, do a segment on whether the media’s coverage of climate change had overlooked minorities. After an extended back and forth, Garfield got sick of his staff pushing back, dismissed the story with a barnyard epithet, and eventually yelled that he was “tired of being accused of not being woke enough,” two people in the meeting recalled. Someone complained to human resources about that incident and two others during which Garfield screamed at producers. Garfield was told by management that if it happened again, he could be fired. Then this spring, Garfield suffered a shoulder injury. During a virtual meeting with his colleagues, he said he needed surgery sooner than planned. He said he then faced 15 minutes of what he viewed as “bullying” from Gladstone and their executive producer, and which they viewed as him bullying them, according to a spokeswoman. Eventually, Gladstone accused Garfield of “bathing in self-pity,” he recalled. He swore at her and slammed his computer shut, he said, calling the incident “an appalling abuse of an employee’s health prerogatives.” WNYC fired him for violating its anti-bullying policy, and he is starting a newsletter on Substack on Monday. When I started trying to figure out what was going on inside America’s biggest and angstiest public radio station for this week’s column, I thought it would be a straightforward story about changing newsroom norms, where nobody — not even on-air talent — is allowed to yell. This is media’s “mean-too” moment, as one skeptical tabloid hack put it to me, embodied by the exposés of producer Scott Rudin. That is, in fact, part of the story. WNYC’s human resources department seems to have its hands full with complaints and counter-complaints of bullying, including those against two prominent women who joined WNYC from sharp-elbowed commercial newsrooms. On Sunday, the company’s labour union filed a formal complaint against the station’s editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, with the National Labour Relations Board, for reportedly waging a “coordinated and aggressive campaign” against her internal critics. Meanwhile, HR is conducting an investigation of one of WNYC’s biggest stars, “The Takeaway” host Tanzina Vega, over complaints from her producers. Depending on whom you ask, WNYC is experiencing either an epidemic of bullying or an epidemic of whining. WNYC has been turned inward at least since December 2017, when the #MeToo movement flushed out accusations of inappropriate conduct against three prominent male hosts, which led to the exit of top leaders at the station who were criticised for mishandling the accusations. When the new chief executive, Goli Sheikholeslami, arrived in 2019, she said, she did a listening tour and all anyone wanted to talk about was the internal culture. “When you’re a mission-based organisation, the people that choose to work here are incredibly passionate and committed to the work that we do,” she said in an interview Friday. Even by the standards of our fraught media moment, public radio — and the parts of the podcast industry that emerged from it — has been beset by seemingly constant clashes that can be difficult for outsiders to make sense of. The reasons are partly structural. Audio production makes literal many of the inequalities that journalists complain about: Increasingly diverse teams of young producers labour anonymously in soundproof rooms to make a single host, traditionally a white guy, though that is changing, look good. (It’s sort of like TV, but with less camera-ready people and without a fat salary to make up for the indignities.) And radio stations filled with idealists who view themselves as working for the public good are often led by people whose greatest skill is raising millions of dollars from affluent donors. At WNYC, they refer to the period that began in 2017 as The Troubles. The place came apart again last summer after Sheikholeslami asked staff members what they wanted in a leader, and they asked for a person of colour with roots in New York and a connection to public media. Instead, she and the station’s chief content officer, Andrew Golis, hired Cooper, the white editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Cooper was welcomed to New York with the headline “WNYC Employees Demanded Diversity. They Got Another White Boss.” After that Bronx cheer, Cooper sought to reassure the staff that she would make diversity a priority. She boasted at a large, early meeting of her record of firing white men at the Chronicle, three people who Zoomed into the virtual gathering said. That wasn’t quite what the staff had wanted, either, though, and they were “horrified” at the remark, a cultural critic at the time, Rebecca Carroll, said this week. Perhaps even worse, Cooper remarked early on that she had never heard of Brian Lehrer, the beloved WNYC morning host whose gently probing, public-spirited interviews embody the station’s appeal, and that she didn’t “get” why he was popular. She has since come to the view that “Brian is the soul of the station and, in many ways, the city itself,” a WNYC spokeswoman, Jennifer Houlihan Roussel, said in an email. In fact, Cooper’s mission was to jump-start the station’s lagging digital transformation, something she had done with unusual success in San Francisco and that requires a willingness to make enemies. She has ambitious plans to hire 15 to 20 more reporters — but first she had the near-impossible assignment of bringing together a group of traditional radio journalists, used to working for days and occasionally weeks on colourful local features, with the reporters at Gothamist, the scrappy local blog that WNYC bailed out in 2018. Cooper sought to professionalize Gothamist away from its bloggy and irreverent roots, telling reporters to be less openly hostile to the New York Police Department in their reporting, two reporters said. Roussel suggested that Cooper was trying to rein in Gothamist’s habit of adding “an element of editorializing to its coverage that can be interpreted as bias.” And Cooper started pushing the radio journalists to pick up their pace and to file stories for the web. That seemed like a reasonable request, but it led to another stumble in early February, when an 18-year veteran of the radio side, Fred Mogul, filed a story with one paragraph printed in a different font. The editor realized it was Associated Press copy; Cooper promptly fired Mogul (who declined through his union to be interviewed) for plagiarism without a review of whether he had ever done it before. Cooper declined to speak to me about Mogul’s termination. But one thing I learned about public radio is that no matter what is happening, someone is always recording it. And that was true when Cooper called a virtual meeting Feb. 5 over Zoom to inform the full newsroom of her decision to fire Mogul. According to a copy of the recording provided to me by an attendee, Cooper told the staffers, “It’s totally OK to be sad.” But then several stunned radio reporters questioned the move, explaining that they regularly incorporated AP copy into stories on air and had imported the practice to WNYC’s little-read website, crediting The AP at the bottom of the story. “Go through every single one of our articles and fire all of us, because that is exactly what we have all done,” one host, Rebeca Ibarra, told her. On Feb 10, more than 60 employees — including Lehrer — signed a letter asking Cooper to reconsider and calling the firing a “troubling precedent.” Things did not calm down after that. In April, WNYC laid off 14 people as it wrestled with a looming multimillion-dollar deficit. Among those let go was another internal critic and union shop steward, Christopher Robbins, and Richard Yeh, a radio veteran who had been quoted in The New York Times as criticizing the selection of Cooper. That prompted the union’s formal charge of retaliation against Cooper. Sheikholeslami said the layoffs were simply part of a revamping to move WNYC toward a newsroom in which audio and digital are truly integrated. Cooper has told the staff she wants to turn WNYC into the city’s news source “of record.” And that may be the biggest challenge of all — not just for WNYC but for all local media in a changing country. Journalists last week, for instance, faced direct challenges to their legitimacy in two of the country’s biggest cities, as politicians sense the political weakness that comes with the lack of racial and ethnic representation in newsrooms. Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago provoked a confrontation by offering interviews only to nonwhite reporters. And a leading candidate for New York mayor, Eric Adams, responded to The New York Times’ investigation of alleged cronyism by suggesting that the media’s focus on him was racially motivated. But it’s hard to look outward when you’re at war with yourself. WNYC’s other big bet is its podcast studio, whose biggest show is Radiolab, and which, after an auspicious start with shows like 2 Dope Queens and Freakonomics Radio, has struggled for a breakout hit. There, too, stress levels are high and accusations of bullying are flying in all directions. Vega, who has been recording from a closet while raising a small child alone through the pandemic, got into a dispute with her producer just before “The Takeaway” was to air on April 22. The tape was, of course, running, and the recording was sent to human resources, which is now investigating, according to two WNYC journalists. After the blowup, Vega went right on the air for an interview with an expert that hinted, perhaps, at some of what ails media right now. It went online under the headline “Journalists Are Burning Out.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

