I sphinx it’s time to go on a diet

They didn’t chow down on pizza, chips and donuts, but the ancient Egyptian elite would still have had to worry about getting heart disease, says Joe Milton

UN blue helmets help passengers in DR Congo when plane overshoots runway

United Nations peacekeepers helped passengers and provided emergency medical treatment today after an airliner with 117 passengers on board over-ran the airstrip in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

US businessman campaigns for Argentine marsh ecology

This US multi-millionaire and former businessman co-founded the North Face and Esprit clothing brands.

He is taking on farmers whom he accuses of polluting the nation’s vast northern sweet-water marshes in Corrientes province, which is near the Paraguayan and Brazilian borders.

He bought 1,390 square kilometers (540 square miles) of land around these marshes in 1998 and is trying to persuade the authorities to turn the rich tropical ecosystem into a 13,000 square kilometer national park.

Tompkins spends six months of the year here, and the other six on his rural properties in Chile, yet is widely regarded with suspicion and resentment as a misguided interloper.

“We were told here in Corrientes, ‘People say that you are here to steal water.’ So I said: ‘How am I gonna do it, to transport it and take it to somewhere else?’

“They said: ‘By the Internet.’ And I said: ‘If I can do that, I don’t need the water’,” Tompkins said.

Doug, as the diminutive and trim 66-year-old is called by his employees, said he would not be dissuaded from his environmentalism, a passion he discovered while reading works by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher.

He seeks to persuade opponents through defensive steps, deploying reason and philanthropic gestures.

Along with his wife Kristine, he has donated hundreds of thousands of protected hectares in southern Chile and Argentina.

But he also goes on the offensive: using his large fortune to buy up cattle farms where he lets nature and indigenous deer take over; reintroducing marsh deer, anteaters and species that had disappeared; and bringing legal cases against rice farmers, whom he says use chemicals that upset the local ecology.

“Corrientes is badly damaged, especially over grazing and big industrial rice operations,” he said.

“You can see how people have abused the land. Common sense tells us that if you continue to abuse the landscapes, there will be negative and unpleasant repercussions.”

Project Iberia, an organisation he funds, has won seven cases so far.

“Argentine laws protecting the water are very solid,” explained Sofia Heinonen, the 41-year-old head of the project, sitting at a table covered with pamphlets that urge locals to saddle up their horses and celebrate the latest supreme court victory.

But the approach has earned Tompkins enemies.

“We don’t believe in this myth of the billionaire philanthropist. Tompkins is face of the power of money - part of the rich and powerful who want to take the natural resources of Latin America,” said Mabel Moulin, a spokeswoman for the Ibera Heritage Foundation for the Correntinos.

The green flag of her group flies at the entrance of several farms in the marshlands, a symbol of defiance.

Moulin charges that Tompkins is forcing poor rural workers off the land he buys with little concern for the human hardship he is causing.

“Before anteaters or deer, we should be defending the people,” she said.

Nevertheless, Tompkins is convinced of his mission. “You must keep your position, do your thing, do it well, have results to show. And over time, you always win.”

“Humans are part of a larger system, they are not living in a glass box above nature. They should take into consideration as we develop our economies and our cultures that we have to share our planet with other creatures,” he added.

Spain doubles aid for UN food operation in Horn of Africa

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) received a boost today for its emergency relief efforts feeding millions of hungry people in the Horn of Africa, with the announcement of a $112 million donation from Spain.

Barratt hopes eco-village will lay the foundations for all new homes

Construction work begins today on Britain’s first official zero-carbon housing development.

The 200 Barratt-built homes at Hanham Hall, a former hospital site in South Gloucestershire, are expected to create the blueprint for future new-build properties, which must all be carbon zero by 2016.

Residents will have allotments and greenhouses, a farm shop selling locally sourced groceries and an on-site biomass boiler. Existing buildings will be adapted for community use and hedgerows, meadows and orchards will be extended.

