Call to Save the Planet Opens COP17
The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), inaugurated on Monday, calls to tackle global warming as a matter of life or death.
During the opening ceremony, South African President Jacob Zuma urged UN agencies, States and parties of the UN Convention to find a solution in Durban and work on reaching a balanced, just and credible result.
Zuma insisted that a multilateral spirit, based on the regulations of the UN Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, must prevail during the event, which will last until December 9.
Zuma noted that an agreement on a second a commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol should be reached as well as a pact on the nature the future system to tackle climate change.
The Kyoto protocol sets the objective of reducing Greenhouse gases in 5.2 percent with regards of the levels of 1990 by 2012.
President Zuma also considered necessary to aid under-developed countries for them to carry out mitigation and adaptation actions through the Green Climate Fund, created in Cancun a year ago.
On the other hand, the president affirmed that the solutions to the effects climate change should not be separated from the fight to eradicate poverty.
The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will alternate with the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7).
Obama Receives Europeans Amid Fears
U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of the European Union (EU) will meet on Monday during a summit amid fears for the impact the European debt crisis might have on the already shaky economy of the country.
The European crisis threat is worse than people think and it could affect the recovery, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The organization noted that the uncertainty surrounding U.S. economy is high.
Officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve believe that the Euro zone debt crisis will not affect the U.S. economy.
At the meeting in the White House, Obama will receive President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, Head of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton.
Egypt: Parliamentary Elections Begins; Protests Continue
The parliamentary elections began Monday in nine of 27 provinces, including the capital and Alexandria, marked by a permanent protest against the military junta in Tahrir Square, which is currently at an uneasy calm.
The first elections to the People’s Assembly (lower house of parliament), since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February, called for 17.5 percent of some 60 million potential voters in the country with a population of more than 80 million people.
More than 6.700 candidates and about 50 political parties and social movements registered all over the country to aspire to the 498-seat People’s Assembly and the 264-seat Shoura Council (upper house), which will open elections in January, 2012.
The complex and long schedule decided by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (CSFA) and the Supreme Judicial Commission for Elections (SJCE) stated that on Monday and tomorrow morning the voters will exercise the suffrage in cities of Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut, Port Said and Luxor.
According to the SJCE, the other four provinces and electoral districts are Fayoum, Damietta, Kafr El-Sheikh and Red Sea, where most of the nearly 9,500 accredited judges will work as supervisors.
Other provinces will hold elections on December 21 (Giza, Beni Suef, Munofyia, Al-Sharqiya, Ismailia, Suez, Beheira, Sohag and Aswan) and the rest of them on January 3 (Minya, Qalubia, Gharbia, Daqahlyia, North Sinai, South Sinai, New Valley, Qena and Marsa-Matrouh).
The elections for the upper house will be made, also in three phases, from January 13 to March 24, a schedule that has generated discomfort among those who accuse the CSFA of delaying its stay in power instead of delivering it to a civil authority.
Merkel Tries to Ban neo-Nazi Party in Germany
German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the political forces for cooperation in order to begin a process to ban the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD).
Merkel considers the fact as “a historical responsibility,” the Der Spiegel magazine reported in this weekend edition.
Negotiations to start a ban of the NPD began after its links with neo-Nazi group that killed nine foreigners and one German police between 2000 and 2007 came to light earlier this month.
The discovery of the neo-Nazi cell questioned German authorities´ work, who were unable to detect the perpetrators of such crimes.
In Germany there are about 10,000 members of groups who claim the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and that are willing to use violence, according to official statistics of the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
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