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An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, UN scientists said on Friday. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change, in a report released in Uganda on Friday. The report gives differing probabilities for extreme weather events based on future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, but the thrust is that extreme weather is likely to increase. "It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes ... will occur in the 21st century on the global scale," the IPCC report said. "It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase," it added. "A 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions," under one emissions scenario. An exception is in very high latitudes, it said. Heat waves would likely get hotter by "1 degrees C to 3 degrees C by mid-21st century and by about 2 degrees C to 5 degrees C by late-21st century, depending on region and emissions scenario." Delegates from nearly 200 countries will meet in South Africa from Nov. 28 for climate talks with the most likely outcome modest steps towards a broader deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. CARBON EMISSIONS UP The United Nations, the International Energy Agency and others say global pledges to curb emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes become more common and food production more difficult. Global carbon emissions rose by a record amount last year, rebounding on the heels of recession. "It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of heavy rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe," especially in "high latitudes and tropical regions." For the IPCC, "likely" means a two-thirds chance or more. It said there was "medium confidence" that this would lead to "increases in local flooding in some regions", but that this could not be determined for river floods, whose causes are complicated. The report said tropical cyclones were likely to become less frequent or stay the same, but the ones that do form are expected to be nastier. "Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming. Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely," the report said. That, coupled with rising sea levels were a concern for small island states, the report said. Droughts, perhaps the biggest worry for a world with a surging population to feed, were also expected to worsen. The global population reached 7 billion last month and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, according to UN figures. "There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century ... due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration," including in "southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil and southern Africa." There is a high chance that landslides would be triggered by shrinking glaciers and permafrost linked to climate change, it said.

A directorate on climate change will be set up under the environment ministry. A proposal in this regard was approved in principle at a meeting of the trustee board on climate change on Wednesday. After the meeting, state minister for environment Hassan Mahmud, also the head of the trustee board, told reporters about the approval. Five proposals were endorsed in principle at the board meeting, while 33 non-government projects and 44 government projects got its final approval. The junior minister said approval was also given to procure machinery for the Karnafuli Jute Mills and Forat Karnafuli Carpet Factory using the climate change fund. He said conditional final approval was given to projects of the army on establishing solar power plants at different military establishments, including its headquarters. He added that the projects by non-government agencies got the final approval after a budget cut. The organisations had sought maximum Tk 50 million. Under the revised budget, they will get Tk 2 million to 10 million, he said.

Macron, host of the summit of seven industrialised nations that ended on Monday in the French seaside resort of Biarritz, said that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had told him he was open to a meeting with US President Donald Trump. Trump told a news conference before heading home that it was realistic to envisage a meeting with the Iranian head of government in the coming weeks. Both leaders are scheduled to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month. European leaders have struggled to calm a confrontation between Iran and the United States since Trump pulled his country out of Iran's internationally brokered 2015 nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions on the Iranian economy. "What unites us, and that is a big step forward, is that we not only don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but we also (want to) find the solution to that via political means," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the end of the gathering. Macron has led efforts to defuse tensions, fearing a collapse of the nuclear deal could set the Middle East ablaze. Trump ruled out lifting sanctions but said talks were underway to see how countries could open credit lines to keep its economy afloat. He indicated he wanted to address the nuclear deal's timescale and said he did not want regime change. "I'm looking at a really good Iran, really strong, we're not looking for regime change," he said. "And we're looking to make Iran rich again, let them be rich, let them do well." But, apparently referring to Iran’s recent rhetoric about its ability to attack US interests, Trump suggested Iran would meet “violent force" if it followed through on its threats. FEW CONCRETE RESULTS Despite the headway made on Iran, the meeting ended with few significant deliverables because there were so many issues dividing the United States and its allies in particular. These ranged from Washington's escalating trade war with China, which many fear could tip the slowing world economy into recession, how to deal with North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin should be readmitted to the group. The US president up-ended last year’s G7 summit in Canada, walking out of the meeting early and disassociating himself from the final communique having initially endorsed the document. Trump said he had got on very well in Biarrtiz with fellow leaders from the group that also comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. However, Macron decided ahead of the meeting not to try for a communique after last year's quarrel, and in the end France issued a terse one-page summit statement that mentioned trade, Iran, Libya, Ukraine and Hong Kong. Trump offered an olive branch to China after days of intense feuding between the world's two largest economies over trade that has spooked financial markets and worried his G7 allies. Washington's dispute with Beijing escalated last week as both sides levelled more tariffs on each other's exports. However, on Monday Trump said he believed China wanted to make a trade deal after it contacted US trade officials overnight to say it wanted to return to the negotiating table. He hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping as a great leader and said the prospect of talks was a very positive development. Asked about the White House's apparent flip-flopping, he said: "It’s the way I negotiate." NO CONSENSUS ON BRINGING RUSSIA BACK Trump skipped a summit session on climate change at which they agreed to $20 million technical and financial help for Brazil and its neighbours stop the Amazon forest fires. Macron said Trump agreed on the initiative but could not attend because of bilateral meeting engagements. A record number of fires are ravaging the rainforest, many of them in Brazil, drawing international concern because of the Amazon's importance to the global environment. Macron said there was no consensus on Trump's proposal to invite Russia back to what used to be the G8. Moscow was excluded from the group in 2014 after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and then backed an anti-Kiev rebellion in the industrial region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. Two European officials said that efforts by summit 'sherpas' to agree on statements on global cooperation on artificial intelligence and gender equality were blocked by the US delegation in talks that went into Sunday night. "Let's say our sessions have been much harder and longer than previously thought because one delegation blatantly blocked almost everything, showing little will to really negotiate and move forward," said a senior European diplomat, who declined to be named. US officials were not available to comment on the impasse.

The link to his Dec 7 proposal titled: "Donald J. Trump statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration," in which he called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" vanished by Thursday, along with his list of his potential Supreme Court justice picks as president and certain details of his economic, defence and regulatory reform plans. The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment on the website changes. The links, which now redirect readers to a campaign fundraising page, appear to have been removed around Election Day on Tuesday, when Trump won a historic upset against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to a website that records historic snapshots of web pages. Muslims In an appearance on CNBC on Thursday, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal praised Trump for removing the Muslim ban proposal from his website and also said Trump had deleted statements offensive to Muslims from his Twitter account. Several tweets attacking Muslims that Trump sent while campaigning for president remained in his feed on Thursday, however, including a March 22 tweet in which Trump wrote: "Incompetent Hillary, despite the horrible attack in Brussels today, wants borders to be weak and open-and let the Muslims flow in. No way!" A Nov 30, 2015 tweet from a supporter which Trump quoted in a tweet of his own repeated the claim that Muslims celebrated the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and suggested Trump include footage of the celebrations in his political ads. At a news conference with other civil rights leaders on Thursday, Samer Khalaf, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the group was still worried about Trump's policies' effects on Muslims. "We thank him for removing those words," Khalaf said, referring to the Muslim ban proposal, "but you know what, words are one thing, actions are something totally different." Deletions Most of Trump's core policy positions remained on his website, including his central immigration promise to build an "impenetrable physical wall" on the border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for its construction. It was not the first time the Trump campaign has made unexplained changes to its site. The campaign this year also replaced the part of the site describing Trump's healthcare policy with a different version. When contacted about it by Reuters in September, the campaign put the original page back up.

The world's rich nations must make immediate and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions or the steeply rising cost of climate change will fall disproportionately on poor countries, the World Bank said on Tuesday. In a major report on the threat of climate change, the Bank's "World Development Report" said developing countries will bear 75 to 80 percent of the costs of damage caused by climate change and rich countries, the biggest CO2 emitters in the past, have a "moral" obligation to pay for them to adapt. It said tackling climate change in developing countries need not compromise poverty-fighting measures and economic growth, but stressed that funding and technical support from rich countries will be essential. The report comes amid tough global negotiations ahead of a meeting in Copenhagen in December on a new global climate accord to combat man-made climate change, to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. Unlike in the Kyoto talks when frictions were between Europe and the United States, current talks have focused on differences between rich and rapidly developing countries. "The countries of the world must act now, act together and act differently on climate change," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said. "Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change -- a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. For that reason, an equitable deal in Copenhagen is vitally important," he added. While the report did not take a specific position on Copenhagen, it said a deal will take a "credible commitment" by high-income countries to drastically cut their emissions. It also said developing nations must do their part and keep down the overall costs of climate change by adopting policies that reduce emissions or their growth rate. "Unless developing countries also start transforming their energy system as they grow, limiting warming to close to 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels will not be achievable," it said. It said annual energy-related CO2 emissions in middle-income economies have caught up with those of the rich, and the largest share of current emissions from deforestation and other land-use change comes from tropical countries. The report said countries in Africa and South Asia could permanently lose as much as 4 to 5 percent of their gross domestic product if the earth's temperature increases 2 degrees Celsius as opposed to minimal losses in rich countries. IMPACTING POVERTY GOALS Rosina Bierbaum, one of the report's authors and Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, said climate change could disrupt U.N. goals to halve global poverty and hunger by 2015 because of the impact to agriculture and food prices. The report estimated that by 2050 the world will need to feed 3 billion more people at a time when countries are dealing with a harsher climate, with more storms, droughts and floods. Bierbaum told a news conference in Washington the cost of addressing climate change will be high but was still manageable if countries act now. The longer the delays, the harder it will be to alter infrastructures, economies and lifestyles. The report said mitigation measures in developing countries to curb emissions could cost around $400 billion a year by 2030. Currently, mitigation finance averages around $8 billion a year. In addition, annual investments that will help developing countries figure out how to live with climate change could cost around $75 billion. This compares to less than $1 billion a year currently available, the Bank said. The World Bank said the global financial crisis should not be used as an excuse to delay action to address climate change because the future climate crisis is likely to be more damaging to the world economy. "The economic downturn may delay the business-as-usual growth in emissions by a few years, but it is unlikely to fundamentally change that path over the long term," it said.

WASHINGTON July 31 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States could save about $600 billion in energy costs by 2020 if it hiked annual efficiency spending about five-fold, business consultants McKinsey and Co said in a report on Wednesday. Governments, businesses and the general public would have to boost annual spending on existing energy-saving measures, like insulating walls and more efficient appliances, from about $10 billion annually to $50 billion per year. The upfront costs would pay off by saving $1.2 trillion by 2020, according to the report called "Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy." The report, which did not look at energy used in transportation, said the savings would cut energy used for heating and to generate power about 23 percent. It would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 1.1 gigatons annually -- or the equivalent of taking the entire fleet of U.S. vehicles off the road, the report said. "The potential to reduce the energy we waste is compelling," said Kenneth Ostrowski, a senior partner at McKinsey. To reach the savings, the country needs coordinated national and regional strategies to overcome barriers and deploy more energy efficiency technologies, he said. The climate bill passed by the House of Representatives includes measures for energy efficiency that would be included with renewable energy programs. The legislation faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Some efficiency gains have been made through initiatives such as the Long Island Green Homes initiative, in which the town of Babylon helps finance energy retrofits for homeowners. But such programs need to be speeded up, said McKinsey principal Jon Creyts, who added it would take 100 years for such programs to reach their full potential. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a release about the report that, "The energy that most effectively cuts costs, protects us from climate change, and reduces our dependence of foreign oil is the energy that's never used in the first place." Barbara Hingst, a marketing vice president at power utility Southern Co, said the report was an accurate portrayal of the potential to save energy, but "what can actually be saved will all depend on what policies and programs are going to be implemented to achieve it."

US President George W. Bush on Friday offered to host a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders at his Texas ranch, as he sought to counter perceptions that he was not paying enough attention to the region. The US president also said he planned to name an ambassador to the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations. "I've invited the ASEAN leaders to Texas at their convenience," Bush said after a lunch with seven of the ASEAN leaders on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific economic summit in Sydney. He said he wanted to make sure his ties with the Southeast Asian countries remained "firmly entrenched". Bush cited democracy issues, counterterrorism, trade and climate change as among the issues that could be discussed at the meeting. Critics contend Bush's focus on the Iraq war and the Middle East has left him too distracted to give enough attention to Asian issues. Bush has dismissed that criticism, saying he has solid relationships with key players in the region and regularly attends the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits. Bush had initially considered a trip to Singapore to meet ASEAN leaders as part of his visit to the region this week, but the trip was dropped because of preparations for a report on Iraq that Bush needs to deliver to Congress by Sept. 15. The White House promised that Bush would find an alternative time to meet the ASEAN leaders. In August, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled a planned trip to the Philippines for an ASEAN security meeting. She went to the Middle East instead. Bush tends to reserve invitations to his cherished 1,600-acre (647 hectares) Texas ranch for important allies. ASEAN groups together Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his energy minister said OPEC member Saudi Arabia would tackle climate change while ensuring oil market stability, stressing the continued importance of hydrocarbons. They were speaking at the Saudi Green Initiative (SGI), which comes ahead of COP26, the UN climate change conference in Glasgow at the end of the month, which hopes to agree deeper emissions cuts to tackle global warming. China and India, the top emitters of greenhouse gases after the United States, have also resisted committing to a 2050 timeline to achieve net zero, a target that US President Joe Biden's administration has adopted. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia aims to reach zero-net emissions by 2060 under its circular carbon economy programme ... while maintaining the kingdom's leading role in strengthening security and stability of global oil markets," Prince Mohammed said in recorded remarks. He said the kingdom would join a global initiative on slashing emissions of methane by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, which both the United States and the EU have been pressing. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is due to attend a wider Middle East green summit Riyadh is hosting on Monday. Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Riyadh, a signatory to the Paris climate pact, had submitted its nationally determined contributions (NDCs) - goals for individual states under efforts to prevent average global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The SGI, which the crown prince said would see investments of over 700 billion riyals ($186.6 billion), aims to eliminate 278 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year, up from a previous target of 130 million tonnes. Saudi Arabia in March pledged to reduce carbon emissions by more than 4 percent of global contributions. It said that would involve generating 50 percent of its energy needs from renewables by 2030 and planting billions of trees in the desert state. HYDROCARBONS STILL NEEDED Saudi Arabia's economy remains heavily reliant on oil income as economic diversification lags ambitions set out by the crown prince. Saudi officials have argued the world will continue to need Saudi crude for decades. "The world cannot operate without hydrocarbon, fossil fuels, renewables, none of these will be the saver, it has to be a comprehensive solution," the energy minister said. "We need to be inclusive and inclusivity requires being open to accept others efforts as long as they are going to reduce emissions," he said, adding that the kingdom's young generation "will not wait for us to change their future". He said net zero might be achieved before 2060 but the kingdom needed time to do things "properly". Fellow Gulf OPEC producer the United Arab Emirates this month announced a plan for net zero emissions by 2050. The chief executive of UAE oil firm ADNOC, Sultan al-Jaber, stressed the importance of investment in hydrocarbons, saying the world had "sleepwalked" into a supply crunch and that climate action should not be an economic burden on developing nations. GREEN PUSH Climate Action Tracker gives Saudi Arabia the lowest possible ranking of "critically insufficient". Experts say it is too early to assess the impact of Saudi's nascent solar and wind projects. Its first renewable energy plant opened in April and its first wind farm began generating power in August. Saudi megaprojects also incorporate green energy plans including a $5 billion hydrogen plant, and state-linked entities are pivoting to green fundraising. Some investors have expressed concerns over the kingdom's carbon footprint while others say it emits the least carbon per barrel of oil. "Obviously the carbon footprint is an issue. However, we would highlight that realistically carbon is going to be slow to phase out, and oil is here for some time yet," said Tim Ash at BlueBay Asset Management.

The chairman of the UN's science panel will head the new Yale Climate and Energy Institute, the university said on Tuesday. Rajendra Pachauri, who has chaired the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2002, will work at the university center half-time. He will continue to head both the IPCC and The Energy and Resources Institute, which is based in India. In 2007, Pachauri accepted the Nobel Peace prize on behalf of the IPCC, which shared the prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. The IPCC is beginning work on its fifth assessment of climate change, the first of which was issued in 1988. Nearly 100 Yale scientists, social scientists and policy experts joined to form the university's new climate center. It will provide seed grants and foster research on topics from atmospheric science to public policy, Yale said. Initial projects will focus on the economics of carbon storage and forecasting climate's impact on water supplies and diseases.

Britain will not hold a referendum on a new European Union treaty, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview published on Friday. Instead he hopes to agree on the framework for the treaty -- a less ambitious version of the stalled EU constitution -- at a summit of European Union leaders in June, Blair told the Financial Times and a small group of European newspapers. Asked whether the treaty he had in mind would need a referendum, he said: "No. If it's not a constitutional treaty, so that it alters the basic relationship between Europe and the member states, then there isn't the same case for a referendum." The Financial Times said Blair expected to agree "the basic outline agreement for a treaty" at the EU summit on June 21-22. Breaking the logjam over the European constitution would be Blair's final act on the European stage before he bows out after a decade in power in Britain, the newspaper said. "Sort it out, then move on," Blair told the newspapers. Finance minister Gordon Brown, who is most likely to takeover from Blair, would be left to oversee negotiations on the small print in the following months, the Financial Times reported. In 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the European constitution in referendums As a result, Blair suspended plans for a British referendum. Given widespread scepticism about Europe in Britain, the government fears it could lose such a vote. His shift towards an EU treaty has triggered accusations of U-turning, but Blair said it was impossible to please everyone. "We are going to get attacked whatever we do, but Europe needs to do it to move forward." Earlier this week, Blair said Europe did not need a constitution, but should opt for a scaled-down new treaty that would not require a referendum. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, holder of the six-month EU presidency, wants to resuscitate the treaty. The subject will be a main topic of debate at the EU meeting in June. Blair also defended Britain's position in Europe, highlighting areas of participation including climate change and the budget. "For Britain as a country and this government as a government, those days of isolation are over," he said.

There is a bright side to the plunge in solar panel prices that has brought down some US and German manufacturers which relied too heavily on subsidies for green energy - solar power costs have fallen faster than anyone thought possible. The falls in prices for photovoltaic components, pushed down by economies of scale and fierce competition from China, have made solar nearly as cheap as conventional sources in Germany's electricity grid. The boom in Germany, the world's biggest photovoltaic market with 24,000 megawatts of installed capacity, has also helped to drive down costs worldwide, making solar a more viable and accessible alternative to fossil fuels in places ranging from India and the Middle East to Africa and North America. The unexpectedly rapid drop in global solar prices has nevertheless hit some equipment makers hard - producers like Solyndra in the United States and Solon (SOOG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) in Germany that failed to keep pace and ended up in bankruptcy protection. The demise of Solyndra, which had got $535 million in loans from the U.S. government, is sometimes cited by sceptics as evidence of the dangers associated with supporting the industry with incentives. They argue subsidies waste public money. "Everyone's missing the real story and it's amazing how brain dead some people are," said Jeremy Rifkin, an adviser to the German government and European Union on climate change and energy security. "It's absolutely a positive thing that solar prices are dropping faster than anyone thought they could. "It's actually a great success," the US economist told Reuters. "Those criticising solar for that are being ignorant or disingenuous. It's a winnowing out process similar to what the computer and communications sectors went through. More companies that can't stay ahead of the curve will go belly up." CHEAP SOLAR POWER Germany is the biggest market for solar power despite its heavy clouds and northern latitude. A robust legal framework that forces utilities to buy solar power at above-market rates has more than negated these disadvantages, turning Germany into the world's top testing ground for photovoltaic energy. Yet due to plunging prices for components, solar power prices in Germany have been halved in the last five years and solar now generates electricity at levels only a few cents above what consumers pay. The subsidies will disappear entirely within a few years, the German BSW solar association says, when solar will be as cheap as conventional fossil fuels. Germany has added 14,000 megawatts capacity in the last two years alone and now has 24,000 MW in total - enough green electricity to meet nearly 4 percent of the country's power demand. That is expected to rise to 10 percent by 2020. Germany now has almost 10 times more installed capacity than the United States. Germany's government-mandated "feed-in tariff" (FIT) is the engine of growth. The FIT is the guaranteed fee utilities are obligated to pay a million producers of solar power for a period of 20 years. It fell to 24 euro cents per kWh for new plants in 2012 from 57 cents in 2004. Since 2010 semi-annual cuts in the incentives have accelerated, dropping the FIT from 43 cents. "The growth of solar in Germany in the last few years has been just incredible," said Martin Jaenicke, head of environment policy research at Berlin's Free University, noting solar power is the world's most abundant source of energy. "People sometimes call solar power expensive. But once the capital equipment is paid off, it's an unbelievably cheap source of energy. Ideally, subsidies eventually eliminate themselves and that is exactly what is happening in Germany." Yet solar remains a relatively expensive source of power, even in Germany where consumers are forced to pay a surcharge of some 7 billion euros annually on their electricity bill to pay for the above-market rates that solar power producers get. The incentives pay for the costs of the 1 million rooftop power plants installed in the last decade. The German government that wrote the Renewable Energy Act in 2000 had had more modest ambitions. They hoped to have 100,000 rooftop power plants. "It's important that electricity remains affordable," said Economy Minister Philip Roesler, who argues new installations should be capped at 1,000 MW per year. "We need to tackle the causes of rising costs and it is above all photovoltaic." Tom Mayer, chief economist of Deutsche Bank, said it was reasonable to support the sector before but it's now "high time" to cut the subsidies by 30 to 40 percent with prices falling to about 15 cents per kWh -- 8 cents below the retail price. "Now that the technology is mature, high subsidies are no longer needed," Mayer said in a research note. Even if some firms will perish, he said: "Leading producers on the world market can cope with (lower) prices." SURVIVAL OF FITTEST "It's remarkable how fast photovoltaic prices fell towards grid parity," said Peter Ahmels, head of renewable energy at the German Environmental Aid Association (DUH). "Germany will hit grid power parity next year -- three years faster than thought." As solar gained popularity in Germany and market prices for components fell, the government reacted by speeding up cuts in the FIT and is now mulling plans to cut the incentives faster to under 20 cents later this year. Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic think-tank, said economies of scale from Germany's boom and technology innovations are behind the fall in solar prices. But she agreed Germany's FIT should fall faster. "The competition is getting tougher all the time," she said. "That's why some German solar companies might not survive." Falling prices for solar power have hit the earnings and the stocks of many solar firms. Along with Solon and Solyndra, Solar Millennium (S2MG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), Evergreen Solar and SpectraWatt have sunk into insolvency. Rifkin, the US economist, said more firms that cannot keep up will fail. "This is disruptive but it's a success and it's moving so quickly," he said. "Germany is leading the way. Solar prices will keep falling. Grid parity is going to be reached in many countries between now and 2015 and that's a good thing. I don't think the world will need any more subsidies for solar by 2020."

"I think foreign observers are troubled by some of the rhetoric that's been taking place in these Republican primaries and Republican debates," Obama told reporters at the end of a summit with Southeast Asian leaders. Americans will choose a new president in a Nov. 8 election. Republicans and Democrats are currently battling in nominating contests to determine who will represent their parties in the race for the presidency. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has made headlines for supporting a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and controversial statements about immigrants. But Obama said the concern abroad is not limited to Trump. "He may up the ante in anti-Muslim sentiment, but if you look at what other Republican candidates have said, that's pretty troubling too," Obama added. Noting that other countries rely on the United States to back sound science, Obama also took aim at Republican resistance to strong action on climate change as "troubling to the international community." Obama reiterated his confidence that ultimately Americans would reject billionaire Trump. Americans realize the next president will have access to the nuclear codes, have the power to send US troops to war and may be tasked with keeping the banking system afloat, Obama said. "They recognize that being president is a serious job. It's not hosting a talk show, or a reality show. It's not promotion or marketing," he said. "The American people are sensible, and I think they will make a sensible choice in the end." Trump, a real estate mogul, was host of popular reality TV shows "The Apprentice" and "The Celebrity Apprentice" before making his run for president. Asked about Obama's comments at a town hall style event in Beaufort, South Carolina, Trump said Obama had done a "lousy job" and would have been a one-term president if he had decided to challenge him in the last election. "This man has done such a bad job and set us back so far and for him to say that actually is a great compliment," Trump said.

The world was slightly warmer than average in the first four months of this year, but 2007 may not turn out to be the hottest on record, Britain's official weather forecaster said on Tuesday. El Nino's lesser-known sister weather phenomenon, La Nina, could bring a cooling touch, the Meteorological Office said. "The first four months of 2007 are on track with our global forecast for a warmer than average year, but the cool La Nina event developing in the equatorial Pacific could prevent 2007 from being the warmest-ever year," David Parker, a climate scientist at the Met Office said. La Nina, or the girl, which recurs every few years, is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean around the Equator, which can affect weather around the globe. The better known El Nino, or the boy, is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, according to the US' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As the leaders of the rich industrialised countries meet in Germany this week to discuss climate change, among other global concerns, Met Office figures released on Tuesday show the mean global temperature for the period January to April was almost 0.5 degrees celsius above the long term average. Data from Britain's leading climatologists also show the spring in Britain was the warmest since records began in 1914. The UK mean spring temperature was 9.0 C, 0.2 degrees above the previos high set in 1945. The balmy UK spring follows one of the warmest recorded winters, and a run of record breaking years - the last five years are the warmest on record. The evidence supporting scientists warnings that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is warming up the planet is causing increasing public concern. According to a survey published on Tuesday by the Nielsen Company and Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, public anxiety about climate change has risen dramatically over the last six months.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday he was assured that US influence on Pakistan would help prod Islamabad to crack down on militants who target India. Singh said his talks with President Barack Obama on Tuesday produced agreements that the two powers would work together on a number of issues including counter-terrorism. "I'll go back to India convinced that India and the United States can and will do lots of things together to strengthen our strategic partnership in economics, in trade, in climate change, in energy, in counter-terrorism and all related activities," he told a news conference. Asked whether he had persuaded the United States to use its clout with its ally Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militants who direct attacks at India, Singh said "I have been assured that U.S. influence will work in (that) direction." The Indian leader's four-day visit to Washington aimed at boosting ties with the United States ended on the eve of the anniversary of last year's attack on the Indian city of Mumbai which killed 166 people. Singh said in a statement to bereaved families of the attack that India "will not rest until we've brought the perpetrators of this horrible crime to justice." Washington and New Delhi want Islamabad to do more to counter growing Islamic militancy. India wants Pakistan to crack down on militants operating in disputed Kashmir, while the United States wants it to root out Taliban fighters to help end an insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. BOTH SIDES COURT CHINA Singh said he and Obama also discussed China, which has a long-running border dispute with India, but the Indian leader played down talk of rivalry with the Chinese. "I said to the president that, like other countries, we welcome the peaceful rise of China. We also are engaged with China," he said, describing Beijing as a major trade partner. Singh said he told Obama that China had been increasingly assertive on the border dispute recently. But he added that India had not sought U.S. help in defusing the row and hoped that it could be resolved in talks with China. He said there were no major blocks to implementing a civil nuclear cooperation agreement he signed with former U.S. President George W. Bush intended to end a nuclear isolation imposed on India after it tested an atom bomb in 1974. "There are no insurmountable barriers and I am confident that in the next couple of weeks we can sort out these," Singh said of a deal that would open up India's potential $150 billion market in power plants to U.S. businesses. India's parliament has to debate a new law to limit U.S. firms' liability in case of a nuclear accident, but Singh said his cabinet had approved it and was ready to take to the assembly. The United States, which still has not signed a nuclear fuel reprocessing agreement with India, had given assurances it was serious about completing that process, Singh said.

Southern African leaders will hold an emergency meeting in Swaziland's capital Mbabane on Wednesday to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, officials said. Earlier, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged the United Nations to isolate President Robert Mugabe and said a peacekeeping force was needed in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has shrugged off Monday's unprecedented and unanimous decision by the U.N. Security Council to condemn violence against the opposition and declare that a free and fair presidential election on Friday was impossible. The Mbabane meeting has been called by the leading regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), amid mounting international pressure on Mugabe to resolve his country's political turmoil and economic meltdown. The leaders of Tanzania, Angola and Swaziland would attend the meeting in their capacity as the SADC's troika organ on politics, defense and security, the Tanzanian government said in a statement. "Others who have been invited to attend the meeting are the current SADC chairman, (President) Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia, and the SADC mediator for Zimbabwe, (President) Thabo Mbeki of South Africa," said the statement. "The meeting will discuss how the SADC and its troika organ on politics, defense and security can help Zimbabwe to get out of its current state of conflict." Tsvangirai, who has withdrawn from the election and taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare since Sunday, said Zimbabwe would "break" if the world did not come to its aid. "We ask for the U.N. to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe," Tsvangirai wrote in an article in Britain's Guardian newspaper. "For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," said Tsvangirai. "Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns." INCREASED PRESSURE Pressure has increased on Mugabe from both inside and outside Africa over Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis, blamed by the West and the opposition on the 84-year-old president who has held power for 28 years. The United States has urged SADC to declare both the election and Mugabe's government illegitimate. Angola's state-run ANGOP news agency quoted SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao as saying foreign ministers agreed at a meeting on Monday that a "climate of extreme violence" existed in Zimbabwe and that the government must protect the people. Friday's vote was meant to be a run-off between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. The opposition leader won a first round in March but official figures did not give him an outright victory. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change won a parallel parliamentary election in March, sending Mugabe's ZANU-PF party to its first defeat since independence from Britain in 1980. Both Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and the leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress said Friday's election must be postponed after Tsvangirai's withdrawal. Zuma, who rivals Mbeki as South Africa's most powerful man, called for urgent intervention by the United Nations and SADC, saying the situation in Zimbabwe was out of control. South Africa under Mbeki has been an advocate of "quiet diplomacy" with Mugabe and has resisted calls to use its powerful economic leverage over landlocked Zimbabwe. But Zuma, who toppled Mbeki as ANC leader last December, has become increasingly outspoken over Mugabe. On Tuesday, Mugabe dismissed the pressure and told a rally in western Zimbabwe that Friday's election would go ahead. "The West can scream all it wants. Elections will go on. Those who want to recognize our legitimacy can do so, those who don't want, should not," said Mugabe. Mugabe has presided over a slide into economic chaos, including 80 percent unemployment and the world's highest inflation rate of at least 165,000 percent. He blames Western sanctions for his country's economic woes.