Involved in the project alongside Barratt are Arup, David Wilson Retirement Homes, HTA Architects, Kingspan Off-Site, GVA Grimley, Sovereign Housing Group and the Homes & Communities Agency (HCA), the quango. Barratt, which was offered the land by the agency at a nominal value, said that it did not yet have an estimated cost for the development, or for the houses when they are built, because such a scheme has not been carried out before. It would not comment on the financial arrangements made with the HCA for the land.
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The Government’s energy efficiency targets have been criticised for putting housebuilders under further cost pressures at a time when they are still reeling from the after-effects of the recession. The industry is obliged to meet only level three of the Government’s code for sustainable homes; the Home Builders Federation has warned that the total extra cost of level six homes — the highest specification, as planned at Hanham Hall — will be £30,000 more than existing new-build prices.

Mark Clare, chief executive of Barratt, said: “The biggest challenge isn’t building zero-carbon homes — it is the cost. They will be prohibitively expensive. The industry has to completely transform itself and invest in research and development. As an industry, we have not had to embrace technology in this way before, so it is a big change.”

The HCA said that it planned to turn a further 95 redundant hospital sites nationwide into 14,000 homes.

FDLR Inc.: Congo’s Multinational Rebels

FDLR Inc: Congo’s multinational rebels

The German authorities have arrested leaders of a militia which operates in the Democratic Republic of Congo - but how strong is the case against them? The BBC’s East Africa Correspondent Peter Greste investigates.

Over the past few months, I have been investigating connections between war crimes allegedly committed by the FDLR in the Congo, and their leaders living in Europe.

One of them is Callixte Mbarashimana, an unlikely-looking warlord, elegantly dressed in a suit, tie and overcoat. With his neatly trimmed goatee and easy smile, he looks more like a university professor than the second-most powerful man in one of Africa’s most feared militias.

Mr Mbarashimana is the executive secretary of the FDLR - one of the most potent rebel forces fighting in the dense forests and bush-land along the eastern frontier of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

They are, he says, “a military-political organisation to protect Rwandan refugees and … to liberate the Rwandan people from the yoke of the fascist regime of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front)”.

‘Conglomeration’

These are claims that gall human rights workers, the United Nations and countless Congolese civilians, who accuse the FDLR of a catalogue of abuses, including mass rape, murder, forced recruitments, child soldiers, using slaves to illegally exploit minerals.

“It’s just a conglomeration of criminals,” according to the head of the UN’s programme to demobilise the region’s armed groups, Greg Alex. “What have they done in the Congo that’s been righteous?”

According to UN investigators, FDLR executives operate relatively freely in North America, and Europe. Those connections have infuriated peacekeeping officials in the Congo who have repeatedly called on host governments to dismantle the support structure that keeps the rebels fighting.

“The linkages are clear,” said a frustrated Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, head of the UN’s peacekeeping force in the province of North Kivu.

“The FDLR has remained cohesive as it is now because of the political leadership in Europe. These are people that encourage those in the field to kill, to rape every day. These are crimes, so they should be prosecuted.”

‘Commander-in-chief’

The FDLR’s president, Ignace Murwanashyaka, lives in Mannheim in Germany. He was arrested on Tuesday, charged with being a leader of a terrorist organisation, of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In interview after interview, serving and former FDLR officials told me that he is not only the ideological and political force behind the movement, he is its supreme military commander.

He is “like President Obama,” according to the FDLR’s spokesman in the Congo who goes by the nom de guerre of “La Forge”.

“Just as President Obama is also the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, so President Murwanashyaka is our military leader as well.”

The BBC has obtained a log of calls from satellite phones owned by senior FDLR commanders that shows a regular and consistent communication with leaders in the diaspora, notably Ignace Murwanashyaka.

The evidence - supported by testimony from former officers - suggests that he personally directed strategy and approved operations.

Child soldiers

Captain Busokoye Donat is a former FDLR officer now in Rwanda under the demobilisation scheme. He used to be in charge of officer training before taking over what he described as “civil defence” - which is training civilian supporters in weapons and military tactics.

“You have to understand that in our organisation, Dr Murwanashyaka is like God,” he said.

