13 December 2014 Last updated at 05:12
Lima climate talks: Peru summit continues through night
Talks have continued well past the official close of business on the final day of a key UN climate summit in Peru aimed at advancing a new global treaty.
The negotiators in the capital, Lima, are tasked with preparing a text to serve as the basis for a new compact to be signed in Paris next year.
But long-running divisions between rich and poor continue to hamper progress.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that the world is "still on a course leading to tragedy".
He said a deal was "not an option - an urgent necessity".
Negotiators have been meeting in Lima for almost two weeks to prepare the elements of the new treaty.
Ten things Japanese people are worrying about ahead of the snap election
We asked our readers to tell us the mood in Japan ahead of Sunday’s snap election called by prime minister Shinzo Abe
This Sunday sees a snap election in Japan, as Shinzo Abe attempts to shore up a mandate for his Liberal Democratic party’s economic reforms.
We asked our readers to tell us the mood in Japan ahead of the election.The responses we received suggest concern for Japan’s economic and social direction, alongside apathy and frustration at the political process. Here are ten key themes that emerged.
1) Voter apathy
Voter turnout dropped to a postwar low in 2012, and is expected to be even lower for Sunday’s poll. Our readers were particularly worried about apathy among young voters.
Germany’s infrastructure rusts as politicians fiddle
Budget curbs and decades of neglect causing structural meltdown in industrial heartland
No amount of aspirin can cure the headaches doing the rounds at its inventor, Bayer. The German healthcare giant is the biggest name in a vast industrial cluster that employs 40,000 people on either side of the Rhine, near Cologne. But doing business or even getting to work here is a daily battle through a rusting, crumbling infrastructure.
For Bayer the problem is the Leverkusen Bridge that spans the Rhine and links two production plants. Erected half a century ago, the cable bridge is a crucial artery on the A1 Autobahn for commuters and businesses.
But last month construction workers discovered serious rips in the steel structure. Traffic was reduced from six lanes to four – and articulated lorries over 3.5 tonnes banned.
Rising Ebola figures cause alarm
The latest figures from the World Health Organization show another increase in the Ebola death toll. Nearly 6,600 people have died from the virus since the worst outbreak on record began early this year.
The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) show 6,583 people have died out of 18,188 recorded Ebola cases.
The Geneva-based UN health agency reported that the majority of infections and deaths were in the West African states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The WHO said earlier in the week that the death toll had remained the same in other countries also affected by the disease: six in Mali, one in the US and eight in Nigeria, which was declared Ebola free in October.
Spain and Senegal have also counted one case of infection each, but were declared free of the virus in recent weeks.
Delhi air impurities far worse than level that won Indian capital 'world's most polluted city' title
December 13, 2014 - 11:05AM
Jason Koutsoukis
South Asia correspondent at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
A survey that found extreme air pollution in Delhi, including in the greenest area of the city, shocked the people who conducted it.
Delhi: When the World Health Organisation ranked Delhi the world's most polluted city this year, it did so using two-year-old figures provided by a local government agency.
But the truth is much worse.
According to a new study published by India's Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi air is so thick with killer particles that it poses a dangerous risk to the health of the capital region's 22 million residents.
"We have found that daily personal exposure to toxic air is significantly higher than the background ambient air pollution that is monitored by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee," says the centre's director-general, Sunita Narain.
'Shami Witness': Twitter's top Islamic State 'jihadi' outed as a fake
A major English language, pro-Islamic State Twitter account turns out to be run by a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing executive in Bangalore, India.
Social media, for good or ill, has become an important part of covering conflict and a conduit of propaganda for its combatants. Supporters of the Islamic State have taken enthusiastically to Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, reposting and broadcasting videos of gruesome beheadings and paeans to their martyrs as fast as the services try to take them down.
Interested in the war in Syria? Follow the right Twitter accounts and you have access to battlefield videos and photos (many real, some faked), statements and propaganda from various sides, and a window into the lives of individual fighters as well as Syrians just trying to survive that gruesome civil war.
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