But after a white supremacist gunman massacred 22 people in El Paso, Texas, the political world hurtled on Monday toward a more expansive, and potentially more turbulent, confrontation over racist extremism. Though the gun lobby was again on the defensive, it was not alone; so were social media companies and websites like 8chan that have become hives for toxic fantasies and violent ideas that have increasingly leaked into real life, with fatal consequences. Perhaps most of all, President Donald Trump faced intense new criticism and scrutiny for the plain echoes of his own rhetoric in the El Paso shooter’s anti-immigrant manifesto. Trump’s usual methods of deflection sputtered Monday: His early morning tweets attacking the news media and calling vaguely for new background checks on gun purchasers did little to ease the political pressure. A midmorning statement he recited from the White House — condemning “white supremacy” and warning of internet-fuelled extremism, but declining to address his own past language or call for stern new gun regulations — did nothing to quiet the chorus of censure from Trump’s political opponents and critics, who are demanding presidential accountability. No moment better captured how the gun violence debate was giving way to a reckoning on extremism than a statement Monday afternoon from former President Barack Obama. Obama, who has weighed in sparingly on public events since leaving office, called both for gun control and for an emphatic national rejection of racism and the people who stoke it. “We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalises racist sentiments,” Obama wrote, “leaders who demonise those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as subhuman, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.” Obama did not mention Trump or any other leaders by name. The Democrats seeking the presidency in 2020 did not hesitate to do so: Trump had scarcely finished speaking from the White House on Monday when his Democratic challengers blamed him explicitly for giving succour to extremists. Joe Biden, the former vice president and current Democratic front-runner, accused Trump on Twitter of having used the presidency “to encourage and embolden white supremacy.” And in an interview with CNN, Biden said Trump had “just flat abandoned the theory that we are one people.” Other political leaders reacted with their own raw distress and alarm. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who has bankrolled a yearslong crusade for gun control, wrote in a column that the “new atrocities need to change the political dynamic” around guns, and said Trump’s remarks were little more than “the usual dodge.” And Democratic presidential candidates rounded on Trump in a front that transcended ideological and tonal divisions in the party. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a populist liberal, said Trump must be held responsible for “amplifying these deadly ideologies,” while Sen Cory Booker of New Jersey, who has campaigned as an advocate for racial justice and national healing, derided Trump’s speech as a “bullshit soup of ineffective words” in a text message that his campaign manager posted on Twitter. An aide to Booker said he would deliver a major speech on gun violence Wednesday morning in South Carolina, at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston where a white supremacist gunman killed nine people in 2015. And the entwined issues of gun violence and racist extremism began to tumble into elections for offices well beyond the presidency. In Colorado, Mike Johnston, a former state lawmaker and gun-control advocate who is challenging Sen Cory Gardner, a Republican, blamed Trump for having “created this toxic culture that incites white nationalists.” In 2020, he said, candidates would have to make a stark binary choice. “Either you’re on the side of the white nationalist holding the AR-15, or you’re on the side of the millions of Americans living in fear of them,” Johnston said in an interview. Trump, for his part, said he was open to “bipartisan solutions” that would address gun violence, and blamed “the internet and social media” for spreading what he termed “sinister ideologies.” He was not specific about any next steps his administration would take, though he stressed his strong support for the death penalty and seemed to express scepticism that gun restrictions would be an appropriate remedy. “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” Trump said. Trump’s campaign responded to criticism of the president with a statement deploring Democrats for “politicising a moment of national grief.” “The president clearly condemned racism, bigotry and white supremacy as he has repeatedly,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign. “He also called for concrete steps to prevent such violent attacks in the future.” Murtaugh added that “no one blamed Bernie Sanders” when one of his supporters attempted to kill a group of Republican lawmakers at a Virginia baseball diamond in 2017. “The responsibility for such horrific attacks,” he said, “lies ultimately with the people who carry them out.” If Trump and his allies are adamant that he is blameless in the rise of extremist violence, much of the public believes he has not adequately separated himself from white supremacists. A survey published in March by the Pew Research Centre found that a majority of Americans — 56 percent — said Trump had done “too little to distance himself from white nationalist groups.” That group included about a quarter of people who identified themselves as Republicans or as leaning toward Trump’s party. It has not only been liberals who have argued that the mass shooting in El Paso, and another one hours later in Dayton, Ohio, represented a crisis for the country, and a major test for Trump. The conservative magazine National Review published an editorial Sunday evening calling on Americans and their government to take on “a murderous and resurgent ideology — white supremacy” in much the same way the government has confronted Islamic terrorism. Trump, the magazine said, “should take the time to condemn these actions repeatedly and unambiguously, in both general and specific terms.” Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma, who led his state through the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorists, said in an interview that the moment called for both new restrictions on firearms and a new tone from the White House. He urged Trump to “carefully choose your words” to avoid instilling fear or inciting anger. “He needs to realise the lethality of his rhetoric,” Keating said. “The truth is, the president is the secular pope,” he added, “and he needs to be a moral leader as well as a government leader, and to say that this must not occur again — exclamation mark.” It was not clear whether the El Paso shooting had the potential to become a pivot point in national politics, much as the Oklahoma City bombing had in the 1990s. After that attack, which killed 168 people, President Bill Clinton delivered a searing speech against the “loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible” — a denunciation widely understood as being aimed at the extreme right. Clinton’s handling of the attack helped restore voters’ confidence in him as a strong leader after a shaky start to his presidency. Trump has shown no inclination in the past to play a role of such clarifying moral leadership, or to engage in any kind of searching introspection about his own embrace of the politics of anger and racial division. In the aftermath of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that resulted in the death of a young woman, Trump said there had been “very fine people on both sides” of the unrest there. In recent weeks, he has engaged without apology in a sequence of attacks on prominent members of racial minority groups, including five Democratic members of Congress. While few Republican lawmakers had anything critical to say about Trump in public after the El Paso and Dayton shootings, the party harbours profound private anxieties about the effect of his conduct on the 2020 elections. During last year’s midterm elections, Trump campaigned insistently on a slashing message about illegal immigration, and was rewarded with a sweeping rejection of his party across the country’s diverse cities and prosperous suburbs. Punctuating the final weeks of the 2018 elections were a pair of traumatic events that may have deepened voters’ feelings of dismay about the president’s violent language and appeals to racism: a failed wave of attempted bombings by a Trump supporter aimed at the president’s critics, and a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, carried out by a gunman who had railed about immigrant “invaders.” Trump responded to the Pittsburgh massacre in a tone similar to the one he used Monday, lamenting the “terrible, terrible thing, what’s going on with hate in our country,” before taking up his caustic message again on the campaign trail. He paid no price for that approach with his largely rural and white political base, which has remained fiercely supportive of his administration through all manner of adversity, error and scandal. In the Democratic presidential race, the weekend of bloodshed had the effect of muting, at least temporarily, the divisions in the party that were showcased in last week’s debates. The outbreak of solidarity may not last, but it underscored how much the 2020 campaign is likely to take shape in reaction to Trump’s worldview and behaviour. Even as they aired their disagreements last week, some Democrats appeared to recognise that political reality. In fact, on the morning after his party’s back-to-back debates concluded, Gov Jay Inslee of Washington state predicted to a reporter in Detroit that his party would have little difficulty rallying together in the 2020 election. “We’ve got the most unifying gravitational force, outside of a black hole,” Inslee remarked, “and that’s a white nationalist in the White House.”   ©2019 New York Times News Service

Rice prices have surged this year for many reasons, but unlike most other commodities, fast-growing Chinese and Indian demand isn't one of them. With incomes rising in two countries where a third of the world's population consumes about half of the world's rice, more people are eating protein-rich meat and diary, or sampling new foods like pasta, leaving less room on the plate for rice. If Chinese rice demand follows the trend seen in wealthy Japan it could fall by half in the coming decades, bringing relief to world consumers more anxious than ever after a near trebling in benchmark Asian rice prices this year. "People are making more money and are eager to try other tasty food," said Chai Weizhong, associate professor at Peking University, where he studies public nutrition. "More people realize meat and vegetables are nutritious and healthy and more choices have cut into consumption of rice." What's bearish for rice is bullish for corn and wheat. Growing demand for higher-protein foods, both for livestock feed as well as food, is partly behind the doubling in global corn and wheat prices over the past two years. This year, lagging rice prices moved swiftly to catch up with other grain markets, fuelled largely by decisions by Vietnam, India and even China to clamp down on exports in order to keep prices low at home. That rally also revived fears about the long-term supply outlook for Asia's staple at a time when industrial development is encroaching on arable land, rising costs are straining farmers and volatile weather is threatening crops. WEALTH EFFECT The industrialization of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan highlights the scale of a trend that's already underway. Per capita rice consumption in China, the world's top rice consumer and producer, fell by 10 percent between 2001 and 2007, according to data compiled by Kyushu University in Japan. Even with the population rising, that cut total consumption to 127 million tons from 135.5 million, still almost one-third of the world's total. All of that was grown in China. In India, per capita rice consumption has already fallen by 7 percent over the past 10 years, and quickening development threatens to speed up the shift, industry officials say. "People are spending more on eating out and we see consumption of pizza and burgers going up, which was not the case earlier. Restaurants are chock a block," says Vijay Sethia, president of the All India Rice Exporters Association. Both are still big rice eaters compared to Japan, whose per capita consumption has halved to 60 kg in the past four decades. In China that figure was 96.1 kg in 2007, and in India 81.1 kg. In Taiwan, consumption has tumbled to just 50 kg. "Given Chinese and Taiwanese have similar diets, it's possible consumption in China could also come down towards 50 kg," said Shoichi Ito, a professor from Kyushu University. With developing Asian nations China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam accounting for two-thirds of global rice consumption, there's a lot of scope for demand to fall, offsetting growing demand from Africa and the Middle East. PRODUCTION CONCERN China and India now produce more rice than they consume thanks to the development of hybrid super-seeds after the 1960s and 1970s Green Revolution. However, a drop in per capita consumption does not mean they can relax their effort on rice production, since they can't always count on buying more abroad -- global trade in rice accounts for only about 6 percent of consumption. Water shortages, shrinking arable land, climate change and population growth still pose major challenges. "In the long term, there are many potential crises for rice. Paddy fields are shrinking and yields have not improved much," said Wang Huaqi at China Agricultural University. Wang is working on dry land rice, also known as aerobic rice, which can grow on dry soil like wheat as China faces a serious water shortage due to industrialization and global warming. Factories have claimed more rice paddies in the booming south, while the north, where farmland has been better preserved, has far less rainfall, Xu Xiaoqing, with the Development Research Center of the State Council, told state media. "A key question for rice production in China is which is going to happen faster -- the decrease in consumption of rice because of growing wealth or the decrease in rice production because of less water and less land," says Duncan Macintosh, a spokesman for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

On his visit, Kerry will meet with his counterparts in the Indian government and private sector leaders, the department said in a statement. Kerry is laying groundwork for US participation in the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, which will be held in Glasgow on Oct 31-Nov 12. He travelled last week to Japan and China for talks with officials. In April, Kerry spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about how the United States could help mobilise finance to reduce risks in producing alternative energy in the fight against global warming. India is the world's third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, albeit with far lower emissions per capita than those countries.

- Osama bin Laden taunted and defied the United States in a series of audio and occasional video messages for nearly a decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Following are highlights from some of the several dozen statements released by the al Qaeda leader. October 7, 2001 - Bin Laden taunts "infidel" U.S. President George W. Bush over September 11 attacks; says in a videotape shown by Al Jazeera that United States will not live in peace until Palestinians can do the same. December 13 - Bin Laden says he was optimistic about September 11 attacks but dared not hope they would bring down World Trade Center towers, according to video that the United States says confirms his guilt. September 10, 2002 - Al Jazeera runs audiotape it says is bin Laden praising September 11 attackers as men who changed history. February 11, 2003 - Message believed to be from bin Laden urges Muslims to fight U.S. and repel any war against Iraq. September 10 - Al Jazeera airs video of bin Laden and al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri descending mountainside calling for jihad and praising the 9/11 hijackers. April 15, 2004 - Arab TV airs bin Laden audiotape offering truce to Europeans if they withdraw troops from Muslim nations. May 6 - Recording purportedly from bin Laden calls for jihad, or holy war, against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. October 30 - Days before the U.S. presidential election, bin Laden in a video tells Americans Bush has deceived them and the United States could face more strikes like September 11. December 27 - Bin Laden in an audiotape urges Iraqis to boycott January parliamentary elections and says anyone who takes part would be an "infidel." July 6, 2006 - A year after bombings in London which killed 52 people, al Qaeda issues a video with comments from Zawahri, bin Laden and one bomber. September 7, 2007 - Bin Laden appears in his first videotape in nearly three years to mark the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In a message to the American people, he says the U.S. is vulnerable despite its economic and military power. March 19, 2008 - In an audio recording, bin Laden threatens the European Union with grave punishment over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. May 16, 2008 - Bin Laden, in an audiotape addressed to "Western peoples," calls for the fight against Israel to continue and says the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of the Muslim battle with the West. January 14, 2009 - Bin Laden, in an audiotape, calls for a new jihad over Gaza and says the global financial crisis has exposed the decline of U.S. influence in world affairs. June 3, 2009 - Bin Laden says in an audio message that U.S. President Barack Obama has planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred toward America" in the Muslim world. September 14, 2009 - Bin Laden says it is time for Americans to free themselves from the grip of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby. January 24, 2010 - A bin Laden audiotape aired on Al Jazeera claims responsibility for the attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound plane on December 25, 2009. March 25, 2010 - In an audiotape aired on Al Jazeera, bin Laden threatens to kill any Americans taken prisoner by al Qaeda if accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is put to death by U.S. authorities. October 1 and 2, 2010 - Audiotapes attributed to bin Laden call for action on climate change and for Muslims around the world to help victims of the Pakistan floods. January 21 2011 - In an audio recording, bin Laden says that the release of French hostages in Niger depends on France's soldiers leaving Muslim lands, Al Jazeera reports. May 2, 2011 - Bin Laden is killed in Pakistan by U.S. forces.

Harris, the California lawmaker who is Joe Biden’s running mate, assailed the White House from the first moments of the debate, blaming Trump and Pence for “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country” because of their approach to the pandemic. Citing extensive reporting about the White House’s missteps, she charged Pence and the president with having attempted to cover up the potential cost of the disease as it was first hitting the country. “They knew, and they covered it up,” Harris said. “The president said it was a hoax,” she added. “They minimized the seriousness of it.” Pence sought to deflect that criticism but did not address it directly, highlighting a few examples of proactive leadership on the part of the administration — like Trump’s decision to ban travel from China — and asserting that Trump had “put the health of America first.” While he tried to pivot away from an accounting of the White House record, Pence attempted to minimize the differences between the two presidential tickets going forward. “When you look at the Biden plan,” he said, “it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way.” There was tension between the two candidates from the outset, but the forum proceeded as a far more orderly affair than the barroom brawllike encounter between Trump and Biden last week, during which the president relentlessly accosted his challenger in hectoring and hostile terms. Pence, for instance, began by telling Harris that it was a “privilege to be onstage with you” — the kind of language Trump never used. Pence was on the defensive from the outset of the debate and grasped for a series of counterattacks to rebut or at least divert attention from the pandemic that has upended American life. He invoked Biden’s 33-year-old plagiarism scandal, cited the Obama administration’s response to the less-lethal swine flu and even suggested that Harris’ criticism of Trump’s handling of COVID-19 amounted to an attack on the American people. Harris rebutted Pence’s swipes with the rhetorical equivalent of pointing to a morbid scoreboard: “Clearly, it hasn’t worked,” Harris said of the administration’s strategy, citing “over 200,000 dead bodies” as evidence. Even as he defended Trump, Pence struck an implicit contrast with the president. The vice-president looked at the camera and assured Americans those who died of the coronavirus would “always be in our hearts and in our prayers”; he invoked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, to validate the administration’s response to the virus rather than to ridicule him; and he immediately bowed to Harris when she objected to his attempt to interrupt her. In perhaps the most striking difference from last week, Pence even looked at Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and saluted her on the “historic nature of your nomination.” The tumult of the last few weeks set the stage for a contentious airing of differences over elemental matters from abortion rights and the structure of the Supreme Court to vaccine safety and the federal response to ongoing health and economic crises. Though the vice-presidential debate is typically the one night of the campaign when the spotlight shifts to the two understudies, Trump seemed determined to remain in the spotlight. He released a video Wednesday afternoon assuring voters he was enjoying a rapid recovery and offering an infomercial-style testimonial about one of the drugs he has been prescribed. The president also churned out a deluge of tweets into the night, including one that called for the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be “home by Christmas!” Two events loomed largest in the runup to the debate: Trump’s bout with the coronavirus and his abrupt announcement on Tuesday that he was terminating talks on a coronavirus relief package with Democrats in Congress. The president seemed to have second thoughts overnight about breaking off talks, but his mercurial behaviour and largely unknown medical condition, along with the dimming hopes for an economic rescue package, presented a dire backdrop for Wednesday’s meeting of running mates. The debate figured to be among the most symbolically consequential vice-presidential duels in recent memory, because of the age of both presidential candidates and Trump’s illness. Either party’s nominee would be the oldest man ever to take office, and Biden would turn 80 midway through a four-year term. Yet in a political season overwhelmed by a daily torrent of news about a pandemic, a recession and the eruptions of a volatile president, it was not clear that an evening of conventional repartee between running mates had the potential to change the race in a significant way. So far, both Pence and Harris have been relegated to the margins of a contest between two of the best-known presidential nominees in modern times. In some respects, their low profiles are not surprising. Vice-presidential candidates typically enjoy a burst of publicity when they are selected before assuming their roles as understudies to the two nominees. But rarely has this dynamic been so pronounced as in this election, which features an incumbent who demands the spotlight each day and whose closest competitor for attention is a global health emergency. The debate could also have long-term implications for a pair of running mates with presidential aspirations of their own. Pence is widely expected to pursue the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, whether or not Trump is reelected; and if Biden is elected, Harris would most likely be seen as his heir apparent in 2024 or 2028, depending on whether he seeks a second term. While a memorable debate performance — of either the commanding or sloppy variety — may be unlikely to change the course of the 2020 race, it could brand either Pence or Harris in the eyes of the public over the longer term. Ironically, the version of Harris that Biden’s aides hoped would show up Wednesday is the one that stirs the most painful memories. It is of the candidate who memorably used the first Democratic primary debate last year to batter Biden; just over a year later he would make her his running mate. For Pence, as both the sitting vice president and head of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, the debate posed particular challenges — ones that he has mostly managed to avoid so far by occupying such a small public role in the campaign. Before the debate, he had not faced a sustained grilling over his own leadership in the pandemic, nor had he been pressed in such a prominent setting to reconcile gaps between his own approach to public-health policy and Trump’s dismissive attitude toward a virus that has claimed more than 210,000 lives in the United States. That uneven approach has yielded an outbreak within the White House that expands by the day, an embarrassing political reality for the president and vice president in the final weeks of their campaign. Up to this point, Pence has skirted the differences between himself and Trump by ignoring them or flatly denying they exist, even though there have been stark divergences between Trump’s pronouncements about the coronavirus and Pence’s private guidance to federal and state leaders. In public, Pence has often delivered toned-down versions of Trump’s lines: He wrote in The Wall Street Journal in June, for instance, that there was no “second wave” of the coronavirus, even as a surge in cases was beginning in the South and Southwest. Pence has taken a similarly acrobatic approach to handling presidential missteps or provocations on matters besides the coronavirus. When Trump last month resisted saying he would accept a Biden victory in the election, Pence did not quite contradict the president but said he would abide by the results of a “free and fair election.” In August, after Trump said he welcomed support from followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, Pence disavowed the group in a television interview but argued implausibly that Trump had not embraced it. ‘We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science’: Senator Kamala Harris criticized Trump’s record on climate change during the #VPDebate https://t.co/i075izFnb5 pic.twitter.com/ZnBORTqrdI— Reuters (@Reuters) October 8, 2020   ‘We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science’: Senator Kamala Harris criticized Trump’s record on climate change during the #VPDebate https://t.co/i075izFnb5 pic.twitter.com/ZnBORTqrdI Pence’s habit of deferring to the president had the potential to complicate his debate appearance, and not only on matters of policy. After Trump was widely seen as badly mishandling his debate with Biden last week, there was considerable pressure on Pence to help stabilize his party’s ticket in his faceoff with Harris. But it also carried the fraught possibility that Pence would perform far better than his boss: Throughout the campaign, Pence aides have been encouraged to be careful about promoting the vice president in any way that Trump might view as an attempt to upstage him. Pence has also been among the most vocal advocates of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and his identity as a Christian conservative and a strong opponent of abortion rights had the potential to yield a more strenuous dispute on the subject than did last week’s presidential debate. Pence’s social views are unpopular with most voters: A recent poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60% of the electorate believed abortion should be legal all or most of the time. For Harris, the showdown in Salt Lake City represented the greatest risk and opportunity of the campaign. After enjoying a few days in the spotlight when Biden named her as his running mate in August, she has largely receded from public view. The coronavirus has limited some of Harris’ travel and the nature of her events, confining her to small groups. Yet Biden’s campaign has also been purposeful, and careful, about her public appearances. Harris has been primarily dispatched to Black and Hispanic communities to energize core Democratic voters. The campaign has also been selective about her engagements with the media, having her talk with local and niche outlets but mostly avoiding higher-stakes interviews. But Harris has never shined in spontaneous interviews. Her strength has traditionally been in hearings and speeches for which she has extensively prepared. During the Democratic primaries, the flip side of Harris’ powerful debate-night broadside against Biden was her sputtering response in a subsequent debate to a scorching denunciation of her prosecutorial record from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. It was the moment Harris’ own advisers saw as perhaps the weakest of her campaign. Recognizing that Wednesday’s forum may be what most people remember about her public performance during a Trump-dominated campaign, Harris studied Pence intensively and committed a number of attack lines to memory. But after sparring with Pete Buttigieg, her former opponent in the Democratic primary and Pence’s fellow Hoosier, Harris had to adjust her strategy to be more conscious of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, according to people familiar with her debate preparation. c.2020 The New York Times Company

WASHINGTON, Fri Nov 21,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The Group of Eight major industrialized countries should be doubled to include Brazil, China and India and other nations to better tackle global challenges like climate change and economic stability, a blue chip panel said on Thursday. The panel, which included European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, argued that the G8 has become "outdated." "The leadership and mandates of key international institutions, from the G8 to the U.N. Security Council, have not kept pace with the new powerholders and dynamic threats of a changed world," the Managing Global Insecurity Project said in a report. "Traditional powers cannot achieve sustainable solutions on issues from economic stability to climate change without the emerging powers at the negotiating table," said the group, formed by the Brookings Institution think tank and by research centers at New York University and Stanford University. The report recommended expanding the G8, which is comprised of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, to include Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. It also proposed adding Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt or Nigeria to create a Group of 16. Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said some nations might resist seeing their own influence diluted but said solving some problems required a broader range of actors. "Rather than to argue about the size of the table and the number of people present, it would be much better to take the view that if a country has a substantial contribution to make to the resolution of the problem ... then they probably ought to be at the table," he said.

Over the past four decades, which includes 12 years as the director of NASA’s planetary science division and the past three years as its chief scientist, he has shaped much of NASA’s scientific inquiry, overseeing missions across the solar system and contributing to more than 100 scientific papers across a range of topics. While specializing in Earth’s magnetic field and plasma waves early in his career, he went on to diversify his research portfolio. One of Green’s most recent significant proposals has been a scale for verifying the detection of alien life, called the “confidence of life detection,” or CoLD, scale. He has published work suggesting we could terraform Mars, or making it habitable for humans, using a giant magnetic shield to stop the sun from stripping the red planet’s atmosphere, raising the temperature on the surface. He has also long been a proponent of the exploration of other worlds, including a mission to Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, that is scheduled to launch in 2024. Before a December meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, Green spoke about some of this wide-ranging work and the search for life in the solar system. Below are edited and condensed excerpts from our interview. Q: You’ve urged a methodical approach to looking for life with your CoLD scale, ranking possible detections from one to seven. Why do we need such a scale? A: A couple of years ago, scientists came out and said they’d seen phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. At the level they saw it, which was enormous, that led them to believe life was one of the major possibilities. On the CoLD scale, where seven is “we found life,” it is “one.” It didn’t even make it to “two.” They recognised later there was contamination in their signal and it may not even be phosphine and we can’t reproduce it. So we have to do a better job in communicating. We see methane all over the place on Mars. Ninety-five percent of the methane we find here on Earth comes from life, but there’s a few percent that doesn’t. We’re only at a CoLD Level 3, but if a scientist came to me and said, “Here’s an instrument that will make it a CoLD Level 4,” I’d fund that mission in a minute. They’re not jumping to seven, they’re making that next big step, the right step, to make progress to actually finding life in the solar system. That’s what we’ve got to do, stop screwing around with just crying wolf. Q: The search for life on Mars has been a focus for NASA for so long, starting in 1976 with the Viking 1 and 2 landers and later with missions from the 1990s onward. Are you surprised we haven’t found life in that time? A: Yes and no. What we’re doing now is much more methodical, much more intelligent in the way we recognize what signatures life can produce over time. Our solar system is 4.5 billion years old, and at this time, Earth is covered in life. But if we go back a billion years, we would find that Venus was a blue planet. It had a significant ocean. It might actually have had life, and a lot of it. If we go back another billion years, Mars was a blue planet. We know now Mars lost its magnetic field, the water started evaporating and Mars basically went stagnant about 3.5 billion years ago. We would like to have found life on the surface. We put the Viking landers in a horrible place because we didn’t know where to put them — we were just trying to put them down on the surface of Mars. It was like putting something down in the Gobi Desert. We should have put them down in Jezero Crater, in this river delta we’re at right now with the Perseverance rover, but we didn’t even know it existed at the time! One of the Viking experiments indicated there was microbial life in the soils, but only one of the three instruments did, so we couldn’t say we found life. Now we’ll really, definitively know because we’re going to bring back samples. We didn’t know it would need a sample return mission. Q: You’ve previously suggested it might be possible to terraform Mars by placing a giant magnetic shield between the planet and the sun, which would stop the sun from stripping its atmosphere, allowing the planet to trap more heat and warm its climate to make it habitable. Is that really doable? A: Yeah, it’s doable. Stop the stripping, and the pressure is going to increase. Mars is going to start terraforming itself. That’s what we want: the planet to participate in this any way it can. When the pressure goes up, the temperature goes up. The first level of terraforming is at 60 millibars, a factor of 10 from where we are now. That’s called the Armstrong limit, where your blood doesn’t boil if you walked out on the surface. If you didn’t need a spacesuit, you could have much more flexibility and mobility. The higher temperature and pressure enable you to begin the process of growing plants in the soils. There are several scenarios on how to do the magnetic shield. I’m trying to get a paper out I’ve been working on for about two years. It’s not going to be well received. The planetary community does not like the idea of terraforming anything. But you know. I think we can change Venus, too, with a physical shield that reflects light. We create a shield, and the whole temperature starts going down. Q: In 2015, NASA approved the Europa Clipper mission to search for signs of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa, set for launch in 2024, following the detection of plumes erupting from its subsurface ocean in 2013. Did you want to see that mission happen sooner? A: Oh, yeah, I would love to have seen it earlier, but it wasn’t going to happen. There are certain series of missions that are so big they’re called strategic missions. For them to actually happen, the stars have to align. You have to propose it, have a solid case work, go to the NASA administration and then pitch it to Congress. Every year, I proposed a Europa mission. Every year. The administration was not interested in going to Europa. The plumes on Europa are what made the Europa mission happen. I was at an American Geophysical Union meeting in 2013. Several of the scientists were going to give a talk on finding a plume with Hubble on Europa, and I go, “Oh, my God.” I said this is fantastic, I want to do a press conference. I call back to NASA headquarters, and they pulled it off. I took that information back with me to headquarters and added that into the story of Europa. That really turned the corner. They said, “Wow, maybe we should do this.” Q: Congress decided against putting a lander on the mission. Did you want one? A: I would love a lander, but it’s not in the cards. It makes the mission too complicated, but everything we do on Clipper feeds forward to a lander. I insisted that we had a high-resolution imager to the point whereas we fly over certain areas, we’re going to get the information we need to go, “Let’s land right there, and safely.” Europa has got some really hazardous terrains, so if we don’t get the high-resolution imaging, we’ll never be able to land. You want to take a step, but not a huge step. You fail when you do that. Viking is that example, where we took too big a step. We didn’t know where to go, we didn’t know enough about the soils or the toxins in the soils. We hadn’t really gotten a good idea where water was on the planet in the past. There were 10 things we should have known before we put the two Vikings on the surface. Q: Are you still going to work on scientific papers in your retirement? A: Oh, absolutely. I’ve got the Mars paper to do. I have a Europa paper I’m writing right now. I have an astrobiology book I’m doing. I have an insatiable appetite for science. ©2022 The New York Times Company

The leaders, held in high regard on the international stage as role models for women in policymaking, met virtually at a CEO forum on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit where Ardern fondly recalled an early meeting between the pair in Germany. "It's not often when you come from a small island nation that you'll find someone of such heft in the world of international diplomacy who felt so genuinely interested in the views of a humble New Zealander," Ardern reminisced. "Your constant engagement with the world, thoughtfulness and willingness to hear the perspective of others, in my mind, is a reflection of a true leader but also just a very good person." Merkel, 67, has cemented herself as an icon who has steered Germany since 2005 through milestone events such as the global financial crisis, the eurozone downturn and the COVID-19 pandemic, and is hailed as a champion of European integration. Ardern, 41, became New Zealand's youngest prime minister when she took office in 2017 and has garnered global praise in recent years for managing the pandemic, cracking down on extremism and gun laws following mass shootings and assembling one of the world's most diverse cabinets. Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron gave Merkel a stylish send-off and praised her for keeping Europe united throughout her tenure. The leaders agreed in the forum the challenges of the pandemic and of climate change were similar, since they were both exponential processes, the severity of which was hard to recognise at the start of a growth curve.

The British government is likely to put forward legislation within three months to cut carbon emissions by at least 60 percent in the fight against global warming, environmentalists said on Wednesday. The Climate Change Bill is expected to go to parliament in November and could become law by May after parliamentary scrutiny and public consultations on the preliminary draft of the legislation ended this month. "We expect it after the Queen's Speech in November and to go into committee in December," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Mike Childs. "Because it has already been through pre-legislative scrutiny it could go quite quickly through the parliamentary process and even become law in the Spring," he told Reuters. A spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment would only say the bill was scheduled for the Autumn and, depending on the parliamentary timetable, could be law by mid-2008. The draft bill says carbon dioxide emissions must be cut by at least 60 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 -- and half that by 2020 -- with five-year rolling carbon budgets on the way there and an independent committee to monitor progress. Environmentalists want annual cut targets -- a goal the government says is impractical -- the inclusion of emissions from maritime transport and aviation, and the final ceiling to be raised to 80 percent from 60. Three parliamentary committee reports have largely echoed the environmentalists' criticisms, and the government is now considering the reports and public responses to the draft before coming out with the final bill. "The government's policy towards the 2050 target is clearly incoherent," said the report from the joint committee of both houses of parliament earlier this month. "The government remains committed to limiting global warming to a rise of two degrees Celsius; but it also acknowledges that, according to recent scientific research, a cut in UK emissions of 60 percent by 2050 is now very unlikely to be consistent with delivering this goal," it added. Scientists say average global temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods, droughts and famines worldwide. The Climate Change Act will make Britain the first major country to set binding legal limits on its greenhouse gas output. But environmentalists note that carbon emissions have actually risen since the Labour government came to power in 1997.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan does not want to talk with his Israeli counterpart and will not attend a climate change conference in Athens on Friday if Benjamin Netanyahu is there, he told Greece's Skai TV on Monday. Turkey, once a close ally of Israel, has become a sharp critic since nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists were killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship in May. "A prime minister who is proud of such an armed intervention is a prime minister with whom I do not agree to talk," Erdogan told Skai TV before his planned visit to Athens. "On this issue, I think that Israel is close to the point of losing a very important friend in the Middle East and that is Turkey," he said. "I think that they must pay for this audacity that characterizes the policy of this government." Erdogan is due to attend a Mediterranean conference on climate change in Athens on Friday. "If the prime minister (of Israel) takes part in this event, I will not be there," he said in the interview, aired late on Monday. Netanyahu's name was not on the list of speakers on the conference's website, and Israel was not among the countries whose participation was confirmed. (here) The Greek foreign ministry could not be reached for comment.

BEIJING, Sun Apr 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global financial crisis is unlikely to deter growing long-term demand for new nuclear power plants, international atomic agency officials said on Sunday, ahead of a conference to discuss the future of atomic power. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials and national and international energy representatives are gathering in Beijing to discuss prospects for atomic power during a global slowdown, climate change and energy worries, and tensions over the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. Thierry Dujardin, a deputy director of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, said that although the financial crisis was making it more difficult to fund some proposed nuclear power plants, longer-term worries about energy security and global warming were likely to buffer the impact of the crisis on the sector. "In the short term, it's obvious that it will be more difficult to find the funding for new investments, heavy investment, in energy infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants," Dujardin told a news conference. "There is a chance that nuclear energy as such will not be so strongly impacted by the current economic crisis, because the need for energy will be there." Dong Batong, of the China's atomic energy industry association, said his country was committed to dramatically expanding nuclear power, despite the slowdown in growth. "We've made nuclear power an important measure for stimulating domestic demand," Dong told the news conference, noting that dozens of new nuclear units are being built or planned across the country. Nuclear power provides 14 percent of global electricity supplies, according to the Vienna-based IAEA, and that proportion is set to grow as nations seek to contain fuel bills and the greenhouse gas emissions dangerously warming the planet. Much of the expected expansion is in Asia. As of the end of August 2008, China topped the list of countries with nuclear power plants under construction, with 5,220 megawatts (MW), followed by India at 2,910 MW and South Korea at 2,880 MW, according to the International Energy Agency. But the ambitious plans for nuclear power growth across the developing world also risk straining safety standards and safeguards against weapons proliferation. Yuri Sokolov, deputy director-general of the IAEA, said governments looking to expand nuclear energy had to ensure regulators were backed by effective legislation and properly trained staff. But even North Korea, facing international censure for recently launching a long-range rocket and abandoning nuclear disarmament talks, has the right to nuclear power stations, said Sokolov. "Each country is entitled to have a civilian nuclear program," he said, calling North Korea a "difficult situation." "If it's ready to cooperate with the international community, I think that the international community will be able to provide the support for civil nuclear power development in North Korea." North Korea renounced its membership of the IAEA years ago, and last week expelled IAEA officials who had been invited back to monitor a shuttered nuclear complex that Pyongyang has said it will restart. The director-general of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, will give an opening speech to the nuclear energy meeting on Monday.

