Taken together, these signals of intent by the world's two biggest producers give a powerful boost to the prospects for the talks. China said it will cut emissions of carbon relative to economic growth by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.

Because its economy is still growing fast, this means that in absolute terms China's emissions will continue to rise fast for at least a decade. But for the first time China has agreed to slow the pace of growth of emissions.

"This ( Read more... )
View full article here

But why? Garlic, surely, is nothing but a smelly, unromantic little vegetable which nobody eats in any great quantity unless they want to lose all their friends. So why should the garlic traders of Jinxiang province, the garlic-producing heartland of China, be stinking rich this year?

One reason is a belief that it can keep you safe from swine flu. In north China, chewing garlic to ward off flu and other ailments is an old practice and it is suspected that traders have been encouraging people ( Read more... )
View full article here

The Burmese regime ? apparently caught off guard by the scale of the demonstrations that have spread through the country over the past week ? held a crisis meeting at its headquarters at its new capital, Naypidaw, located deep in the jungle. With discussions apparently led by the Defence Ministry, the regime emerged to issue new, blunt warnings to the demonstrators to end their protests or face the government's response.

The protesters showed no sign yesterday of backing down. For the eighth ( Read more... )
View full article here

"I have not entered that room ? it's not something I have done. Even in the aftermath I did not go in. I did not see the bodies. I refused to do this," says Mr Kang. "To me, the last memories I want to remember are of them still alive."

Twelve months after 10 Islamist militants swept ashore and laid deadly siege to the Indian city of Mumbai leaving more than 165 people dead and a nation stunned, the historic Taj Mahal Palace hotel ? the hotel of which Mr Kang remains general manager ? is ( Read more... )
View full article here

Burden sharing by the rest of the coalition is the last of the conditions placed on the UK's boost by the Prime Minister which remains to be fulfilled.

But in a letter to Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Mr Brown said he was confident UK efforts to persuade partners other than the US to contribute had been successful.

The PM despatched his senior foreign policy adviser Simon McDonald and Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth to 10 countries ( Read more... )
View full article here

A Nepalese minister said it was the largest sacrifice of animals in the world. Protests by animals rights activists and other religious groups have occurred in recent weeks in towns near the Gadhimai Temple and in the capital, Kathmandu, but the organisers refused to halt the slaughter, saying it is a centuries-old tradition.

More than 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons will be killed over two days at the temple in the jungles of Bara district, about 100 miles south of Kathmandu, ( Read more... )
View full article here

Zhang Yujun was executed for endangering public safety and Geng Jinping for producing and selling toxic food, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Their sentences were upheld in March by an appeal court in the northern city of Shijiazhuang. China requires death sentences to receive final approval from the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, after which most are carried out by lethal injection.

The case was one of China's worst food safety ( Read more... )
View full article here

The bullet-riddled bodies of 24 people were found buried in shallow graves yesterday in a remote farming area of Maguindanao province, adding to the 22 corpses police had already discovered on Monday that had been dumped along a dirt road. Local officials said the victims, including 14 women and several journalists, were shot at close range and then hurriedly piled on top of one another in a pit dug up with a bulldozer.

And there were warnings that the death toll was only likely to rise. ( Read more... )
View full article here

Huang Qi was sentenced less than a week after the US President Barack Obama urged China to grant its citizens greater human rights. The court ruling was interpreted as a clear sign that Beijing was unwilling to cede any ground on civil liberties.

Mr Huang, a 46-year-old political activist and campaigner, had asked awkward questions on behalf of parents who believed their children would have survived if their shoddily-built schools had not collapsed when the huge tremor struck Sichuan province ( Read more... )
View full article here

But the target market we are looking at here is several times more impoverished than that. We are talking about quite possibly the most neglected people in Asia, or anywhere else. They call themselves Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Burma, 30,000 of whom have been so cruelly persecuted by their country's military junta, in large measure because of their religion, that they have chosen to flee over the border to live in a refugee camp that they themselves built, without the help of the United ( Read more... )
View full article here

Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner said the bodies of 13 women and eight men were found in the area where about 30 people were taken hostage.