A thaw would reverse a paradoxical expansion of the extent of floating ice on the ocean around the frozen continent in recent decades, apparently defying the trend of global warming blamed on greenhouse gases. Winter sea ice around Antarctica shrank 65 percent in a natural warm period between Ice Ages about 128,000 years ago, when temperatures were slightly warmer than now, according to the report in the journal Nature Communications. The conclusions were based on ancient ice cores drilled from deep in the Antarctic ice sheet. The chemistry of snow indicates how far it blew from the ocean before it landed and got compressed into ice. The ancient shrinking of the ice helps underpin forecasts by a panel of U.N. climate experts that global warming will mean a 58 percent retreat in Antarctica's sea ice by around the year 2200, the British scientific team that wrote the report concluded. "A major reduction at 128,000 years ago could indicate a tipping point in the sea ice system," they wrote. Lead author Max Holloway of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) told Reuters that the ancient shrinking of sea ice may have preceded a collapse of an ice sheet in West Antarctica that spilled into the sea and pushed up sea levels. "With a major reduction in sea ice, you'd expect the ice sheets to be more sensitive," he said. Separately, in 2014 another study suggested that some glaciers in West Antarctica have already begun an irreversible thaw. Sceptics who reject mainstream scientific findings about global warming often point to the expansion of sea ice around Antarctica as evidence. Sea ice in the Arctic at the other end of the planet has been shrinking in recent decades. Scientists say the contradictory trends may partly be because Antarctica is a continent surrounded by an open ocean, while the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land - mainly Russia, Canada, Greenland and Alaska. "By uncovering, for the first time, a huge retreat around Antarctica, we have established that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is also susceptible to major climate changes," co-author Louise Sime of BAS said in a statement.

Climate negotiators prepared to ditch a December deadline for agreeing a new pact as UN talks in Barcelona drew to a close on Friday with little progress made. "It's an unfinished piece of work, well below what's needed," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, chair of the Group of 77 and China, representing poor nations. Some leaders and U.N. officials have said in the past two weeks that governments will not sign a legally binding text at a Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen, aiming instead for a strong political agreement including emissions reductions targets. This week's Barcelona meeting was the final U.N. preparatory meeting but made little progress, re-opening a rich-poor divide and criticism of the United States for not tabling a formal, carbon-cutting offer. "All G77 member states, Africa have said developed countries have refused to make progress," Di-Aping told Reuters. "They're going further now, managing expectations down, saying we have to continue for another six months." A U.N. climate treaty may need an extra year or more, beyond the original December deadline, delegates said this week. African nations in Barcelona boycotted the start of some of the talks, saying that planned climate action by the developed world was insufficient. They won support from many developing nations and environmental groups. "The cuts the industrialised countries have put on the table at the low levels of ambition, scarcely a few more percentage points more commitments than they made in the original Kyoto agreement (in 1997)," said Bill Hare, a scientist at Germany's Potsdam Institute. The process has entered a difficult phase, he said. "I think there's all still to play for in Copenhagen in setting up a strong legally binding agreement, and the process wil take at six least to 12 months to complete." The Africa boycott delayed until Wednesday the start of negotiations on emissions cuts. "Making significant progress here in Barcelona is probably not possible, because of the hiccup we had, because of the loss of two days trying to arrive at a solution," said John Ashe, chair of talks to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol. "What it means is we'll have our work cut out in Copenhagen." A controversial U.S. climate change bill cleared its first hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, but Democrats are likely to fall far short of their goal of passing legislation in the full Senate before Copenhagen as Boxer's bill lacks enough support for full approval. That would make it difficult for the United States to offer an internationally binding emissions reduction target in December, it may face blame for any failure in Copenhagen.

Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, was scheduled to set sail from Hampton, Virginia, on Wednesday morning. This time, she will hitch a ride with an Australian couple that sails around the world in a 48-foot catamaran called La Vagabonde and chronicles their travels on YouTube. La Vagabonde will take roughly three weeks to reach Spain, where Thunberg hopes to arrive in time for the next round of UN-sponsored climate talks. “I decided to sail to highlight the fact that you can’t live sustainably in today’s society,” Thunberg said by phone from Hampton on Tuesday afternoon. “You have to go to the extreme.” Thunberg doesn’t fly because of the outsize greenhouse gas emissions from aviation. And so her trip from Europe to the United States was also by boat — a racing yacht that set off from Plymouth, England, and arrived in New York harbour to much fanfare in August. Thunberg had been travelling slowly across the United States and Canada — appearing on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” in New York, protesting alongside Sioux leaders in North Dakota, bike riding in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger and joining school strikes every Friday from Iowa City to Los Angeles. She had planned to make her way south, mainly by bus and boat, to Santiago, Chile, for the next round of UN-sponsored climate negotiations in December. Her slow travel plans needed to be quickly changed. First came a wave of street protests in Santiago. Chile said the climate talks could no longer be held there. Spain offered Madrid as the venue, and Thunberg found herself suddenly needing another ride across the ocean. “It turns out I’ve travelled half around the world, the wrong way,” she said on Twitter. “Now I need to find a way to cross the Atlantic in November… If anyone could help me find transport I would be so grateful.” Help came from Riley Whitelum, an Australian who has been sailing around the world with his wife, Elayna Carausu. “If you get in contact with me, I’m sure we could organise something,” he responded. In the span of a week, the voyage was organised. Whitelum and Carausu will be joined by a British professional sailor, Nikki Henderson, for this voyage. Thunberg’s father, Svante, will accompany her back across the ocean, as he did on the westward trip. The couple’s 11-month-old son, Lenny, will also be onboard, meaning that Thunberg, who is usually the only child in rooms full of powerful adults, will not be the youngest person in the crowd. “Finally,” she said. Thunberg’s extraordinary rise stems, in large part, from the fact that she is a child. She was 15 when she decided she would skip school and sit in front of the Swedish parliament, holding a homemade sign that read, in Swedish, “School Strike for the Climate.” She credits her single-minded focus on climate action to what she calls her superpower: Asperger’s syndrome, a neurological difference on the autism spectrum. Word spread of her solo act of civil disobedience. It buoyed the efforts of other young environmental activists and inspired hundreds of school strikes. Young people organised with the tool that they best know how to use: the internet, mobilising by the millions, from Melbourne to Kampala to Bonn to New York City. Their anger, like hers, embodied the frustration of their generation at the incongruously slow pace of action in the face of definitive science. Thunberg’s fame has grown in the United States. A collection of her speeches, most of them previously published, has been released in a new anthology by Penguin Press. Her angriest speech, delivered to world leaders at the United Nations in September, has been used in a death-metal remix. The likeness of her face is painted on a mural on the side of a building in San Francisco. Threats of violence have come at her too, along with attacks aimed at her medical condition. Perhaps her most famous American encounter was with President Donald Trump in the corridors of the United Nations. He didn’t see her. But she saw him, flashing icy daggers with her eyes. Asked what she was thinking in that moment, Thunberg said, “It speaks for itself.” Thunberg said Tuesday that she hoped La Vagabonde would bring her to Spain safely and on time. After that, she was looking forward to going back home to Stockholm and hugging her two dogs. “Travelling around is very fun and I’m very privileged to have the opportunity to do so, but it would be nice to get back to my routines again,” she said.   c.2019 The New York Times Company