Others including Russia, India and Mexico quickly signaled their commitment to the accord, although a Kremlin aide said it would not be viable without US participation. France said it would work with US states and cities - some of which have broken with Trump's decisions - to keep up the fight against climate change. The World Meteorological Organization sought to quantify Trump's decision, estimating that US withdrawal from the emissions-cutting accord could add 0.3 degrees Celsius to global temperatures by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario. Trump, tapping into the "America First" message he used when he was elected president last year, said he would withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement on tackling global warming. He said that participating would undermine the US economy, wipe out US jobs, weaken American national sovereignty and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world. The move was met with a mix of dismay and anger across the world - from many in industry as well as governments, which scrambled to renew their commitment to curbing global warming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a pastor's daughter who is usually intensely private about her faith, said the accord was needed "to preserve our Creation". "To everyone for whom the future of our planet is important, I say let's continue going down this path so we're successful for our Mother Earth," she said to applause from lawmakers. In Paris, the venue for the pact, French President Emmanuel Macron turned Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan on its head, saying in a rare English-language statement that it was time to "make the planet great again". China and Europe together A long-scheduled meeting on Friday between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and top European Union officials in Brussels was dominated by Trump's decision. The meeting will end with a joint statement pledging full implementation of the Paris deal, committing China and the EU to cutting back on fossil fuels, developing more green technology and helping raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer countries reduce their high-polluting emissions. China has emerged as Europe's unlikely partner in this and other areas - underlining Trump's isolation on many issues. "There is no reverse gear to energy transition. There is no backsliding on the Paris Agreement," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said. Russia struck a rare negative note. While Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said he did not think Trump's decision would prompt Russia to rethink its own stance, the Kremlin suggested the withdrawal could be fatal to the pact. Kremlin aide Andrei Belousov said the US move punched a gaping hole in the Paris accord. "It's obvious that without the participation of the United States the Paris agreement will be unworkable because the United States is one of the biggest generator of emissions," he said. Warm words The vast majority of scientists believe that global warming - bringing with it sharp changes in climate patterns - is mainly the result of human activities from agriculture to industry. A small group of skeptics - some of whom are in the Trump White House - believe this is a hoax and one that could be damaging to business. Despite this, a number of figures from US industry expressed their dismay at Trump's move. Jeff Immelt, chief executive officer of US conglomerate General Electric, tweeted: "Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government." Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk and Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger said they would leave White House advisory councils after Trump's move. German industry associations also criticized Trump's decision, warning that it would harm the global economy and lead to market distortions. Germany's DIHK Chambers of Commerce and the VDMA engineering industry group warned that US companies could gain short-term advantages by Trump's decision. "Climate protection can be pushed forward in an effective and competition-friendly way only by all states," said DIHK President Eric Schweitzer. Environmental groups were scathing. The US Sierra Club, citing Trump's endorsement of what he regards as clean coal, tweeted: "Clean coal, you can find that next to the unicorns and leprechauns."

Parts of China, India, Europe and the northeastern United States are among the hardest-hit areas, suffering a disproportionately high share of 8.7 million annual deaths attributed to fossil fuels, the study published in the journal Environmental Research found. The new research gives the most detailed assessment of premature deaths due to fossil-fuel air pollution to date. Another study in 2017 had put the annual number of deaths from all outdoor airborne particulate matter — including dust and smoke from agricultural burns and wildfires — at 4.2 million. "Our study certainly isn't in isolation in finding a large impact on health due to exposure to air pollution, but we were blown away by just how large the estimate was that we obtained," said Eloise Marais, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at University College London, and a co-author of the study. Previous research based on satellite data and ground observations had struggled to distinguish pollution caused by burning fossil fuels from other sources of harmful particulates, such as wildfires or dust. The team from three British universities and Harvard University sought to overcome this problem by using a high-resolution model to give a clearer indication of which kinds of pollutants people were breathing in a particular area. With concern growing over the role that burning fossil fuels plays in causing climate change, the authors said they hoped the study, based on data from 2018, would provide further impetus for governments to accelerate a shift to cleaner energy. "We hope that by quantifying the health consequences of fossil fuel combustion, we can send a clear message to policymakers and stakeholders of the benefits of a transition to alternative energy sources," said co-author Joel Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Putin promised to protect a bank partly owned by an old ally, which Washington has blacklisted, and his spokesman said Russia would respond in kind to the latest financial and visa curbs after producing one blacklist of its own.His allies laughed off the US sanctions, but shares on the Moscow stock exchange - which have lost $70 billion of their value this month - fell sharply after President Barack Obama also threatened to target major sectors of the economy if Russia moved on areas of Ukraine beyond the Black Sea peninsula.Obama's national security adviser said Washington was sceptical of Russian assurances that troop movements on the Ukraine border were no more than military exercises and European Security body the OSCE agreed to send monitors to Ukraine.The financial noose was already tightening with Visa and MasterCard stopping processing payments for a Russian bank owned by two brothers on the US blacklist. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia might cancel its foreign borrowing for 2014 and raise less domestically if the cost of issuing debt rose.European Union leaders - who like Obama insist Crimea is still part of Ukraine - imposed their own sanctions on 12 people, including Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and two aides to Putin.Shaken by the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, they also expressed their determination to reduce the EU's reliance on Russian energy, and signed a political deal with the Kiev leadership that took power after Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich's overthrow last month.In a Kremlin ceremony shown live on state television, Putin signed a law on ratification of a treaty making Crimea part of Russia as well as legislation creating two new Russian administrative districts: Crimea and the port city of Sevastopol, where Moscow keeps part of its Black Sea fleet.Thousands of Russians marked the annexation with fireworks and celebrations in Simferopol, capital of Crimea where the population is around 58 percent ethnic Russian."Many people wanted this, to go back, not to the USSR, but to that big country of ours," said Anna Zevetseva, 32. "We are waiting for things to improve and for investment from Russia." Ukrainian and Tatar residents stayed behind closed doors.Sergey, a 64-year-old Ukrainian businessman who did not want to give his surname, said he saw no reason to celebrate: "An occupying force is in my country and we have been annexed."Inner circleA referendum last Sunday after Russian troops seized control of Crimea overwhelmingly backed union with Russia but was denounced by Washington and the European Union as a sham. It opened the way for annexation within a week.Obama's decision to go for the financial jugular of the people who accompanied Putin's rise from the mayor's office in St Petersburg in the 1990s to the Russian presidency has deepened the diplomatic confrontation.Putin said Bank Rossiya, singled out by Washington as the personal bank for senior Russian officials, had nothing to do with the events in Crimea.The St Petersburg-based bank - which is chaired and partly owned by Yuri Kovalchuk, an old associate of Putin's - mainly serves clients in Russia's energy sector including businesses owned by state-run gas producer Gazprom.Putin, who says Crimea has exercised its right to self-determination, promised to transfer his wages to Bank Rossiya. "I personally don't have an account there, but I certainly will open one on Monday," he told Russia's Security Council.Others on the U.S. blacklist include oil and commodities trader Gennady Timchenko and the brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, who are linked to big contracts on gas pipelines and the Sochi Olympics, as well as Putin's chief of staff and his deputy, the head of military intelligence and a railways chief.Energy unionEuropean leaders also agreed to accelerate their quest for more secure energy supplies at talks on Friday.The EU has made progress in diversifying since crises in 2006 and 2009, when rows over unpaid bills between Kiev and Moscow led to the disruption of gas exports to western Europe. But Russia still provides around a third of the EU's oil and gas and 40 percent of the gas goes through Ukraine.European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said member states would help one another to maintain supplies if Moscow cut them. "We are serious about reducing our energy dependency," he told a news conference at the end of a summit in Brussels.EU countries, which buy Russian gas individually, will also look to negotiate supply deals jointly with Moscow to increase their bargaining power. "It is clear we need to be moving towards an energy union," said Van Rompuy.German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the possibility that US shale gas could eventually be an option for European countries seeking to diversify. Obama is expected to address the issue at a summit with EU leaders next Wednesday.Underlining how Washington can apply pressure via the international financial system, US credit card companies Visa and MasterCard stopped providing services for payment transactions with Russia's SMP bank, owned by the Rotenberg brothers, the bank said.SMP called the moves unlawful and foreign banks and companies now fear the secondary ripple effects of the sanctions. In a worst-case scenario for them, Washington would stop banks doing business with Russian clients, similar to the sanctions that were imposed on Iran."What has been announced so far is really nothing. It's purely cosmetic," said a French banker based in Moscow, adding that the biggest risk was to transfers in US dollars, crucial for the energy export-dependent Russian economy.Obama said on Thursday that Washington was also considering sanctions against economic sectors including financial services, oil and gas, metals and mining and the defence industry, if Russia made military moves into eastern and southern Ukraine.In Crimea itself, Ukrainian troops who have been surrounded by Russian forces continued to leave their bases, powerless to halt Moscow's takeover of the peninsula."The situation in Ukraine remains unstable and menacing," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urging the OSCE observers to take up their work as quickly as possible.EU support for KievEuropean governments also took individual action against Russia. Germany suspended approval of all defence-related exports to Russia, ordering contractor Rheinmetall to halt delivery of combat simulation gear, while France called off military cooperation with Moscow.In Brussels, the 28 EU leaders underlined their support for Ukraine's new leadership, signing a political agreement with interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk.They also promised financial aid for the government - rejected as illegitimate by Moscow - as soon as Kiev reaches a deal with the International Monetary Fund.The IMF is to report next Tuesday on advanced talks with Ukraine on a loan programme that would be linked to far-reaching reforms of the shattered economy.Three months of protests were set off by Yanukovich's refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU, the political part of which was signed on Friday.Russia's MICEX stock index fell about 3 percent when trade opened, although it recovered some of the losses later. Promsvyazbank analyst Oleg Shagov said Obama had "opened a Pandora's box full of sanctions", with future sanctions to be "directed against whole sectors of the Russian economy".Negative market sentiment was reinforced by warnings from credit ratings agencies Fitch and S&P that they were changing their outlooks on Russia to negative from stable because of the possible impact of sanctions on Russia's economy and business climate. Both agencies presently rate Russia BBB.Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made clear that Russia would step up financial pressure on Ukraine. He said the former Soviet republic should repay Moscow $11 billion under a gas supply contract that should be scrapped because it no longer applied.

The European Union stuck on Friday to its insistence that UN talks in Bali should set stiff 2020 guidelines for rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, despite US opposition. "We continue to insist on including a reference to an indiciative emissions reduction range for developed countries for 2020," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement on the last day of the Dec. 3-14 meeting. He did not restate, however, an EU demand for a reference to cuts of 25 to 40 percent cuts below 1990 levels by 2020. A compromise draft text, meant to launch two years of negotiations for a global pact to fight climate change, dropped a key ambition of tough 2020 greenhouse emissions cuts for rich countries but retained a 2050 goal of at least halving world emissions.

Leaders from the world's major industrialised nations met in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm this week for a G8 summit. Below are highlights of the main policy results of the meeting between Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. CLIMATE CHANGE G8 leaders agreed to pursue "substantial" reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and pledged to negotiate a new global climate pact that would extend and broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. But Merkel was not successful in convincing the G8 to make firm numerical commitments on emissions reduction, including her key aim to cut gases by 50 percent by 2050. President George W. Bush agreed to fold his climate plans into the UN framework, but he is likely to be out of office by the time any post-Kyoto deal is clinched and US participation will depend on big polluters like China and India joining in. AFRICA The G8 pledged $60 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis -- diseases that have devastated African countries and their economies. But the declaration set out no specific timetable, nor did it break down individual countries' contributions or spell out how much of the total funds had been previously promised. Leaders also reiterated an overall pledge made in 2005 to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, $25 billion of which is for Africa. US-RUSSIA TIES Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for the first time since a nasty row erupted over US plans to deploy a missile shield in central Europe, reviving Cold War memories. Putin appeared to catch Bush off-guard with a proposal that Washington use a Russian-controlled radar station in Azerbaijan instead of putting parts of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. KOSOVO Leaders failed to break a deadlock over independence for the breakaway Serbian province, with Russia rebuffing an attempt by France to avert a UN Security Council veto by Moscow through a delay in a UN vote. Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was no point to put off the vote if no compromise was in sight. IRAN The G8 reiterated its profound concerns over the proliferation implications of the Iranian nuclear programme. They urged Iran to comply with international obligations and vowed "further appropriate measures" -- code for sanctions -- if it continued to ignore calls by the UN Security Council. TRADE G8 leaders called for a prompt conclusion to the Doha round of world trade talks and urged all sides to show flexibility to get a deal. ECONOMY Leaders agreed the global economy is in good shape, but said emerging market economies with large current account surpluses needed to ensure movement in their exchange rates to help iron out imbalances. They did not name names but said that Asia needed to pursue reforms which would boost internal demand as a driver of growth alongside exports. Officials said currency exchange rates were discussed but did not dominate deliberations. OUTREACH G8 leaders launched the so-called "Heiligendamm Process", a two-year project where the OECD will serve as a go-between for more permanent consultation on policy between the G8 industrial powers and emerging market economies China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

ROME, Wed Jun 4 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A UN summit on the global food crisis asked rich nations on Wednesday to help "revolutionize" farming in Africa and the developing world to produce more food for nearly 1 billion people facing hunger. "The global food crisis is a wake-up call for Africa to launch itself into a 'green revolution' which has been over-delayed," Nigerian Agriculture Minister Sayyadi Abba Ruma said on the second day of the three-day summit. "Every second, a child dies of hunger," the minister said. "The time to act is now. Enough rhetoric and more action." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received a petition signed by more than 300,000 people saying there was no time to lose. A draft declaration from 151 countries taking part said: "We commit to eliminating hunger and to securing food for all." The UN Food and Agriculture Organization called the summit after soaring commodity prices threatened to add 100 million more people to the 850 million already going hungry and caused food riots that threaten government stability in some countries. The cost of major food commodities has doubled over the last couple of years, with rice, corn and wheat at record highs. The OECD sees prices retreating from their peaks but still up to 50 percent higher in the coming decade. Ban said the summit was already a success. "There is a clear sense of resolve, shared responsibility and political commitment among member states to making the right policy choices and investing in agriculture in the years to come. "Hunger degrades everything we have been fighting for in recent years and decades," he told reporters. "We are duty-bound to act to act now and to act as one." Ban's predecessor at the head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, was in Rome to sign an agreement with U.N. food agencies for a new drive to increase farm production in Africa. BREADBASKET "We hope to spur a green revolution in Africa which respects biodiversity and the continent's distinct regions," said Annan, who chairs the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) which is coordinating the effort. The scheme will provide technical support to improve soil and water management, access to seeds and fertilizers, and improve infrastructure in "breadbasket" areas of Africa which have relatively good conditions for farming. The Nigerian minister said his country had "the potential to become the food basket of Africa". But its farms were 90 percent dependant on rainfall, making them vulnerable to climate change, and its 14 million smallholders used "rudimentary" techniques. The Rome summit will set the tone on food aid and subsidies for the Group of Eight summit in Japan in July and what is hoped to be the concluding stages of the stalled Doha talks under the World Trade Organization aimed at reducing trade distortions. As leaders made lofty speeches, many blaming trade barriers and befouls for driving up prices, delegations worked on a summit declaration for release on Thursday. A draft of the declaration promised to "stimulate food production and to increase investment in agriculture, to address obstacles to food access and to use the planet's resources sustainability for present and future generations". The United States found itself on the defensive regarding befouls, along with Brazil which is the world's largest producer of sugar-cane ethanol, and US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer bristled at the criticism. "I don't think the United States gets enough credit at all for providing over one half of all the food aid," he said. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who told the summit on Tuesday that former colonial power Britain was to blame for many of his country's problems, came under fire from a human rights group which said he was using food as a weapon ahead of a June 27 presidential run-off election. Human Rights Watch said the Harare government was deliberately stopping food aid being provided to supporters of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. "President Mugabe's government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome," it said.

With four times the population of the United States, an economy growing 8-9 percent a year and surging energy demand, India's race to become an economic power has propelled it to No. 3 in the list of top carbon polluters. India's greenhouse gas emissions will keep rising as it tries to lift millions out of poverty and connect nearly half a billion people to electricity grids. But it is also trying to curb emissions growth in a unique way, fearing the impacts of climate change and spiralling energy costs. The government is betting big on two market-based trading schemes to encourage energy efficiency and green power across the country of 1.2 billion people, sidestepping emissions trading schemes that have poisoned political debate in the United States and Australia. "The policy roadmap India is adopting to curb emissions is innovative -- something that will make industries look at making efficiency the centre-piece rather than some step that follows an ineffective carrot and stick policy," said Srinivas Krishnaswamy, CEO of green policy consultants Vasudha India. In the world's first such national market-based mechanism, called Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT), India is starting a mandatory scheme that sets benchmark efficiency levels for 563 big polluting from power plants to steel mills and cement plants, that account for 54 percent of the country's energy consumption. The scheme allows businesses using more energy than stipulated to buy tradeable energy saving certificates, or Escerts, from those using less energy, creating a market estimated by the government to be worth about $16 billion in 2014 when trading starts. The number of Escerts depends on the amount of energy saved in a target year. LEARNING CURVE A three-year rollout phase is set to start in September and will help India curb about 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions, the government estimates. The rollout is aimed at working out hiccups in the process for companies to measure and report their energy use. India has already rolled out a renewable energy certificate (REC) trading scheme for wind, solar and biomass power plants. Green power comprises about 8 percent of energy production in India, while coal generates more than 60 percent, leading to a hefty coal import bill. Trading for the REC scheme, which currently occurs once a month, has picked up as more projects participate, underpinning a government plan to ramp up solar power from near zero to 20 gigawatts by 2022, about one eighth of power generation now. On May 25, a total of 14,002 RECs were traded during the REC trading session on the Indian Energy Exchange valued at $4.6 million, compared with 260 units at the previous session in April. But concerns remain about how both initiatives will evolve because of a lack of data and trained manpower as well as weak penalties for firms that refuse to comply. "India has an issue of manpower and data. You look at incomes, industrial activities are growing, the share market might boom but hiring manpower, (building up) capacity and institutions is a long-term game," said Girish Sant, energy analyst at non-profit think tank Prayas. Some analysts also point to technical gaps in the PAT scheme, including how various units of one company would be graded. There were also limitations that allow REC certificates to be traded only once, limiting the early entry of intermediaries or market makers. "In order to have an effective cap-and-trade or market mechanism that aids desired reduction in energy use, it is necessary to have targets that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve," said leading Indian clean energy project developer and advisory Emergent Ventures in a report on PAT. But industry observers said it still makes sense for India to opt for a national energy efficiency scheme rather than carbon emissions trading. "Because the target is intensity, so you are basically asking people to reduce their intensity and that matches the overall target," said Sant of Prayas. The government has pledged to cut carbon intensity -- the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic output -- by between 20 and 25 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. Emissions trading would need an absolute emissions cap, something India does not want to do, saying it needs to keep its economy growing and competitive. Adapting to the national policy and creating a unique market are a function of time and communication, said Vishwajit Dahanukar, managing director of Managing Emissions, a clean energy project developer, advisory and asset manager. "That's basically it. It's just early days," he told Reuters from Mumbai. Rival China is also looking at promoting energy efficiency but most of the government's planned efforts focus more on carbon emissions trading to achieve national climate and pollution goals. In April, a senior Chinese official said the government would launch pilot emissions trading schemes in six provinces before 2013 and set up a nationwide trading platform by 2015, Thomson Reuters Point Carbon reported. The programme would be based on provincial-level energy consumption targets. The Chinese government is also considering a cap-and-trade scheme for energy savings in its buildings sector, which accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the country's overall emissions. According to a government directive, the mechanism would create energy saving credits but the programme was still in the early planning stages, with trading some years away. "As Chinese industry is much more organised and the political system allows stringent monitoring, it becomes a little easier for them to use emissions trading," said Siddharth Pathak, Greenpeace India's policy officer for climate and energy, told Reuters. "Also the push back from Indian industry would be much more than China."

“The Ordovician one has always been a little bit of an oddball,” said Stephen Grasby of the Geological Survey of Canada. Now he and David Bond of the University of Hull in England say they have cracked the case in a study published last month in the journal Geology. Widespread volcanic eruptions unleashed enough carbon dioxide to heat up the planet and trigger two pulses of extinction separated by 1 million years, they report. If true, it places the first grand wipeout of life on Earth in good company: Many of the other major mass extinctions are also thought to be victims of global warming. Scientists have offered a range of culprits — including toxic metals and radiation released from a distant galaxy — but the favored explanation has long been global cooling. Toward the end of the Ordovician, Earth underwent widespread glaciation. That could have caused the shallow seas to disappear, which provided optimal conditions for a variety of organisms. But some scientists, including Keith Dewing, who is also at the Geological Survey of Canada but was not involved in this research, have struggled with this hypothesis. Geological evidence shows that both pulses of the extinction were quite abrupt, but glaciation often waxes and wanes over millions of years. “You had to shoehorn your data in a little bit to get it to fit,” he said of that explanation. Bond and Grasby reached their volcanic hypothesis after collecting Ordovician rocks from a small stream in southern Scotland. They then shipped those rocks to Vancouver, British Columbia, where the specimens were heated in a lab until they released large amounts of mercury — a telltale sign that volcanoes had rocked the epoch. The rocks also emitted molybdenum and uranium — geochemical proxies that suggest the oceans were deoxygenated at the time. Only warming so easily robs the oceans of oxygen, they say, asphyxiating the species that live there. Think of a bottle of cola. “If it’s been in the fridge, it stays nice and fizzy because the gas in that carbon dioxide stays in the liquid,” Bond said. “But if you leave it on a sunny table outside and it gets really warm, then that gas quickly dissociates out of that liquid and you end up with a flat Coke.” These findings allowed the team to paint a new picture — one that doesn’t discount the glaciation at the time but suggests that the cooler climate was punctuated by global warming events triggered by volcanic eruptions. “It all just seemed to fit together quite nicely,” Bond said. In the story they tell, Earth’s crust began to break open just before both pulses of extinction. Giant cracks released walls of lava that erupted hundreds of feet into the air and extended for hundreds of miles. So many flows could have deposited lava up to 1 million square miles away, plus mercury and enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to drive global warming. That, in turn, caused a cascade of effects, from punching holes in the ozone layer to reducing oxygen in the ocean. “This wasn’t an oddball cooling event,” Grasby said. “It joins the club as another ‘death by warming.’” Seth Finnegan, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the research, has questions about the study’s mercury data. It’s possible, he said, that mercury (from later volcanic eruptions or elsewhere) moved into Ordovician rock shortly after the extinction pulses. Dewing said that if one rock showed an anomalously high mercury signature, it might be cause for concern. But the team saw it in rock after rock after rock. “It’s a very pronounced change right at that point,” Dewing said. “So it’s not just one bad data point.” The new hypothesis points toward a number of tests that scientists can now undertake, like studying Ordovician rocks in other locations for the same signatures. That alone is a huge step beyond the global cooling hypothesis, which Dewing said “was almost more like a belief system.” In addition, scientists can attempt to pinpoint the volcanic region that dates to that time (as they have done with other periods of mass extinction). “The real smoking gun would be to find a big volcanic province,” said Paul Wignall, from the University of Leeds, who was not involved in the study. If the hypothesis holds, the first mass extinction will match many of the others. For some scientists, that only provides more impetus to better understand these events — which can no doubt yield further insight into anthropogenic impacts today as we also pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Although it might sound mind-boggling, Finnegan argues that we’re releasing greenhouse gases at a rate that equals or exceeds these major extinction events. “These are not worlds that you want to inhabit,” Finnegan said.   © 2020 The New York Times Company

As the nations of the world struggle in Doha to agree even modest targets to tackle global warming, the cuts needed in rising greenhouse gas emissions grow ever deeper, more costly and less likely to be achieved. UN talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases. An overriding long-term goal set by all nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial Revolution is fast slipping away. "The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished," Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, told Reuters. Disagreements mean the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7 have scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to start by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the US Northeast last month. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about 3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s. Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing by about 3 percent a year over the next decade. For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since pre-industrial times. "The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks. Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week. Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030. POLLUTION In some projections, global emissions will need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C. And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming sunshine. "Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters. Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said. The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel. The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C. But deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40 rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012. The deadline for a deal on new cuts due to start in 2020 has been put back to 2015, giving breathing space for the troubled talks as ever more carbon enters the air. Yet current emissions cut pledges are putting the planet on course for a warming of 3 to 5 C, a UN report said last week, adding that 2 C was still possible with tough action. "The later we go in getting complete action and the higher emissions are in 2020, the greater is the risk that these targets are not possible or are extremely expensive," said Bill Hare, head of the non-profit advisory organisation Climate Analytics. Key will be a switch to nuclear or biomass power and carbon capture and storage. If these don't step up, there will be no financially feasible solutions to meet the target, he said. In Doha, both the United States and the European Union - the main emitters among developed nations - say they will not deepen their pledges for cuts by 2020. "It's a desperate situation," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace. To be effective, the next climate pact from 2020 would need global agreement for rapid and deep cuts. Under a scenario drawn up by the IPCC, rich nations needed to achieve cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. But existing pledges are for less than 20 percent. STARK MESSAGE Canadell, citing work by the Global Carbon Project and other researchers, said that to have a reasonable chance of keeping warming to 2 C, global emissions would have to drop about 3 percent a year from 2020. Since developed nations are meant to take the lead, that would mean the rich would have to cut by between 4 and 5 percent a year, he said. That could cripple economies by prematurely shutting down coal-fired power plants and polluting factories. Global accountancy firm PwC estimated that the improvement in global carbon intensity - the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output - needed to meet a 2 C target had risen to 5.1 percent a year, from now to 2050. "We have passed a critical threshold - not once since World War Two has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation, but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years," PwC said.

European Union and Group of Eight President Germany urged on Saturday some of the world's top politicians to work together to tackle global warming which it said was one of the most dramatic threats the world faces. German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened her speech to a security conference with an unusual message for a gathering which in recent years has focused mainly on issues such as the Middle East conflict and global terrorism. "Global warming is one of the most dramatic long term threats we face," she told the conference in the southern city of Munich, adding that climate change demanded urgent action. "One thing is clear -- this threat is touching everyone, no one can run away." Portraying climate change as the war of the future, she said the threat demanded coordinated action from world nations. Among those in the audience were Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and US Senator for Arizona John McCain. The United States, Russia and China have been reluctant to join global efforts to tackle climate change. But Merkel has made tackling global warming a priority of Germany's dual EU and G8 presidencies. She wants to push nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy and shift to renewable fuels. She has also talked of making progress on a framework agreement to reduce greenhouse gases after the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. Germany's left-right coalition is, however, itself divided on several energy policies and the government has resisted some EU initiatives to cut emissions.

LONDON, Wed Jun 24, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Migrants uprooted by climate change in the poorest parts of the world are likely to only move locally, contrary to predictions that hundreds of millions will descend on rich countries, a study said on Wednesday. The research from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit London-based think tank, challenges the common perception in the developed world that waves of refugees will try to move there permanently to escape the impact of global warming. For example, many farmers struggling to grow enough food as seasons change will leave their homes to look for work in nearby towns for short periods only, the study said. "It seems unlikely that the alarmist predictions of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees will translate into reality," said the paper, presented at a conference on climate change and population organised by IIED and the United Nations. "Past experiences suggest that short-distance and short-term movements will probably increase, with the very poor and vulnerable in many cases unable to move." The study said uncertainty about the expected consequences of global warming -- including more extreme weather and rising seas -- and weak migration data make it difficult to forecast accurately how many people will be displaced by climate change. Frequently cited estimates range from 200 million to 1 billion by 2050, it noted. IIED researcher Cecilia Tacoli, the paper's author, said there was a risk that alarmism about climate-related migration in the developed world would lead to policies that fail to protect the most vulnerable people. "No one seems to have a perception that (migration) is an essential part of people's lives," Tacoli told Reuters. "For some people, (it) is an extremely good strategy to move to better jobs, to better lifestyles." The paper said that, because most governments and international agencies view migration as a problem they need to control, they are missing opportunities to develop policies that could increase people's resilience to climate change. These include helping local governments and other institutions in small rural towns create jobs, provide basic services and share out natural resources more fairly. Even in small island nations and coastal regions threatened by rising seas, the numbers leaving their homes will depend on government and community measures to adapt land use and improve infrastructure and construction methods, the paper said. Hasan Mahmud, Bangladeshi state minister for foreign affairs, told a conference in Geneva on Tuesday organised by the Global Humanitarian Forum, that millions had already been displaced by floods and encroaching seas in his country. In response, the government is investing in more resistant crops and helping local authorities and communities respond quicker when disasters strike.

India is the world's third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, and Modi's participation in the COP26 summit, which runs from Oct 31 to Nov. 12, was seen as critical amid uncertainty over whether Chinese President Xi Jinping would attend. Both India and China, which have not yet made stronger pledges to cut emissions, known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs, face pressure to do so at the conference. "The prime minister is going to Glasgow," Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said in an interview, adding that India was doing its bit to help tackle climate change. Summit host Britain welcomed Modi's decision to attend. "India plays an important role in this and the prime minister has had a number of conversations with Modi on the importance of climate change, so we look forward to discussing it with them further," Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman told reporters. Growing public pressure for action on climate change has spurred promises by countries and companies worldwide to contribute to the effort, which will be reviewed and amended at Glasgow. US climate envoy John Kerry has visited India twice in the past few months to urge the Modi government to raise its climate ambition and consider a net zero commitment as scores of other countries have done. Net zero means balancing out greenhouse gas emissions with actions such as planting trees, restoring soil and using technology to prevent emissions reaching the atmosphere. But energy-hungry India, which still relies heavily on fossil fuels, says it should not be expected to make deep carbon cuts like rich countries because it is a developing economy. INDIA WEIGHS GLASGOW STANCE India's Cabinet, chaired by Modi, will decide the position to be taken at COP26, most probably within a week, an environment ministry spokesperson said. Yadav said India was doing its part to cut emissions. "India's NDCs are quite ambitious," he said. "We are doing more than our fair share. Our NDCs are more progressive than major polluters." The country is on track to increase green energy capacity to 450 GW by 2030, he said. It has installed more than 100 GW of renewable energy, which accounts for more than 25% of overall capacity. India has not yet committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, considered a vital goal in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Government sources have told Reuters that India is unlikely to bind itself to that goal, as tougher deadlines would hit demand growth that is projected to outstrip that of any other nation over the next two decades. Last month, India's chief economic adviser KV Subramanian said rich nations should commit much more than $100 billion to help poor countries fight climate change, due to their high historical share of emissions. "Even today, India's per capita greenhouse emission is one-third of the world average," Yadav said. About 120 countries have submitted revised NDCs, but there is a lack of consistency with no common timeframe for meeting pledges.

As the snow melts from the towering peaks in the distance, Culebra Creek runs fast and the trout are biting. But Van Beecham, a fourth generation fishing guide, is uneasy. "When I was a kid we never had regular run-off from the mountains in February or March. This is global warming," Beecham said. The early run-offs are one of many signs of warming temperatures that have caught the attention of hunters and anglers around the United States -- an influential group that has its pulse on the outdoors. "If you have early runoffs then you have less water in the summer and autumn," said Oregon-based Jack Williams, a senior scientist with conservation group Trout Unlimited. Trout like cold water and become stressed on hot summer days, because water levels are lower and temperatures are higher than would have been the case if the run-off came at more traditional times from April to June. "We are finding a lot of concern among anglers and hunters about climate change. These people value traditions and their family and it will affect their children and their ability to enjoy these kinds of outdoor experience," Williams said. The political run-off could flow as far as the Republican Party, which has broad support from hunters and anglers but which has been reluctant to address global warming. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both hunt and fish. But both also have ties to the oil industry and they have been less than enthusiastic about embracing political measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of scientists agree that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are contributing to a rapid warming of the planet that cannot be explained by natural cycles. Professional hunters have also detected climate-related changes that affect their trade. "The past season was a bad one for goose hunting ... I would say the clients only got about 40 percent of what they usually get," said Corey Marchbank, a goose hunting guide in the eastern Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. He said the weather seemed to be the main factor. Mild autumn and winter temperatures meant the geese could stay longer in coastal areas that used to freeze up. An early grain harvest last season also meant there was less in the fields to attract the birds when the hunting season began in October. Hunters and anglers notice such things and are behind many conservation measures in the United States, not least because they could not shoot game or catch fish without protected habitat. "We have a lot of support from duck hunters who know our work in protecting wetlands is vital," said Ben McNitt, communications director for the National Wildlife Federation. Outdoorsmen were seen as instrumental in getting congressional protection from oil and gas drilling last year for two wild areas: the Valle Vidal in New Mexico and the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana. "Sportsmen played a critical role in convincing Congress to protect these areas," said Kira Finkler, legislative director for Trout Unlimited. Groups like Trout Unlimited are now directing political attention to climate change issues and policy. A commonly cited figure used by the National Wildlife Federation is that more than 40 million Americans hunt and fish and that they spend $70 billion a year on such activities. Guns, guides, gas, rods, licenses: it all costs money. And the numbers and the cash all add up to influence. A nationwide survey of licensed hunters and anglers last year commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation found that 76 percent of those polled agreed that global warming was occurring and the same percentage said they had observed climatic changes in the areas where they lived. Eighty percent of the outdoors-types surveyed said they believed the United States should be a world leader in addressing global warming. Half of those polled identified themselves as evangelical Christians -- a key support base for the Republican Party, which has been divided on the issue of global warming. "If the priorities of evangelicals change from social issues like abortion to the environment it could have a profound effect on the Republican Party," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron. It could make the Republicans embrace more environment issues or it could lose support to the Democrats, Green said.