"We believe more bodies are buried," Brawner said. "Unfortunately, the killing happened before our troops got there."

Some of the victims were beheaded, and bodies mutilated, local officials said.

Military officials said the dead included Genalyn Tiamzon-Mangudadatu, ( Read more... )
View full article here

Some of the audience titters. This impeccably dressed guest, was introduced as Begum Nawazish Ali, the stately widow of an army colonel, and he is Pakistani's first television transvestite. Begum, otherwise known as Ali Saleem, is a 30-year-old television presenter who has made a name for himself as Pakistan's first open bisexual, a highly transgressive act in a country where overt homosexuality is banned under sharia law.

His show has become a flagship series for Aaj channel, and he has ( Read more... )
View full article here

Rescuers saved more than 240 people aboard the ferry but officials are unsure of how many more people may be missing.

A second ferry was still stranded in nearby waters after running aground, but all its passengers were said to be safe.

Rescue teams found 25 bodies, including those of two children, according to officials.

A total of 243 survivors from the Dumai Express 10 were rescued, they said.

It was unclear how many people were aboard the ferry. ( Read more... )
View full article here

The findings, from new reports looking at the current situation in Afghanistan, highlight key areas in which, contrary to the assurances of Western military leaders, the war is being lost.

There were nearly 13,000 attacks between January and the end of August this year ? more than two and a half times the number experienced during the same period last year and a fivefold increase on the total in 2005.

"The most recent data available, as of August 2009, showed the highest rate of enemy-initiated ( Read more... )
View full article here

And that may be the problem for Goa. When people like Mr Keller first arrived, they came overland, down the hippy trail that wound from Turkey through Iran and Afghanistan to this tiny former Portuguese enclave on India's western coast. They were few enough in number to blend in among the coastal villages, and if they were in a blissed-out haze on marijuana or hash a lot of the time, nobody minded too much.

Talking to Mr Keller in the organic café decorated with streamers and lanterns and ( Read more... )
View full article here

Some 300,000 war-displaced were forced into camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.

The ethnic minority Tamils are held against their will. More than half were released in recent months amid pressure from rights groups and foreign governments. Authorities say nearly 136,000 people remain detained in the camps, which are guarded by soldiers and strung with barbed wire. ( Read more... )
View full article here

The killing 34 years ago of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, traumatised his young nation and plunged it into political chaos. But yesterday, with the upholding of the death sentences against five leaders of the coup which ended Rahman's life, some Bangladeshis were hoping that their country can now finally turn the page.

"Executions of the Mujibur killers would relieve the nation of a great burden and restore rule of law," said Abu Yusuf Humayun, a senior state ( Read more... )
View full article here

It was a far cry from his first inauguration five years ago. Much of the city was decorated in 2004, with streams of coloured lights, the red, green and black of the Afghan flag, and portraits of Mr Karzai hanging from buildings and street lamps. Banners proclaimed in English: "This Is the Birth of Our Freedom". When Mr Karzai entered the Great Hall of the Presidential Palace accompanied by the former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, he received a standing ovation. The newly-elected president spoke ( Read more... )
View full article here

With the accused said to include serving cabinet members, prosecutions would send the strongest signal yet that Mr Karzai is serious about smashing the culture of impunity that has destroyed public confidence in his government.

"We have indictments with sufficient proof against five ministers," Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko said on Wednesday in an interview with Der Spiegel. "Two of them are in the current cabinet and three are former ministers... The President only has to grant ( Read more... )
View full article here

The bombing was the seventh strike in less than two weeks in and around Peshawar, the largest city in the north-west. The attacks have killed more than 80 people.

The bomber, who arrived in a taxi, was being searched by police at the gate of the city's lower court when he detonated explosives.

The army launched its offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan in mid-October. It has retaken many towns in the region, but the militants say they avoided fighting and will ( Read more... )
View full article here