Computer simulations of the weather workings of the entire planet will be able to make forecasts to within a few kilometers accuracy, helping predict the effects of deadly weather systems. But the world may have to wait 20 to 40 years' for such accurate information on weather events like El Nino as computer capacity grows, a senior British scientist said Thursday. "If we step forward 20 to 40 years into the future of climate science, it is conceivable we can have climate models down to a scale of a few kilometers' resolution," Alan Thorpe, director general of the UK-based European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), told reporters. "That would add a huge amount of information to this variability question." A climate model is a computer-based version of the Earth's climate system, based on physics and complex equations. Such models can be used for weather forecasting, understanding the climate and projecting climate change. A model with a very fine resolution could produce more accurate results but this depends on computer capacity. Thorpe said some climate models are now nearing a resolution of 100 km, compared to around 300 km 10 to 15 years ago. "We are running global weather picture models at a 16 km resolution already so we have the science and the models to reduce the problem of high resolution but we need the computer power to do it," Thorpe said. It would cost up to 200 million pounds to buy a top-end super computer, he added, which is around 7 percent of the UK's yearly science budget of 3 billion pounds. "The impact of climate change needs to be seen as sufficiently important to society to devote this level of resource to it," Thorpe said. Some experts warn that some of the most devastating impacts of climate change could be felt before and during the period 2030 to 2050. Some climate models have been criticized for not being accurate enough or not predicting extreme events far enough into the future. Thorpe said ECMWF scientists are doing a lot of research into so-called tipping points, when there is a rapid change in the climate which is irreversible or which would take a long time to reverse. "Inevitably, those are the aspects of the system we have to worry about most because they are not linear behavior. How many of those there are is still an open question," he added. "If we devoted the whole of the science budget to these questions we could make more rapid progress but we are doing a lot of research on these areas." Some tipping points are seen happening in the coming decades, such as the loss of summer Arctic sea ice or the loss of the Amazon rainforest.

The Tibetan plateau, which has the largest store of ice outside the North and South Pole, has experienced rising temperatures of 1.3 Celsius over the past five decades, three times the global average, the leadership said in a statement.Tibet, with an average altitude of over 4,000 metres (13,125 ft) is particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Warming is already melting glaciers that are the source of water in rivers that help support about 1.3 billion people. "The Tibetan Plateau needs to be protected, not just for Tibetans but for the environmental health and sustainability of the entire world," the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader, said. "As vital as the Arctic and Antarctic, it is the Third Pole," he said in the statement issued from the Indian hill station of Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile has been based since the Dalai Lama fled his homeland in 1959.Close to 200 countries will meet in Paris in December to try to hammer out a deal to slow man-made climate change by aiming to keep temperatures below a ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Ethnic Tibetan pilgrims walk on a road during Tibetan New Year in Langmusixiang, Sichuan Province in February 2012. Reuters World leaders are hoping for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol after 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen ended in disappointment due to differences between the United States and China.Tibet's leaders said they want an effective climate change agreement and also want to have a say in the talks.About 80 percent of the ice in Tibet has retreated in the past 50 years, according to the government-in-exile.With the rapidly melting permafrost, 12,300 million tons of carbon could be released into the air, further exacerbating the problems of global warming, they said. Ethnic Tibetan pilgrims walk on a road during Tibetan New Year in Langmusixiang, Sichuan Province in February 2012. Reuters

But there will always be companies that try to upend the status quo, powered by idealistic thinking and, ideally, deep pockets. One such company is set to take its shot this summer with a single-seat car called the Solo. A tiny, three-wheeled electric, it will be available in Los Angeles later this year. “So many vehicles are being driven by one person,” said Paul Rivera, chief executive of the Solo’s manufacturer, ElectraMeccanica, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. “Why does everybody think they need to drive around and leave three or four empty seats?” Nearly 90% of Americans who commute by car, truck, van or motorcycle drive alone, according to the Census Bureau. Positioning itself as a right-size alternative to hauling around all of that excess automotive tonnage, the Solo takes up about a quarter of the space of a typical SUV. It also looks like a car — at least from the front — with the usual hood, grille and headlights. Take a peek from behind, however, and it tapers down to just one wheel. Technically, the Solo is a motorcycle, though it’s fully enclosed and drives like a car with a steering wheel and foot pedals. It has only one seat, but it’s accessible with doors on both sides. It also has a trunk, and amenities common to a full-size passenger vehicle, including Bluetooth stereo, air conditioning and a backup camera. Having three wheels, it is not subject to the sorts of crash-testing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires for street-legal, four-wheeled vehicles, but it does have a seatbelt and an integrated roll bar. The Solo isn’t the first small, three-wheeled car to squeeze into the crowded automotive market. The Bond Bug, an angular British three-wheeler in pumpkin orange, went out of production in 1974, after four short years. Carver, based in the Netherlands, has been making different iterations of its leaning, three-wheeled “man-wide” vehicles since the 1990s. And the Corbin Sparrow, with its striking resemblance to Mother Hubbard’s shoe, failed to take off in any meaningful way after going into production in 1999. “There’s been so many of these,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book. “A lot of people want to solve the problem of clean, space-efficient, inexpensive personal transportation.” Microcars have tended to sell in microscopic numbers in a new-car market with millions in annual sales. Fiat sold just 6,556 of its Fiat 500s in 2019, despite their seeming ubiquity. Mercedes pulled its Smart car from the US market after selling just 680 units last year. Toyota yanked its Scion iQ after selling just 482 of them in 2015. “It’s not to say a group of people won’t buy these,” Brauer said of the Solos, “but that group is in the hundreds, not the thousands, and something that sells in the hundreds is not saving anything: not the planet or our congestion problems.” He added, “If you can’t get tens or hundreds of thousands of these to sell, it’s not having any sort of meaningful impact on any of these problems it’s supposed to be solving.” Rivera, ElectraMeccanica’s chief executive, declined to reveal initial production or order figures for the Solo. While its Chinese factory is capable of making 20,000 vehicles a year, “we won’t do that right out of the gate,” he said. “We will launch very slowly and methodically.” ElectraMeccanica has its roots in a decades-old Italian company that built replica Porsches in the 1960s. That company relocated to Vancouver in the 1990s and created the ElectraMeccanica subsidiary in 2015, from which the Solo was born. Two batches of earlier generation vehicles have been manufactured so far, in limited quantities, some of which are still being driven in Canada. The new production version of the Solo will be manufactured in Chongqing, China, in partnership with the Chinese motorcycle manufacturer Zongshen Industrial Group, a company that already makes about 3 million motorcycles annually. ElectraMeccanica plans to set up a North American assembly facility within the next two years. After launching in Los Angeles later this year, ElectraMeccanica will expand sales to San Francisco, Seattle and Portland — early-adopter cities in states that also have generous incentives for electric vehicles. California provides a $750 rebate for the Solo; Oregon, $2,500. Rivera said the Solo would expand to the rest of the country over the next 18 months to two years, then globally. Taking a page from Tesla, which sells its cars through retail stores rather than dealerships, ElectraMeccanica is offering the Solo through shopping mall kiosks, starting with two in the Los Angeles area — Westfield Fashion Square in the San Fernando Valley and Westfield Century City. Together, the malls have 24 million visitors a year, according to a Westfield official. In a handout photo provided by ElectraMeccanica, the Solo isn’t the first small, three-wheeled car to squeeze into the crowded automotive market. The New York Times Malls in California are closed now because of the coronavirus outbreak, but the Solo kiosks will be up and running when the state’s stay-at-home orders are lifted, possibly this month. In a handout photo provided by ElectraMeccanica, the Solo isn’t the first small, three-wheeled car to squeeze into the crowded automotive market. The New York Times The coronavirus is changing the transportation landscape in ways that seemed unthinkable even two months ago. Public transportation ridership is plummeting throughout the country. Cars are suddenly unaffordable to millions who have lost jobs. And the threat of climate change remains very real. So maybe — just maybe — the Solo has a chance. Arriving on the market when travelers are hesitant to touch what others have touched, it provides for social distancing. Priced at $18,500, it also costs about half as much as the current average sales price for a new passenger vehicle ($35,667 as of March 2020). And it has zero emissions, allowing for up to 100 miles of travel per charge at a top speed of 80 mph. It recharges with Level 1 or 2 chargers. “Conceptually, it makes sense,” said Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But what’s socially desirable and environmentally beneficial isn’t necessarily personally optimal.” American drivers tend to buy “the most capable or largest vehicle that they need,” Matute said, even if they need that capability for only 5% of their trips. Thus the popularity of pickup trucks and SUVs. While the Solo’s price is far less than an average car, it may still be a stretch for many during a downturn. And even though 50% of electric vehicles sold in the United States are sold in California, installing the infrastructure to charge them is an additional hurdle, Matute said. Regardless of whether the Solo finds a market in Los Angeles or elsewhere in the United States, it already has an unequivocal fan in Leona Green. The owner of the Greens and Beans deli in New Westminster, British Columbia, Green has driven a first-generation Solo every day for three years. “It’s adorable,” she said. Driving her little green Solo with a custom “Han” license plate, Green uses the car to deliver sandwich trays, four of which fit in the trunk. It is small enough for motorcycle parking, and she spends about $15 a month on electricity to recharge it. “Not a day goes by that people aren’t stopping and taking pictures of the car, even after all this time,” she said. “I love it.” © 2020 New York Times News Service