China hopes to have free trade discussions with India during the Chinese Premier's visit to New Delhi this week, a signal of how the two Asian powerhouses may try to smooth tensions over their economic and border rivalries. "The free trade agreement is the next stage (of India-China relations). It is our hope that we can start the process," China's envoy to India, Zhang Yan, told reporters in New Delhi on Monday. "We are very much positive on these issues. I think that in general the Indians think it is positive but need more time." While a deal could be years away due to Indian fears it could become a dumping ground for cheap Chinese goods, it highlights how world powers are trying to boost ties with a South Asian nation that is one of the few stars in a weak world economy. Wen Jiabao's visit will be the first to India by a Chinese premier in four years and comes a month after President Barack Obama's trip. President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron have also visited India this year. Despite a boom in bilateral commerce in the past decade, and cooperation on global issues such as climate change, India and China remain deeply suspicious of each other's growing international influence. Both powers compete from Latin America to Africa for resources. Many in India fear China wants to restrict its influence, potentially by opposing a U.N. Security Council seat for India or encircling the Indian Ocean region with projects from Pakistan to Myanmar. EVERYTHING ON THE TABLE Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said everything would be up for discussion during the Dec. 15-17 visit to New Delhi. Wen then goes straight to Pakistan, India's nuclear armed rival, for another two nights. "No issues are off the table," Hu told reporters in Beijing, adding the India trip was to expand bilateral trade, increase cooperation and promote regional peace and stability. China and India plan to sign a series of business deals, including one agreed in October for Shanghai Electric Group Co to sell power equipment and related services worth $8.3 billion to India's Reliance Power. Representatives from Shanghai Electric and commercial banks would accompany the delegation and try to iron out financing details, said Liang Wentao, a deputy director general at the Ministry of Commerce. He would not give a value for the total amount of deals to be signed. India's trade deficit with China rose to $16 billion in 2007-08 from $1 billion in 2001-02, according to Indian customs data. China is India's biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade expected to pass $60 billion this year. India has sought to diversify its trade basket, but raw materials and other low-end commodities such as iron ore still make up about 60 percent of its exports to China. In contrast, manufactured goods -- from trinkets to turbines -- form the bulk of Chinese exports. "China is not purposely seeking trade surplus over other countries. We are ready to work with countries concerned to minimise the imbalance because we know in the long run a big gap in trade is not healthy and not sustainable," Zhang said. Analysts said that India would be reluctant to agree to any trade deal. India's $1.3 trillion economy lags China's $5 trillion economy -- in 2009 according to the World Bank -- in basic infrastructure and is less export-orientated. The two countries' populations are near equal. "I think the Indian side will not be able to accept any free trade agreement, as the fear is that China would dump goods in the Indian market," Srikanth Kondapalli, head of East Asian Studies at Jaharwalal Nehru University, said. TENSIONS SIMMER India and China have also clashed repeatedly over a raft of political issues including their long-disputed border, China's increasingly close relationship with Pakistan, and fears of Chinese spying. Wen rather pointedly is twinning his trip to India with a visit to rival Pakistan, where China has extensive port, power, and road investments. During the Pakistan trip, Wen will discuss regional cooperation as well as long-term development, Hu said. Last year, India protested against a Chinese embassy policy of issuing different visas to residents of Indian Kashmir. New Delhi bristles at any hint that Kashmir, where a separatist insurgency has raged for two decades, is not part of India. Hu acknowledged the visa issue could come up, as might Chinese dam building on the upper reaches of important rivers that flow across the border including the Brahmaputra, known in China as the Yarlung Zangbo. "The dam won't influence the development of the relationship between the two countries, and it won't influence the livelihood of people living downstream," Hu said. "The visa issue falls under the category of details."

Sadly, I was right. And as I also warned at the time, Obama didn’t get a second chance; the perceived failure of his economic policy, which mitigated the slump but didn’t decisively end it, closed off the possibility of further major action. The good news — and it’s really, really good news — is that Democrats seem to have learned their lesson. Joe Biden may not look like the second coming of FDR; Chuck Schumer, presiding over a razor-thin majority in the Senate, looks even less like a transformational figure, yet all indications are that together they’re about to push through an economic rescue plan that, unlike the Obama stimulus, truly rises to the occasion. In fact, the plan is aggressive enough that some Democratic-leaning economists worry that it will be too big, risking inflation. However, I’ve argued at length that they’re wrong — or, more precisely, that, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says, the risks of doing too little outweigh any risk of overheating the economy. In fact, a plan that wasn’t big enough to raise some concerns about overheating would have been too small. But how did Democrats get so bold? The answer is that they’ve learned some important things about both economics and politics since 2009. On the economic side, Democrats have finally stopped believing in the debt boogeyman and the confidence fairy, who will make everything better if you slash spending. There was a time when many Democrats — including Obama — accepted the proposition that public debt was a huge problem. They even took seriously warnings from people like Rep Paul Ryan that debt was an “existential threat.” But predictions of an imminent fiscal catastrophe kept being proved wrong, and at this point mainstream economists have become much more relaxed about debt than they were in the past. Some Democrats also used to worry that big spending programmes would hurt the economy by undermining business and investor confidence and conversely that caution would be rewarded with higher private investment. But this doctrine has also been belied by experience; austerity doesn’t instil confidence, it just imposes pain. But if Democrats have learned a lot about economic reality since 2009, they’ve learned more about political reality. Obama came into office sincerely believing that he could reach across the aisle, that Republicans would help him deal with the economic crisis. Despite the reality of scorched-earth opposition, he continued to seek a “grand bargain” on debt. He regarded the rise of the Tea Party as a “fever” that would break in his second term. He was, in short, deeply naive. Many progressives worried that President Joe Biden, who had served in the Senate in a less polarised era, who talks a lot about unity, would repeat Obama’s mistakes. But so far he and his congressional allies seem ready to go big, even if that means doing without Republican votes. One thing that may be encouraging Democrats, by the way, is the fact that Biden’s policies actually are unifying, if you look at public opinion rather than the actions of politicians. Biden’s COIVD-19 relief plan commands overwhelming public approval — far higher than approval for Obama’s 2009 stimulus. If, as seems likely, not a single Republican in Congress votes for the plan, that’s evidence of GOP extremism, not failure on Biden’s part to reach out. Beyond that, Biden and company appear to have learned that caution coming out of the gate doesn’t store up political capital to do more things later. Instead, an administration that fails to deliver tangible benefits to voters in its first few months has squandered its advantage and won’t get a do-over. Going big on COVID relief now offers the best hope of taking on infrastructure, climate change and more later. Oh, and Democrats finally seem to have learned that voters aren’t interested in process. Very few Americans know that the Trump tax cut was rammed through on a party-line vote using reconciliation, the same manoeuvre Democrats are now pursuing, and almost nobody cares. Finally, I suspect that Democrats realise that getting policy right is even more important in 2021 than it was in 2009 — and not just because of the economics. When much of the opposition party won’t acknowledge election results, condones insurrection and welcomes conspiracy theorists into its ranks, you really don’t want to pursue policies that might fall short and thereby empower that party in the years ahead. Put it this way: Debt isn’t and never was an existential threat to our nation’s future. The real existential threat is an illiberal GOP that looks more like Europe’s far-right extremists than a normal political party. Weakening policy in ways that might help that party’s prospects is a terrible idea — and I think Democrats realize that. So this time Democrats are ready to seize the day. Let’s hope it will be enough.   c.2021 The New York Times Company

Every day, 15,000 tankers ferry water from the countryside into the city. Everywhere you look, rows of bright neon plastic water pots are lined up along the lanes, waiting. This is life in Chennai, a city of nearly 5 million on India’s southeastern coast. The rains from last year’s monsoon season were exceptionally weak. By the time summer came with its muggy, draining heat, the city’s four major water reservoirs had virtually run dry. Chennai has struggled with water for years. Either there’s not enough rain or there’s way too much rain, which floods in the streets before trickling out into the Bay of Bengal. But the problem is not just the caprice of nature. Gone are the many lakes and fields that once swallowed the rains. They have since been filled in and built over. Land is too expensive to be left fallow. Even groundwater is spent in many neighbourhoods, over-extracted for years as a regular source of water, rather than replenished and stored as a backup. And so now, little comes out of Bhanu Baskar’s taps at home, which is why she skips a shower on the days she doesn’t need to go out. She saves the water for her grown children, who both have office jobs and who both need a daily shower. “It’s very uncomfortable,” said Baskar, 48, trying to hide her shame. “It’s very tough. “It’s not hygienic, also,” she said. Chennai was primed for this crisis. The city gets most of its water each year from the short, heavy monsoon that begins in October and a few pre-monsoon showers. The trick is to capture what comes and save it for the lean times. Chennai requires every building to catch the rainwater from its rooftops and pour it back into the earth, but that has not been enough to stop either drought or flood. So the city spends huge amounts of money scooping water from the sea, churning it through expensive desalination plants and converting it into water that residents can use. Sekhar Raghavan, 72, a lifelong Chennai resident and the city’s most outspoken supporter of better rainwater harvesting, finds this absurd. “Some of us knew this crisis would come,” he said. “For us, in Chennai, harvesting means putting every drop of water back into the ground.” And then there’s climate change. It doesn’t bear direct blame for Chennai’s water crisis, but it makes it worse. The city is hotter than before. Maximum temperatures have on average gone up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (or over 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950, according to Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. In an already hot tropical city — often above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and very humid in the summer — that means water evaporates faster and the demand for it rises. The seeds of the crisis can be found in Velachery, a neighbourhood named after one of Chennai’s many lakes. The lake was once deep and wide, but as the city grew, portions of it were filled in 20 years ago to make room for private homes. P Jeevantham was one of the first residents in Velachery when it was developed. He built a slender, three-story apartment building and manages a tiny shop selling everyday provisions on the ground floor. What remained of the lake was deep and clean back then. That didn’t last for long. Because the city’s water supply was erratic, Jeevantham drilled a bore well to draw up water from the aquifer beneath Chennai. So did all his neighbours, up and down the block. Today, Jeevantham, 60, runs his motor seven hours a day to satisfy the needs of his own family of four and their tenants. It slurps water from 80 feet under the ground, slowly draining from the lake. “The lake is God’s gift,” he marvelled. But for how much longer? This, he didn't know. “Maybe five years,” he said, laughing uncomfortably. Today the lake is a shallow, gray-green oasis, bordered on the edges by invasive weeds and trash, including, in one corner, a black and yellow, broken-down rickshaw. Near the city centre, the groundwater is nearly gone. Dev Anand, 30, still lives in his childhood home in the Anna Nagar area. For much of his life, his family relied on what city water came through the pipes. When that wasn’t enough, they drew water from under the ground. This summer, that dried up. For a few weeks, his neighbour shared his water. Then his groundwater dried up too. Anand, who is active with a civil society group that raises awareness about water, now relies on city tankers. He calls, complains, waits, worries. The entire neighbourhood is on tenterhooks. No one knows when their bore wells will be exhausted. People are still drilling more wells all over the city, draining the aquifer further and faster. Every now and then comes a sprinkling of pre-monsoon showers. Those, too, seem to leave the city no sooner than they enter it. The water reservoirs have been cleared of silt and trash. The city says it dispatches more than 9,000 water tankers on any given day, more than ever before; private companies supply another 5,000 tankers. A steady stream of people line up at a public tap outside the city waterworks near Anand’s house. An auto-rickshaw driver said he came every afternoon with his wife and two children to fill up six big jugs. Men on scooters dangled their water pots on either side. Everyone has their water-saving hacks. Rinse the rice, then use the water to wash the fish. Empty the dirty dishwater into the potted plants. Never, ever leave the tap running. Forsake the washing machine and hand wash everything with two carefully rationed buckets of water. To avoid a fight, fill only four pots when the water tanker arrives. Only once everyone has had their share should you consider going back for more. And then there’s the air conditioner. Everyone collects its drip. One day, when Rushyant Baskar woke up after working the night shift and turned on his water pump, a dry wheezing sound was all he heard. The buckets were empty, except the one under the air conditioner. It was the only water he had. “At that point, we thought we must get out of Chennai,” said Baskar, 28, who talks to clients in the United States at an outsourcing centre. “It was devastating.” These days, his family increasingly relies on the generosity of neighbours. Someone orders a private water tank and shares. As soon as a city water tanker shows, neighbours text — and the Baskars rush out with their jugs. It is exhausting, all this waiting, worrying and keeping vigil for water. Baskar said he was sleeping less than usual. His mother said she hadn’t had time to check in with relatives on the other side of town. It used to be that you came to the big city to chase money, Baskar said. “Now we run after water.” c.2019 New York Times News Service

Across France this week, and also in Britain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, heat records were smashed, leaving millions of Europeans searching for solutions to endure temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. With summers getting hotter, and their populations suffering — and dying — officials across Europe have been scrambling to come up with measures to protect desperate residents in places that never even had the need for air conditioning before. France has taken what is arguably the most aggressive stance, moved by a heat wave in the summer of 2003 that killed 15,000 people. The next year, the country put a national plan in place to deal with deadly heat waves. “The ‘canicule’ surprised the whole French government because it had harsh consequences on the people,” Delphine Colle, the head of the crisis preparedness office at the French Health Ministry, said about the 2003 heat wave. “We had to address the heat wave issue, and it resulted in an unprecedented national policy.” In that 2003 heat wave, many of the dead in France were older people living alone in city apartments or in retirement homes that were not air-conditioned. In 2004, French authorities introduced what was in effect a heat tax to fund programs to protect the most vulnerable, older citizens, along with a heat alert system, or “plan canicule,” which successive governments have activated every summer since. This week, 20 of the country’s 96 administrative departments were placed under red alert, the highest warning under the plan, which urges people to take “absolute vigilance.” Some 60 departments were placed under orange, the next-highest level. “Our communication campaigns now target the entire population, and not only older people or children,” Colle said. “It’s vital to make people understand that we are all affected and that, no, biking under such heat is not reasonable.” Sunbathers in front of the Trocadéro fountains near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Thursday, July 25, 2019. The temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.6 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1947, in the French capital on Thursday. Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands also set national records. Since 2018, the national heat prevention plan has been extended from June 1 to mid-September, instead of Aug. 31 — a sign, meteorologists said, that heat risks now spread across a longer period. Sunbathers in front of the Trocadéro fountains near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Thursday, July 25, 2019. The temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.6 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1947, in the French capital on Thursday. Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands also set national records. Experts have applauded France’s efforts. “France is on alert: Public authorities and Météo France have become much better at coordinating themselves,” said Jean Jouzel, who was vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 when it won the Nobel Prize. “They now see the threats coming, and we now all know that more and more are coming.” Météo France is the national weather service. While the government in Britain has acknowledged the growing risk of deaths connected to heat waves, not much headway has been made in mitigating the dangers. The average number of premature heat-related deaths in Britain, now about 2,000 a year, is expected to triple to more than 7,000 by the 2050s unless action is taken, the Committee on Climate Change, an independent advisory group, has said. “At present, there are no comprehensive policies in place to adapt existing homes and other buildings to high temperatures, manage urban heat islands, nor safeguard new homes,” the climate change committee wrote in a 2017 report. “The level of risk from overheating across the UK is unknown for hospitals, care homes, schools, prisons and places of work.” In Germany, authorities have provided few emergency measures and have instead focused on longer-term plans, with lawmakers debating how to put a price tag on carbon emissions. The country’s agriculture minister has also called for a reforestation program worth 550 million euros ($611 million) to plant trees in the country’s aging forests, as part of measures that would help to reduce carbon emissions. “Trees bring solutions to short- and long-term concerns against global warming,” said Solène Marry, an urban planning expert at ADEME, France’s publicly funded Agency for Environment and Energy Management. “If planted in loose soil in cities, they help fight heat islands by stocking water and providing shade.” Major cities in Europe have adopted their own heat plans. Paris has made available 3,000 reusable water bottles to homeless people over the summer and created a mobile app listing “isles of coolness” — parks and other public spaces — where people can enjoy a cooler environment. The city also checks up on vulnerable people who are registered on a self-declared list through regular phone calls. Vienna has pledged 8 million euros (about $8.9 million) to plant shade trees in 2019 and 2020 and has earmarked additional funds for the installation of misters and water fountains. While such measures can help, they won’t be enough in the long term to offset ever more extreme heat waves, scientists and climate activists say. People cool off in the Trocadéro fountains near the Eiffel Tower in Paris as sunbathers rest nearby, on Thursday, July 25, 2019. Heat records were smashed across much of Europe this week, leaving officials searching for short- and longer-term solutions to help people endure temperatures soaring over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “Both emergency measures and long-term plans are needed, and both are linked,” said Jouzel, the climatologist. “Yet populations in Europe are likely to ask for more short-term reliefs, as they see the concrete effects of climate change becoming more frequent.” People cool off in the Trocadéro fountains near the Eiffel Tower in Paris as sunbathers rest nearby, on Thursday, July 25, 2019. Heat records were smashed across much of Europe this week, leaving officials searching for short- and longer-term solutions to help people endure temperatures soaring over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In December, President Emmanuel Macron of France cancelled a fuel tax increase under pressure from the yellow vest protesters, pushing France further from its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Mr Macron has been eager to send strong messages for the climate, yet his actions don’t reflect that, and he is clearly not delivering on his promises,” said Anne Bringault of the pro-environment group Réseau Action Climat. But Bringault acknowledged that Macron has generally been a strong advocate in the fight against climate change, a stance different from that of some of Europe’s new populist leaders, one of whom  dismissed the new normal of heat waves as recently as this spring. “Talking about global warming — we are in the middle of May and call upon global warming because we haven’t had a cold like this in Italy in recent years,” Italy’s interior minister and de facto leader, Matteo Salvini, said in Milan at the time. “We are turning on our heaters.” A month later, a heat wave scorched Milan and much of the rest of Italy. ©2019 New York Times News Service

His main target was renewable energy, suggesting that the systemwide collapse was caused by the failure of wind and solar power. “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas, as well as other states, to make sure we will be able to heat our homes in the winter times and cool our homes in the summer times,” said Gov. Greg Abbott, speaking on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News. Other conservative talk show hosts had already picked up the theme. However, wind power was not chiefly to blame for the Texas blackouts. The main problem was frigid temperatures that stalled natural gas production, which is responsible for the majority of Texas’ power supply. Wind makes up just a fraction — 7% or so, by some estimates — of the state’s overall mix of power generation. As frigid weather grips the centre of the nation, causing widespread power outages, freezing temperatures, slippery roads and weather-related deaths, Abbott’s voice was among the most prominent in a chorus of political figures this week to quickly assert that green energy sources such as wind and solar were contributing to the blackouts. The talking points, coming largely from conservatives, reinvigorated a long-running campaign to claim that emissions-spewing fossil fuels are too valuable a resource to give up. The efforts came despite the fact that the burning of fossil fuels — which causes climate change by releasing vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere — is helping to drive the phenomenon of increasingly dangerous hurricanes and other storms, as well as unusual weather patterns. “Green energy failure” read the banner on the bottom of the screen of Fox News stories about power outages. Social media posts mocked renewable energy as “unreliables.” A Wall Street Journal editorial called for more reliance on coal to help endure frigid temperatures. Some politicians and analysts spread lies and disinformation to advance their defence of fossil fuels. “Every time we have challenges with the grid, whether it’s in California this past summer or Texas right now, people try to weaponise this for their pet project, which is fossil fuels,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work has focused on battles over energy policy. “Our infrastructure cannot handle extreme weather events, which these fossil fuels are ironically causing.” The politicisation of the cold weather gripping huge swaths of the country is playing out as President Joe Biden has made combating climate change a key tenet of his administration. With a sweeping set of executive orders in his initial days in office, Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement among nations to fight climate change, cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and issued a moratorium on drilling for fossil fuels on federal land, among other things. “Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good paying, union jobs, creating a clean energy economy, and meeting the president’s goal of reaching a net zero emissions future by 2050,” said Vedant Patel, a White House assistant press secretary. Scientists are still analysing what role human-caused climate change may have played in the current round of winter storms, but it is clear that global warming poses future threats to power systems nationwide with predictions of more intense heat waves and shortages of water. Many electric grids aren’t equipped to handle those extreme conditions, putting them at risk for widespread failure. That was the case in Texas, where millions of people suffered rolling blackouts. Grids in the Midwest and Southwest also were strained. Dozens of people have died in the storm or its aftermath. When Abbott appeared on Fox News, saying “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, an architect of the proposed Green New Deal, shot back on Twitter. “Gov. Abbott needs to get off TV pointing fingers & start helping people,” she wrote. “After that, he needs to read a book on his own state’s energy supply.” Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host, had a similar pro-fossil-fuel message earlier in the week. “Global warming is no longer a pressing concern here,” he said, speaking of this week’s frigid weather and invoking the discredited claim that cold weather disproves that the world is warming dangerously. “The windmills froze, so the power grid failed,” he said. Blades of some Texas wind turbines did freeze in place, but wind power is estimated to make up only 7% or so of the state’s total capacity this time of year in part because utilities lower their expectations for wind generation in the winter in general. The bulk of the power loss in Texas came from natural gas suppliers, according to regulators, as pipelines froze, making it difficult for plants to get the fuel they needed. Production from coal and nuclear plants dropped as well. A similar phenomenon played out in Kansas and other states. As Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems engineer at Princeton University, said on Twitter, “In short, ALL generation types are getting hammered.” Nevertheless, proponents of fossil fuels are using the current crisis to emphasise why they think fossil fuels need to be part of the overall mix of options to power the grid. “The anti-carbon movement has really placed no value on reliability,” said Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” who expressed his views in a long Twitter thread. Wind energy has long been a target of criticism in America, with some opponents blaming turbines for interrupting vistas, taking up land for hunting, or shifting jobs away from the fossil fuel industry. This week’s crisis in Texas has provided a new rallying point for some of this political messaging. “We have Joe Biden who is nice and warm in his fossil-fuelled White House singing kumbaya with his environmental extremists while Americans are freezing to death,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, a R-Colo, who earlier this year introduced a measure to block reentry to the Paris climate agreement. Boebert mentioned a photo shared repeatedly this week on social media of wind turbines she said were in Texas and apparently being de-iced by helicopter with a substance derived from fossil fuels. However, the image was debunked by the website Gizmodo: the photo was from a test seven years ago on turbines in Sweden. In Kansas, one of the few states that relies heavily on wind power, the blades on some turbines froze, too. However, just like in Texas, the bigger problem was that the state’s frigid temperatures stopped delivery of natural gas to fossil-fuel-burning power plants. That didn’t stop some Republicans from targeting green energy as a chief culprit. “Wind turbines are frozen up. Solar is useless,” Mike Thompson, a state senator in Kansas, wrote on his Facebook page. “This is why the expansion of renewables is dangerous.” Thompson, in an interview, called coal “our saviour” and said the country needs to embrace fossil fuels. “Do away with all those at your own peril in a deep freeze like this,” said Thompson, a former television weather forecaster and climate change denialist. State Rep Brandon Woodard of Kansas, a Democrat, recalled how on Monday, with the epic cold outside his door, he was sitting in his apartment in two layers of sweatpants and wrapped in blankets when he was alerted to rolling blackouts there by an email from a constituent. “I’m hoping you can explain to me how the state will prevent these so-called rolling outages from becoming a norm,” read the email. Woodard said the email, combined with this week’s deep freeze and electrical failures, should serve as a wake-up call for lawmakers to act. “This is why we have to have the conversations about being resilient to address changing patterns in the climate,” Woodard said. “I don’t think this is the last time we’ll see rolling blackouts.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism. The bestowal of one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo. The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Critics -- some in parts of the Arab and Muslim world -- called the committee decision premature. Obama's press secretary woke him with the news before dawn and the president felt "humbled" by the award, a senior administration official said. When told in an email from Reuters that many people around the world were stunned by the announcement, Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, responded: "As are we." The first African-American to hold his country's highest office, Obama, 48, has called for disarmament and worked to restart stalled Middle East peace moves since taking office in January. "Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said in a citation. Despite problems at home that include high unemployment, the US president is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure. Obama laid out his vision on eliminating nuclear arms in a speech in Prague in April. But he was not the first American president to set that goal, and acknowledged it might not be reached in his lifetime. Obama was to make a statement in the White House Rose Garden at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT). The president, struggling at home with high unemployment and resistance in Congress to his healthcare reform plans, is likely to go to Oslo to receive the prize, Axelrod told the MSNBC TV channel. While the award won praise from such statesmen as Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, both Nobel laureates, it was also attacked in some quarters as hasty and undeserved. Afghanistan's Taliban mocked the award, saying Obama should get a Nobel prize for violence instead. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was absurd to give a peace award to a man who had sent 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to escalate a war. "The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. Obama is considering a request from his top commander in Afghanistan to send him at least 40,000 more troops. The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and opposes a peace treaty with Israel, said the award was premature at best. EMBARRASSING "JOKE" Obama is the fourth US president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Jimmy Carter won in 2002, Woodrow Wilson picked it up in 1919 and Theodore Roosevelt was chosen for the 1906 prize. Issam al-Khazraji, a day laborer in Baghdad, said of Obama: "He doesn't deserve this prize. All these problems -- Iraq, Afghanistan -- have not been solved . . . man of 'change' hasn't changed anything yet." Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing "joke". But the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed it and expressed hope that Obama "will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East." Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early, saying it recognized what he had already done over the past year. "We hope this can contribute a little bit to enhance what he is trying to do," he told a news conference. The committee said it attached "special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons", saying he had "created a new climate in international politics". Without naming Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, it highlighted the differences in America's engagement with the rest of the world since the change of administration in January. "Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. "Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts," it said, and the United States was playing a more constructive role in tackling climate change. Obama is negotiating arms cuts with Russia, and last month dropped plans to base elements of a US anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Moscow had seen the scheme as a threat, despite US assurances it was directed against Iran. On other pressing issues, Obama is deliberating whether to send more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is still searching for breakthroughs on Iran's disputed nuclear program and on Middle East peace. Israel's foreign minister said on Thursday there was no chance of a peace deal for many years. Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been tipped as a favorite for the prize, told Reuters that Obama was a deserving candidate and an "extraordinary example". Obama's uncle Said Obama told Reuters by telephone from the president's ancestral village of Kogelo in western Kenya: "It is humbling for us as a family and we share in Barack's honor... we congratulate him." The prize worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million) will be handed out in Oslo on Dec. 10.

Bird flu may be the tip of the iceberg. Experts meeting in Mali say the deadly H5N1 virus is just one of a plethora of diseases threatening animals and people around the world as global warming, intensive farming, increased travel and trade help dangerous microbes breed and spread. "Avian flu is just one of many diseases that are impacting the continent (of Africa). The experts are telling us that other diseases are going to emerge or re-emerge," said Francois Le Gall, the World Bank's lead livestock specialist for Africa. "Almost every year there is a new disease appearing, and 75 percent of these emerging or re-emerging diseases are coming from animals; 80 percent of those have zoonotic potential," he said in an interview. Le Gall said such zoonoses -- animal diseases that humans can also catch -- included Rift Valley fever, rabies and anthrax. "These could come together to create what the experts are calling 'the perfect microbial storm'," he said. But Le Gall said progress being made to tackle the current bird flu outbreak by strengthening veterinary and human health monitoring systems around the world would temper the risk of an apocalyptic conflagration of diseases. "All the measures we are using now are going to be useful to control all these emerging or re-emerging diseases -- like veterinary services, public health services," he said. What singles out bird flu is the potential of the virus to mutate into a human form of influenza capable of passing from person to person, not just from infected animals. International health experts were winding up a three-day meeting in Mali, the fourth global bird flu summit since late last year, aimed at plotting strategies to halt the spread of the disease and seeking donor funds for this campaign. "Remember that with globalisation, and unprecedented movements of merchandise, of people, there is a continuous transfer of pathogens," Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organisation for Animal Health, told Reuters. "This is made worse by climate change. Many disease vectors have colonised new territories," Vallat said. Some diseases were being spread by mosquitoes or other insects whose larvae were previously killed off by cold winters, but who now survive in temperate zones, he said. "Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples. There is a disease called blue tongue, which infects sheep, which for the first time in history has attacked northern Europe, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and by a vector that is capable of spreading the virus in this region, which is unprecedented." Blue tongue spreads via biting insects, but does not affect humans. But West Nile Disease, which affects birds and was first found in Egypt and is spread by mosquitoes, has killed hundreds of people in the United States since it first spread there in 1999 -- probably via an imported pet bird, Vallat said. "Now the United States is completely infected, as well as southern Canada and Mexico. In a few years this disease which was completely unknown (there) has colonised all the eastern United States via a mosquito vector," he said. "Microbes can cross the world in a few hours," he said. "The globalisation of exchanges of people, merchandise and commodities is a phenomenon that affects the whole planet more and more each year. It's a good thing, but it brings with it new risks. We have to be prepared."

Australian Prime Minister John Howard will turn 68 on Thursday and on the eve of his birthday defended his ideas and policies for the nation's future, saying age will not be an issue at elections expected within months. But many commentators believe generational change will loom large at the election with Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who is streets ahead in opinion polls, turning 50 this year. "I accept that I will be 68 tomorrow. No man or woman can mock the passage of the years," Howard told Australian television on Wednesday night. "People will judge me on the contribution I have made to the country and my capacity to continue to lead it," he said. Howard, already Australia's second-longest serving prime minister, will become the second-oldest prime minister, behind the ruling Liberal Party's founder Robert Menzies, who was 71 when he left office in 1966. But opinion polls suggest the government is headed for defeat at elections due before the end of the year, with Howard at risk of losing his own seat. The opposition says his government is out of touch on key issues such as climate change and housing affordability for young buyers. While the economy has boomed during Howard's four successive terms, living costs have also soared. Howard said Labor was trying to make age an election issue. "What really matters is the age and relevance of the policies and ideas that I put forward," he said. "I will challenge anybody from the other side of politics to argue effectively that the age and relevance of their ideas for Australia's future are superior to mine." Some commentators have suggested Howard has held on to power too long and should now hand over to his heir apparent, Treasurer Peter Costello, to give the conservatives a chance of winning a fifth straight election. Howard's mantra is he will remain prime minister as long as his party wants him and that it is in the party's best interests. Howard has won previous elections with a tough stand on security and will celebrate his 68th birthday with a lightning visit to East Timor on Thursday, where he will meet Australian peacekeepers and hold talks with President Jose-Ramos Horta. He will then visit the Indonesian island of Bali on Friday, where he is set to hold talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and open a hospital built in memory of the victims of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings. AGE ISSUES Over the past six months, Labor has attacked Howard's age by portraying him as old fashioned and out of touch, compared to its youthful new leader. Labor has run television and Internet ads attacking Howard for being slow to react on issues such as climate change, with Australia alongside the United States refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol or set binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Political analyst Nick Economou said attacks on Howard's age would not work, as the prime minister, who power-walks every day, still had plenty of energy. "He's still a robust man. He's a fighter," Economou, from Monash University, told Reuters. In a bid to counter perceptions he is not up with modern culture, Howard a week ago launched an environment policy on the popular youth Web site YouTube, although reaction was negative. Over the past month, the media has scrutinised every Howard slip for signs of ageing, including Howard forgetting the name of an election candidate, and tripping on a visit to a radio station, blamed on a slippery floor rather than unsteady legs. "I am not walking away from my age," said Howard. "I am fit and healthy. But it's for other people to make a judgement about the age and relevance of my ideas." The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said leaked Labor Party focus group research found voters believed Howard was "past his used-by date" and should retire, with an editorial saying the prime minister needs to overcome his age problem. "As he turns 68 this week, the PM must make a convincing argument that his age is not a barrier to his running the country as well as he ever has," the paper said.