“He might not give tactical orders - that’s the job of the officers who know the situation on the ground - but every operation is run past him for approval.”

“He knows everything that happens in the field.”

I asked Donat about reports that the FDLR is recruiting child soldiers.

“We have been losing a lot of troops through DDRRR (the UN’s demobilisation programme) so we have to go to schools to get more soldiers. We have no choice,” he said.

“Does Dr Murwanashyaka know this?” I asked.

“I told you. Dr Murwanashyaka knows everything that happens.”

Donat also linked the leader to attacks on innocent villagers.

“I personally saw a telegram in which President Murwanashyaka told commanders that they should attack villages to force civilians to flee.”

“That’s to put pressure on the international community and Rwanda to negotiate with us,” Donat said.

Justice

Before his arrest, we asked Mr Murwanashyaka for an interview. He referred us to his executive secretary Callixte Mbarashimana in Paris.

Mr Mbarashimana denied complicity in war crimes. “I am in a country where justice works. I am ready to face justice if there are any allegations that come with evidence.”

“I have always claimed my innocence and I am ready - I repeat ready - to face justice if they come with allegations.”

Mr Mbarashimana fiercely defended the FDLR’s human rights record. “There is no FDLR policy to attack any civilian population,” he said. “We condemn all those abuses. We have consistently called for an international investigation so that they can identify the authors of those abuses and bring them to justice. That is our policy.”

The French authorities told me Mr Mbarashimana has broken none of their laws. They said free speech legislation protects his right to act as the organisation’s spokesman, and they have not received any formal request for an investigation.

Crossing Continents: Congo Connection is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 19 November 2009 at 1100 GMT and repeated on Monday, at 2030 GMT. It is also broadcast on the World Service’s Assignment programme on Thursday, 19 November 2009
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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8364327.stm
Published: 2009/11/18 13:30:33 GMT

Detroit Demonstration Against Repression Outside Renaissance CenterToday, 5:00-6:00pm

For Immediate Release

Media Advisory

Event: Protest the ALPACT Dinner With U.S. Atty. Gen. Holder & the FBI
Date: Thursday, November 19, 5:00-6:30pm
Location: Marriot Hotel at Renaissance Center, East Jefferson and Brush
Sponsor: Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI)
Contact: 313.671.3715
E-mail: info@mecawi.org
URL: http://www.mecawi.org

Demonstration to Demand Justice for Slain Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah and Freedom for the Detroit 10

The Advocates and Leaders for Police and Community Trust (ALPACT) dinner at the Ren Cen comes at a time when the FBI has shot down a respected Detroit Muslim leader, Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah. They have arrested 10 other Muslims on wild charges and media hysteria reminiscent of the Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) that attacked Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis, the American Indian Movement, Assata Shakur, and others.

At the same time the Detroit Police Department, and police agencies throughout Michigan and the nation, continue racial profiling, racist harassment and racist killings.

Nationally the FBI, the “Justice” Department and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), along with local police agencies, are hounding and deporting thousands of undocumented workers. Often families are torn apart with parents deported and children waiting for their parents who never come home.

United States jails are filled with victims of frame-ups, and death row inmates are legally lynched. Political prisoners languish in lock up such as Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier – both victims of police frame-ups.

This is no time to break bread and sip wine with the FBI.

DEMAND:
Justice for Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah
Free the Detroit 10 (Muslim prisoners of FBI frame-up)
End the ICE raids and deportations
Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier and all political prisoners
Stop racist profiling, harassment and killings

Members of MECAWI are available to the media for comment.

EU aims for greener buildings by 2020

The majority of new buildings constructed in the European Union and those undergoing significant renovation must prove their high energy efficiency as of December 31, 2020, the EU agreed Tuesday.

Buildings currently generate 36 percent of CO2 emissions in the EU and account for 40 percent of energy consumption in the union.

Representatives of the European parliament and European states decided to revise an existing European law set in 2002 on the energy performance of buildings as part of the EU’s major plan to reduce pollution emissions.