The strike began to unfold Wednesday evening as workers at the national railway SNCF walked off the job. The walkout threatens to paralyze France for several days or more, with teachers, students, hospital staff, police officers, garbage collectors, truck drivers and airline workers all expected to join. By Wednesday night, the streets of Paris were uncharacteristically quiet, with people wary of being caught without transportation options home. Parts of the Paris subway system had come to a halt, and buses had signs in their windows that they were returning to their depots. The fresh round of social unrest is once again calling into question Macron’s top-down management style, a big factor in last year’s protest over stagnating wages and dwindling living standards. He promised then to bring more voices into his decision-making but has wound up dictating another overhaul that has created deep unease in France. There is also now concern at the top at the reaction from the street, with one senior official at the Élysée Palace, the French presidency, acknowledging that the pension overhaul had the potential to galvanise disparate parts of the opposition. “Pension reforms create anxiety. It’s not an easy sell,” said the official, who could only be quoted anonymously under French rules. The Yellow Vests say they will join the new protest — unlike the unions, they have been successful at extracting concessions from the government — as will Macron’s opponents, right and left, and a wide spectrum of unions, though not the centrist French Democratic Confederation of Labour. Publicly, government officials have been busy assuring journalists and others that they are not afraid of the strike action, which has come to be called “the Dec 5 wall.” But the walkout and the underlying social discontent call into question Macron’s apparent triumph over the Yellow Vest movement, seen up until now as a crucial moment of his reformist presidency. Unions are predicting a huge turnout on Thursday. Jean Garrigues, a political historian at the University of Orléans, said, “The victory doesn’t seem to have rehabilitated Macron.” This week’s protest is “the reflection of a crisis in French society, one that can explode at any moment,” he added. “There’s real anxiety over the future.” Macron’s hasty $19 billion check to bolster purchasing power in the form of tax cuts and income supplements for low earners did help tamp down the Yellow Vest demonstrations. But some analysts, like economist Daniel Cohen of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, have pointed out that the cash did not settle underlying French social dislocation linked to globalisation. The senior Élysée official acknowledged that citizens were in effect saying that they had not seen enough improvement to their daily lives. The strike has been called to protest Macron’s proposed overhaul of the Byzantine French pension system, one of the world’s most complicated and generous, which is currently headed for a deficit of about $19 billion. Some railway workers, for instance, can retire at 52, and average retirement ages are among the lowest in the industrialised world. The official retirement age is 62, but many retire before. Pensions as a percentage of working-age salaries are among the world’s highest, hovering at around 70%, and often even higher for state workers. Retirements tend to be long in France, and public leisure facilities — concerts, museums, theatres — are often full of vigorous retirees with lots of time on their hands. The results of this complex system of 42 different pension plans are remarkable: France has among the world’s lowest old-age poverty rates, and average incomes of those over 65 are slightly higher than incomes under that age, a global rarity. The train workers have their own retirement plan, as do the opera workers, the workers at the Comédie-Française — the national theatre company — and the workers at the Port of Bordeaux, among others. Most workers are under the private-sector pension plan, in which the state is also heavily involved. The French are fiercely protective of their world-beating pension arrangements, and indeed, the government does not dare tinker with the basics: It is not proposing to spend less on pensions or to make people retire later. Instead, Macron’s idea is to merge all these disparate systems, public and private, into one state-managed system in which workers accumulate points over the course of a working life and then cash them in. His instinct is always to rationalise and he says his system will be fairer, though there are concerns that his changes will mean less for some. Hervé Boulhol, a pensions specialist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that, as things stand, “We’ve got a panorama that’s extremely disparate, with lots of different rules.” Macron is proposing “a very ambitious reform,” Boulhol said. “We’re changing the way of calculating pension rights.” But although many in France worship the rational, it is also a country that loves street protest and hates change, particularly in a moment full of fear over globalisation and climate change. Previous governments have foundered on the third rail of French politics, the pensions system. “It’s not right that you do the same work, and your neighbour retires earlier, the calculation is different,” Macron said at a public meeting in Rodez in central France this fall. “So this has created suspicion in regard to our pension system, so today people find that it is more or less unfair, and more and more, people have doubts about it.” But they appear to have even more doubts about Macron’s changes. “The amount of pension, for everybody, is going to go down,” said Benoît Martin, a senior official with the General Confederation of Labour, a left-leaning union that is leading the charge on Thursday. He added, “The number of retirees is going to go up, but they’re not talking about spending more on pensions.” “It’s going to be a lot more haphazard, this way of getting points,” Martin said. “When there’s periods of little work, the number of points will be low.” None of this is certain. But one of the difficulties with Macron’s overhaul is its continual state of flux, and the president’s own lack of clarity. At Rodez, Macron refused to commit to special retirement rules for the police; sure enough, they will be demonstrating on Thursday. “We don’t know all the details; there’s uncertainty,” said Boulhol of the OECD. There was talk, for instance, of raising the retirement age, but a vast outcry killed that idea. And then there has been the government’s uncertain method, which could point to lessons imperfectly learned from the Yellow Vest crisis. Macron was “scarred” by those protests, he had a “consciousness-raising,” said Ismaël Emelien, one of the president’s closest advisers until he left the government this year and who is still a source of counsel. Macron learned that “all change has got to be cultural,” Emelien said in an interview this fall. “You’ve got to implicate society in these changes. You can’t just stand there and say you are right.” The senior Élysée official said: “We have to associate the people. It’s a matter of management and focus.” And so Macron spent four months traveling France to listen and to lecture, a process that continues fitfully today. But in the end, the pensions overhaul has been served up like so many of its predecessors, under the French top-down system: from the professed smart folk at the Élysée Palace. There has so far been no debate in Parliament. Macron has convened endless meetings with unions, but those discussions have not made the lines move. “We have the impression that these meetings were not really a negotiation,” said Garrigues, the political historian. “The positions remained fixed. And the responsibility for this immobility belongs to an executive too used to top-down. Maybe that’s the personality of Emmanuel Macron.” © 2019 New York Times News Service

