IPCC report: Scientists are 95% certain humans causing climate change
Most comprehensive report on climate change ever leaves little doubt that greenhouse gases are causing the world to heat up
Scientists are more certain than they have ever been that humans are causing global warming, according to the most comprehensive report ever conducted into climate change, which predicts with 95 per cent certainty that people’s greenhouse gas emissions are heating the world.
This is the main finding of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) fifth assessment report, known as AR5, which was published in Stockholm this morning.
The degree of certainty leaves little doubt that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are responsible for climate change and compares to a finding of 90 per cent certainty in the previous - fourth - assessment six years ago. This, in turn, was a significant increase on the 66 per cent certainty reached in 2001's third assessment and just over 50 per cent in 1995.
REFUGEES
Considered, deported and forgotten
German asylum procedures specify that the authorities are only permitted to deport refugees to a so-called "safe" third country. But trying to determine what exactly is safe is not necessarily easy.
The police picked up Anuar Naso and his family in the Lower Saxon town of Giessen in the early morning hours. The 15-year-old and his father were deported to Syria, where the two Yezidic Kurds were jailed in Damascus. Anuar was kept in prison for a month and three days. "I was detained and I was tortured," the young man told Deutsche Welle.
Anuar Naso and his father were deported on February 1, 2011, although Germany's foreign ministry has for years pointed out the problematic human rights situation in Syria. According to reports, beginning in the fall of 2009, refugees deported to Syria were immediately detained there in several cases.
Out of sight, out of mind?
Thousands of refugees are deported from Germany every year. According to the federal interior ministry, 6,632 people have been deported so far in 2013. Like Anuar and his father, they are sometimes picked up in the middle of the night and taken to the airport.
Terror in Kenya: The 'White Widow' and the SA link
Home affairs says Samantha Lewthwaite's passport was "cancelled" in 2011 as fear grows in Jo'burg's "Little Mogadishu".
Evidence that Samantha Lewthwaite – dubbed "the White Widow" by the British press – led or was involved in the Kenya attacks remained thin this week.
But, at the same time, evidence mounted that Lewthwaite used Johannesburg as a base in recent years during a time when, the Kenyan government believes, she was involved in the planning of terror attacks.
Late on Thursday, Interpol issued a warrant for Lewthwaite's arrest. Her alleged accomplice, Briton Jermaine Grant, appeared in a Kenyan court this week to face charges that the two had planned to murder British tourists in terror attacks in Kenya.
Authorities in that country believe the two were working with Somali terror group al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the attack on Nairobi's Westgate Mall.Colombia out, Peru in, as coca king. What's that mean?
The UN announced this week that Peru has edged out Colombia as top producer of coca, the plant used to create cocaine, reflecting shifting markets and military realities.
After nearly two decades as the top producer of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, Colombia has passed the baton to neighboring Peru, according to United Nations figures. It’s a shift in the map of Andean coca production, which experts say strongly resembles the landscape from the early 1990s, a time of expanding drug crop cultivation and trafficking.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime announced Tuesday that 60,400 hectares of coca were planted last year in Peru. Although this is a 3.4 percent drop in the area cultivated from the previous year, a 25 percent drop in Colombia means Peru has taken on the dubious distinction of top producer.
"The new map looks an awful lot like the old map" from the 1990s, says Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America who has been tracking drug policy in the Andes for more than a decade.
Uzbekistan's Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva reveals rift in first family
They are the glamorous daughters of Uzbekistan's authoritarian President Islam Karimov, mixing with international celebrities and enjoying a jet-set lifestyle.
But now, in comments given exclusively to BBC Uzbek, the younger sister, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva has revealed an extraordinary rift at the heart of one of Central Asia's most prominent ruling families.
"My sister and I have not spoken to each other for 12 years," Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva says.
"There are no family or friendly relations between us."
Ms Karimova-Tillayeva's frank comments about the complete breakdown of her relationship with her sister, Gulnara, are a rare crack in the secrecy and media silence that usually surrounds Central Asia's all-powerful political dynasties.
Mao-era style of self-criticism reappears on Chinese TV
On Chinese TV, President Xi Jinping leads a session of self-criticism among Hebei provincial officials. They chastise themselves for wasteful spending.
By Barbara Demick
Chinese people switching on their 7 p.m. television news might have done a double take, suspecting that the state broadcaster had mistakenly plugged in a tape from the 1970s before the death of Mao Tse-tung.
For 24 minutes, the flagship Chinese news — probably the television program with the largest viewership — showed President Xi Jinping presiding over an extraordinary public session in which Communist Party cadres in engaged in self-criticism.
Self-criticism, the Communist Party's equivalent of group psychotherapy, is a venerable tradition that has largely lost steam since the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when people denounced themselves and one another, donning dunce caps and delivering beatings. Although party members are still required to practice self-criticism, it has been in recent years largely pro forma. In fact, they can buy self-criticism essays online if they don't know what to say.
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