COP21: Progress reported on key issue of loss and damage

“Loss and damage” is the idea that compensation should be paid to vulnerable states for climate-related events that they cannot adapt to.

The issue has provoked heated arguments and walkouts at previous conferences.

But here in Paris, negotiators from the US and small island states are said to be “closer” to an agreement.

For small island states and some of the least developed countries, the question of loss and damage has become one of the most important aspects of the climate negotiations in recent years.

While the vulnerable countries believe there are many impacts of climate change that they can adapt to, they have been seeking a mechanism that would compensate them for those events that they cannot cope with.

Killed by a Russian bomb, a five-year-old visiting relatives in Syria

Raghat’s mother thought her village was a safe distance from Isis – but Syrians accuse Russia of targeting civilian areas

Emma Graham-Harrison in Reyhanli

 Five-year-old Raghat loved singing, nail polish, teasing her toddler sister, the alphabet she was starting to learn at nursery, and goofing for the camera. In the last photos of her, taken barely 10 minutes before the Russian bombs landed, she shows off a new bracelet and freshly painted nails with glee, then squeezes a kiss from her squirming baby sister.

“I only took my children back to Syria for six days,” says her mother, Suheer, her eyes welling up as she plays a video on her smartphone, bringing a shadow of her daughter momentarily back to life. Her son Hossein, only four himself, leans in to smooth away her tears. Too young to really understand why his sister has vanished, he comforts his mother with a soft patter of “mummy, no, mummy”.

Saudi Arabia’s unity summit will only highlight Arab disunity

Sixty-five opposition figures are supposed to achieve Arab unity in time for international talks

• Robert Fisk @indyvoices

Everyone opposing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria will be invited to Riyadh later this month with one significant exception: a delegation from the so-called “Islamic State”.

At least 65 “opposition figures”, in the words of Saudi Arabia’s state-controlled press, are supposed to achieve the impossible – Arab unity – in time for the new year’s round of multinational peace talks on Syria. But the whole shebang is likely to prove as mystifying as David Cameron’s 70,000 “moderate” fighters. There will, we are assured, be representatives of the “armed opposition”. But who are they? Will the head-chopping and sectarian al-Qaeda outfit Jabhat al-Nusra be represented, funded by sources in Qatar and posing as the new “moderates”? And then there’s the virtually non-existent “Free Syrian Army”, which will certainly be ready to fly to Riyadh, if only to prove it exists.

Smiles mark uneasiness for ‘most endangered tribe’ on Earth

December 5, 2015 – 11:30AM

Dom Phillips

Caru Indigenous Land, Brazil: Wirohoa does not have a driver’s licence, a television or a mobile phone. He does not know how old he is and walks barefoot around the indigenous village of Tiracambu, in the Brazilian Amazon.

Last December he, his mother Jakarewaja and his aunt Amakaria left the forest where they had lived their whole lives as nomadic hunter-gatherers, isolated from modern society.

“We were very happy living in the forest,” said Wirohoa, who does not use a surname, and is estimated to be about 25.

The family’s move to a village brought decidedly mixed results. The two women caught tuberculosis; like other hunter-gatherers, their immune systems are especially susceptible to modern diseases. Wirohoa found a wife.

Proposed social media bill under fire in Nigeria

Activists use social media to condemn proposed law they say would “infringe freedom of speech” if passed.

Teo Kermeliotis

Web activists, tech professionals and rights groups in Nigeria have joined forces to call for the withdrawal of a draft bill which, they claim, will limit freedom of expression in Africa’s most populous country.

Using the #NoToSocialMediaBill hashtag, they took to Twitter on Friday to oppose the proposed law, which has passed a second reading at the Senate.

The draft bill to “Prohibit Frivolous Petitions and Other Matters Connected Therewith,” proposed by Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah from the ruling All People’s Congress party (APC), begins by making it illegal to start any type of petition without swearing an affidavit that the content is true in a court of law.

Why mass shootings don’t convince gun owners to support gun control

Updated by David Roberts

One thing I often hear in the wake of these endless mass shootings is, “Surely this will convince those gun people. Surely the carnage and suffering are bad enough now that they’ll feel compelled to support some gun control.”

This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the cognitive and emotional dynamics at work. It presumes that mass shootings constitute an argument against guns, to be weighed against arguments in their favor. But to gun enthusiasts, mass shootings are not arguments against guns but for them. The rise in mass shootings is only convincing both sides that they’re right, causing them to dig in further.

It’s not even clear that opinions on guns and gun violence remain amenable to argument. Over the past few decades, gun ownership in the US has evolved from a practical issue for rural homeowners and hunters to a kind of gesture of tribal solidarity, an act of defiance toward Obama, the left, and all the changes they represent. The gun lobby has become more hardened and uncompromising, pushing guns into schools, churches, and universities.