The European Union and Southeast Asian leaders called on Thursday for enhanced economic cooperation and the release of political detainees in military-ruled Myanmar, but set no deadlines for either. A free-trade agreement between the EU and its fifth-largest trading partner the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has stumbled over issues such as reform in military-ruled Myanmar, which the EU slapped sanctions on this week. A joint declaration welcomed the decision of the Myanmar government to step up dialogue with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and called for a peaceful transition to democracy, although the two blocs clashed over sanctions. "We see some progress, but it is not sufficient," Jose Socrates, acting president of the EU, told a news conference. "I disagree that the EU and ASEAN have fundamental differences over Myanmar -- both want human rights and democracy -- and both want to achieve that goal," Socrates said. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said negotiations between the blocs "should not be held hostage" by the Myanmar issue and said they had agreed to move faster towards free trade. "It will take a lot of creative work," Lee said. Talks over a free-trade agreement kicked off in May but have made little progress since then. "We need to quicken our pace. We need to put in a little bit more drive," said the EU's trade chief Peter Mandelson. "I have two concerns. One is the...level of ambition." The two groups said they would be mindful of the different levels of development and capacity in moving towards a deal. ASEAN encompasses Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia, and Singapore, the second richest in terms of GDP per capita. Mandelson said banking secrecy laws in Singapore, one of Myanmar's biggest investors and accused of acting as banker to Myanmar's military rulers, were not a stumbling block to a deal. The leaders said they had not spoken much of financial market turbulence, with EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso telling Reuters he was concerned about the strength of the euro -- at a record high versus the dollar -- for European exporters. The leaders said record oil prices were also a worry, with Barroso saying they agreed in talks on climate change on the need to move away from fossil fuels to a lower-carbon economy. "We are determined to go to the next conference in Bali to achieve a result," said Socrates, adding this would be a two-year road map to agreed on a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2009. Next month's Bali conference is seen by the UN, financial markets and green groups as one of the last opportunities for more than 180 nations attending to agree to work on a global formula to fight climate change before the protocol's current targets end in 2012. LITTLE PROGRESS The EU diplomats welcomed a new ASEAN charter -- enshrining principles of democracy and human rights, economic integration and environmental protection -- but advocated a "carrot and stick" approach for reform in Myanmar. The EU this week adopted sanctions against 1,207 firms in Myanmar and expanded visa bans and asset freezes on the country's military rulers in response to their bloody crackdown on the biggest pro-democracy protests in nearly 20 years in September. The United States also expanded its sanctions against Myanmar's rulers in October. But ASEAN leaders say sanctions reduce the chances of leading the regime on a democratic path. EU officials said once the bloc was satisfied with the progress of reforms, it could do more to help fight poverty in Myanmar, where protests started over fuel price hikes. "There's great potential if we can further remove obstacles to our bilateral trade," said Barroso. "It's up to ASEAN members to decide how far to go," he said, on ASEAN's integration aims. ASEAN still needs to define what it means by a single market, with common economic and social policies or a single currency as in the EU seen as unlikely, analysts said. US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said this week a US- ASEAN trade deal was unlikely because of the political situation. Diplomats say the new ASEAN charter, which gives the group a legal identity, means that the current option of excluding Myanmar from trade deals will end. The charter, signed on Tuesday, needs to be ratified by the 10 ASEAN member states within 12 months for it to take effect. But the Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said its Congress might not ratify unless Myanmar releases Suu Kyi.

News of Rex Tillerson's possible appointment comes as US intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win the White House. The choice of Tillerson further stocks Trump's Cabinet and inner circle with people who favour a soft line towards Moscow. Tillerson, 64, has driven Exxon's expansion in Russia for decades and opposed US sanctions imposed on Russia for its seizure of Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson Russia's Order of Friendship, one of the country's highest civilian honours. Exxon's Tillerson emerged on Friday as Trump's leading candidate for US secretary of state over 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and three other people. Tillerson met with Trump for more than two hours at Trump Tower on Saturday morning. It was their second meeting about the position this week. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tillerson was the expected pick but cautioned no formal offer had yet been made. A senior official on the Trump transition team said the president-elect was close to picking Tillerson. Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said on Twitter that no announcement on the high-profile job was forthcoming in the immediate future. Transition Update: No announcements on Secretary of State until next week at the earliest. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) December 10, 2016   Transition Update: No announcements on Secretary of State until next week at the earliest. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain Trump on Saturday attended the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore, where he was joined by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who withdrew from consideration as secretary of state on Friday. NBC News, which first reported the development, said Trump would also name John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, as deputy secretary of state. As Exxon's CEO, Tillerson oversees operations in more than 50 countries, including Russia. In 2011, Exxon signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia's largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia. Tillerson and Rosneft chief Igor Sechin announced plans to begin drilling in the Russian Arctic for oil as part of their joint venture, in spite of US sanctions. In July, Tillerson was one of the highest-profile US representatives at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, one of Putin's main investment forums, even as Washington had been taking a harder line than Europe on maintaining sanctions. Trump has pledged to work for stronger US ties with Russia, which have been strained by Putin's incursion into Crimea and his support for Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. In a preview from an interview to be aired on "Fox News Sunday," Trump said Tillerson is "much more than a business executive." "I mean, he's a world class player," Trump said. "He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor. It's been a company that has been unbelievably managed." "And to me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia," Trump said. Tillerson's Russian ties figure to be a factor in any Senate confirmation hearing. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, a long-time Putin critic, told Fox News that he does not know what Tillerson's relationship with Putin has been, "but I'll tell you, it is a matter of concern to me." Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee raised concerns in a memo on Saturday citing Trump's "cavalier dismissal" of US intelligence reports that Russia interfered in US elections and the appointment of Tillerson, who has "business ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin, and whose company worked to bury and deny climate science for years." Should Tillerson be nominated, climate change could be another controversial issue for him. The company is under investigation by the New York Attorney General's Office for allegedly misleading investors, regulators and the public on what it knew about global warming. Tillerson is, however, one of the few people selected for roles in the Trump administration to believe that human activity causes climate change. After Trump's election, Exxon came out in support of the Paris Climate Agreement and said it favours a carbon tax as an emissions-cutting strategy.

Russia's government on Tuesday approved the legal framework for Joint Implementation projects under the Kyoto agreement, allowing businesses to earn and trade credits for trapping greenhouse gases. Russia had already ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for developed nations to cut carbon emissions that scientists say cause climate change. But businesses have had to wait for two years for the government to draw up the legal framework through which it can approve the projects. "The key reason is to attain ecological benefits both globally and locally here in Russia," Vsevolod Gavrilov, deputy director at the natural resources department in the economy ministry, told a news briefing at the World Bank Offices in Moscow. The Joint Implementation mechanism allows industrialised countries to buy rights to emit greenhouse gases and use them to help stay within their Kyoto emissions caps by 2012. It lets countries busting their caps fund projects that cut emissions in countries that are well within their limits, like most former communist states, and count the cuts as their own. Russia is considered potentially one of the largest sellers of carbon credits in the world because of the often heavy emissions from its Soviet-built industry, which can easily be changed through such means as insulating pipes to reduce heat waste or plugging leaky gas pipes. Russia's emissions of greenhouse gases plunged in the 1990s along with the collapse of Soviet-era smokestack industries, but have risen as the economy has since boomed. Current emission levels are still far below 1990 levels.

A "silent tsunami" unleashed by costlier food threatens 100 million people, the United Nations said on Tuesday, and aid groups said producers would make things worse if they curbed exports. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would seek changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices -- a day after the bloc stood by its plans to boost biofuel use. The World Food Programme (WFP), whose head Josette Sheeran took part in a meeting of experts Brown called on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, said a "silent tsunami" threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. "This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said ahead of the meeting. Riots in poor Asian and African countries have followed steep rises in food prices caused by many factors -- dearer fuel, bad weather, rising disposable incomes boosting demand and the conversion of land to grow crops for biofuel. Rice from Thailand, the world's top exporter, has more than doubled in price this year. Major food exporters including Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and Cambodia have imposed curbs on food exports to secure supplies. Sheeran said artificially created shortages aggravated the problem: "The world has been consuming more than it has been producing for the past three years, so stocks have been drawn down." Rising prices meant the WFP was running short of money to buy food for its programmes and had already curtailed school feeding plans in Tajikistan, Kenya and Cambodia. Sheeran said the WFP, which last year estimated it would need $2.9 billion in 2008 to cover its needs, now calculated it would have to raise that figure by a quarter because of the surge in prices of staples like wheat, maize and rice. END OF AN ERA Britain pledged $900 million to help the WFP alleviate immediate problems and Brown raised further doubts about the wisdom of using crops to help produce fuel. "If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets," he said a day after the EU stood by its target of getting a tenth of road transport fuel from crops and agricultural waste by 2020. Japanese Agriculture Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi said Tokyo would propose the World Trade Organisation set clear rules for food export restrictions imposed by producer countries. Tokyo wanted a WTO mechanism for food importers such as Japan to be able to give an opinion when notified about restrictions by an exporting country, Wakabayashi said, according to the text of a news conference published on the ministry's website. Rajat Nag, managing director general of the Asian Development Bank, said the era of cheap food was over and urged Asian governments not to distort markets with export curbs but use fiscal measures to help the poor. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said dearer food risked wiping out progress on cutting poverty. His predecessor Kofi Annan said climate change was aggravating the global food crisis and many poor countries could be facing the start of "major hunger disasters". "The poor are bearing the brunt and they contributed the least to climate change. The polluter must pay," he said. "Climate change is an all-encompassing threat -- a threat to our health, security, political stability and social cohesion."

Fears of disease gripped Indonesia's flood-hit capital on Friday with thousands of people living in cramped emergency shelters and some streets still inundated a week after the city's worst floods in five years. Authorities are on guard for any outbreaks of diarrhoea, cholera or skin disease as torrential rains overnight triggered fresh flooding in parts of the low-lying city of around 14 million people. "We are concentrating on health issues to prevent diarrhoea, cholera and leptospirosis (a disease spread by rats and mice) outbreaks by clearing up places and water sanitation," Rustam Pakaya, the health ministry's crisis centre chief, told Reuters. "There are three cases of leptospirosis reported. All of the patients are treated. No cases of tetanus have been reported." The floods in Jakarta have killed 57 people and more than 250,000 people are still displaced from their homes, many of them sheltering under flyovers and plastic tents near graveyards and cemeteries. A group of horse carriage operators sheltered under one East Jakarta flyover with their carriages and horses as ankle-high manure spread around and mixed with cooking utensils. Traffic moved slowly and several cars broke down as parts of a city highway were inundated by water following the floods that have also caused blackouts and cut telecommunications. Teddy, a resident of Manggarai Bukit Duri in south Jakarta, said he was desperate to leave the shelter he was staying in. "We are cleaning our house hoping we can sleep in this house tonight," he said on Thursday as he swept mud and debris out of his home with his two brothers. The disruption in power affected water supplies in parts of the city, forcing people to use rain water for bathing. Relief agencies distributed food and medicines to the displaced people while authorities moved some of the people whose homes have been flooded into a sports stadium. "The Red Cross distributed 11,000 packages of food for communal kitchens, 5,000 hygiene kits, 5,000 packets of biscuits in five of the worst-hit areas yesterday," Irwan Hidayat, secretary of the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Red Cross. "Today, we are going to give medical treatment to the areas." Officials and green groups have blamed excessive construction in Jakarta's water catchment areas for making the floods worse, while a deputy environment minister told Reuters on Wednesday that climate change was contributing to the problem. A previous flood disaster in 2002 saw widespread looting, but National Police Chief General Sutanto said there had been no repeat this time and he had dispatched 14,000 police officers to flood-hit areas, Antara news agency reported. Indonesia's largest telecommunications firm, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (Telkom), had suffered losses of around 18 billion rupiah ($1.99 million) due to flooding in areas in and around Jakarta, its chief was quoted by one newspaper as saying. However, despite the flood's disruption of various business operations, and sporadic difficulties with telecommunications, Indonesia's rupiah currency was holding firm against the dollar on Friday, while the share market key index was down only about half a percentage point at mid-morning.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders on Sunday supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, but European negotiators said the move did not imply weaker action. Some argued that legal technicalities might otherwise distract the talks in Copenhagen and it was better to focus on the core issue of cutting climate-warming emissions. "Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told the leaders. "The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion," said the Copenhagen talks host, who flew into Singapore to lay out his proposal over breakfast at an Asia-Pacific summit. Rasmussen said the December 7-18 talks should still agree key elements such as cuts in greenhouse gases for industrialized nations and funds to help developing nations. Copenhagen would also set a deadline for writing them into a legal text. "We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook," Rasmussen said after the meeting, which was attended by leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Australia and Indonesia. WAITING FOR UNITED STATES French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said it was clear the main obstacle was the United States' slow progress in defining its own potential emissions cuts. "The problem is the United States, there's no doubt about that," Borloo, who has coordinated France's Copenhagen negotiating effort, told Reuters in an interview. "It's the world's number one power, the biggest emitter (of greenhouse gases), the biggest per capita emitter and it's saying 'I'd like to but I can't'. That's the issue," he said. Danish and Swedish officials said they wanted all developed countries including the United States to promise numbers for cuts in emissions in Copenhagen. The U.S. Senate has not yet agreed carbon-capping legislation. "There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days," said U.S. negotiator Michael Froman. "We believe it is better to have something good than to have nothing at all," said Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez. The next major U.N. climate meeting is in Bonn in mid-2010. "Copenhagen can and must deliver clarity on emission reductions and the finance to kickstart action. I have seen nothing to change my view on that," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official. Ministers from 40 nations will meet in Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday for preparatory talks. Copenhagen was seen as the last chance for countries to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, aiming to fight a rise in temperatures that many scientists predict will bring rising sea levels and more floods and droughts. The aim of the summit is to set ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gases in industrialized nations, but also to raise funds to help poor countries slow their own emissions growth and tackle the worst impacts on crops and water supplies. But negotiations have been bogged down, with developing nations accusing the rich world of failing to set themselves deep enough 2020 goals for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. FINANCING FIRST It was not clear if China, now the world's biggest carbon emitter, had backed the two-stage proposal in Singapore. Chinese President Hu Jintao instead focused his remarks at the breakfast meeting on the need to establish a funding mechanism for rich nations to provide financial support to developing countries to fight climate change. Britain's Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC the issue was tough but he was "quite optimistic". "It is about saving the world ... If we can get a very clear set of commitments from the world's leaders in Copenhagen on how they're going to cut their emissions -- not just Europe, not just the United States but India and China and other countries -- then that will be a very major step forward," he said. Despite the talk in Singapore of urgent action on climate change, a statement issued after the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit dropped an earlier draft's reference to halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Environmental lobby group WWF was disappointed. "At APEC, there was far too much talk about delay," spokesperson Diane McFadzien said in a statement. "In Copenhagen, governments need to create a legally binding framework with an amended Kyoto Protocol and a new Copenhagen Protocol. Legally binding is the only thing that will do if we want to see real action to save the planet."

Conservationists have announced that some 6,000 rare Irrawaddy dolphins, living in the freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans and adjacent Bay of Bengal waters, make up the largest population of these endangered sea mammals found in the wild. The Wildlife Conservation Society—revealing the discovery earlier this week at the First International Conference on Marine Mammal Protected Areas in Maui—said the largest known populations of Irrawaddy dolphins had previously numbered only in the low hundreds. "With all the news about freshwater environments and state of the oceans, WCS's discovery that a thriving population of Irrawaddy dolphins exists in Bangladesh gives us hope for protecting this and other endangered species and their important habitats," Dr. Steven Sanderson, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said on Tuesday. "WCS is committed to conservation of these iconic marine species from dolphins, sea turtles, sharks to the largest whales," he said. Authors of the study, undertaken in an area where little marine mammal research has taken place to date, include Brian Smith, Rubaiyat Mansur Mowgli, and Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society, along with Benazir Ahmed of Chittagong University in Bangladesh. Despite finding this large population, the authors warn that the dolphins are becoming increasingly threatened by accidental entanglement in fishing nets. During the study, researchers say they found two dolphins that had become entangled and drowned in fishing nets - a common occurrence according to local fishermen. The Irrawaddy dolphin, Orcaella brevirostris, grows up to eight feet and lives in large rivers, estuaries, and freshwater lagoons in South and Southeast Asia. In Myanmar's Ayeyarwady River, these dolphins are known for "cooperative fishing" with humans, where the animals voluntarily herd schools of fish toward fishing boats and awaiting nets helping fishermen increase their catches. The dolphins appear to benefit from this relationship by easily preying on the cornered fish and those that fall out of the net as the fishermen pull it from the water. In 2006, WCS helped establish a protected area along the Ayeyarwady River to conserve this critically endangered mammal population. The New York-based WCS says it is now working closely with the Ministry of Environment and Forests in Bangladesh on plans for establishing a protected area network for both Irrawaddy and Ganges River dolphins in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Funding is critical to sustaining these activities along with WCS's long-term efforts to study the effects of climate change on this habitat, support sustainable fishing practices, and develop local ecotourism projects, says the conservation group.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed on Thursday a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and said Japan would support developing countries committed to halting global warming with a new form of financial aid. (update) Climate change will be high on the agenda at the June 6-8 Group of Eight summit in Germany and Abe has said Japan wants to exert leadership in drafting plans to extend beyond 2012 the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions. The pact is named after Japan's ancient capital where the agreement was signed in 1997. Outlining his "Cool Earth 50" proposals in a speech, Abe said a post-Kyoto framework should include all major emitters such as the United States, China and India. Kyoto's first phase ends in 2012 and negotiations have yet to start in earnest on the pact's next stage. Abe said a post-2012 framework should also take into account the diverse conditions in different countries and be compatible with both economic growth and environmental protection. "There is only one Earth, and there are no national boundaries for the air. "Even the most outstanding strategy would be meaningless unless all people living on Earth participate in it," Abe said. "If the framework required economic growth to be sacrificed, the participation of many countries cannot be expected." Germany has been pushing for G8 members to commit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel said earlier on Thursday that she was unsure whether the G8 summit would produce a breakthrough in the fight against global warming. The United States, which is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and pulled out of the Kyoto pact in 2001, has said it would keep rejecting targets or plans to cap emissions because it fears these steps could hurt economic growth. Japan -- itself one of the world's top emitters of greenhouse gases -- will host next year's Group of Eight summit of wealthy nations and the environment will be a key issue there as well. The long-term target proposed by Japan would not be binding and does not specify a base year against which cuts would be measured, Koji Tsuruoka, director-general for global issues at Japan's foreign ministry, told reporters. "When we talk about 2050 ... we do not have sufficient scientific knowledge to be concrete and precise in identifying a goal," he said. "It is going to be a vision that could be shared as a target that could be accepted ... by all the countries of the world." A centrepiece of Abe's proposal was a pledge to create a new form of financial aid to provide support for developing countries that, as he put it, "say 'No' to further global warming". Other developed countries and international bodies such as the World Bank and United Nations could also take part, Abe said. "Japan's intention is to have developing countries come on board in line with what we are proposing," Tsuruoka said. But he added details had yet to be worked out on how the new aid mechanism would work or how much funding would be available. Abe also launched a campaign to ensure Japan achieves its own target under the Kyoto Protocol of cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by 6 percent in the 2008-2012 period from 1990 levels. Japan's actual emissions were 14 percent above its Kyoto goal as of March 2006. The United States says Kyoto is unworkable because it excludes big developing nations such as India and China from binding targets during the treaty's first phase. In return, India and China demand rich nations, particularly the United States, commit to deep reductions in emissions, arguing that industrialised countries should make the first move. China is the world's second top producer of greenhouse gases.

The urge to merge within both the recording and satellite radio industries this week reflects how tough it is to compete profitably within the evolving digital media market. Struggling satellite radio operators XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. announced a proposed $4.9 billion merger and Warner Music Group Corp this week said it had approached Britain's EMI Group Plc about a possible takeover bid in the latest twist in a seven-year mating saga between the two. The deals are seen as defensive reactions to an increasingly complicated digital entertainment market. "Both these potential deals in the satellite and the record industries reflect rationalization in business models due to changes in the consumption of music and entertainment in general," said Paul-Jon McNealy, analyst with American Technology Research. Both potential corporate pairings face regulatory hurdles, but analysts and lawyers believe regulators may revise views that such combination would throttle competition. "In both cases, they're going to argue that technology has changed the landscape so much that their set of competitors are no longer confined to companies like themselves," said Josh Bernoff, analyst with Forrester Research. "They'll argue their mergers are part of a larger transition." As the record industry struggles to change into an increasingly digitally-based business, satellite radio providers are asserting the explosion of portable music players, Internet-delivered music and cell phone-based content services is hurting their efforts to turn profitable. Indeed, XM and Sirius have said they should be allowed to merge as they now compete with every audio device consumers use, from typical car radios to digital music players. "Over a decade ago, when the first satellite licenses first came out, there were no iPods, there was no HD radio, there were no streaming music on cell phones," XM Chairman Gary Parsons told Reuters in a phone interview. Despite thousands of lawsuits against people who download music illegally, labels like Warner and EMI still bleed millions of dollars in sales to piracy. Eric Garland of Web consultants Big Champagne estimates that more than 1 billion digital tracks are illegally traded each month. Both the satellite radio operators and music companies are suffering as they try to sell their wares against the ultimate competitor: free music and content. "More music is being consumed by the public than ever before, but the trick is monetizing it. The downloading ... is pretty much killing both the satellite and record businesses," said entertainment attorney Fred Goldring. Both XM and Sirius have continued to add subscribers, but their shares have tumbled on investor concerns about slowing growth and the cost of building their services. Neither has turned a profit as they spent lavishly on content such as Sirius' five year, $500 million deal for shock jock Howard Stern. Struggling with a 23 percent drop in global CD sales between 2000 to 2006, the music industry also finds itself slashing costs and scrambling to find a way to survive in an increasingly fragmented, digital marketplace. Bernoff of Forrester believes the regulatory climate could ease this time around for EMI and Warner. "When the whole business is collapsing, the regulatory authorities tend to be more lenient in allowing mergers to happen, such as in the case of the railroads," he said. Goldring said neither industry has found the right business mix for the digital environment. "The promise has always been the great jukebox in the sky," he said, but added, "neither of these industries has yet answered the call of the consumer."

SHANGHAI, Oct 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The United States does not expect to reach an agreement on climate change with China during President Barack Obama's visit to Beijing next month, the country's senior climate change envoy said on Wednesday. "I don't think we are getting any agreement per se," said Todd Stern, US Special Envoy for Climate Change. "I think (Obama) is trying to talk to President Hu, to push towards as much common understanding as we possibly can in order to facilitate an agreement in Copenhagen," Stern told reporters. Negotiators gather in the Danish capital in December to draft a new accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012. Progress in the talks has remained slow, with the United States reluctant to commit itself to a deal that does not oblige developing countries like China to agree to mandatory CO2 reduction targets. Chinese negotiators have also said the industrialised world should bear the bulk of the burden in cutting carbon emissions. The meeting between Obama and President Hu Jintao, leaders of the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, is seen as a crucial component in the efforts to build a consensus around any new global climate pact. Maria Cantwell, a Democratic Senator from Washington State, said in Beijing last month that China and the United States are likely to sign a bilateral agreement during Obama's visit. But Stern said Washington was not trying to cut a separate deal. The two sides are likely to discuss further cooperation next month on issues like carbon capture and storage, but the differences between the two sides will make it difficult to formulate any substantive agreement, analysts said. "There will be lots of kind words and lots of talk but I don't think it will amount to much, not least because we are moving towards Copenhagen and I don't think they want to show their hand yet," said Paul Harris, professor of global and environmental studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. With Copenhagen six weeks away, Stern warned that success was by no means guaranteed. "Copenhagen can be a success," said Stern, "There's a deal to be had, but it doesn't mean we can get it." The Obama administration's attempt to push through its own climate plan before the end of the year is expected to be crucial, analysts suggest. The US Senate Enviroment Committee is holding hearings on a new climate bill this week. The administration has been urging Congress to move forward, and further delays might dent the credibility of the United States during the Copenhagen talks.

Francis, on the fifth day of his first trip abroad since his election in March, went to Rio's Copacabana beach to preside at a "Way of the Cross" service commemorating Jesus' final hours as part of an international jamboree of Catholic youth, known as World Youth Day.Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to see the Argentine pope at the theatrical event on the crescent-shaped beachfront, giving him yet another of the frenzied welcomes that have defined his trip so far.He ordered his open-sided popemobile to stop numerous times along his 1.8-mile (3-km) route so he could kiss babies and shake hands. He got out several times to walk along the route, making his security detail nervous again.In his address, Francis used the analogy of the suffering Jesus to ask the young people to ease the sufferings of the world. He used the theme to address issues ranging from hunger and crime to an oblique reference to the child sex abuse scandal that has roiled the Roman Catholic Church in recent years.Francis spoke of "the silence of the victims of violence, those who can no longer cry out, especially the innocent and the defenceless."He said Jesus was united with families whose children were victims of violence and drug addiction."Jesus is united with every person who suffers from hunger in a world where tons of food are thrown out each day ... with those who are persecuted for their religion, for their beliefs or simply for the colour of their skin," he said.In a reference to the sex abuse scandal, he spoke of "young people who have lost faith in the Church, or even in God because of the counter-witness of Christians and ministers of the gospel."Since his election in March, the pope has taken strong stands in defence of the environment and has several times said that financial speculation and corruption were keeping millions of people in hunger."So many young people who have lost faith in political institutions, because they see in them only selfishness and corruption," Francis said.SUFFERINGLast month, Brazil, Latin America's largest nation, was rocked by massive protests against corruption, the misuse of public money and the high cost of living. Most of the protesters were young."The suffering of Christ is keenly felt here," the pope said, asking the young people to step outside of themselves and not wash their hands of society's many problems like Pontius Pilate washed his hands of Jesus' fate in the gospel.It was the second time in as many days that the pope urged young people to exploit their drive and energy to change things.During a visit to a Rio slum on Thursday, he urged them to not lose trust and not allow their hopes to be extinguished. Many young people in Brazil saw this as his support for peaceful demonstrations to bring about change.At the slum, he issued the first social manifesto of his young pontificate, saying that the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots.The first Latin American pope is clearly relishing the enthusiasm at a time when the Church, which once was an unrivalled religious bastion on the continent, is grappling to hold onto faithful.On Friday, he took on the role of a simple priest and heard confessions of young people. Later, he visited the archbishop's residence, where he again showed his personal touch by lunching with youth and meeting juvenile inmates.After four straight days of rain and unseasonable cold, the sun returned to Rio on Friday and the long evening service that included dramatic re-enactments of Jesus' final hours was held under stars instead of clouds.But the change in the weather came too late. The rain forced organizers to move this weekend's two final gatherings to Copacabana from a pasture on the outskirts of the city because it had become a vast field of mud.The final, climatic event of World Youth Day is Sunday, when Francis presides at a closing Mass before returning to Rome that evening.

ROTHERA BASE, Antarctica, Wed Jan 21,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - US geologists working at an Antarctic base hailed President Barack Obama's inauguration Tuesday and expressed hopes for a stronger focus on science. "It's a very exciting time," David Barbeau, assistant professor of geology at the University of South Carolina, told Reuters after watching the inauguration at the British Rothera research station on the Antarctic Peninsula. "There certainly is a feeling that this administration will have science pretty close to the forefront," he said in the base, by a bay strewn with icebergs with several seals sunning themselves on the ice. And he said he felt inspired by Obama's commitment to doubling the basic research funding over the next 10 years. "It's certainly very hopeful to have someone coming into office ... who is excited about science and supportive of it," said Amanda Savrda, a graduate student in geology at the University of South Carolina working with Barbeau. "It seems to bode well for my future and the future of a lot of people in science," she said. Barbeau and Savrda are trying to work out exactly when the ocean formed between Antarctica and South America millions of years ago. At the Rothera base, other scientists are studying everything from ice sheets to starfish for signs of how they may be affected by climate change. Obama has promised to make the fight against global warming a priority. Former President George W Bush angered many scientists and foreign governments by deciding against adopting the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, the main UN plan for fighting climate change. All other industrialized nations back Kyoto.

Temperatures and humidity are likely to continue to rise throughout this century, causing glaciers to retreat and desertification to spread, according to the report published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research."Over the past 50 years, the rate of temperature rise has been double the average global level," it said, according to the report on the website of Science and Technology Daily, a state-run newspaper.Glacier retreat could disrupt water supply to several of Asia's main rivers that originate from the plateau, including China's Yellow and Yangtze, India's Brahmaputra, and the Mekong and Salween in Southeast Asia.In May, Chinese scientists said Tibetan glaciers had shrunk 15 percent - around 8,000 square km (3,100 square miles) - over the past 30 years.The new report said a combination of climate change and human activity on the plateau was likely to cause an increase in floods and landslides there. However, rising temperatures had also improved the local ecosystem, it said.The scientists urged the government to work to reduce human impact on the region's fragile environment.But Beijing is building a series of large hydropower projects there, with construction of several mega-dams expected to start by 2020. China has built thousands of dams in the past few decades in a bid to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels.India, too, is planning a number of hydro plants along the Brahmaputra river - more than 100 proposals are under consideration - as the country strives to boost electricity generation.

A senior Dutch official on Sunday expressed worry that controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has put the bank into a crisis situation that needs to be resolved quickly. "It has become clear to us ... that there is also a lack of trust at the moment in the leadership and in the management, so that is something that has to be resolved," Dutch Development Minister Bert Koenders said in an interview with Reuters, adding that he felt "grave concern" about the situation. "A bank without a motivated staff cannot work on poverty eradication," he said. Koenders spoke shortly after the IMF-World Bank Development Committee issued a communique similarly expressing worry that Wolfowitz's handling of a girlfriend's promotion and pay raises put the bank's credibility and reputation at risk. The Dutch minister took some credit for ensuring the communique dealt with the Wolfowitz situation and described it as "a pretty strong statement" that development ministers want the bank's board to decide quickly how to resolve the matter. The Dutch government is among the top donors for global development projects and was instrumental in promoting an agreement to cancel the debt of poorer countries last year, so its voice carries weight in decisions on how and where to direct aid money. "These larger issues that we just mentioned -- the credibility, reputation and motivation of the staff -- have to be looked into very seriously in coming days from the perspective that the bank has to adhere to the highest standards," Koenders said. He declined to say specifically that Wolfowitz should quit, but added: "I don't want to hide the fact that I have doubts about his functioning." Koenders said that it was essential that all the facts of the case are gathered quickly so that the board can move toward a speedy resolution. "I see this as a substantial crisis for the institution," he said. Koenders said the Dutch government considers the World Bank "one of the most crucial development institutions," with a key role to play on a wide range of substantial issues -- from coping with climate change to promoting poverty reduction and finding a way to help Africa achieve greater prosperity. "If the situation at the bank is as it is right now, it's very difficult to carry out these functions satisfactorily. So, we need urgently for the board to take stock. They have to, in the end, see whether Mr Wolfowitz can continue or not," Koenders said. "I think it's very important that this bank has a clear sense of direction and it's lacking at the moment ... I find it very serious that Mr. Wolfowitz has not been able to create sufficient support within his own staff." Koenders said Dutch uneasiness about Wolfowitz's leadership had nothing to do with his past as a former Bush administration official associated with the Iraq war. "This has nothing to do with anything even related to the United States," he said. "It has to do with standards at the bank, it has to do with credibility and reputation and it has nothing to do with nationality or country." "It's a concern we have about the future of the institution," he added.

President Barack Obama's top aides promised on Wednesday "robust" negotiations towards a global climate change deal this month, but firmly stated the United States does not owe the world "reparations" for centuries of carbon pollution. They also warned that China, with its booming economy, would not be a recipient of any US aid, even though the Asian heavyweight is considered a developing country under U.N. rules. But Yu Qingtai, China's climate change ambassador, told reporters that "China has never sought to become the first candidate of financial support," despite its emphasis on the need for developed country financial aid. That emphasis, he said, was to "safeguard the basic principles" agreed in previous United Nations climate deals. Three of Obama's Cabinet secretaries and his lead climate negotiator arrived in Copenhagen for the talks that began on Monday and are scheduled to continue through December 18. "We are seeking robust engagement with all of our partners around the world," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said at a news conference. Speaking just days after her agency announced it intends for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, Jackson declared: "We are seeking to prevent the rapid approach of climate change." Todd Stern, Obama's special envoy for climate change, assured reporters that the United States will contribute to a rich-country fund aimed at helping developing nations deal with climate change problems. Stern warned, however, that China, with its booming economy and large reserves of U.S. dollars, would not be a recipient of financial aid from Washington. "I don't envision public funds, certainly not from the United States, going to China," he said, adding that the government would direct public money to the poorest countries. "We don't think China would be a first candidate." And he said countries that did get US cash should not see it as a sign that the world's largest economy be blamed for its growth in an era when carbon dioxide was not recognised as a threat to the planet. "We absolutely recognise our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere, up there, but the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that," Stern said in response to a reporter's question. There have been discussions of a $10 billion (6 billion pounds) annual fund for the next few years, which would be a downpayment towards what in the long-run could grow to hundreds of billions of dollars of financial and other support each year. US Senator John Kerry has asked the Obama administration to contribute $3 billion next year. The financing plan is a key part of the ongoing talks. Another high-ranking Obama administration official, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar toured an off-shore Danish wind mill. Saying climate change solutions were put on a back-burner for the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, Salazar told reporters: "I think the world has hope and optimism that we in the US will be able to get our act together on energy and a climate change bill that will be one for the world." The economic recession in the United States that has pushed unemployment above 10 percent has dampened enthusiasm for climate change legislation, which could raise consumer prices as industries are gradually forced to switch from fossil fuels like coal and oil to more expensive alternative energy sources. But Obama administration officials hope that in coming months Congress will be able to finish work on a bill that would be more comprehensive than EPA regulations. Recently, the recession has cut US gas emissions, putting the country on track to reach Obama's short-term emissions goals, but cutting pollution further will take more effort as the economy recovers. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also is in Copenhagen and will be joined later by other administration officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Obama will arrive here towards the end of the talks, when deal-making typically peaks. Over the past two days, Chinese officials attending the Copenhagen meeting have been highly critical of the U.S. offer to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. China's top climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, told Reuters he hoped Obama can offer a tougher target in Copenhagen. But that could be difficult for the US president because Congress so far has failed to embrace any specific goals. Stern countered that the "core part of this negotiation is significant action by the major developing countries, there's no question." While he said China and other major developing countries had taken steps towards controlling carbon emissions, they needed to offer firm, transparent plans in negotiations.