Mass deaths of bee colonies in many parts of the world may be part of a wider, hidden threat to wild insect pollinators vital to human food supplies, a UN study indicated on Thursday. Declines in flowering plants, a spread of parasites, use of pesticides or air pollution were among more than a dozen factors behind recent collapses of bee colonies mainly in North America and Europe, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said. That cocktail of problems -- rather than a single cause killing bees in hives that might be easier to fix -- may also threaten wild bees and other insects vital to pollinate crops such as soybeans, potatoes or apple trees. "It's the tip of the iceberg we're seeing with the honey bees," Peter Neumann, a lead author of the study of "global honey bee colony disorders and other threats to insect pollinators," told Reuters. "There is not an immediate pollination disaster but the writing is on the wall," said Neumann, of the Swiss Bee Research Center. "We have to do something to ensure pollination for future generations." The study said there were also reports of bee colony collapses in China, Egypt and Latin America. "There are some indicators that it is becoming a global issue," he said in a telephone interview. BIRDS AND THE BEES Bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles or birds are estimated to do work worth 153 billion euros ($212.3 billion) a year to the human economy -- about 9.5 percent of the total value of human food production, it said. Recent estimates of the contribution by managed species, mainly honey bees, range up to 57 billion euros. In the United States, over two million bee colonies are trucked around the nation to help pollination every year. "Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees," Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said in a statement. "Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people," he said. The report urged a shift toward ecological farming, less dependent on insecticides and more resilient to threats such as climate change. Food prices have hit record levels and are one factor behind uprisings in Egypt or Tunisia. UNEP said farmers could be given incentives to set aside land to "restore pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants" as part of a shift to a "Green Economy." Neumann also urged more research into insects, noting that charismatic animals such as polar bears won most attention as victims of global warming. "Insects are usually not cute but they are the backbone of ecosystems," he said.

World business leaders welcomed President George W Bush's acknowledgment of climate change as 'a serious challenge,' but called on Wednesday for long-term emissions standards to help them plan. While supporting the White House nod to alternative energies such as ethanol, wind, solar and nuclear power, corporate executives meeting at the Swiss ski resort of Davos said they wanted Washington to lock in stricter US emissions standards. Bush declined in his annual State of the Union address to support mandatory caps on heat-trapping carbon gases that big US companies such as General Electric Co have pushed for, instead backing new technologies to cut the amount of gasoline used in the United States. Environmentalists said Bush had failed to recognise the seriousness of climate change and his comments were driven by US fears about oil supplies. In his speech, Bush called on Americans to cut their gasoline use by 20 percent over a decade, mostly through a nearly five-fold increase in use of home-grown fuels such as ethanol, and urged tighter vehicle fuel efficiency standards. "It is a good step, but we need to take many more," Duke Energy chief executive James Rogers said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting, where climate change is dominating talks among some 2,400 global movers and shakers. Alcoa chief executive Alain Belda said it was untenable for the US climate change agenda to be set by individual states. "I think the country needs one rule," he told a climate change panel at Davos, noting such a standard could reduce the risks for companies of adopting emissions-cutting technologies. He said strong leadership from the United States, the top global source of greenhouse gases, could spur other less wealthy countries to tighten their emissions rules. But Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of India's Bharti Enterprises warned it would not be easy for these countries. "India is going to be a willing partner in discussing this issue. But clearly it's not a willing punching bag, because it has its limitations," he said. "We, as a billion people, are going to be consuming a lot of services and goods that will create emissions. We will need technology, we will need money, but India will be willing to align with the world," he added. "President Bush barely mentioned climate change in his speech. The few measures he did announce were about improving fuel use efficiency and developing alternative fuels, driven by fear about US energy security," Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne said. About 60 percent of US petroleum supplies are imported. "There was no mention of emissions trading, carbon taxes or promoting public transport," she said. Her comments matched concerns in India, where some scientists say climate change will have a major impact. "He is diluting the issue by talking in terms of cutting the United States' oil dependency, rather than in terms of the serious environmental consequences," said K. Srinivas, campaigner for climate change and energy for Greenpeace India. Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Don Henry said: "The president's proposed actions to tackle climate change are extremely weak." Australia, along with the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and its targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, widely blamed for global warming. The head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, Yvo de Boer, said Bush's statement was 'very encouraging.' "He did not talk in his State of the Union address about international cooperation on climate change. But at the same time, he did put his remarks in the context of the need for global response," de Boer told reporters in Tokyo. The head of a Singapore-based biofuels producer was cautious about Bush's call to ramp up ethanol production from corn and other sources, such as wood chips and grasses. "It will not take effect, this is just a policy," said Georges Mercadal, director at CMS Resources. But a senior British advisor was more positive. "He did have quite strong targets for biofuels. That is in itself an important step forward," Nicholas Stern, advisor to the British government on the economics of climate change, told Reuters Television in an interview. The speech also failed to impress grain markets. Chicago Board of Trade grain futures turned lower on Wednesday, with corn leading the way.

BRUSSELS, Fri Dec 12, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - European leaders sealed a 200-billion-euro ($264 billion) pact to revive the bloc's battered economy on Friday and edged close to a climate deal amended to cushion industry and poorer EU states. Talks on the pact, which draws on existing national packages and provides support for sectors including construction and motors, had exposed differences between Britain and Germany. But the second day of a two-day Brussels summit brought evidence of a softening of positions. "We have agreed an ambitious stimulus package," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a news conference. The deal, announced after the collapse of a planned US auto sector aid programme sent a chill through world markets, amounted to 1.5 percent of the bloc's total gross domestic product. Leaders took a step towards salvaging the planned Lisbon Treaty of EU reforms by giving Ireland assurances that it will not affect key policy areas. The move is designed to enable Dublin to stage a new referendum by next November on a text which its voters rejected in June. After weeks of pressure by France and others to contribute more to EU-wide stimulus efforts, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin would study possible new steps some time next year. A dispute on whether EU states should together cut value added tax (VAT) -- a move she had opposed -- was deferred. A draft summit text, obtained by Reuters before a final review by EU leaders, committed the bloc to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, despite concessions. However, diplomats say the final shape of the climate package was still uncertain, and ecology groups fear it could emerge from the talks in a much watered-down form. "This is a flagship EU policy with no captain, a mutinous crew and several gaping holes in it," said Sanjeev Kumar of environment pressure group WWF. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana acknowledged there had been concessions, cushioning some industrial sectors and easing the burden of east European countries with highly-polluting Soviet-era power stations. But, with an eye to U.N. sponsored global environment talks in Poznan, Poland, he added: 'The objectives, the dynamism the leadership of the EU is going to continue." The draft approved the headline goal of an EU-wide programme of measures aimed at wrenching the 27-nation bloc's economy out of recession, despite some differences between EU member states about how to handle the worst economic downturn in 80 years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has argued against large cash injections, especially purchase tax cuts, warning that billowing budgetary deficits can only burden future generations. "Europe will act in a united, strong, rapid and decisive manner to avoid a recessionary spiral and sustain economic activity and employment,' the draft said of temporary support to the economy, including the auto and construction sectors. In wording which appeared to reflect the reluctance of countries such as Germany to cut value added tax (VAT), the text raised the possibility of reducing VAT on labour-intensive services only in those states that wished to do so. The climate discussions took on a special significance, six weeks before Barack Obama takes over the U.S. presidency holding out the prospect of closer transatlantic co-operation on global warming. COAL POWER According to the draft text, poorer east European nations will be offered two tiers of funding worth billions of euros to win their support for measures to tackle climate change that will ramp up costs for their highly-polluting power sectors. The nine former communist states are seen as the final blockage to a deal, having already threatened to veto the plan if nothing is done to temper measures aimed at making coal-fired power stations uneconomical and boosting cleaner alternatives. Their power sectors were also partially exempted from paying for emissions permits under the EU's flagship emissions trading scheme (ETS) between 2013 and 2020. However it was not clear whether eastern capitals would back the new proposals in a final planned session of talks on Friday, despite positive noises voiced earlier by Poland and others. Diplomats said leaders had agreed assurances to Ireland enabling Dublin to hold a second referendum by next November on the Lisbon treaty. The Lisbon Treaty -- successor to the defunct EU constitution -- aims to give the bloc more weight in the world by creating a long-term president and its own foreign policy supremo and needs to be ratified by all 27 EU states. Dublin will be offered guarantees that concerns such as military neutrality and national tax policy will not be touched, as long as it commits to ratifying it by November 2009 -- paving the way for a new referendum which it is far from sure to win.