Public buildings will lead by example in the new agreement, required to meet the higher standards two years earlier, from the end of 2018.

The new agreement implies a “very significant” recourse to renewable energies, including those produced directly on site.

Each country will set the precise standards of energy efficiency as the task of establishing general norms applicable to both Finland and Portugal, for example, would be too difficult for the EU to implement.

Depending on the materials and designs used, new buildings meeting the efficiency standards require just a fifth of the energy that existing buildings consume on average.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne takes top spot as Britain’s greenest city

A city once wreathed in smoke and deafened by shipyard steel-hammers, has transformed itself into the greenest in Britain, according to the country’s most comprehensive sustainability audit.

Millions of pounds and a communal push for cleaner, brighter surroundings have returned Newcastle upon Tyne – almost - to the days when Thomas Bewick made his countryside engravings in the city centre and commuted home through meadows.

“We hope this inspires other cities to redouble their efforts,” said Peter Madden of Forum for the Future, whose annual rankings show the Geordies leap-frogging more “apparently green” cities such as Bristol, which came top last year, and the 2007 winner Brighton & Hove. For the second year running, Hull propped up the bottom of the table.

“Anywhere with an industrial heritage faces genuine challenges, but Newcastle’s success shows how it is possible to overcome the legacy of the past. In all our categories – environment, quality of life and future-proofing, the city scores really well,” said Madden.

Tyneside’s triumph drew on improvements in air quality, biodiversity in public parks and open spaces and the best salmon run on a English river. The audit shows the city performing well on waste collection, extending green space, life expectancy and the local strategy for tackling climate change.

Its ratings took it from fourth place last year after a similar climb from eighth in 2007. The accolade follows plaudits for the local universities and hospitals, and a year as unofficial European City of Culture; pipped by Liverpool for the actual title, Newcastle and its neighbour Gateshead went ahead with a marathon arts programme as if they had won.

The council’s Liberal Democrat leader John Shipley picked out transport innovation as one of the city’s distinctive green projects, with curbs on cars and emission cuts on public transport. The Tyneside Metro is also one of the biggest underground services outside London.

“We reckon to be leading the way in transport which reduces CO2 emissions and helps to prepare us for a low carbon economy,” he said. “Economic growth must not be achieved at the expense of the environment. Sustainability is at the heart of our vision for a socially just future.

“The city has also become the electric car capital in a government-backed experiment, which will see 1,000 charging points installed in Newcastle and Gateshead over the next two years.”

The silver and bronze in the Forum for the Future audit went to Bristol and Brighton & Hove, with organisers saying that the final figures were “very close”. Bristol came first in the quality of life and Brighton had the strongest economy, but slipped back on environmental performance.

Fourth place went to a newcomer in the top five, Leicester, which scored best in future-proofing thanks to climate change measures, recycling progress and a very high number of allotments. London was fifth while another northern contender, Leeds, shot up from 13th to sixth place.

Hull’s lowly place at the bottom of the league for the second year running followed a collapse of conservation management on the 97 local biodiversity sites, and a slip down the economic table because of job losses. But the Yorkshire port scored its best-ever rating on future-proofing. Glasgow fell back badly in the same category, with a fall in recycling to only 14.5%of waste.

Madden said that the jostle for top positions showed how almost all the country’s major cities were raising their green game, with performances so good in many sectors that a slight lapse could forfeit half-a-dozen points. A third northern city with a major legacy of heavy industry, Bradford, drops to 16th place this year, after winning the environment section in 2007, largely because of a fall in local recycling.

The report is a “detailed snapshot” rather than a comprehensive analysis according to the forum, which uses 13 indicators to reach the results. Cities are chosen rather than more mixed areas, largely because of the greater power of their local authorities to affect “green” statistics.

Newcastle’s victory was the greater because of the city’s continuing prosperity, Madden said, with the data placing it ninth in economic performance. He said: “Our findings vindicate the council’s sustainable community strategy for 2008-2011, which commits Newcastle to ‘economic growth but not at the expense of the environment’.”