It was also the hottest September on record for Europe. Northern Siberia, western Australia, the Middle East and parts of South America similarly recorded above-average temperatures. The announcement, by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, an intergovernmental agency supported by the European Union, comes after nine months of devastating wildfires and during the most active Atlantic hurricane season since 2005. It also came as Arctic sea ice plunged to its second-lowest levels on record, driven by record temperatures in late June. Many experts predict that by 2050, Arctic sea ice could melt completely during the summer. According to Copernicus, last month was 0.63 degrees Celsius warmer than average and topped the average for September 2019 by 0.05 degrees Celsius. The agency’s satellite observations date to 1979, and averages are calculated using data spanning 1981 through 2010. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also publishes monthly assessments of global temperature data, which are generally issued about a week after the Copernicus measurements. The two organisations calculate averages differently, but the results are generally similar. NOAA relies on surface temperature measurements from land stations, ships and buoys. Copernicus relies heavily on computer modelling. “Even though the details of the report are different, they all come to the same conclusion that the global temperatures are increasing,” said Ahira Sánchez-Lugo, a physical scientist for NOAA’s National Centres for Environmental Information. According to NOAA’s predictions, this year is 99.9% certain to be one of the top five hottest years on record. Whether that prediction holds true will partly rely on the impact of La Niña, which NOAA scientists declared last month. La Niña is the opposite phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the globe. Its strongest influence is usually felt in winter. And while the precise effects are unpredictable, La Niña can result in warmer and drier conditions across the southern United States and cooler conditions in southeastern Alaska, the Northern Plains and western and central Canada. © 2020 New York Times News Service

Malpass told a virtual event hosted by the Washington Post newspaper the sanctions would have a bigger impact on global economic output than the war itself. He said he expected a robust response by producers around the world to increase supplies as needed, and saw no need for people to have extra stockpiles in their kitchens or restaurants.

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

A U.S. Senate vote this week rejected an effort to put climate-change legislation on a fast track, making it harder for Congress to put limits on greenhouse gas emissions this year. Democratic leaders and the Obama administration had floated the idea of using the federal budget to move cap-and-trade legislation through Congress. Making the plan part of the budget would enable it to pass with a simple majority. But the Senate on Wednesday voted 67-to-31 in favor of a measure blocking lawmakers from attaching a cap-and-trade bill to the federal budget. Democrats now will need 60 votes in the Senate to end a potential filibuster of any bill to create a system limiting greenhouse gas emissions and requiring industry to buy permits to release gasses blamed for global warming. John McMackin, a director of a glass container company and part of a lobby for energy-intensive firms, said this vote shows there are still a large number of moderate Democrats from heavy manufacturing states that are skeptical of climate change legislation. "Until they are satisfied that their industrial base can be protected, they are not going to make it easy for this bill to move," McMackin said. Lawmakers from both parties pushed back against using the budget for bills aimed at setting a price on carbon. "Climate change legislation could have a profound impact on every family and every sector of our economy, and now it will be possible to have the full and open debate this issue deserves," Republican Senator Mike Johanns said in a statement. It is possible Democrats could still pursue the budget reconciliation method for climate change bills, but chances are slim because they do not have enough Senate support. Franz Matzner, acting legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he did not view Wednesday's vote as a setback to climate-change legislation. "That's just one of many paths forward and all those paths are going to be pursued to get to the solution that the country urgently needs," Matzner said. President Barack Obama has called on Congress to set up a system addressing global warming this year. A delay in Congress could mean the Obama administration will not be able to show any significant U.S. progress on climate change before a U.N. climate deal is expected to be reached in December in Copenhagen.

Australia's two major parties wooed independent lawmakers on Sunday after an inconclusive election left the nation facing its first hung parliament since 1940 and set up financial markets for a sell-off. The Australian dollar and shares were likely to fall when trading resumes on Monday, analysts said, with the vote count threatening to drag on for days and both the ruling Labor party and opposition seemingly unable to win a majority. "The uncertainty is going to be a real killer to the financial markets," said economist Craig James of Commsec, suggesting the Australian dollar could fall a cent or more. With 78 percent of votes counted, a hung parliament was most likely, with two possible scenarios for a minority government: a conservative administration backed by rural independents or a Labor government backed by Green or green-minded MPs. The latter scenario is frightening for many investors, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard indicating on Sunday after early talks with independent and Green MPs that she was open to discussing the policies of this disparate group of lawmakers. "It's my intention to negotiate in good faith an effective agreement to form government," said Gillard, adding her Labor party was better placed to deliver stable government and noting that Labor had won more votes than the conservatives. Conservative leader Tony Abbott also met some crossbench MPs on Sunday. "I have spoken briefly to each of the three incumbent independents. I don't want to pre-empt the discussions that I expect will be held over the next few days," Abbott said. "I intend to be very pragmatic, but within the broad policy parameters we discussed during the election," Abbott told reporters in Sydney. The independent and Green lawmakers who have emerged from the election stand for everything from higher income and company taxes, in the case of the Greens, to more open government and fewer banana imports, in the case of two independents. The Greens party, which is also set to win the balance of power of the Senate, will certainly push for action on climate change, with Labor postponing its carbon emissions trading scheme until 2012 and the conservatives opposing a carbon price. "The minimum for climate change is to take action, to get something under way," said Greens leader Senator Bob Brown. Brown has earlier suggested an interim, fixed A$20 ($17.8) a tonne carbon price ahead of a full-blown emissions trading scheme. Treasurer Wayne Swan sought to reassure markets that the caretaker Labor administration could provide stability until a new government is formed. "The investment and broader community can be assured that Australia's economy is among the strongest in the world, with a stable financial system and world class regulators who have served both sides of politics very effectively," he said. MARKET BRACED FOR SELL-OFF Investors would prefer a minority conservative administration over a Labor-Green arrangement, UBS chief strategist David Cassidy said, noting that conservative leader Abbott had pledged to scrap Labor's proposed 30 percent mining tax. The tax on major iron ore and coal-mining operations has weighed on mining stocks such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and the Australian dollar. "Clearly the market won't like the uncertainty," UBS's Cassidy said, predicting moderate selling. "Markets would be uncomfortable with a Labor government with Green assistance." Greens leader Brown met Gillard, who ousted former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a party coup in June, for preliminary talks on Sunday, though Brown said later that no agreements were reached, no policies discussed and no demands made. He said he was now ready to meet Abbott: "We have repeatedly shown we are very responsible in working with the bigger parties to get good outcomes in positions of balance of power." Election analysts said both Gillard's Labor party and the opposition conservatives were likely to fall short of enough seats to form a government alone, forcing them to rely on four independents and a Green MP to take power. One Green-minded and center-left independent candidate, Andrew Wilkie, who has a chance to win a lower house seat, said on Sunday he already had taken a call from Gillard but declined to be drawn on which major party he would support. "I am open-minded," Wilkie told ABC radio, adding he would back the party that could ensure stable and "ethical" government. Another independent, Bob Katter, a stetson-wearing maverick from the outback, said he would support the party he felt would do more for rural communities and ensure their right "to go fishing and camping and hunting and shooting." Independent Tony Windsor said he would be "happy to talk to anybody" when the final results were in, local media reported. Some of the independents have protectionist views and are outspoken about Chinese investment in Australian resources.

She had never spent much money or time on beauty treatments; she had had few facials, and shopping at Sephora was rare. But when Dr Lara Devgan, a plastic surgeon in New York, reopened her office last month, Aubry went in for a consultation and got treated the same day. That office visit was one of the few outings she had taken since March. Aubry, 40, could pinpoint her unease: “Hearing the sirens from my apartment. Being constantly terrified of getting sick. Having my kids home, compromising my ability to run my company. Seeing what the pandemic has done to the economy. All of it made me stressed, and I started noticing that I was aging rapidly.” Throughout the lockdown, waitlists for nonessential, noninvasive skin-care appointments — those laser procedures, fillers and Botox injections — grew. Dr Ben Talei, a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, reported that he and his colleagues are seeing people who are clamouring for care now, especially for anything that has healing time. “They want to do it now while it’s not interfering with their work and social lives,” Talei said. A surge of catch-up appointments was probably predictable. But what will the aesthetic world look like after an initial surge? Will more of us have a list of things we’d like to fix after becoming better acquainted with our features over innumerable virtual meetings? Or, after a long break from a doctor’s office and a reliance on at-home skin care, will we realise that we don’t need medical intervention after all? Then there’s the most important consideration of all: How do we do any of this safely? The pandemic will change how we look. With masks covering most of our faces, we’ll likely turn our attention to our eyes, doctors say. Devgan expects more requests for under-eye filler, Botox brow lifts and eyelid surgery. “I also think that as we cover our faces, we’ll reveal more of our bodies,” she said. “That will create an emphasis on the aesthetics of the torso, buttocks and legs.” As practices reopen, doctors are indeed seeing an increase in requests for body treatments. Typically, summer would be a slow time for surgeries as people plan for beach vacations spent in revealing clothing. But these days, said Dr Sachin Shridharani, a plastic surgeon in New York, “because the pandemic has limited travel, they’re doing these procedures now.” According to the Aesthetic Society, a professional organisation and advocacy group for board-certified plastic surgeons that gathers data from plastic surgery practices nationwide, liposuction and tummy tucks made up 31% of total procedures in June, up from 26% in June 2019. Breast procedures were up 4.3% over last June. “In my own practice, if you take into account the time that we were closed, breast augmentations and breast lifts are up significantly when compared to last year,” said Dr Herluf Lund, a plastic surgeon in St Louis and the president of the Aesthetic Society. Nonsurgical body treatments, particularly injectables, are in demand as well. “We’re seeing a lot of interest in what can be done with a syringe instead of a scalpel,” Shridharani said. Injectables, typically approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the face, can be effective at tackling body concerns. For instance, Shridharani treats patients with Kybella, an acid that is injected to dissolve a double chin, to melt fat in the abdomen, arms and thighs. He also has been injecting small amounts of diluted Sculptra, a product that stimulates the body to produce more collagen, into arms and thighs to help smooth crepey skin. (Shridharani is compensated financially for work with the companies that manufacture Kybella and Sculptra.) What may be on the wane are the excessive fillers and Botox that we’ve grown used to seeing on celebrities and influencers. Steven Pearlman, a plastic surgeon in New York, said that he expects the baby-smooth, motionless foreheads and overfilled lips and cheeks — already diminishing in popularity — to retreat even more rapidly now. “People have seen their faces relax into something more natural during the lockdowns,” Pearlman said. “And because of all that’s going on in society, too, they are going to realise it’s not important to have that extreme look.” Social media habits will change, too. It’s tough to say whether or not we’ll be sharing (or oversharing) scenes from our Botox appointments on Instagram. In a climate of coronavirus concerns, economic suffering and mounting national unrest, posting one’s very expensive cosmetic procedures on social media could, and arguably should, invite criticism. At the end of May and the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests, aesthetic doctors noticeably paused their streams of striking before-and-after shots. “We wanted to be sensitive, of course,” Pearlman said. “Everyone was considering, ‘What is the right thing to post at this moment, and should we be posting at all?’” On the other hand, social media has been an essential mode of connection during monthslong lockdowns. People have grown comfortable sharing life’s details with their followers. Perhaps we will land in a middle ground where instead of posting about procedures on their own social media feeds, more patients will allow their doctors to share their procedure photos. “I wouldn’t have given my permission to post before going through this experience,” Aubry said. “But I wanted other women who were feeling as I did to know that there are options, and they shouldn’t have any shame in pursuing them.” But is it safe to have aesthetic procedures right now? In medicine, everything is about risk-benefit,” said Dr Adolf Karchmer, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Some people feel they need these procedures for psychological or even professional benefit.” The risk of getting the coronavirus when out in the world will never be zero, but offices should enact safety protocols to reduce the risk to a negligible level, he said. Karchmer served on a task force that developed Project AesCert, safety guidelines for reopening. For patients, there are a few main lessons. First, safety begins before you arrive at the office. Practices will be screening patients based on presence of symptoms, potential exposures and preexisting conditions. Some practices may turn away individuals at high risk for COVID-19. “The first thing the patient should be asking is, ‘What is this practice saying about their safety protocols,’” Lund said. “When you call, can they describe without hesitation what they’re doing? Is it on their website?” When you arrive, you’ll have your temperature taken. Paperwork will have been handled online before your appointment. Everyone should be in masks. The doctor will have on personal protective equipment, likely an N95 mask, face shield, gown and gloves. Doctors are in agreement that many consultations and follow-ups will by default be done virtually to keep traffic in office to a minimum. “Because of the risk of coronavirus exposure, the stakes are higher than ever for aesthetics,” Devgan said. Medical resources are still not optimal, she said, making it a bad time to have a complication from a procedure. c.2020 The New York Times Company

One hundred passengers and crew escaped unhurt after their cruise ship hit ice in the Antarctic and started sinking on Friday, the ship's owner and coast guard officials said. A Norwegian passenger boat in the area safely picked up all the occupants of the MS Explorer from the lifeboats they used to flee the ship when it ran into problems off King George Island in Antarctica at 0524 GMT, the Explorer's owners said. "All are aboard my vessel," Captain Arnvid Hansen of the Norwegian ship the Nordnorge told Britain's BBC Television. "There are no afraid passengers or anything like that." The passengers were being taken to Chile's Eduardo Frei base in the Antarctic from where they would later be flown to Punta Arenas in southern Chile, a Chilean navy commander told local television. The stricken vessel, owned by Canadian travel company Gap Adventures, had set sail from the southern Argentine port of Ushuaia last week and was heading south toward the barren, icy continent, officials said. "Apparently they crashed into an iceberg," Pedro Tuhay, of the Argentine coast guard, told local radio as operations continued to save the vessel. "The boat's got a 23-degree list, but it's keeping steady very well." Pictures on local television showed the vessel listing severely amid dark gray waters. Gap Adventures spokeswoman Susan Hayes told CNN the vessel's evacuation was "very calm" and the passengers were never in danger. The vessel "didn't hit an iceberg, it hit some ice ... There are ice flows, but it didn't hit a huge iceberg," Hayes said. CLIMATE CHANGE Gap Adventures said in a statement a total of 100 passengers and crew were on board the ship. Earlier reports had put the number at 154, but a spokesman said that was the ship's maximum capacity. It said the passengers included Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, Dutch, Japanese, Argentines and other nationalities, and that the families of those on board were being contacted. The ship, built in 1969, was carrying 85 passengers and 15 crew on the luxury cruise, the spokesman said. The Explorer usually makes two-week cruises around the Antarctic, costing some 4,000 pounds ($8,000) per cabin. Smaller than most cruise ships, it is able to enter narrower bays off the continent and scientists are on board to brief passengers on the region's geology and climate change, the spokesman added. King George Island lies about 700 miles (1,127 km) south of Cape Horn, the tip of South America, and is the largest of the South Shetland islands. Cruise trip travel has grown in Antarctica in recent years and Tuhay said 52 cruises were expected at the southern port of Ushuaia during this year's peak season from October to April.

The study of 15,500 breeding pairs of black-browed albatrosses on New Island in the Falklands used data spanning 15 years. The researchers, led by Francesco Ventura of the University of Lisbon, found that the divorce rate among the birds, which averaged 3.7% over that period, increased in years in which the ocean was warmest. In 2017, it rose to 7.7%. Albatross divorce is typically very rare. The most common trigger for permanent separation is an inability to successfully fledge a chick, the report noted. In the years that the sea was unusually warm, the albatrosses were more likely both to struggle with fertility and to divorce — the technical term used by the researchers — foreshadowing a worrisome trend for seabird populations in general as temperatures rise globally. “Increasing sea surface temperature led to an increase in divorce,” Ventura, a conservation biologist, said in an interview. But even after the models factored in higher breeding failure in warmer years, that by itself did not explain the rise in divorce rates, the researchers found. “We see there is still something that is left unexplained,” Ventura said. The large sea birds are found across the Southern Hemisphere, in countries like New Zealand, and off the coast of Argentina. They are known for their expansive travels, wingspan of up to 11 feet and long lives. They can survive for decades. The black-browed albatrosses take their name from the swooping, sooty brows that give them an expression of perennial irritation. Albatrosses in partnerships spend most of the year apart, reuniting each season to raise chicks together. The male typically arrives first on land, where he waits for his partner and tends to their nest. “It’s pretty obvious they love each other,” said Graeme Elliott, an albatross expert at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation who was not involved in the New Island study. “After you’ve been watching albatrosses for 30, 40 years, you can kind of spot it. They do all this stuff that we think’s important — human emotion stuff, you know — greeting the long-lost mate, and they love each other, and they’re going to have a baby. It’s wonderful.” The birds usually return to the same partner each breeding season. The pairs perform a dance of reunion that becomes more synchronised over the years. “They increase the quality of the performance with the years — first a bit awkward, and then, as time goes by, they get better and better and better,” Ventura said. The stress of warmer seas appears to disrupt that delicate balance, especially if the birds arrive for the breeding season late or in poorer health after having flown farther to find food. “We expect cooler waters to be associated with more nutrient-rich and more resource-rich conditions, whereas warmer waters are resource-poor conditions,” Ventura said. Some albatrosses in the population studied ended successful unions and recoupled with a different albatross, the researchers found. (Females, who have an easier time finding a new mate, tend to be the instigators of permanent separations.) “After a difficult resource-poor breeding season, the greater effort and higher breeding investment can lead stressed females to disrupt the bond with their previous mate and look for a new one, even if previously successful,” the researchers wrote. Elliott, the New Zealand albatross expert, said the study’s finding “doesn’t surprise me that much.” Researchers have noticed demographic changes among birds elsewhere as fish populations have declined, he said. The number of albatrosses on the remote Antipodes Islands, about 530 miles south of New Zealand, has declined by two-thirds over the past 15 years, according to the New Zealand Department of Conservation. Climate change is a factor: Female birds have travelled well off course in search of harder-to-find food, drawing them into deadly contact with fishing boats and leading to significant population imbalance, Elliott said. That has prompted desperate decision-making by male albatrosses who find themselves single, he said. Male-male pairs now make up 2% to 5% of the bird population on the island, echoing a pattern of same-sex mating behaviour across many species. The behaviour, with its lack of a clear evolutionary advantage, generally continues to stump researchers. “We’ve got 1 1/2 to 2 times as many males as females on the island now,” Elliott said. “We’ve been getting these male-male pairs forming — the males can’t find mates, and after a while, they decide other males are better than nothing at all.”   ©2021 The New York Times Company

The leaders of Japan and China vowed on Wednesday to deepen trust and cooperate on issues from climate change to regional security, and said they were on track to resolve a feud over energy rights in the East China Sea. Friction over history, undersea gas reserves, military plans, international influence and consumer safety has divided the neighbors, and mutual public distrust runs deep. The summit between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is meant to ease the feuding and build on a recent warming in often chilly ties, settling on a blueprint for relations between Asia's two economic giants. "We both believe relations between China and Japan are at a new starting point," Hu told a joint news conference with Fukuda. The two leaders also said they had made progress to resolve a dispute over rights to gas beneath the East China Sea. "There are already prospects for resolving this issue," Hu said, adding the two sides would continue consultation and seek a solution as soon as possible. The 71-year-old Fukuda, long a proponent of warmer ties with Japan's Asian neighbors, said good two-way ties were vital for the region and the world. "Japan and China both need to create a good future for Asia and the world together by recognizing their responsibility in the international community and by constantly deepening mutual understanding and mutual trust, and expanding mutual cooperation," Fukuda told the news conference. The two leaders signed a joint document on future relations between the two Asian economic giants, agreeing that "cooperation for peace and friendship is the only option for Japan and China". Sino-Japanese ties chilled during Junichiro Koizumi's 2001-2006 term as Japan's prime minister over his visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine, seen by critics as an offensive symbol of wartime misdeeds, but improved after Koizumi stepped down.

STRASBOURG, France, Wed Nov 19,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Honey bees, whose numbers are falling, must be given flowery 'recovery zones' in Europe's farmlands to aid their survival, a leading EU lawmaker said Wednesday. Bees pollinate numerous crops and scientists have expressed alarm over their mysterious and rapid decline. Experts have warned that a drop in the bee population could harm agriculture. "If we continue to neglect the global bee population, then this will have a dramatic effect on our already strained world food supplies," said Neil Parish, who chairs the European Parliament's agriculture committee. Parish, a British conservative, said vast swathes of single crops such as wheat often made it difficult for bees to find enough nectar. But he said farmers could help bees by planting patches of bee-friendly flowers -- including daisies, borage and lavender. "We're talking about less than one percent of the land for bee-friendly crops -- in corners where farmers can't get to with their machinery, round trees and under hedges." Genetically modified crops, climate change, pesticides and modern farming techniques have all been blamed for making bees vulnerable to parasites, viruses and other diseases. More research is needed to pin down the exact cause of the declining number of bees, the European Parliament is expected to recommend in its vote Wednesday evening. "The experts themselves are mystified," said Parish. "A failure to act now could have catastrophic consequences." The EU parliament's vote will carry no legal weight but is intended to nudge the European Commission and EU member states to take the matter seriously.

These are the main challenges facing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was sworn in for a second term on Friday after the election victory of his Congress party-led coalition. ECONOMY * Faced with India's highest fiscal deficit since the early 1990s, Singh will have to decide how much to prioritise reforms such as labour laws and privatisations over pressure to spend more on social programmes that helped Congress win the election. * The new government must lift growth in Asia's third-largest economy amid a global slump and contracting domestic demand. Growth could be as low as 6 percent this year compared with nearly double digits in earlier years. Economists believe the economy may now have bottomed, with a return to vigorous likely towards the end of this year. * A stimulus through higher government spending will increase already-heavy borrowing, which is also crowding out private investment needed to expand factory capacities. * India's consolidated fiscal deficit is estimated at 9 percent of gross domestic product for 2009/10, and fresh stimulus measures would mean widening the deficit and higher borrowing. * Another key challenge for the new government and the central bank would be to urge commercial banks to reduce their lending and deposit rates. * Industry bodies are demanding cuts in corporate and individual income tax rates, and extension of tax breaks for infrastructure sectors. But there is little fiscal space for the new government to cut tax rates this year. REFORMS * Singh faces pressure to progress on a host of reforms, after years of being blocked by his communists allies during the last government. * Some reforms that had been blocked by the left will be relatively easy, such as opening up the pension and insurance sector to help access to credit across the economy. * The government could also move quickly to open up foreign investment in infrastructure projects and the defence sector. * Other reforms, such as allowing foreign investment in the the retail sector, could face more opposition from within the Congress party, mindful of the millions of small shopkeepers who could lose their jobs. * Laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers, long a demand of large corporations, could be put on the backburner due to a possible backlash from voters in the middle of an economic downturn. * Foreign investors may have opportunities in the auto, chemicals and white goods sectors. PAKISTAN * Remains New Delhi's biggest foreign policy challenge after the Mumbai attacks. The relationship between South Asia's nuclear powers is dogged by mutual suspicion and the fate of Kashmir. * India wants Pakistan to do more to crack down on militants operating on its soil, who have in the past crossed the border and launched attacks on Indian cities. New Delhi accuses its neighbour of egging on militants to destabilise India. * India may face pressure from the United States to resume a stalled peace process and start talks about Kashmir, as President Barack Obama needs Pakistan's focus to be on fighting a powerful insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan. DOHA TRADE TALKS * India must somehow negotiate a favourable deal at the Doha world trade talks. Rich countries have tried to lean on India to agree to open its markets more but India worries hundreds of millions of poor farmers will be hit. Years of negotiations on a deal ran into a brick wall as the United States and large developing countries, especially India, failed to agree on tariff cuts and subsidies. CLIMATE CHANGE * India, the world's fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, may face international pressure to impose legally binding cuts at the next climate change talks in Copenhagen. * New Delhi has so far refused to play ball, saying priority must go to economic growth and pointing out that it lags well behind rich countries on per-capita emissions. * India, however, is likely to be one of the biggest casualties of climate change that could dry up its rivers, affect the crucial monsoon rains and wipe out forests and glaciers.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders are urging President George W Bush and Congress to take action against global warming, declaring that the changing climate is a "moral and spiritual issue." In an open letter to be published on Tuesday, more than 20 religious groups urged US leaders to limit greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy sources. "Global warming is real, it is human-induced and we have the responsibility to act," says the letter, which will run in Roll Call and the Politico, two Capitol Hill newspapers. "We are mobilising a religious force that will persuade our legislators to take immediate action to curb greenhouse gases," it says. The letter is signed by top officials of the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America and the political arm of the Reform branch of Judaism. Top officials from several mainline Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church and Alliance of Baptists also signed the letter, along with leaders of regional organizations and individual churches. Rev Joel Hunter, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, also signed the letter, though that group has not officially taken a stance on global warming due to opposition from some of its more conservative members.

Google Inc is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more. "We've been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on," the company's green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy within a few years. The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance. Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four." "Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money." That works out to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour. Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions. "We're not there yet," he said. "I'm very hopeful we will have mirrors that are cheaper than what companies in the space are using..." Another technology that Google is working on is gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas, an idea that has the potential of further cutting the cost of electricity, Weihl said. "In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range," Weihl said. Google is invested in two solar thermal companies, eSolar and BrightSolar but is not working with these companies in developing the cheaper mirrors or turbines. In wide-ranging remarks, Weihl also said the United States needs to raise government-backed research significantly, particularly in the very initial stages to encourage breakthrough ideas in the sector. The company has pushed ahead in addressing climate change issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm. Weihl said there is a lack of companies that have ideas that would be considered breakthroughs in the green technology sector. After announcing its plans to create renewable energy at a price lower than power from coal, it has invested less than $50 million in other companies. Weihl said Google had not intended to invest much more in early years, but that there was little to buy. "I would say it's reasonable to be a little bit discouraged there and from my point of view, it's not right to be seriously discouraged," he said. "There isn't enough investment going into the early stages of investment pipeline before the venture funds come into the play." The US government needs to provide more funds to develop ideas at the laboratory stage, he said. "I'd like to see $20 billion or $30 billion for 10 yrs (for the sector)," Weihl said. "That would be fabulous. It's pretty clear what we have seen isn't enough."

Delegates from about 190 nations will meet in Bali, Indonesia, from Dec. 3-14 aiming to launch negotiations on a new UN pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Here are some frequently asked questions about Kyoto: * WHAT IS THE KYOTO PROTOCOL? -- It is a pact agreed by governments at a 1997 UN conference in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries to at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. A total of 174 nations have ratified the pact. * IS IT THE FIRST AGREEMENT OF ITS KIND? -- Governments agreed to tackle climate change at an "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 with non-binding targets. Kyoto is the follow-up. * SO IT IS LEGALLY BINDING? -- Kyoto has legal force from Feb. 16, 2005. It represents 61.6 percent of developed nations' total emissions. The United States, the world's biggest source of emissions, came out against the pact in 2001, reckoning it would be too expensive and wrongly omits developing nations from a first round of targets to 2012. * HOW WILL IT BE ENFORCED? -- Countries overshooting their targets in 2012 will have to make both the promised cuts and 30 percent more in a second period from 2013. * DO ALL COUNTRIES HAVE TO CUT EMISSIONS BY 5 PERCENT? -- No, only 36 relatively developed countries have agreed to targets for 2008-12 under a principle that richer countries are most to blame. They range from an 8 percent cut for the European Union from 1990 levels to a 10 percent rise for Iceland. * WHAT ARE 'GREENHOUSE GASES?' -- Greenhouse gases trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. The main culprit from human activities is carbon dioxide, produced largely from burning fossil fuel. The protocol also covers methane, much of which comes from agriculture, and nitrous oxide, mostly from fertiliser use. Three industrial gases are also included. * HOW WILL COUNTRIES COMPLY? -- The European Union set up a market in January 2005 under which about 12,000 factories and power stations are given carbon dioxide quotas. If they overshoot they can buy extra allowances in the market or pay a financial penalty; if they undershoot they can sell them. * WHAT OTHER MECHANISMS ARE THERE? -- Developed countries can earn credits to offset against their targets by funding clean technologies, such as solar power, in poorer countries. They can also have joint investments in former Soviet bloc nations. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