Ugandan police have found an unexploded suicide vest and arrested six of the more than 20 Somalis and Ugandans suspected of planning twin bombings that killed 76 soccer fans on Sunday, an intelligence source said. Somali al Shabaab Islamists linked to al Qaeda said they had carried out the attacks on a crowded restaurant and a rugby club in the Ugandan capital while fans watched the World Cup final on television. In Washington, a senior U.S. official said there were indications that al Shabaab's claim of responsibility was authentic. It would mark the first time the group has struck outside Somalia. U.S. President Barack Obama said it was "tragic and ironic" that the explosions happened as people were watching the World Cup being played in South Africa. "On the one hand, you have a vision of an Africa on the move, an Africa that is unified, an Africa that is modernizing and creating opportunities," Obama told the South African Broadcasting Corp. "On the other hand, you've got a vision of al Qaeda and Al Shabaab that is about destruction and death." Washington has been in contact with Uganda and other governments in the region to determine whether al Shabaab is plotting more attacks and to share intelligence and decide on all "appropriate measures," a senior U.S. official said. An al Shabaab official said there had been no suicide bombers involved in the attack on Uganda, which has peacekeepers in Somalia. A Ugandan military intelligence source told Reuters that intelligence officials had received a tip-off last month that an attack was being planned. But the U.S. official said Washington was not aware of any advance warning. "On June 17 an informer from the Kisenyi suburb of Kampala told intelligence that some Somalis were planning an attack during the World Cup," the Uganda source said. The official said more than 20 people, Somalis and Ugandans, were involved in planning the attacks. "So far we have arrested six people from that racket," he said. Al Shabaab has threatened more attacks unless Uganda and Burundi withdraw their peacekeepers from the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, where the militants are fighting the government and control large parts of the country. Police said the suicide vest found late on Monday at a third site was designed so it could be planted, rather than worn. "Rage blessed those who carried the attack and expected a long life for them. That shows there was no suicide bomb. These were planted," a man who identified himself as Yonis, assistant to al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, told Reuters. As well as banning alcohol, al Shabaab has prohibited watching soccer matches in areas under its control. Coordinated attacks are a hallmark of al Qaeda and groups linked to Osama bin Laden's militant network. But for al Shabaab, it would be the first time the militants have taken their push for power internationally. AFRICAN SUMMIT "I think that there's a common recognition that this is a new phase for al Shabaab in terms of expanding their geographic reach unfortunately," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters. "We are constantly looking at ways that we can increase our preparation for, prevention of, and interdiction of any type of terrorist attack before it should occur on our own soil," she said. The U.S. official who briefed reporters in Washington said al Shabaab had been "on our radar screen," had links to al Qaeda in East Africa and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The official said the Kampala attack was in line with threats to broaden its targets, but did not directly answer a question whether the group might pose a specific danger to the United States. "What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself," Obama said in the interview with South African Broadcasting Corp. "They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains." The African Union said Uganda would still host a summit of African leaders this month and that it would not be deterred from its peacekeeping mission. Regional bloc IGAD said it would not be cowed and would continue to support the Western-backed government in Somalia. "We shall continue with our plans to increase peacekeepers in Somalia to over 8,000 and we hope to have the extra troops in the country by the second week of August," executive secretary Mahboud Maalim told journalists in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Last week IGAD members Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti said they eventually wanted 20,000 troops from the AU and United Nations deployed in Somalia. Uganda's opposition Forum for Democratic Change party urged President Yoweri Museveni to pull his peacekeepers out and said it planned a withdrawal if it won elections in 2011. "There is no peace to keep in Somalia and Uganda has no strategic interest there. We're just sacrificing our children for nothing," party spokesman Wafula Oguttu told Reuters. Analysts say any sustained bombing campaign would damage Uganda's investment climate, but a one-off attack was unlikely to deter major companies such as British hydrocarbons explorer Tullow Oil from investing. Direct foreign investment in east Africa's third largest economy has surged, driven by oil exploration along the western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. One American was among the dead. The U.S. embassy in South Africa said five other U.S. citizens who had been wounded had been evacuated to Johannesburg and Nairobi. An FBI team is in Kampala, the U.S. State Department said.

China urged President Barack Obama to increase a U.S. offer to cut carbon emissions but its top climate envoy indicated willingness on Wednesday to compromise at a U.N. conference in Copenhagen. Xie Zhenhua said that China wanted to play a constructive role at the December 7-18 climate talks, where a successful outcome largely depends on agreement between the United States and China which together emit 40 percent of global greenhouse gases. "I do hope that President Obama can bring a concrete contribution to Copenhagen," Xie told Reuters. When asked whether that meant something additional to what Obama has already proposed, a 3 percent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, Xie said: "Yes." Xie also said that China could accept a target to halve global emissions by 2050 if developed nations stepped up their emissions cutting targets by 2020 and agreed to financial help for the developing world to fight climate change. "We do not deny the importance of a long-term target but I think a mid-term target is more important. We need to solve the immediate problem." "If the demands of developing countries can be satisfied I think we can discuss an emissions target," to halve global emissions by 2050. The deputy chairman of the powerful economic planning superministry, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told Reuters he wanted rich countries to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. "It is our hope that the emissions cuts of developed countries can fall into the range of 25-40 percent (below 1990 levels." Earlier this year, at some previous rounds of U.N. talks, China had insisted on a cut of "at least 40 percent." Xie said that he preferred a final, legally binding agreement at the meeting in Copenhagen, but if that were not possible a deadline to wrap up a full treaty by June "would be very good." He rejected a U.N. proposal for fast-track funding of $10 billion a year from 2010-2012 as "not enough."

