COP21: Climate deal due Saturday after more all-night talks
Negotiators at the Paris climate summit aim to wrap up a global agreement to curb global warming on Saturday – a day later than expected, hosts France said.
“Things are moving in the right direction,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the summit.
But more compromise is needed if an agreement is to be reached, a BBC correspondent at the talks says.
A deal signed in Paris would come into being in 2020.
Mr Fabius told French television that “the atmosphere is good, things are positive” and that a new compromise deal would be presented on Saturday.
Participants at COP21 – as the UN conference is called – have been working on a draft text, prepared by the French presidency, since Wednesday.
This was seen as a significant moment after discussions that began in 2011 about a new global agreement that would stake out a long-term strategy for dealing with climate change.
Rwanda’s ‘most wanted man’ arrested by Interpol over 1994 genocide
Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who had $5m bounty on his head, had been on the run for 21 years from charges relating to genocide in which 800,000 people died
Interpol agents arrested a Rwandan with a $5m bounty on his head who is among the most wanted for the 1994 genocide, officials said on Thursday.
Ladislas Ntaganzwa was arrested in the eastern Congo city of Goma late on Monday, according to John Bosco Siboyintore, head of the genocide tracking unit at Rwanda’s Public Prosecution Authority, and Richard Muhumuza, Rwanda’s prosecutor general.
Ntaganzwa is among the nine most-wanted fugitives in the 1994 Rwanda genocide which killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, Siboyintore said.
Russia 2018: Racism ‘guaranteed’ at World Cup as incidents double
Report identifies 10 cases of abuse of black people – some of them players – compared to five in the previous two seasons
The number of racist acts committed by Russian football fans has doubled in the country which will host the 2018 World Cup, with most cases going unpunished, anti-discrimination campaigners have said.
Researchers from the Moscow-based Sova Centre and the Uefa-affiliated Fare Network logged 92 incidents of discriminatory displays and chants in and around stadiums last season, compared to a total of 83 for the previous two seasons put together.
At the World Cup, “there will be incidents inside stadiums, around stadiums. The question will be how frequently they occur, how serious they are,” Fare executive director Piara Powar said.
11 December 2015 – 08H25
Colombian eco-designer finds beauty in trash
MEDELLÍN (COLOMBIA) (AFP) –
Adriana Restrepo has a lot of experience searching for silver linings.
The Colombian fashion designer and environmentalist was a pregnant 18-year-old when drug traffickers in Medellin, her violence-stained hometown, killed her partner, leaving her to raise their son on her own.
Maybe that has something to do with her talent for finding beauty in other people’s trash, which she avidly collects to turn into hip, colorful home decor and accessories.
Restrepo lights up as she criss-crosses Medellin, Colombia’s second city, visiting used tire depots and warehouses full of cannibalized computers.
“It’s my shopping mall,” she said, beaming as she brandished defunct hard disks she planned to turn into pop-art coasters or clocks.
Maid, 11, accuses cricket star of abuse: ‘They used to beat me with sticks’
By Sugam Pokharel, CNN
She’s known as “Happy” but when Mahfuza Akhter was found bruised and crying in the streets of Dhaka she was anything but.
The 11-year-old former live-in maid of one of Bangladesh’s cricketing heroes is at the center of perhaps the biggest celebrity trial the country has ever seen.
She claims that she was abused by international cricket star Shahadat Hossain and his wife, Nritto Shahadat, while working in their home.
“They used to beat me with sticks, kitchen utensils, punch me, and scratch me. I would be slapped a lot,” she says, pointing to a distinct scar on her face.
Does North Korea really have a hydrogen bomb? (+video)
North Korea has indicated that it possesses the capacity for this powerful weapon, but these claims are difficult to verify.
During a tour of the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site, a memorial to North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, and its most recent leader, Kim Jong-il, the Hermit Kingdom’s current president appeared to make a startling claim.
Kim Jong-un said that thanks to the “tireless efforts” of his grandfather, the country has now developed the capacity for a hydrogen bomb.
North Korea is now “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate [an] A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation,” the state-run KCNA news agency quoted Mr. Kim as saying.
Hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs, are even more powerful than atomic weapons because they gain their detonating powers from nuclear fusion.
North Korea has publicly tested nuclear devices in the past, drawing both condemnation and sanctions from the United Nations. The most recent sanctions are in place until April of next year.