The reason is that Zall’s decades of service to science were done in the secretive warrens of the CIA. Now, at 70, she’s telling her story — at least the parts she is allowed to talk about — and admirers are praising her highly classified struggle to put the nation’s spy satellites onto a radical new job: environmental sleuthing. “It was fun,” she said of her CIA career. “It was really a lot of fun.” Zall’s programme, established in 1992, was a kind of wayback machine that looked to as long ago as 1960. In so doing, it provided a new baseline for assessing the pace and scope of planetary change. Ultimately, it led to hundreds of papers, studies and reports — some classified top secret, some public, some by the National Academy of Sciences, the premier scientific advisory group to the federal government. The accumulated riches included up to six decades of prime data on planetary shifts in snowfall and blizzards, sea ice and glaciers. “None of this would have happened without her,” said Jeffrey K Harris, who worked with Zall as director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs the nation’s fleet of orbital spies. “You have to decide if you’re going to break down the wall or climb over it, and she did a little bit of both.” Some of her biggest fans are surviving members of her team of 70 elite scientists whom Zall recruited to sift through and analyze mountains of images from a secret archive. The storehouse was accumulated mainly as a byproduct of Washington’s spying on adversaries from space as a means of distinguishing threats and propaganda from deadly capabilities. “She was an amazing leader,” said Michael B McElroy, a planetary physicist and professor of environmental studies at Harvard. “She had energy and enthusiasm and a wonderful ability to communicate with people” — as well as the tact to handle large egos. “Having this woman from the CIA telling them what to do wasn’t easy. It was amazing to watch her.” The top-secret images that Zall succeeded in repurposing for environmental inquiries came from satellites that were some of Washington’s crown jewels. The spy satellites would zero in on such targets as deadly weapons and render images that in some cases were said to be good enough to show a car’s license plate. The first reconnaissance satellite, known as Corona, was launched in 1960. Federal experts have put the overall cost of its hundreds of successors at more than $50 billion. An accident of fate let the fleet assess a top environmental concern — the extent to which vast expanses of Arctic and Antarctic ice were retreating. Many spy satellites orbit on north-south paths that pass close to the poles so that, as the planet turns, the vast majority of Earth’s surface passes beneath their sensors over the course of 24 hours. Thus, their many paths converge near the poles. Spies had little use for sweeping Arctic and Antarctic images. But they dazzled environmentalists because the Earth’s poles were fast becoming hot spots of global warming and melting ice. “It gave us the first real measurements of the ice budget — how much loss you have from season to season,” said D James Baker, who directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 1993 to 2001 and served on Zall’s CIA advisory panel. In normal science, where collaborators share credit, Zall might have been listed on papers as a co-author or even a lead author. But not in a twilight zone where science was part open, part secret. For decades, hers was a hidden hand. Zall’s environmentalism for the CIA began in 1990 when Vice President Al Gore, then a Democratic senator from Tennessee and now a leading climate-change activist, wrote a letter asking the agency to examine whether the nation’s spy fleet might address environmental riddles. The agency put Zall onto the question. Quickly, she saw how the nation’s archive of surveillance observations could also serve to strengthen assessments of Earth’s changing environment. “I worked night and day,” Zall recalled. “I was fascinated.” The secret information, she added, boded well “for all the things I loved.” The oldest of three children, Linda Susan Zall grew up in North Hornell, New York, a village nestled in rolling farmland near the Finger Lakes. Her childhood was spent outdoors raking leaves and speeding through the countryside on sleds and toboggans, bikes and boats. “I didn’t try to love nature,” Zall recalled. “I didn’t know anything else.” She lived for snow. “We’d build forts and play in the hills and nearly kill ourselves.” Her father, the manager of a large dairy, moved his family to Ithaca, New York, in the mid-1960s so he could study for a doctorate in food science at Cornell University. She liked what she saw. In 1976, she graduated from Cornell with a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering. Her mentor at the university, Donald J Belcher, was a pioneer in applying aerial photography to engineering questions, such as where to build houses and cities. Belcher was hired by Brazil to pick the best site for its new capital, Brasília. He put his graduate student onto an aerial project in Alaska that sought to assess changes in permafrost — ground that’s usually frozen but in some places was starting to thaw. “I had my face glued to the window,” Zall said of viewing the continental wilderness during her flight to Fairbanks. “It was mind-blowing. I get goose bumps thinking about it.” After Cornell, Zall gained a higher perspective. Civilian surveillance satellites such as Landsat were flying hundreds of miles up to take images of the planet for farmers, geographers and other specialists. From 1975 to 1984, she worked for the Earth Satellite Corp. Based in Washington, it used computers to enhance Landsat images, making their details more accessible. Zall then vanished into the CIA It was 1985 — a bruising last chapter of the Cold War — and US satellites were playing outsize roles in scrutinizing Moscow. She used her skills to improve the analysis of reconnaissance images and to plan new generations of spy satellites. In 1989, she took on a new assignment as the CIA’s liaison to the Jasons — a group of elite scientists who advise Washington on military and intelligence matters. Its ranks would eventually supply her with contacts for top environmental scientists. Then, in late 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Its collapse diminished not only a main threat to Washington but also a top rationale for maintaining a fleet of costly spy satellites. New uses beckoned. But the prospect of training spy satellites on environmental questions faced vast resistance from the deeply entrenched fiefs of the intelligence world that were built on decades of colossal budgets. As Gore pushed, Zall provided answers. She wrote a highly classified report describing what the secret reconnaissance could do for Earth science. “Spy Satellite Photos May Aid in Global Environment Study,” The Associated Press reported in May 1992. The article made no mention of Zall. By October 1992, the CIA was so confident in the ability of spy satellites to solve environmental mysteries that it established a large task force. Zall was put in charge and recruited its members, mainly Earth scientists. In the face of some bureaucratic foot-dragging, she named her group Medea, after the headstrong character of Greek mythology who let nothing stand in her way. “She wanted to understand nature,” said Jeff Dozier, a snow hydrologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an early recruit. “She was really curious. She also was very good at drawing us out.” The ensuing rush of satellite imagery “changed my life,” Dozier said. For the first time, he was able to monitor wide shifts in snow cover, especially in the Sierra Nevada. “That has affected me ever since,” he said. His findings inform a textbook he published last month with three colleagues, “Lakes and Watersheds in the Sierra Nevada of California.” As Medea picked up speed, Zall found herself deeply involved with an old foe. As part of the post-Cold War thaw, the Clinton administration wanted to engage Russia with new projects and better relations. The Soviets, it turned out, had amassed a treasure of Arctic ice data. The negotiations to share the trove involved top officials from both sides, starting with Zall. “I went to Moscow probably 10 times and St. Petersburg twice,” she said. Her first visit took her to a mansion on Moscow’s outskirts. She rode a tiny elevator made of ornate ironwork that opened to a large room full of vases, Oriental rugs and chandeliers. Five men met her, including a general. “It was really intimidating,” she said. “I was a satellite wonk. They all spoke perfect English. They were extremely warm and inclusive.” In time, that meeting was part of a series that helped broker a peaceful new era. In 1995, Medea was the driving force when President Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of over 800,000 spy-satellite images, including mapping and surveillance ones. Taken from 1960 through 1972, the images showed not only airfields and missile bases but also giant swaths of land marked by deforestation and environmental ills. A 1962 image revealed the Aral Sea before an ecological catastrophe left it bone dry. Medea also fostered a parallel movement for the Navy to release once-secret information that illuminated inner space — the ocean’s sunless depths. In late 1995, a new map of the seabed was unveiled that bared riots of deep fissures, ridges and volcanoes. “This was the first, uniform map of the global seafloor,” said John A. Orcutt of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. That breakthrough, he added, became the initial source for the kinds of detailed ocean topographies that are now visible to everyday users of Google Earth. President George W Bush’s administration and conservatives in Congress, questioning the scientific consensus on global warming, let Medea languish for many years. But in late 2008 it was revived in cooperation with a Democratic Congress, and continued by the Obama administration. Zall then focused on how Earth’s changing environment would most likely prompt security issues and crises. In late 2009, the CIA set up a Center on Climate Change and National Security. Its mission was to help US policymakers better understand the impact of floods, rising sea levels, population shifts, state instabilities and heightened competition for natural resources. News reports announcing the programme again made no mention of Zall. She retired from the CIA in 2013. Medea was never the same. The agency shut it down in 2015, and the Trump administration made sure there was no revival of the programme. In interviews, former Medea members said the incoming Biden administration might want to establish a similar panel for helping the world push ahead on knotty issues of environmental change. Zall agreed, adding that Medea’s agenda was unfinished. She said her group, knowing that Earth’s fate might hang in the balance, wrestled for years on how to monitor climate treaties. She called the problem “very difficult” and argued that its resolution was even more important today. “It needs to be done,” Zall said. “We have to figure it out.” c. 2021 The New York Times Company

Antarctica's penguin population has slumped because of global warming as melting ice has destroyed nesting sites and reduced their sources of food, a WWF report said on Tuesday. The Antarctic peninsula is warming five times faster than the average in the rest of the world, affecting four penguin species -- the emperor penguin, the largest and the grandest in the world, the gentoo, chinstrap and adelie, it said. "The Antarctic penguins already have a long march behind them," Anna Reynolds, deputy director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme, said in a statement at the Bali climate talks. "Now it seems these icons of the Antarctic will have to face an extremely tough battle to adapt to the unprecedented rate of climate change." The report, "Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change", said sea ice covered 40 per cent less area than it did 26 years ago off the West Antarctic Peninsula, leading to a fall in stocks of krill, the main source of food for the chinstrap and gentoo penguins. In the northwestern coast of the Antarctic peninsula, where warming has been fastest, populations of adelie penguins have dropped by 65 percent over the past 25 years, it said. The number of chinstraps decreased by 30 to 66 percent in some colonies, as less food made it more difficult for the young to survive, while the emperor penguin has seen some of its colonies halve in size over the past half a century. Warmer temperatures and stronger winds mean the penguins had to raise their chicks on increasingly thinner sea ice which tends to break off early while many eggs and chicks have been blown away before they were able to survive on their own. Scientists have predicted that global temperatures could rise sharply this century, raising world sea levels and bringing more extreme weather. A 2005 study showed that most glaciers on the Antarctic peninsular were in headlong retreat because of climate change -- and the speed was rising. Scientists say that most of the rest of the ice on the giant continent seems to be stable. "The food web of Antarctica, and thus the survival of penguins and many other species, is bound up in the future of the sea ice," said James P. Leape, director general of WWF International. "After such a long march to Bali, ministers must now commit to sharp reductions in carbon emissions for industrialised countries, to protect Antarctica and safeguard the health of the planet."

Major economies made progress in defining the building blocks of a new U.N. deal to fight climate change in talks in Paris on Friday but with splits about whether to set a goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Washington said the talks, among 17 nations accounting for 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, found common ground on sharing clean technologies, financing and possible sectoral emissions goals for industries such as steel or cement. "In my view we have made significant progress," said Daniel Price, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs, told reporters on the second of two days of talks including China, Russia, India and the European Union. But delegates at the meeting, the third of a U.S.-backed series, said that there were deep divisions about whether to set a goal of halving global emissions by 2050, favoured by the European Union, Japan and Canada. A plan by President George W. Bush to halt the growth of U.S. emissions only in 2025 -- long after most industrialised nations who are seeking cuts from a 1990 benchmark under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol -- made such goals far harder. The 2050 targets would be considered at a Group of Eight summit in Japan from July 7-9 and at another meeting of the 17 major emitters planned for the sidelines of the summit. "I think there is a chance we will have it (a 50 percent target) in the declaration" in July, said Andrej Kranjc, Secretary of the Environment Ministry of Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency. He said the new U.S. goal meant that common 2020 targets -- even more relevant to today's policymakers than a 2050 goal -- were getting far harder as part of a fight against warming that may bring more floods, droughts, rising seas and heat waves. DEEP CUTS Industrialised nations apart from the United States have agreed to consider cuts in emissions of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed by the end of 2009 to succeed Kyoto. The United States said it was still "seriously considering" a goal of halving world emissions by 2050 even though its own emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, would peak in 2025 under Bush's plan. Bush will leave office in January 2009. U.S. emissions could plunge once new technologies, such as clean coal-fired plants, new biofuels and nuclear power plants came on line in coming decades, said James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Delegates said many G8 nations favoured setting a 50 percent cut by 205 at the G8 summit. But the United States wanted to agree only if big developing nations were also willing to sign up. Developing nations say rich countries should take the lead. Earlier, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on all major economies to act faster to fight global warming, saying new scientific evidence was confirming the "most gloomy scenarios". "I would like to pass on a simple message to you: the situation is urgent and this urgency must prompt each of us to overcome our defensive reactions, no matter how legitimate they may be," he told the Paris talks. "Bad news continues to emerge. Scientific models and empirical observations indicate that the events unfolding now confirm the experts' most gloomy scenarios," he said, pointing to a fast melt of polar ice. The Paris talks group the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa. The European Commission, current EU president Slovenia and the United Nations are also attending.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in China on Sunday for a three-day visit aimed at reducing mutual suspicions over long-standing border disputes, while building on strong trade ties to foster trust. In his first visit to China since taking office in 2004, Singh is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao, top legislator Wu Bangguo and Premier Wen Jiabao. Leaders of the world's fastest growing major economies and most populous nations may find common ground on energy and climate change, but analysts cautioned against hopes for any major breakthroughs. "If you compare this visit to previous years, it is a very welcome departure that there is no attempt to project some grand achievement," said Alka Acharya, head of East Asian studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "There is a certain normality coming about in terms of high-level interaction ... but there is considerable depth in the relationship which has yet to be explored." Before his arrival in Beijing, Singh called the relationship an "imperative necessity" and dismissed talk India was ganging up with the United States, Japan and Australia against China. Despite annual summits between the former foes, a "strategic partnership" announced three years ago has yet to take off. "As of now we are comfortable with our relationship with China," Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said on Friday. "It's made good progress, we think both sides are determined to settle the boundary question, and we are both successful in maintaining peace and tranquillity along the border." COMMON GROUND AND DISPUTED LAND In their reaction to climate change, India and China sound at their most harmonious. Both resist calls for mandatory curbs on emissions for developing nations and insist the greater burden for mitigation be borne by the already developed West. Yet many bilateral irritants remain, such as a festering border dispute and trade barriers, said Zhang Li, at China's Sichuan University. "This visit probably won't bring breakthroughs in those issues, but it could set a more positive tone for dealing with them," he said. The economic relationship between Asia's engines of growth falls far short of potential. Bilateral trade has crossed $30 billion and is growing fast but non-tariff barriers remain high. India is unhappy the trade balance is increasingly skewed in China's favour, and would prefer to be exporting more finished goods and fewer raw materials such as iron ore. China complains of barriers to direct investment in India and wants a "level playing field", according to its ambassador to India, Zhang Yan. But there is a more fundamental problem with Sino-Indian relations, a border dispute that led to war in 1962. China still claims much of India's vast northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, land it says is rightly part of Tibet. Decades of glacial negotiations have produced little more than a commitment to solve the problem through dialogue. Last year, China even seemed to harden its position by restating its claim to the Buddhist monastery at Tawang, and Indian troops complain of frequent border incursions last year. There are other concerns too, including China's longstanding relationship with India's estranged neighbour, Pakistan, while Beijing eyes uneasily India's burgeoning friendship with the United States and its traditional support for Tibetan refugees. Jian Yang, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, says China does not treat India as a threat but the reverse is not true. "For China, the biggest concern is to make sure that India doesn't feel threatened by China's rise, and that India won't move too close to countries like the United States and Japan as a kind of balance against China," he said.

Clashes broke out between hundreds of stone-throwing youths and police firing teargas to disperse them in the southern town of Gafsa, but the streets were calm elsewhere in the North African state which gave birth to the Arab Spring uprisings.Calls for a general strike raised the specter of more trouble although the family of assassinated secular politician Chokri Belaid said his funeral, another possible flashpoint, might not be held until Friday.Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda announced late on Wednesday he would replace the government led by his moderate Islamist party with a non-partisan cabinet until elections could be held, as soon as possible.But a senior Ennahda official said Jebali had not sought approval from his party, suggesting the Islamist group was split over the move to replace the governing coalition."The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party," said Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda's vice-president. "We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with other parties about forming a coalition government."Tunisia's main opposition parties also rejected any move to a government of experts and demanded they be consulted before any new cabinet is formed.Political analysts said protracted deadlock could aggravate the unrest, which has underscored the chasm between Islamists and secular groups who fear that freedoms of expression, cultural liberty and women's rights are in jeopardy just two years after the Western-backed dictatorship crumbled.Belaid was shot as he left home for work by a gunman who fled on the back of a motorcycle. That sent thousands of protesters onto the streets nationwide hurling rocks and fighting police in scenes recalling Egypt last month.No one claimed responsibility for the killing, and the head of Ennahda said the party had nothing to do with it.But a crowd set fire to the Tunis headquarters of Ennahda, which won the most seats in a free election 16 months ago. Protests also hit Sidi Bouzid, fount of the Jasmine Revolution that ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.Although Belaid had only a modest political following, his sharp criticism of Ennahda policies spoke for many Tunisians who fear religious radicals are bent on snuffing out freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.PARLIAMENT TO WEIGH NEW CABINETMehrzia Abidi, vice-president of the interim parliament which has been struggling for months to draft a new post-Ben Ali constitution, said it would discuss Jebali's proposal for temporary technocratic government on Thursday.Sadok Belaid, a constitutional law expert, said the assembly would have to approve the cabinet overhaul. But the body's dysfunctional record raised the prospect of protracted deadlock that could kindle further unrest.Political analyst Salem Labyed said the opposition appeared to want to leverage the crisis to its own advantage."It seems that the opposition wants to secure the maximum possible political gains but the fear is that the ... crisis will deepen if things remain unclear at the political level. That could increase the anger of supporters of the secular opposition, which may go back to the streets again," he said.Many Tunisians complain that radical Salafi Islamists may hijack the democratic revolution, fearing Ennahda is coming increasingly under their sway.Nervous about the extent of hardline Islamist influence and the volatility of the political impasse, big powers urged Tunisians to see through a non-violent shift to democracy.But discontent has smoldered for some time not only over secularist-Islamist issues but also over the lack of progress towards better living standards expected after Ben Ali's exit.In a reflection of investor fears about the crisis, the cost of insuring Tunisian government bonds against default rose to their highest level in more than four years on Thursday. It remains lower than that of unrest-wracked Egypt, however.Lacking the huge oil and gas resources of neighbors Libya and Algeria, Tunisia counts tourism as a crucial currency earner, and further unrest could deter visitors.REBELLION WITHIN CABINETJebali declared after Wednesday's protests that weeks of talks on reshaping the government had failed amid deadlock within the three-party coalition. One secular party threatened to bolt unless Ennahda replaced some of its ministers.The opposition Nida Touns, Republican, Popular Front and Massar parties demanded that Jebali - who planned to stay on as caretaker prime minister - talk to them before making any move to dissolve his cabinet."The situation has changed now ... Consultations with all parties are essential," said Maya Jribi, head of the secular Republican party."All the government, including the prime minister, should resign," added Beji Caid Essebsi, a former prime minister who heads the secular Nida Touns.The day before his death Belaid was publicly lambasting a "climate of systematic violence". He said tolerance shown by Ennahda and its two, smaller secularist allies in the coalition government toward Salafists had allowed the spread of groups hostile to modern culture and liberal ideas.As in Egypt, secular leaders have accused Islamists of trying to cement narrow religiosity in the new state. This dispute has held up a deal on a constitution setting the stage for a parliamentary election, which had been expected by June.But unlike Egypt's government, Ennahda has struggled to form a stabilizing partnership with key existing state institutions, as the Muslim Brotherhood has done with the Egyptian military, risk consultancy Stratfor said in an analysis on Wednesday."This inability or unwillingness to rely on the state security apparatus as a regime backer has left Ennahda with few useful tools to address the strengthening political opposition and popular forces increasingly calling for significant changes in the makeup of the government," Stratfor said.

Beneath a towering canopy in the heat of the Amazon jungle, Brazilian Indians and officials urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday to rally international support to protect the world's largest rain forest. "We need the Secretary to help convert international good will into concrete mechanisms that benefit the residents of the Amazon," Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva told Ban under a century-old Samauma tree 30 minutes upriver from Belem, the Amazon's largest city. Ban was on the last stop of a South American tour that focused on the potential impact of global warming and included a visit to Antarctica last week. "I kindly ask you to help create incentives so we and other forest dwellers can make a living here," Amazon Indian Marcos Apurina told Ban, who received a necklace made of native plant seeds and saw other forest products from honey to handicrafts. Ban, who hiked a short jungle trail on Combu island on the Guama River, said: "The United Nations will stand beside you. This is a common asset of all humankind." Earlier Ban petted a three-toed sloth and planted two native trees at a botanical garden in Belem. Ban is preparing for a UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December, which should start talks to curb carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. FOREST DESTRUCTION Brazil produces the world's fourth-largest amount of carbon emissions, due mostly to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, according to international environmental groups. Ban did not comment on Brazil's refusal to adopt targets to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions. Instead, he commended Brazil for its efforts to curb forest destruction by 50 percent over two years, even though the rate has risen again since August. The Amazon releases stored carbon dioxide when trees are burnt or decompose, contributing to global warming. Advancing farmers and loggers clear country-sized chunks of the forest every year -- more when grain, beef or timber prices are high, less when they fall. Silva, a former rubber tapper and activist, urged Ban to help overcome opposition by some Western countries to a proposal within the international Convention on Biodiversity that would force pharmaceutical companies to pay for drugs derived from Amazon medicinal plants. "He listened and said he would study the proposal," Silva said after a meeting with Ban late on Monday. Scientists say global warming could turn part of the Amazon into semi-arid savanna within a few decades. Extreme weather has caused droughts in some parts and flooding in others. Ban's planned trip along an Amazon tributary near the port city of Santarem was canceled because the river was too shallow. Ban praised Brazil for its leadership in developing low-emission biofuels but said more international research was needed to study the possible impact of their large-scale production on food supplies. On the weekend, he visited one of the plants in Sao Paulo state that make Brazil one of the largest and cheapest producers of ethanol. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government has increased police raids on illegal loggers and expanded protected areas. But it is also building roads and hydroelectric plants which conservationists fear could increase deforestation in the long term.

The aircraft, which took off from Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday, touched down in Muscat following a trouble-free 12-hour flight, Xinhua reported.  The landing marks the completion of the first leg of the plane's global circumnavigation. Piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Switzerland, the aircraft is believed to be an effort to demonstrate the promise of clean energy. Capable of flying over oceans for several days and nights in a row, Si2 will travel 35,000 km around the world in 25 days over the course of roughly five months. It will pass over the Arabian Sea, India, Myanmar, China and the Pacific Ocean. There will be 12 stops en route, which include stops at the Indian cities of Ahmedabad and Varanasi. The aircraft is also likely to hover above the river Ganga in Varanasi to spread the message of cleanliness and clean energy. "We are proud that Muscat International Airport is the first stop for the Si2, the solar powered aircraft considered to be a ...step towards a more sustainable environment-friendly future with the use of clean energy," said Sayyid Shihab bin Tariq al-Said, Advisor to Oman's Sultan Qboos. "I hope the Si2 will motivate the next generation of Omanis to be more creative and innovative in order to develop our vision for the future," he added. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday congratulated the the team behind the Si2 project and wished them every success in their historic attempt. "We take inspiration from their example and efforts to harness the power of multilateralism to address climate change and to inspire the world to achieve sustainable development through ...sustainable energy and renewable energy," he said. "With their daring and determination, we can all fly into a new sustainable future," he added. The Si2 is an airborne laboratory and the largest aircraft of its kind ever built, with a weight equivalent to that of a small car.  With a wing covered by more than 17,000 solar cells, the plane can fly up to an altitude of 8,500 metres at speeds ranging from 50 to 100 km per hour. After travelling around the globe, Si2 is expected to arrive back in Abu Dhabi in late July or early August.

The prime minister spoke on the matter at the inauguration of ‘World Environment Day and Environment Fair 2017 and National Tree Planting Project and Tree Planting Day 2017’ on Sunday at the Bangabandhu International Convention Centre. “We put a particular focus on ensuring that the Sundarbans comes to no harm when developing our projects,” she said. Many environmentalists and leftist groups have protested the Awami League government’s decision to build a coal-based power plant in Rampal, 14 kilometres from the Sundarbans. The government has repeatedly stated the power plant would not harm the Sundarbans in any way. The Sundarbans were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 under an Awami League government led by Hasina. “We have continued to protect the Sundarbans ever since,” Hasina said. Bangladesh has been saved by the Sundarbans, the prime minister said. The government is making plans to grow the mangrove forest through artificial means. The Awami League government has been able to ensure a 17 percent increase in the forest area in Bangladesh and has targeted a 25 percent increase, she said. A balance of environmental protection and socially conscious forestry has been developed by the government, Hasina said. She also proposed the development of ‘smart patrolling’ to protect the region. A number of steps are also being taken to ensure those who live off the Sundarbans can find alternative employment, she added. “And most essential is the development of a ‘green seawall’ to fend off hurricanes and floods.” The prime minister also mentioned the trust fund she had set up to fight climate change. Thus far, Tk 31 billion has been allocated for the fund, she said. Hasina did, however, express her disappointment that many developing countries had not contributed to the fund. “Though we received many promises, very little financial support was given,” she said. “But what we have received, we put to good use.” “Bangladesh has shown the world how to begin work on your own without depending on others and we are being recognised for it,” the prime minister said.

Delegates at climate talks in Bali are close to agreeing guidelines for a pay-and-preserve scheme for forests under a future deal to fight global warming, Indonesia's foreign minister said on Thursday. Under the scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), preservation of forests could become a tradeable commodity with the potential to earn poor nations billions of dollars from trading carbon credits. Scientists say deforestation in the tropics is responsible for about 20 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and preserving what's left of them is crucial because they soak up enormous amounts of the gas. CO2 is blamed for the bulk of global warming that the UN Climate Panel says will trigger rising seas, rapid melting of glaciers and more droughts, floods and intense storms. "In the meeting this morning, it was very clear that there was enthusiasm from developed countries on the importance of forests in the context of climate change," Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told reporters. "Developed countries and countries with large forest areas agreed to formulate a world map as part of the cooperation, involving not just governments, but also institutions like universities and research bodies." Curbing deforestation has been a top issue for the thousands of delegates at Bali because the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. climate pact, does not include schemes that reward developing nations for preserving tropical rainforests. LAND USE At its simplest, the REDD scheme would allow carbon credits to be issued to qualifying developing nations. Rich nations buy these credits to offset their emissions at home. The unresolved issue centres on the question whether to put future talks on deforestation in a wider context, which includes other types of land use, a proposal backed by the United States and opposed by most developing nations, an Indonesian forestry official said. The official told Reuters the proposal could take away the focus from forests, complicate the scheme and further stall its implementation. So far, the Bali meeting has agreed to encourage individual countries to run a series of projects to help them prepare for REDD while agreeing to study the issue further. The World Bank has already launched plans for a $300 million fund to fend off global warming by preserving forests, which includes a $100 million "readiness" fund to give grants to around 20 countries to prepare them for large-scale forest protection schemes. Grants will fund projects including surveys of current forest assets, monitoring systems and tightening governance. A second $200 million "carbon finance mechanism" will allow some of these countries to run pilot programmes earning credits for curbing deforestation. Indonesia, a keen supporter of REDD, is among the world's top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires, according to a report earlier this year sponsored by the World Bank and Britain's development arm. Indonesia has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres (91 million hectares), or about 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical forests, according to rainforestweb.org, a portal on rainforests.

The EU's unity, solidarity and international standing are at risk from Greece's debt, Russia's role in Ukraine, Britain's attempt to change its relationship with the bloc, and Mediterranean migration. Failure to cope adequately with any one of these would worsen the others, amplifying the perils confronting "Project Europe". Greece's default and the risk, dubbed 'Grexit', that it may crash out of the shared euro currency is the most immediate challenge to the long-standing notion of an "ever closer union" of European states and peoples. "The longer-term consequences of Grexit would affect the European project as a whole. It would set a precedent and it would further undermine the raison d'être of the EU," Fabian Zuleeg and Janis Emmanouilidis wrote in an analysis for the European Policy Centre think-tank. Though Greece accounts for barely 2 percent of the euro zone's economic output and of the EU's population, its state bankruptcy after two bailouts in which euro zone partners lent it nearly 200 billion euros ($220 billion) is a massive blow to EU prestige. Even before the outcome of Sunday's Greek referendum was known, the atmosphere in Brussels was thick with recrimination - Greeks blaming Germans, most others blaming Greeks, Keynesian economists blaming a blinkered obsession with austerity, EU officials emphasising the success of bailouts elsewhere in the bloc. While its fate is still uncertain, Athens has already shown that the euro's founders were deluded when they declared that membership of Europe's single currency was unbreakable. Now its partners may try to slam the stable door behind Greece and take rapid steps to bind the remaining members closer together, perhaps repairing some of the initial design flaws of monetary union, though German opposition is likely to prevent any move towards joint government bond issuance. The next time recession or a spike in sovereign bond yields shakes the euro zone, markets will remember the Greek precedent. Destabilising An economic collapse of Greece, apart from the suffering it would cause and the lost billions for European taxpayers, could aggravate all three of Europe's other crises and destabilise the fragile southern Balkans. With tension already high in the eastern Mediterranean due to civil war in Syria, the eternal Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the unresolved division of Cyprus and disputes over offshore gas fields, a shattered Greece might turn to Russia for help. In exchange, it might veto the next extension of EU sanctions against Moscow, or even offer access to naval facilities once used by the United States. Athens is already struggling with an influx of refugees from the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts who wash up on its Aegean islands, seeking the safest transit route to Europe's prosperous heartland in Germany or Sweden. Cash-starved Greek authorities are more than happy to see them head north in search of asylum elsewhere in the EU. It is not hard to imagine a government cast out of the euro zone using migrants as a means of piling pressure on EU countries. The "boat people" crisis has proved divisive in the EU, with Italy and other frontline states accusing their northern and eastern partners of lacking solidarity by refusing to co-finance or take in quotas of refugees. Britain has refused to take any. Failure to resolve Greece's debt crisis after five years of wrangling makes the EU look weak and divided in the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and others looking to expand their power. Brussels officials acknowledge that the euro zone crisis has caused a renationalisation of decision-making on some policies and sapped the "soft power" of Europe's model of rules-based supranational governance. It has weakened the EU's hand in world trade and climate change negotiations. Worse may yet be to come. Britain's demand to renegotiate its membership terms and put the result to an uncertain referendum by 2017 raises the risk of the EU losing its second largest economy, main financial centre and joint strongest military power. Despite opinion polls showing British supporters of staying in the EU have roughly a 10 point lead, and some relief that Prime Minister David Cameron did not include any impossible demands in his renegotiation agenda, there is nervousness in Brussels. UK opinion polls got the May general election spectacularly wrong. Since his victory, Cameron has been tripped up several times by Eurosceptic rebels in his Conservative party. A long, agonising Greek economic meltdown, whether inside or outside the euro zone, with social unrest and political havoc, might reinforce those who argue that the UK economy is "shackled to a corpse". Given Russia's lingering Cold War hostility towards Britain, seen in Moscow as the United States' most loyal ally, Putin would likely be delighted by any prospect of the UK leaving the EU. It would weaken those in the EU seeking a robust response to Russian behaviour in Ukraine and Georgia and detach Washington's trusty partner from the continental bloc, although Britain would remain a member of NATO. That could strengthen Putin's hand in dealings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has led European diplomacy seeking to restore Ukraine's control over all its territory. Rem Korteweg of the Centre for European Reform compares the interlocking crises to the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the New Testament Book of Revelation: harbingers of a "day of judgment" representing conquest, war, famine and death. "The EU's leaders will find it hard to tame these four horsemen," the Dutch thinker wrote in an essay. "If a European answer cannot be found, the horsemen will continue to promote chaos, instability and mutual recrimination within the EU."

Japan thinks 2005 would be a 'fair' base year for calculating cuts in greenhouse gas emissions under a post-Kyoto climate pact, a senior trade and industry official said on Monday. Japan has rejected the idea of keeping 1990 as the base year for emissions cuts for a new global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, saying it was unfair to Japanese industry, which had made energy efficiency investments two decades ago. But Tokyo had not specified what the new base year should be. Takao Kitabata, vice minister at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) told a news conference that 2005 would be 'fair', a spokesman for the ministry said. The proposed change in the base year would likely be opposed by the European Union, which has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. About 190 countries agreed at UN-led talks in Bali last year to launch two-year negotiations on a replacement for Kyoto, which binds only rich nations to emissions cuts by an average of five percent between 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels. All nations would be bound under Kyoto's successor and under the "Bali roadmap," nations recognised that deep cuts in global emissions were needed. But there are wide gaps over the size of binding targets and the base year for such targets.

About 40 world leaders plan to go to Copenhagen next month to improve the chances of clinching a UN climate deal, the United Nations said on Friday as preparatory talks ended with scant progress. Developing nations in Barcelona accused rich countries of trying to lower ambitions for a 190-nation deal in Copenhagen with suggestions that up to an extra year may be needed to tie up details of a legally binding treaty. Inviting world leaders to the end of the Copenhagen meeting on Dec. 7-18 could help overcome disputes, said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, on the final day of the week-long Barcelona talks. "My understanding is that 40 heads of state have indicated their intention to be present," he said. They include British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as leaders of African and Caribbean nations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering attending, a spokesman said in Berlin. U.S. President Barack Obama is among those undecided. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has not formally invited leaders to the talks, currently due to be limited to environment ministers. "There is no official figure" of how many leaders will come, a Danish spokesman said. The 175-nation Barcelona meeting ended with little progress towards a deal but narrowed options on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, sharing technology and cutting emissions from deforestation, delegates said. RICH-POOR SPLIT The meeting exposed a continuing rich-poor split on sharing the burden of curbs on greenhouse gas emissions in a drive to avert droughts, wildfires, species extinctions and rising seas. It also opened a new rift on what was achievable in Copenhagen. Rich nation delegates said there was time to agree in December a "political deal", followed by a legal text six to 12 months later. Any notion of such a delay must be "dismissed", said India's Shyam Saran, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's climate envoy, and many developing nations said Copenhagen must be legally binding. "Developed countries are acting as a brake towards any meaningful progress" said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, chair of the Group of 77 and China, representing poor nations. African nations boycotted some talks on Tuesday in protest. "Lives and the very existence of whole nations are at stake," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, representing small island states which say they risk being swamped by rising sea levels. She said a Copenhagen deal had to be legally binding and also rejected talk of a delay. De Boer said Copenhagen "can and must be the turning point in the international fight against climate change" but said time was too short to seal a full legal treaty in 2009. He said Copenhagen should at least set 2020 greenhouse gas emissions goals for all rich nations, agree actions by the poor to slow their rising emissions and agree ways to raise billions in funding and mechanisms to oversee funds. "I believe that the US can commit to a number in Copenhagen," de Boer said. "That's a decision yet to be made," Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation, said when asked if Obama could bring a number in December. The US delegation wants a target to be guided by its Senate. A US climate bill cleared a key panel on Thursday but is unlikely to pass the full Senate before Copenhagen. Activists criticised a lack of leadership in the run-up to Copenhagen, including from Obama. Two protesters wandered the conference hall dressed as aliens with green faces on Friday asking: "Where are your climate leaders?" in robotic voices. "Where is the great Rudd?", one of them asked a group of Australian delegates, referring to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In St Andrews, Scotland, British finance minister Alistair Darling said he would seek progress to raise cash to fight climate change at a Group of 20 finance ministers' meeting.