President Barack Obama arrived in the Norwegian capital on Thursday to accept his Nobel Peace Prize amid criticism he does not deserve the accolade because of his Afghan war build-up and few foreign policy successes. Obama is the third sitting U.S. president, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to win the prize. Jimmy Carter was honored two decades after he left office. Other prominent Nobel peace laureates include Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa. Obama will accept the prize just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to break the momentum of the Taliban. The troop announcement, so shortly before the Nobel ceremony, was an "interesting coincidence of history" not lost on the president, a senior administration official said. He is due to receive the award at a ceremony in Oslo City Hall starting at 1200 GMT (7 a.m. EST) after flying overnight from Washington. Aides said Obama, known for his soaring rhetoric, was still working on the estimated 20- to 25-minute speech in the hours before his journey. Some polls show that while many Americans are proud Obama is receiving the award, a majority feel it is undeserved. Americans remain anxious about the economy, nudging Obama's approval ratings down to 50 percent or below and potentially hurting his Democratic Party in congressional elections next year. Many people were stunned, including some in the White House, when the Nobel committee announced in October it was awarding the peace prize to Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and cited his push for nuclear disarmament. Critics called the decision premature, given that Obama, who took office in January, had achieved few tangible gains as he grapples with challenges ranging from the war in Afghanistan and nuclear stand-offs with Iran and North Korea to climate change. Obama is due to join scores of other world leaders in Copenhagen next week at the climax of a U.N. conference on climate change, though legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions is stuck in the U.S. Congress. Eco-activists in Oslo intend to keep pressure on Obama during the Nobel celebrations to sign a deal in Copenhagen. The administration official said Obama would not shy away from the Afghanistan war in his speech in Oslo and would address the apparent contradiction of a president whose country is involved in two wars receiving a peace prize. "Right now, he has a range of foreign policy and national security initiatives, all of which are designed toward achieving greater peace and security in the world," the official said. "He feels in many ways that he has not fully earned the award yet. He is at the beginning of his presidency and in many ways at the beginning of his work on behalf of peace." Obama has been widely credited with improving America's global image after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who alienated allies with his mostly unilateral policies, like the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Growing public concern at global warming could help put pressure on governments to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions, the top UN climate change expert said on Monday. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he was pleased with the response to the group's three reports this year, which concluded that human-induced global warming would cause hunger, droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels. "This time around the amount of interest has been enormous compared to previous reports," he told Reuters during a World Meteorological Organisation meeting on climate change. "The fact that people are paying attention to this assessment clearly gives us some satisfaction ... With the knowledge that has been provided, there should be some impetus and momentum for action." Pachauri said it was premature to say whether governments had adequately reacted to the IPCC findings that global carbon dioxide emissions must fall 50 to 85 percent by 2050 to stop the planet from heating up more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). He said he was optimistic that governments would outline policy steps during a summit of environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, in December. "I hope there is at least some decisions on how to move ahead, at least a clear understanding on how the process is going to move forward," Pachauri said. The IPCC reports, compiled by scientists and officials from more than 100 countries, review the latest science on climate change and assess the costs of curbing emissions growth. They are meant to serve as a blueprint for governments without telling them exactly what to do. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said a "comprehensive package on the way forward" needs to be launched at the Bali conference to ensure that emissions restrictions are maintained when the Kyoto Protocol's first phase runs out in 2012. The Kyoto accord binds 35 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12, but its signatories only account for a third of global emissions. Diplomats say time is running short on a successor deal -- which is meant to include outsiders to Kyoto such as the United States, China and India -- because it would take two years to negotiate and another two years for governments to ratify.

A yellow submarine has helped to solve a puzzle about one of Antarctica's fastest-melting glaciers, adding to concerns about how climate change may push up world sea levels, scientists said Sunday. The robot submarine, deployed under the ice shelf floating on the sea at the end of the Pine Island Glacier, found that the ice was no longer resting on a subsea ridge that had slowed the glacier's slide until the early 1970s. Antarctica is key to predicting the rise in sea levels caused by global warming -- it has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft) if it ever all melted. Even a tiny thaw at the fringes could swamp coasts from Bangladesh to Florida. The finding from the 2009 mission "only adds to our concern that this region is indeed the 'weak underbelly' of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," co-author of the study Stan Jacobs at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said in a statement. West Antarctica's thaw accounts for 10 percent of a recently observed rise in sea levels, with melting of the Pine Island glacier quickening, especially in recent decades, according to the study led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Loss of contact with the subsea ridge meant that ice was flowing faster and also thawing more as sea water flowed into an ever bigger cavity that now extended 30 km beyond the ridge. The water was just above freezing at 1 degree Celsius (33.80F). SATELLITE BUMP Satellite photographs in the early 1970s had shown a bump on the surface of the ice shelf, indicating the subsea ridge. That bump has vanished and the 7 meter (22 foot) submarine found the ridge was now up to 100 meters below the ice shelf. Adrian Jenkins, lead author at BAS, said the study raised "new questions about whether the current loss of ice from Pine Island Glacier is caused by recent climate change or is a continuation of a longer-term process that began when the glacier disconnected from the ridge." Pierre Dutrieux, also at BAS, said the ice may have started thinning because of some as yet-unknown mechanism linked to climate change, blamed mainly on mankind's use of fossil fuels. "It could be a shift in the wind, due to a change in climate, that pushed more warm water under the shelf," he told Reuters. The UN panel of climate scientists projected in 2007 that world sea levels could rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7-24 inches) by 2100, excluding risks of faster melting in Antarctica and Greenland. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the 21st century rise might be 2 meters in the worst case.

