WITH U.S. BACKING, UKRAINE PUSHES TO PRIVATIZE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT
LIKE MOST DOCUMENTS that travel through U.N. channels, a recent proposal from Ukrainian diplomats is blanketed in jargon and buzzwords, promising to render things “integrated, holistic and balanced” and to promote “ambition.” But this proposal — brought by the Ukrainian negotiating team to this year’s U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties, COP23 — carries more substance than its language might suggest: giving the world’s biggest polluters an official say in how the Paris Agreement gets implemented.
“We have to stop forcing our corporations to do something, but making — I don’t like to say profitable — but, I like to say, make them think about environmental actives as serious business,” Taras Bebeshko, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister who presented the proposal on behalf of his delegation this month, told The Intercept.
'Unrivalled helmsman'? We read Chinese media's enormous ode to Xi so you don't have to
Xinhua has issued a lengthy hagiography of president Xi Jinping. Here are the essentials so you can pass the pub test
China’s official news agency, Xinhua, has released a titanic and oleaginous 8,000-word profile of the country’s leader, Xi Jinping. Pushed for time? Here’s a quick Xi-nopsis
Name: Xi Jinping.
Age: 64.
Job titles: Lots. General secretary of the Communist party of China, chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist party of China, president of the People’s Republic of China … AKA the chairman of everything.
Number of times his name appears in Xinhua’s 7,649-word opus: 113.
Which words crop up more? Only six: “the” (534), “of” (264), “and” (250), “to” (188), “a” (180) and “in” (175).
How often is democracy mentioned? Just once.
Why I'm still not celebrating the arrest of Mugabe, whose men tortured my schoolfriend
Mark was my classmate for six years, and was one of many jubilant children who ran out of our classroom celebrating Mugabe’s victory in March 1980. Then his newspaper ran a story about an attempted military coup, and everything changed
We were in class when the news came.
The war was over, as was 90 years of white domination. Rhodesia was no more. Its former Prime Minister Ian Smith’s claim that he didn’t believe in black majority rule – “ever in Rhodesia, not in 1,000 years” – was dust.
Robert Mugabe, whose name had been banned in the local press, who had been jailed for 11 years for political activities, survived assassination attempts and called a black Hitler, was our new leader.
Iraqi forces retake last town held by IS group
Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State (IS) group control, on Friday, signalling the complete defeat of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
The capture of the town marks the end of IS group’s era of territorial rule over a so-called caliphate that it proclaimed in 2014 across vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Iraqi forces “liberated Rawa entirely, and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings,” Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement from the Joint Operations Command.
Rawa borders Syria, whose army declared victory over the militants on Nov. 9, after seizing the last substantial town on the border with Iraq.
Argentine navy says it's lost contact with submarine
Updated 0833 GMT (1633 HKT) November 18, 2017
The Argentine navy is looking for one of its submarines after it lost contact with the vessel off the country's coast, the military service said Friday.
The ARA San Juan submarine was last spotted Wednesday in the San Jorge Gulf roughly 432 kilometers (268 miles) off the east coast, the navy said. At least 44 crew members were on board, state-run news agency Telam reported.
Crews are searching for the vessel by air and sea near its last known location in the Atlantic Ocean, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters.
Zimbabweans call for Mugabe's resignation at rally
Thousands of Zimbabweans are marching to demand President Robert Mugabe's resignation, in a rare show of public defiance.
Saturday's rally to the State House in Harare, the capital, is backed by the army, which seized power on Wednesday.
The mood at the Zimbabwe Grounds, where speeches will be delivered, was celebratory.
The site chosen was symbolic. In 1980, around 200,000 people gathered at Zimbabwe Grounds to welcome Mugabe from exile after the liberation war from white minority rule.
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