Like Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi's economy was hit by a dramatic fall in oil prices in mid-2014, triggering a drive to reduce its dependence on crude. A central part of that has been to reform and modernise state champion ADNOC and attract foreign investment. Unlike Aramco's push for a giant stock market listing, which has been highly publicised and closely watched, ADNOC has gone for a more staggered approach with its fundraising efforts, and there has been little overview of their scope by industry experts. However the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to give its full name, has raised more than $19 billion over the past three years from overseas investors, according to Reuters calculations based on publicly released size of investments, signing fees and share sales. That's equivalent to two-thirds of the $29.4 billion that Saudi Aramco raised in the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history. Despite the record-breaking December listing, the bulk of the shares were sold to domestic investors after foreign institutions baulked at the valuation. ADNOC, which supplies nearly 3% of global oil demand, has for example struck deals with the world's largest fund manager BlackRock and with US investment firm KKR, a rare foray for both into national oil companies in the Middle East. It has also sold stakes in its pipeline infrastructure and refining businesses. See FACTBOX on key deals: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Group CEO talks to employees at the Panorama Digital Command Centre at the ADNOC headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE December 10, 2019. Reuters While both Gulf state-controlled firms are aiming to replicate the model of oil majors by expanding in downstream, trading and petrochemicals, their funding strategies diverge, said Dmitry Marinchenko, analyst with Fitch rating agency. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Group CEO talks to employees at the Panorama Digital Command Centre at the ADNOC headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE December 10, 2019. Reuters "Aramco is raising funds mainly by conventional borrowing while ADNOC is using more sophisticated forms of funding, including selling minority stakes in subsidiaries," he said. "ADNOC is more open to cooperation with international partners." It remains to be seen which approach to attracting investment will prove more fruitful in coming years. But at stake could be the companies' ability to successfully diversify from crude production and, more broadly, for the domestic economies that rely on them to weather oil price shocks. "The biggest challenge is the uncertainty in the outlook for oil and the growing international scrutiny that all energy companies are facing because of climate change," said Helima Croft, managing director of RBC Capital Markets. PRINCE PUSHES FOR CHANGE The reforms have been driven by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, de-facto ruler of the wider United Arab Emirates. Their roots can be traced back to 2016, when oil prices fell to $30 a barrel, hitting state revenues and exposing how sensitive Abu Dhabi finances were to volatile prices. The crown prince, known as MbZ, appointed ally Sultan al-Jaber as CEO of ADNOC with a plan to restructure the company to make it more efficient and function more like a major than a state monopoly. Al-Jaber swiftly embarked on plans to reshuffle ADNOC's leadership and slashed 5,000 jobs, mainly foreigners, out of its 60,000 employees. It is no easy task to change the course of an organisation viewed as one of the most conservative in the region, however. ADNOC's production depended on decades-old concessions with Western oil majors, some of which have been operating in the UAE since the 1930s, and new deals and foreign investment were uncommon. In April 2016, two months after installing al-Jaber, MbZ made a rare visit to ADNOC's headquarters to deliver a wake-up call to managers and staff. His message, demanding a sharp change in a culture of entitlement, was unexpected in a nation where most citizens expect guaranteed state jobs with long-term security. An employee is seen at the Panorama Digital Command Centre at the ADNOC headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE December 10, 2019. Reuters He told ADNOC employees they should feel no sense of entitlement, and that the UAE cannot be chained to oil price fluctuations anymore, whether at $30 or $100 a barrel, said Haif Zamzam, vice president of transformation and business supply at ADNOC who was present during the crown prince's visit. An employee is seen at the Panorama Digital Command Centre at the ADNOC headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE December 10, 2019. Reuters "He said 'You show me your CV and you show me your experience, you show me what you are able to actually do, and you have great opportunities," said Zamzam, who had worked with al-Jaber at state investor Mubadala. The visit sent a message to ADNOC's old guard that he would not brook any opposition, said people familiar with the company. "People used to come to ADNOC to clock in and clock out and leave at 2pm, and they expect their children to also work there. That is not the case anymore," said one UAE-based industry source. STRETCHING THE DOLLAR Al-Jaber, a minister of state and a former CEO at Mubadala's energy unit who holds a PhD in business and economics, was tasked with making ADNOC profitable enough to contribute to the UAE's budget even with lower oil prices. "We wanted to challenge the conventional business model of the National Oil Company," he told Reuters in an interview at his office on the 63rd floor of ADNOC's skyscraper HQ. "To make it simple - we are in the business of stretching the dollar from every barrel we produce." ADNOC does not publish financial results but, nonetheless, investors appear to like the changes. KKR's investment in 2019, its first as a direct investment in the region, was due to ADNOC's reforms, a spokesman for the US firm said. ADNOC has formed new partnerships with European and Asian energy firms such as Italy's Eni and China's CNPC to boost its oil, gas and trading businesses, and was the first foreign company with a deal to store oil in India's strategic reserves. In his drive to emulate oil majors, al-Jaber has lured employees from Total, Royal Dutch Shell and BP to launch new trading operations. He has also led a change in the way ADNOC plans to change the way it prices its oil by establishing a new crude benchmark. The pace of the reforms has surprised industry players. "He transformed the company," said Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, one of ADNOC's newest partners. Al-Jaber stressed the reforms were ongoing. ADNOC plans to invest $45 billion to expand its refining and petrochemicals operations with partners and is looking to boost its international market share for crude and fuel, he said. "We don't want only to stick to the known or the traditional partners," said the CEO. "We don't want to leave any stone unturned."

Just days after host Australia was embarrassed into addressing climate change at the Group of 20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane, Abbott defiantly held his country's line - the polar opposite of most other G20 nations. "It's vital that the Paris conference be a success... and for it to be a success, we can't pursue environmental improvements at the expense of economic progress," Abbott said. "We can't reduce emissions in ways which cost jobs because it will fail if that's what we end up trying to do." Abbott made the remarks at a joint press conference in Canberra with visiting French President Francois Hollande, who said he hoped a new deal on carbon emissions would be legally binding and linked to a new United Nations fund to help poor nations cope with global warming. "If the poorest, most vulnerable countries can't be accompanied in their transition to sustainable development, then there will be no binding agreement," Hollande said earlier this week in New Caledonia, where he met top government officials from Kiribati, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Tuvalu and French Polynesia. The Green Climate Fund now stands at $7.5 billion following pledges by the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Mexico and South Korea. That is within sight of a $10 billion goal, brightening prospects for a UN climate pact next year. Asked if Australia would contribute to the fund, Abbott said Australia, one of the world's biggest carbon emitters per capita, had already committed A$2.55 billion ($2.21 billion) to a domestic initiative to reduce the country's emissions by 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020. "What we are doing is quite comparable with what other countries are doing and we do deliver on our reductions targets unlike some others," Abbott said. Still, US President Barack Obama used a high-profile speech in Brisbane to warn Australia that its own Great Barrier Reef was in danger, a message that reportedly angered G20 organizers. Obama was at the forefront of a successful push by the majority of G20 nations to override Australia's attempts to keep climate change off the formal agenda of the summit. The final communique called for strong and effective action to address climate change with the aim of adopting a protocol, with legal force, in Paris. (1 US dollar = 1.1535 Australian dollar)

But after a failed 2016 coup, Erdogan embarked on a sweeping crackdown. Last year, the economy wobbled and the lira plunged soon after he won re-election with even greater powers. As cronyism and authoritarianism seep deeper into his administration, Turks are voting differently — this time with their feet. They are leaving the country in droves and taking talent and capital with them in a way that indicates a broad and alarming loss of confidence in Erdogan’s vision, according to government statistics and analysts. In the past two to three years, not only have students and academics fled the country, but also entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and thousands of wealthy individuals who are selling everything and moving their families and their money abroad. “We are selling everything,” Merve Bayindir, a hat designer, said after closing her business in Istanbul and moving it to London. The New York Times More than a quarter of a million Turks emigrated in 2017, according to the Turkish Institute of Statistics, an increase of 42 percent over 2016, when nearly 178,000 citizens left the country. “We are selling everything,” Merve Bayindir, a hat designer, said after closing her business in Istanbul and moving it to London. The New York Times Turkey has seen waves of students and teachers leave before, but this exodus looks like a more permanent reordering of the society and threatens to set Turkey back decades, said Ibrahim Sirkeci, director of transnational studies at Regent’s University in London, and other analysts. “The brain drain is real,” Sirkeci said. The flight of people, talent and capital is being driven by a powerful combination of factors that have come to define life under Erdogan and that his opponents increasingly despair is here to stay. They include fear of political persecution, terrorism, a deepening distrust of the judiciary and the arbitrariness of the rule of law, and a deteriorating business climate, accelerated by worries that Erdogan is unsoundly manipulating management of the economy to benefit himself and his inner circle. The result is that, for the first time since the republic was founded nearly a century ago, many from the old moneyed class, in particular the secular elite who have dominated Turkey’s cultural and business life for decades, are moving away and the new rich close to Erdogan and his governing party are taking their place. One of those leaving is Merve Bayindir, 38, who is relocating to London after becoming Turkey’s go-to hat designer in the fashionable Nisantasi district of Istanbul. “We are selling everything,” she said during a return trip to Istanbul last month to close what was left of her business, Merve Bayindir, which she runs with her mother, and to sell their four-story house. Protesters in Taksim Square in Istanbul in June 2013. Many participants were subject to harassment and persecution, and subsequently left Turkey. The New York Times Bayindir was an active participant in the 2013 protests against the government’s attempt to develop Taksim Square in Istanbul. She said she remains traumatised by the violence and is fearful in her own city. Protesters in Taksim Square in Istanbul in June 2013. Many participants were subject to harassment and persecution, and subsequently left Turkey. The New York Times Erdogan denounced the protesters as delinquents and, after enduring arrests and harassment, many have left the country. “There is so much discrimination, not only cultural but personal, the anger, the violence is impossible to handle,” Bayindir said. “If you had something better and you see it dissolving, it’s a hopeless road.” Thousands of Turks like her have applied for business visas in Britain or for golden visa programmes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, which grant immigrants residency if they buy property at a certain level. Applications for asylum in Europe by Turks have also multiplied in the past three years, according to Sirkeci, who has studied the migration of Turks to Britain for 25 years. He estimates that 10,000 Turks have made use of a business visa plan to move to Britain in the past few years, with a sharp jump in applications since the beginning of 2016. That is double the number from 2004 to 2015. Applications by Turkish citizens for political asylum also jumped threefold in Britain in the six months after the coup attempt, and sixfold among Turks applying for asylum in Germany, he said, citing figures obtained from the UN refugee agency. The number of Turks applying for asylum worldwide jumped by 10,000 in 2017 to more than 33,000. A large proportion of those fleeing have been followers of Fethullah Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based preacher who is charged with instigating the 2016 coup, or people accused of being followers, often on flimsy evidence. Tens of thousands of teachers and academics were purged from their jobs after the coup, including hundreds who had signed a peace petition calling on the government to cease military action in Kurdish cities and return to the peace process. Hundreds have taken up posts abroad. Erdogan has tried to make Turkey more conservative and religious, with a growing middle class and a tight circle of elites who are especially beholden to him for their economic success. The flight of capital and talent is the result of this conscious effort by Erdogan to transform the society, said Bekir Agirdir, director of the Konda polling company. With the help of subsidies and favorable contracts, the government has helped new businesses to emerge, and they are rapidly replacing the old ones, he said. “There is a transfer of capital underway,” he said. “It is social and political engineering.” Ilker Birbil, a mathematician who faces charges for signing the peace petition and left Turkey to take a position at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, warned that the country was losing people permanently. “People who are leaving do not want to come back,” Birbil said, citing the polarised political climate in the country. “This is alarming for Turkey.” “I have received so many emails from students and friends who are trying to get out of Turkey,” he said. Students are despairing of change partly because they have grown up with Erdogan in power for 17 years, said Erhan Erkut, a founder of MEF University in Istanbul, which teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. “This is the only government they have seen; they do not know there is another possibility,” he said. Families are setting up businesses abroad for the next generation to inherit, said Sirkeci of Regent’s University, adding that many students at his private university fell into that category. At least 12,000 of Turkey’s millionaires — around 12 percent of the country’s wealthy class — moved their assets out of the country in 2016 and 2017, according to the Global Wealth Migration Review, an annual report produced by AfrAsia Bank. Most of them moved to Europe or the United Arab Emirates, the report said. Turkey’s largest business centre, Istanbul, was listed among the top seven cities worldwide experiencing an exodus of wealthy people. ‘'If one looks at any major country collapse in history, it is normally preceded by a migration of wealthy people away from that country,” the report said. Erdogan has reviled as traitors businesspeople who have moved their assets abroad as the Turkish economy has begun to falter. “Pardon us, we do not forgive,” he warned in an April speech at the Foreign Economic Relations Board, a business association in Istanbul. “The hands of our nation would be on their collars both in this world and in the afterlife.” ‘'Behaviour like this cannot have a valid explanation,” Erdogan added. His comments came amid reports that some of Turkey’s largest companies were divesting in Turkey. Several such companies have made significant transfers of capital abroad, amid fears they would be targeted in the post-coup crackdown or as the economy began to contract. One is Turkish food giant Yildiz Holding, which came under fire on social media as being linked to Gulen’s movement. Soon after, Yildiz rescheduled $7 billion of debt and sold shares of its Turkish biscuit maker, Ulker, to its London-based holding company, essentially transferring the family’s majority holding of Ulkerout of reach of Turkish courts. “Billions of dollars have fled Turkey in the last couple of years, especially after the coup attempt when people started to feel threatened,” said Mehmet Gun, the owner of a law firm in Istanbul. Bayindir, the designer, began slowly moving her company to London two years ago. In Turkey she had half a dozen workers and a showroom, but now she designs and makes the hats herself out of a rented atelier in London. “I could have stayed,'’ in Istanbul, she said. “I would be better off.” But life in Turkey had become so tense, she said, that she fears civil strife or even civil war could develop between Erdogan supporters and their opponents. “Now when I come here, I don’t see the same Istanbul,” she said. “She does not have energy anymore. She looks tired. Me not wanting to come here is a big, big thing, because I am one of those people who is in love with the city itself.”   © 2018 New York Times News Service

Sheikh Shahariar Zaman Senior Correspondent bdnews24.com Dhaka, Jul 16 (bdnews24.com)—The government is going to introduce a Green Initiative in all the export-processing zones to reduce energy consumption, Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority Member Mahbubur Rahman says. He said the industries using boiler in the EPZs release steam into the air which could be used for generating heat, saving 'a lot of energy'. According to Rahman, a project is being implemented at Chittagong Export Processing Zone for developing a roadmap to ensure low carbon emission. The project, supported by International Finance Corporation, UKAID, KOICA and the European Union, will be replicated in other export processing zones, he added. All the export-processing zones would be brought under a system for ensuring efficient use of energy as Bangladesh is committed to reduce carbon emission being most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, said Rahman. There are eight export-processing zones in Bangladesh. Senior Investment Officer of International Finance Corporation Han-koo Yeo said awareness and sharing of knowledge are the two most crucial factors to be considered in adopting the Green Initiative. The project being implemented in Chittagong would provide local companies with an opportunity to see how the initiative can be adopted, he added. Yeo underscored using energy efficiently for ensuring a sustainable development in the business.

Humans must help animals and plants adapt to a warmer world, according to environmentalists, because it is too expensive to rebuild entire ecosystems and their loss makes people even more vulnerable. "The scale of the problem means we cannot effectively intervene. We have to look to nature to help itself," Rodney Salm, director of tropical marine conservation at The Nature Conservancy, said on the sidelines of UN talks in Bali on tackling climate change. Conservation efforts should focus on protecting a variety of the most resilient or adaptable communities, and providing protected corridors of land or sea to allow species to shift habitats if their old range becomes unliveable, he said. Traditionally, protection efforts often focused on the best-preserved areas of plant or animal life, but these are not always the best positioned to adapt. For example, mangrove swamps at the edge of plains might be overlooked by environmentalists because they are easily accessible to people living nearby and so often in bad condition, while remote outcrops below steep hills can seem better havens of biodiversity, Salm said. But to survive warming seas, the plants will need the room to retreat slowly inland that flatter areas offer. And experts say humans need mangroves to protect them from storm surges and slow the impact of rising oceans. "Nature is relying on us. In addition to reducing emissions, we need to help natural systems adapt to climate change in order to sustain the processes that make life liveable," said Stephanie Meeks, President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy. "No matter how successful mitigation efforts may be, this planet and its people are already committed to a substantial amount of warming and associated impacts of climate change," she said. Coral reefs, which nurture fisheries and have already suffered mass die-offs or "bleachings" because of warmer waters, are another system in urgent need of protection, Salm said. Rather than trying to farm heat-resistant or adaptable corals, protection efforts should focus on reefs in water cooled naturally by shade or currents, and those positioned to supply larvae to repopulate damaged areas after a bleaching. Pacific islanders already suffering the impact of global warming are working on projects to protect the ecosystems that support their traditional way of life, the President of the tiny South Pacific nation of Palau said. Tommy Remengesau said fishermen and farmers already found it hard to judge weather patterns in a country that also lost vast swathes of its coral reefs in a massive global bleaching late last decade. "The resiliency of our biodiverse natural systems will be critical to our ability in our efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change that we all know are coming," he said.

Inspired by teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old student Aman Sharma launched a petition on Change.org in May after noticing that every successive year was getting hotter, drier, thirstier and more polluted, he said. "I started this campaign to put pressure on the government because if we keep silent right now then it's going to affect our survival in the future," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Friday as his petition gathered more than 170,000 signatures. His other demands to the environment ministry include increasing the country's green cover and meeting pledges made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to try to limit a rise in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change did not respond to repeated requests for comment. With backing from several film personalities including actress Nathalie Kelley from US TV soap "Dynasty" as well as some Bollywood names, Sharma said his next aim was to draw Hollywood environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio's attention. On Wednesday, DiCaprio posted a photo on Instagram of women in the southern city of Chennai drawing pots of water from a near empty well, capturing the daily struggle of thousands. Chennai has been in the global spotlight since its four main reservoirs dried up earlier this month, largely because of poor monsoons in 2018, forcing residents to ration the use of water. The city was one of 21 cities predicted to run out of ground water by 2020, government think-tank NITI Aayog said in a report published last year. It warned that India faced the worst long-term water crisis in its history, with 600 million people - nearly half of India's population - at risk of facing acute shortage. In the north, a heatwave has killed at least 36 people this year, with New Delhi recording its highest-ever temperature of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit). Jitendra Sharma, a popular Mumbai-based Instagram influencer, started a similar petition this week which had nearly 300,000 signatures by Friday. He said he was hopeful that the government would announce a climate emergency. "It is the need of the hour," he said, citing other countries taking similar action. In May Britain's parliament declared a symbolic climate change "emergency" in a nod to an increasing vocal activist movement particularly among young people in Europe. While there is no single definition of climate emergency, environmentalist Chandra Bhushan said it was the act of placing climate change at the centre of policy and planning decisions. "It means the Indian government will have to recognise we are in crisis, will have to set up an action plan," said Bhushan of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. "We are in trouble. Even if the Indian government does not recognise climate emergency now, it is a matter of time that they will have to."

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visits Japan and Indonesia this week in what will be his first major opportunity to set out his Asian agenda, after announcing plans for an Asia-Pacific Community by 2020. Rudd's trip will focus on bilateral security and trade issues but also seek to foster regional responses to climate change and natural disasters, such as the Myanmar cyclone. While China is now Australia's top trade partner, Japan and Indonesia are Australia's two most important strategic allies in the region. The Mandarin-speaking former diplomat said last week the region must develop a European Union-style community to tackle the challenges of the Asia-Pacific century, such as terrorism, climate change and energy and food security. Rudd is seen as pro-Asian and his Asia-Pacific Community plan will be given a polite hearing, say analysts, but add he should not expect any concrete commitments during this trip. "Everyone gets very proprietorial about this and no one is in a hurry for the white boys to come in and shoot their mouths off with a new plan," said Andrew MacIntyre, director of the Crawford School of Economics at the Australian National University. "But everyone recognizes there is a need for something like this. This idea has a chance. There is no doubt it will mutate." During talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, Rudd says he will seek to accelerate negotiations on a free-trade agreement (FTA) and strengthen security engagement, both bilaterally and trilaterally with the United States. "In many ways, our relationship with Japan is one of the foundations of our regional engagement. I am committed to adding even more depth and breadth to that partnership," Rudd said in a major Asia-Pacific speech last week. Japan is Australia's biggest export market and as well as meeting Japan's prime minister, Rudd will also have an audience with the Emperor and Empress of Japan. Australian and Japanese media say Rudd's visit to Beijing in April, before first visiting Japan, was seen as a snub and that he will need to repair ties on his June 8-12 trip. "There is no doubt the Japanese worry about that, but the Japanese really have a neurosis on this issue (of China), it's not such a big deal elsewhere in the region," said MacIntyre. "The big conclusion Asia came to when he (Rudd) won office was that Australia would be more engaged in Asia." Rudd will also have to negotiate the divisive issue of whaling, with Australia at the forefront of global moves to force Japan to end its annual whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. He said on Sunday, just before leaving for Japan, that he hoped to make progress on a diplomatic solution to the whaling dispute during his visit, but added: "Our position on the protection of whales has not changed one bit." REGIONAL COOPERATION Rudd's visit to Indonesia will be his second since coming to power last November, after attending a climate change conference in Bali where he committed Australia to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Jakarta is Canberra's most strategically important Asian ally, but ties have often been rocky because of past human rights abuses by Indonesia's military in East Timor and Aceh province. Rudd says Australians, which have at times been suspicious of Indonesia, should have a better understanding of the world's most populous Muslim nation because bilateral ties were so important. "An important part of this mutual learning process is inter-faith dialogue," said Rudd. In Jakarta from June 12-14, Rudd will also seek to quicken the pace of free-trade talks and build on defense and security when he meets President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But a major aim of his two-country trip will be to foster regional cooperation on natural disasters and climate change. "Natural disasters in Burma and China in recent weeks... death tolls, have reminded us of the need for regional cooperation to have practical results, by improving coordination of disaster response efforts for instance," said Rudd. Myanmar's ruling junta dithered for weeks over allowing foreign aid workers into the country, where 134,000 people were killed or missing and 2.4 million are in need of urgent aid. Rudd believes APEC has an important role to play in disaster response and that Australia and Indonesia, as co-chairs of APEC's emergency response taskforce, should accelerate their work. He will raise disaster coordination with the Indonesian president. On climate change, Rudd says he will urge Japan and Australia to work together on the science of climate change and in Indonesia he will discuss ways to reduce deforestation. Indonesia has large areas of tropical rainforest but has lost vast tracts to illegal logging and oil palm plantations. Corruption and lax enforcement of laws ensures large areas are cut down and burned every year, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, according to Greenpeace, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

According to the State of the World's Trees report 17,500 tree species - some 30 percent of the total - are a risk of extinction, while 440 species have fewer than 50 individuals left in the wild. Overall the number of threatened tree species is double the number of threatened mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles combined, the report said. "This report is a wake up call to everyone around the world that trees need help," BGCI Secretary General Paul Smith said in a statement. Among the most at-risk trees are species including magnolias and dipterocarps - which are commonly found in Southeast Asian rainforests. Oak trees, maple trees and ebonies also face threats, the report said. Trees help support the natural ecosystem and are considered vital for combating global warming and climate change. The extinction of a single tree species could prompt the loss of many others. "Every tree species matters — to the millions of other species that depend on trees, and to people all over the world," Smith added. Thousands of varieties of trees in the world's top six countries for tree-species diversity are at risk of extinction, the report found. The greatest single number is in Brazil, where 1,788 species are at risk. The other five countries are Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Colombia and Venezuela. The top three threats facing tree species are crop production, timber logging and livestock farming, the report said, while climate change and extreme weather are emerging threats. At least 180 tree species are directly threatened by rising seas and severe weather, the report said, especially island species such as magnolias in the Caribbean. Though megadiverse countries see the greatest numbers of varieties at risk of extinction, island tree species are more proportionally at risk. "This is particularly concerning because many islands have species of trees that can be found nowhere else," the report added.

Lurking among rocks on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most aggressive land predator on the frozen continent is on the prowl -- for microscopic prey. Animals such as lions, crocodiles or snakes thrive elsewhere on the planet, but Antarctica's most fearsome land predator is a reddish bug. The continent is best known for penguins, seals and whales, but all rely on the sea for food, unlike its Lilliputian land-based creatures and plants -- so far almost unaffected by humans. Scientists are stepping up their study of these tiny creatures in Antarctica for possible early warnings about how climate change may disrupt life around the planet in coming decades. "Antarctica is strikingly different to other continents in terms of what you find on land," Pete Convey, a biologist at the British Antarctic Survey, said while peering at an apparently barren pile of rocks on the Antarctic Peninsula. "There are no land mammals, there are no grazing animals like gazelles, no land birds," he told Reuters near the British Rothera Base. One of the first rocks he picked up had a tiny, reddish mite racing around the surface. "It's the lion of the ecosystem -- it's the top predator," he said of the Rhagidia mite, about 1 mm (0.04 inch) across. The mites have eight legs and are related to spiders. And the biggest land animal on the entire continent, which covers more land than the United States, is a flightless midge about 0.5 cm (0.2 inch) long. SURVIVAL TECHNIQUES Such tiny animals have found ways to live year-round on land and shut down their bodies to survive the deep winter freeze. The simplicity of the ecosystem means the impact of new threats such as climate change can be more easily assessed. "There are only two (land) predators within 500 miles of here," Convey said. "It makes it a lot easier to understand the way the ecosystem functions." "Everywhere people go they take roads, they take pollution, they take farming, they move species around," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist at BAS. "It's very hard to see how climate change affects a natural ecological system, except somewhere like this," he said of the Rothera area, ringed by mountains and with icebergs crowding the bay. "The Antarctic Peninsula, because the climate is warming so rapidly, is the one place on the world's surface where you can come to see the effects on the ecology in a pure form," he said. The peninsula, sticking up toward the southern tip of South America, is the part of the southern hemisphere that has warmed fastest in the past 50 years, apparently because of an increase in temperature stoked by human use of fossil fuels. Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the past half century, almost the difference in mean annual temperatures between France's southern city of Nice and Paris. And the Antarctic ecosystem may already be changing -- with both benefits and possible disruptions. Global warming "is going to make life easier for (tiny creatures on the peninsula), almost certainly," Convey said. Warmer temperatures would help plants grow, turn parts of the peninsula greener and so benefit the animals that feed on them. But rising temperatures might also dry out the climate, threatening life. And higher temperatures could make the Antarctic Peninsula more open to invasive species -- such as seeds, insects or spores unwittingly brought by tourists or scientists on their clothing, blown by the wind or stuck to birds. "More than 50,000 people a year come to Antarctica," Convey said of tourists, scientists and other visitors. "That carries a far greater risk of bringing an alien biological organism into the Antarctic than natural colonization," he said. Many invasive species will die because of the cold -- the winters are still too cold for rats or mice. Midget creatures have evolved in Antarctica wherever ground is exposed and there is fresh water in summer -- temperatures around Rothera reach a maximum of about 7 Celsius (44.60F) in summer. It even rained briefly at the weekend. Rhagidia hunts for springtails, a primitive type of insect that Convey likened to the elephants of Antarctica -- or maybe gazelles since springtails can jump. The springtails live off vegetation. Sparse patches of green, black or orange lichen dot some rocks. Antarctica also boasts two flowering plants, some tiny worms and countless microbes. Many of Antarctica's animals have blood proteins that act as a natural anti-freeze. "I can come here in winter and collect them," Convey said. "They are absolutely stationary ... they are perfectly well capable of surviving months and months and months of minus 10 to minus 20 Celsius" (14.0 to minus 4.00 Fahrenheit)," he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said on Thursday. The former first lady and onetime political rival to President Barack Obama quickly became one of the most influential members of his Cabinet after she began her tenure at State in early 2009. She has said publicly she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years. Associates say Clinton has expressed interest in having the World Bank job should the bank's current president, Robert Zoellick, leave at the end of his term, in the middle of 2012. "Hillary Clinton wants the job," said one source who knows the secretary well. A second source also said Clinton wants the position. A third source said Obama had already expressed support for the change in her role. It is unclear whether Obama has formally agreed to nominate her for the post, which would require approval by the 187 member countries of the World Bank. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied the discussions. "It's totally wrong," he told Reuters. A spokesman for Clinton, Philippe Reines, denied Clinton wanted the job, had conversations with the White House about it or would accept it. People familiar with the situation, told of the denials from the White House and State Department, reaffirmed the accuracy of the report. Revelations of the discussions could hurt Clinton's efforts as America's top diplomat if she is seen as a lame duck in the job at a time of great foreign policy challenges for the Obama administration. Under normal circumstances, names of potential candidates for the World Bank would not surface more than a year before the post becomes vacant. But the timing of the discussions is not unusual this year given the sudden opening of the top job at the bank's sister organization, the IMF, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn's resignation following his arrest on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York. The World Bank provides billions of dollars in development funds to the poorest countries and is also at the center of issues such as climate change, rebuilding countries emerging from conflict and recently the transitions to democracy in Tunisia and Egypt. WOMAN HAS NEVER HEADED WORLD BANK OR IMF The head of the International Monetary Fund has always been a European and the World Bank presidency has always been held by an American. That gentleman's agreement between Europe and the United States is being aggressively challenged by fast-growing emerging market economies that have been shut out of the process. The United States has not publicly supported the European candidate for the IMF, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, although Washington's support is expected. Neither institution has ever been headed by a woman. If Clinton were to leave State, John Kerry, a close Obama ally who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is among those who could be considered as a possible replacement for her. Clinton's star power and work ethic were seen by Obama as crucial qualities for her role as the nation's top diplomat, even though she did not arrive in the job with an extensive foreign policy background. She has embraced the globe-trotting aspects of the job, logging many hours on plane trips to nurture alliances with countries like Japan and Britain and to visit hot spots like Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East. She has long been vocal on global development issues, especially the need for economic empowerment of women and girls in developing countries. She has made that part of her focus at State. Her husband, former US President Bill Clinton, has also been involved in those issues through his philanthropic work at the Clinton Global Initiative.

The meeting — the president’s first with Francis since his inauguration — had deep emotional resonance for Biden, a Roman Catholic. The president and the pope share common ground on many issues, and Biden seemed visibly excited as he headed into a private meeting, which lasted 90 minutes. During their meeting, Biden thanked Francis for his advocacy for the world’s poor and people suffering from hunger, conflict and persecution, the White House said, adding that he had also lauded the pope’s leadership in the climate crisis and his advocacy on coronavirus vaccines. Francis has repeatedly called on pharmaceutical companies to waive intellectual property protections for their coronavirus vaccines on the grounds that doing so would be a “gesture of humanity.” In May, Biden said he supported the suspension of some of those protections, but large manufacturers argue that increasing production is a more effective way to help end the pandemic. The Vatican visit was the prelude to a five-day diplomatic marathon that is crucial not just for Biden but also for the world. This weekend, at the Group of 20 summit of the world’s largest economies, leaders will gather amid a pandemic in which inequalities are increasingly stark and as supply chain woes and rising energy prices threaten economies worldwide. After that, he and many of the same leaders will travel to Scotland for COP26, a worldwide summit on climate change that is billed by many as a make-or-break moment to save a warming planet from disaster. For Biden, the international events come against the backdrop of high-stakes negotiations over his domestic agenda. But participants in the summits from across the globe are all facing enormous challenges, many linked to the pandemic and the health and economic devastation it has wrought. The agenda would be daunting even in normal times, but this is the first G-20 meeting in person since the virus emerged. Many of those who are coming hope to deliver concrete changes on issues like international tax shelters and getting coronavirus vaccines to the developing world, even as they struggle to make progress on existential issues like lowering carbon emissions and addressing energy shortages. Biden will also meet Friday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, who is livid with the administration after the United States cut a secret deal to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines — leaving France, which thought it had a multibillion-dollar agreement in the bag, empty-handed. Between those two meetings, Biden heads to the Chigi Palace, the home of Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi. It is not just a polite drop-by. With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany leaving the scene and Macron politically embattled, Draghi has emerged as a leader of Europe and a potentially key interlocutor for a US president looking to keep alliances strong on the Continent. ©2021 The New York Times Company

In the last stop of an international farewell tour that included visits to Greece and Germany, Obama continued his efforts to calm anxieties since Republican businessman Trump beat Democratic rival and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the US presidential race. "My main message to you ... and the message I delivered in Europe is don't just assume the worst," Obama told a group of young people during a question-and-answer session in Peru on Saturday. "Wait until the administration is in place, it's actually putting its policies together, and then you can make your judgments as to whether or not it's consistent with the international community's interest in living in peace and prosperity together." Trump won the election after promising to build a wall on the US border with Mexico, rip up trade deals and ban Muslims temporarily from entering the United States. Obama has sought to soothe fears by pledging to ensure a smooth transition of power and expressing optimism that the president-elect would shift away from inflammatory campaign rhetoric once he faced the realities of the job. "It will be important for everybody around the world to not make immediate judgments but give this new president-elect a chance to put their team together, to examine the issues, to determine what their policies will be, because as I've always said, how you campaign isn’t always the same as how you govern," Obama said. But Obama has couched his assurances largely in hopeful language that Trump's team would see the merits of policies that Democrats championed despite Trump's pledged to dismantle them, from the Iran nuclear deal to an international pact to fight climate change. And the president, who campaigned vigorously for Clinton and showed visible disdain for Trump before his victory, has offset his words of reassurance with subtle digs at his successor by emphasising themes of democratic values in Europe and Peru that Trump has been criticised for ignoring. "You’re seeing some countries that are going backwards rather than forwards in terms of freedom of the press, in terms of freedom of the Internet, in terms of respecting political opposition and civil society," Obama said on Saturday. Trump barred some news organiations from covering events during his campaign and threatened during a televised debate to jail Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Though Obama came on his trip able to assure European countries that Trump would respect US commitments to NATO, his other assurances, including for Latin American policy, seemed based more on optimism than knowledge of Trump's plans. "With respect to Latin America, I don't anticipate major changes in policy from the new administration," he said, citing trade as a key exception. Trump announced hawkish picks for attorney general, national security adviser, and CIA director on Friday that suggest he is setting up his administration to take a hard line confronting Islamist militancy and curbing illegal immigration.