The city’s victory may come as more of a surprise outside the region than on Tyneside itself, where the quality of life – and landscape – has been a given for years. Newcastle has some of Britain’s finest Georgian architecture and the Town Moor, within easy walking distance of the centre, is an “urban lung” bigger than Hampstead Heath and Hyde Park combined.

Bewick, whose work is in the highest canon of portrayals of the English countryside, had no doubts himself. After a spell in the capital in 1776 he wrote with relief on returning home: “The numerous shows to be seen in London may give a momentary satisfaction, but cannot afford me half the pleasure which I always feel in my excursions through the pleasant woods to Eltringham.”

British business is ready for a low-carbon economy. Are our leaders?

Business people are not scientists or politicians. But they are paid to evaluate risk and to recognise opportunity. That’s why business has a strong interest in a successful conclusion to next month’s climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Either the world moves together in an orderly fashion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by way of the legally binding obligations of an international treaty, or it risks a disorderly transition, with countries moving at their own pace and making their own arrangements. At the extreme lies the risk of belated — and therefore very costly — reactions to sudden shifts in climate conditions around the world.

Globally co-ordinated actions are important for businesses based in Britain. The EU is committed to ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and to making polluters pay. If other regions do not follow, European industry would be at a serious competitive disadvantage, and manufacturers of commodities such as steel or cement would shift production elsewhere, risking many thousands of jobs. We would still need lots of cement in this country: shipping it in from distant ports would not help the planet.

So the big question for business is: what will success next month look like? We will not get a fully fledged treaty: there is too much unfinished business to complete the job. But the meeting can produce positive results, provided it hits five prime targets.

First, the momentum of negotiations must be maintained. That means presidents and prime ministers must attend in person and deliver a firm political agreement that will be the stepping stone to a treaty as soon as possible next year. Worthy declarations of intent will not be enough to drive investment in research and technology on the enormous scale required to build a new kind of economy.

So Barack Obama must, as a minimum, commit to delivering the provisions of the Waxman-Markey climate change Bill, and leaders from the developed and developing world must guarantee the promises they have already, or will shortly, make to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

The numbers will have to be clear: global emissions should peak around the year 2020, then decline steadily to a point where, by 2050, they are less than half today’s levels. Change on this scale will require carrots and sticks, best achieved by putting a price on emissions that rewards efficiency and punishes profligacy.

So the second big challenge will be to lay the foundations for a global market for carbon, by developing schemes that cap emissions and create a market for trading in carbon permits, suchas the EU’s Emission Trading System. The value of a global carbon market could be well over $2 trillion by 2020.

Next, Copenhagen must reach outline agreement about the scale of the resources that rich countries will pass to the developing economies to ease their transition. China is setting its financial demands too high, and the US has yet to put a realistic offer on the table. They will probably need to converge on about €100 billion a year by 2020, with roughly half of that coming from the proceeds of emissions trading. Negotiating how this bill will be carved up among the rich countries will be one of the trickiest tasks of the conference.

Technology resources will have to be transferred to the poorer countries, as well as cash. But businesses would strongly object if governments from the developed countries agreed simply to hand over intellectual property, which is not theirs to give away.

Establishing a cross-border regime to curb emissions from aviation and shipping is target No 4. A way will have to be found to include them in a global cap and trading scheme to provide incentives for fuel efficiency.

Challenge No 5 is particularly important for businesses in the UK. The EU has undertaken to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, or 30 per cent in the event of a successful global agreement. The higher figure would encourage others to be more ambitious, and would provide powerful incentives to develop new technologies and to drive energy efficiency.

But the big worry is that the higher target — coming on top of the EU’s costly renewable policies — could drive carbon-intensive industries out of Europe. So other countries would have to make strong commitments to contain emissions before British business agreed that this extra step was justified.

All this adds up to a very complex set of negotiations next month, and will call for political leadership of the highest order. Businesses in Britain are clear about the risks of failure and the rewards of success, and are developing products and services that will enable consumers everywhere to make the choices that will lead to a sustainable and rewarding future. Muddling through is not an option.