Six In The Morning

UN members agree climate deal at Lima talks

14 December 2014 Last updated at 07:36

BBC

United Nations members have reached an agreement on how countries should tackle climate change.

Delegates have approved a framework for setting national pledges to be submitted to a summit next year.

Differences over the draft text caused the talks in Lima, Peru, to overrun by two days.

Environmental groups have criticised the deal as a weak and ineffectual compromise, saying it weakens international climate rules.

The talks proved difficult because of divisions between rich and poor countries over the scale and scope of plans to tackle global warming.

Ten years on, a survivor’s fear of torture doesn’t go away

 Jabuli endured seven months in a torture chamber in a central African country, an ordeal that has left him struggling to recover

Spencer Ackerman

The Observer, Sunday 14 December 2014

Jabuli prefers to stay indoors, on his own. When he does go out, he seeks crowded public spaces so that there will be witnesses if his tormentors reappear to kidnap him again. Ten years on, time and distance have not healed the damage that comes from torture.

“You live with the fear that the people who tortured you may come back to torture you again,” he said, “regardless of if you are in a safe country.”

Triggers are everywhere. Armoured vans on the street make him think of the station where he was tortured. He fears intimacy, because he doesn’t want someone to see him having nightmares, or to watch him wake up crying. He worries that he will not be “good enough to have a family”.

A Greek island – yours for the price of a London flat

 Cash-strapped Greeks are selling off their slices of paradise

 KITTY KNOWLES   Sunday 14 December 2014

Fed up with Britain’s icy blasts and soaring house prices? Then why not bask in the sun and paddle the azure seas from the shores of your own Greek island. You may have to share living space with goats, but with more than 20 Greek islands for sale, Brits can live out their Mamma Mia! fantasies for the price of a central London flat.

Little Lesbos, an uninhabited 16-acre haven in the Aegean Sea, 200 metres from the island of Lesbos and described as “one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean” by real estate company Vladi Private Islands, is available for €800,000 (around £630,000).

Egypt refers hundreds to military tribunals

More than 400 Egyptians will face military trials in connection to violence that followed the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi. In recent tribunals, hundreds of Egyptians have been sentenced to death.

 

Egyptian authorities referred 438 supporters of former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to military tribunals Saturday in relation to violence stemming from protests in Cairo last year, security officials said.

Morsi’s followers have been the target of a relentless crackdown since ex-army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took power in July 2013.

In the first case to be handled by the military tribunals, 139 Morsi backers are expected to stand trial over the deaths of three policemen in the southern province of Minya.

Farhana Yamin’s simple yet radical idea: zero emissions

Ms. Yamin has been a key actor in getting that ambitious goal into the discussion of carbon emission reductions under way at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru.

 By Karl Ritter, Associated Press

LIMA, PERU – Pulling a worn, yellowed copy of the 1992 U.N. climate change convention from her handbag, Farhana Yamin points to the paragraph that states its goal: To stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous warming.

It doesn’t provide any guidance on how to do that.

But Ms. Yamin does. And, in a historic first, dozens of governments now embrace her prescription. The global climate pact set for adoption in Paris next year should phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, says the London-based environmental lawyer.

‘Stupid’ US sanctions won’t undo my government: Maduro

 

 Caracas (AFP)

President Nicolas Maduro charged Saturday that tighter, “stupid” new US sanctions are just further straining to undermine military staff loyalty after Venezuela derailed a bid to oust him.

“These sanctions are a threat — to see if they can break the morale of leaders of our armed forces … in March, I announced that we put down an attempted coup d’etat, thanks to our brass’ loyalty,” Maduro said at a speech in Caracas.

The tighter US sanctions freeze assets and deny visas to Venezuelan authorities responsible for violence and political detentions triggered by the protests.