At the start of the 20th century, inventors Thomas Alva Edison and Nikola Tesla clashed in the "war of the currents." To highlight the dangers of his rival's system, Edison even electrocuted an elephant. The animal died in vain; it was Tesla's system and not Edison's that took off. But today, helped by technological advances and the need to conserve energy, Edison may finally get his revenge. The American inventor, who made the incandescent light bulb viable for the mass market, also built the world's first electrical distribution system, in New York, using "direct current" electricity. DC's disadvantage was that it couldn't carry power beyond a few blocks. His Serbian-born rival Tesla, who at one stage worked with Edison, figured out how to send "alternating current" through transformers to enable it to step up the voltage for transmission over longer distances. Edison was a fiercely competitive businessman. Besides staging electrocutions of animals to discredit Tesla's competing system, he proposed AC be used to power the first execution by electric chair. But his system was less scalable, and it was to prove one of the worst investments made by financier J. Pierpont Morgan. New York's dominant banker installed it in his Madison Avenue home in the late 19th century, only to find it hard to control. It singed his carpets and tapestries. So from the late 1800s, AC became the accepted form to carry electricity in mains systems. For most of the last century, the power that has reached the sockets in our homes and businesses is alternating current. Now DC is making a comeback, becoming a promising money-spinner in renewable or high-security energy projects. From data centers to long-distance power lines and backup power supplies, direct current is proving useful in thousands of projects worldwide. "Everyone says it's going to take at least 50 years," says Peter Asmus, a senior analyst at Boulder, Colorado-based Pike Research, a market research and consulting firm in global clean technology. But "the role of DC will increase, and AC will decrease." FROM CLOUD TO MICROGRID The main factor driving demand is the need to conserve energy and produce more of it from renewable sources. Alternating current is generated by rotating engines, but renewable sources such as wind and solar produce DC power. To use it, because of the way our buildings are wired, we first convert it to AC. Another thing that's happened since Edison's time is the advent of the semiconductor. Semiconductors need DC power, and are increasingly found in household appliances. These have to convert the AC supply back to DC, which is a waste of energy and generates heat. In the early years of industrialization this wasn't an issue, but today it's important, especially in the huge and fast-growing business of cloud computing. The companies that handle our information traffic are racking their brains to boost efficiency and cut carbon emissions from their plants. Pike Research expects the green data center business to be worth $41 billion annually by 2015, up from $7.5 billion now. That will be just under a third of all spending on data centers. Finnish information technology company Academica, for instance, has a data center in a granite cave beneath Helsinki's Uspenski cathedral. It uses Baltic sea water to cool the plant and feeds surplus heat to the city's homes. IBM has designed a solar array to power its Bangalore data center. Microsoft has filed a patent application for a wind-powered data center. Direct current may be one way to increase efficiency and reduce emissions. Right now, outside a handful of universities, it's not the first thing people are thinking of because there are more basic things to do, says Eric Woods, Research Director for Smart Industry at Pike. But for companies on the leading edge, "it's sort of coming out of the research ghetto." Pike has not put a figure on how big the DC component of the green data center market will be. Swiss-Swedish engineering firm ABB, a big DC advocate, says about 35 percent of demand for green data centers will come from the United States, 30 percent from Europe, and the rest spread globally. Every day, says ABB, we all send more than 300 billion emails and 250 million tweets globally. The centers to handle all this data are growing by 10 percent each year and already consume 80 million megawatt-hours of energy annually -- almost 1.5 times the amount of electricity used by the whole of New York City. They're also responsible for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions. DC power could help. At low voltages it has long been used in data centers but will be "game-changing" at higher voltages, ABB says. Beyond its potential in data centers, DC power's ability to run on renewable energy sources makes it interesting for important plants that need to operate in "island mode" -- independent of the grid -- in case of a supply failure. Building systems with small, self-contained electricity distribution networks known as microgrids is of particular interest to governments and militaries who worry about terrorist attacks. "In our view the market (for microgrids) is about to take off," said Pike Research's Asmus, who also sees demand for microgrids in countries that aren't densely covered by AC grids, such as Australia and India, and in developing countries looking to replace costly and wasteful diesel generators. SMART GRIDS And it's not just "island mode." Thanks to power electronics - semiconductor switching devices - DC can now be transmitted at high voltage over very long distances, longer than AC. It can be easily used in cables, over ground or under the sea. High voltage direct current (HVDC) systems are the backbone of plans for smart grids, or supergrids, which aim to channel energy from places where power sources such as sunlight and hydropower are abundant to countries where it is scarce. Siemens, which vies with ABB for market leadership in HVDC transmission, says demand is increasing fast. "By 2020, I'm expecting to see new HVDC transmission lines with a total capacity of 250 gigawatts. That is a dramatic increase," says Udo Niehage, CEO of the Power Transmission Division in Siemens' Energy Sector. "In the last 40 years, we've only installed 100 gigawatts worth of HVDC transmission lines." Emerging markets have been the main drivers. ABB has installed a 2,000-km line in China that operates DC power; a 2,375-km HVDC project under construction in Brazil will be the world's longest transmission line when it comes online in 2013. But Europe is also important. HVDC is now used in a power connection between Britain and the Netherlands. The island of Majorca, whose tourists push up power demand every summer, was hooked up to the Spanish mainland in September. The HVDC system can transmit 30 to 40 percent more energy than with conventional overhead lines carrying alternating current. Jochen Kreusel, the head of ABB's Smart Grid program, says smart grid demand will put Europe at the forefront of HVDC growth over the next 10 years. "At the moment, based on the number of projects, I'm quite sure it's the strongest market," he said. Pike in November 2010 estimated HVDC investment would reach $12.1 billion by 2015. The bulk of this DC know-how is currently with European companies, although Chinese firms are joining in. Besides ABB, Siemens and France's Alstom are the main players. NOT THERE YET There are plenty of obstacles to all these developments. People in some places worry about the environmental damage from laying new grids, others point to a lack of standards and say DC still has technological limitations that need to be fixed. Public fears about the potential danger of high voltage cables could also be an issue, especially in the United States where standard voltages are already much lower than in Europe. There are practical limitations, such as a shortage of cable-making capacity. If the economic climate does not improve, cash may also be a constraint. Countries such as Spain and the Netherlands have already cut subsidies to renewable energy projects. ABB's Kreusel says the economic crisis will have an impact on the market, but he still expects DC to become "an evolutionary add-on" to AC grids over the next 20 years. How would Edison see all this? He might even have foreseen it. "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy," he reportedly told his associates Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in the 1930s. "What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

Quoting Irish poet WB Yeats at the start of his first EU-US summit as president, Biden also said the world was shifting and that Western democracies needed to come together. "The world has changed, changed utterly," Biden, an Irish-American, said, citing from the poem Easter 1916, in remarks that pointed towards the themes of his eight day trip through Europe: China's rise, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Sitting at an oval table in the EU's headquarters with US cabinet officials, he told EU institution leaders that the EU and the United States working together was "the best answer to deal with these changes" that he said brought "great anxiety". He earlier told reporters he had very different opinions from his predecessor. Former president Donald Trump also visited the EU institutions, in May 2017, but later imposed tariffs on the EU and promoted Britain's departure from the bloc. "I think we have great opportunities to work closely with the EU as well as NATO and we feel quite good about it," Biden said after walking through the futuristic glass Europa Building, also known as "The Egg", to the summit meeting room with EU institution leaders. "It's overwhelmingly in the interest of the USA to have a great relationship with NATO and the EU. I have very different views than my predecessor," he said. Biden and the EU side agreed to remove tariffs on $11.5 billion of goods from EU wine to US tobacco and spirits for five years. The tariffs were imposed on a tit-for-tat basis over mutual frustration with state subsidies for US planemaker Boeing and European rival Airbus. "This meeting has started with a breakthrough on aircraft," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said. "This really opens a new chapter in our relationship because we move from litigation to cooperation on aircraft - after 17 years of dispute ... Today we have delivered." Biden's summit is with von der Leyen and the EU's chairman Charles Michel, who represents EU governments. Biden also repeated his mantra: "America is back" and spoke of the need to provide good jobs for European and American workers, particularly after the economic impact of COVID-19. He spoke of his father saying that a job "was more than just a pay-check" because it brought dignity. He is seeking European support to defend Western liberal democracies in the face of a more assertive Russia and China's military and economic rise. "We're facing a once in a century global health crisis," Biden said at NATO on Monday evening, while adding "Russia and China are both seeking to drive a wedge in our transatlantic solidarity." According to an EU-US draft final summit statement seen by Reuters and still being negotiated up until the end of the gathering, Washington and Brussels will commit to ending another row over punitive tariffs related to steel and aluminium. BROADER AGENDA US Trade Representative Katherine Tai discussed the aircraft dispute in her first face-to-face meeting with EU counterpart Valdis Dombrovskis ahead of the US-EU summit. The pair are due to speak on Tuesday afternoon. Freezing the trade conflicts gives both sides more time to focus on broader agendas such as concerns over China's state-driven economic model, diplomats said. Biden and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken earlier met with Belgian King Philippe, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmes in Brussels' royal palace. On Wednesday, he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The summit draft statement to be released at the end of the meeting said they had "a chance and a responsibility to help people make a living and keep them safe, fight climate change, and stand up for democracy and human rights". There are no firm new transatlantic pledges on climate in the draft summit statement, however, and both sides will steer clear of setting a date to stop burning coal. The EU and the United States are the world's top trading powers, along with China, but Trump sought to sideline the EU. After scotching a free-trade agreement with the EU, the Trump administration focused on shrinking a growing US deficit in goods trade. Biden, however, sees the EU as an ally in promoting free trade, as well as in fighting climate change and ending the COVID-19 pandemic.