UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks beside environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the Youth Climate Summit at the UN Headquarters on September 21, 2019. Reuters
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks beside environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the Youth Climate Summit at the UN Headquarters on September 21, 2019. Reuters
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks beside environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the Youth Climate Summit at the UN Headquarters on September 21, 2019. Reuters
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks beside environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the Youth Climate Summit at the UN Headquarters on September 21, 2019. Reuters

Climate action summit a test for UN chief as well as global leaders


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A climate action summit on Monday opens a week of high-level talks at the United Nations General Assembly, with world leaders being asked to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions following commitments first made in Paris in 2015.

Although the event in New York aims to pressure countries to do more to combat climate change the gathering could instead highlight the ambivalence of some nations to the UN initiative.

The United States – which early in the Trump administration announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord – will not be among 64 countries that take to the podium. A low-level US delegation will attend the day-long talks while President Donald Trump hosts a separate event around the time UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opens the climate summit.

Also missing will be Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, like Mr Trump a climate science sceptic, who has been castigated for failing to combat huge fires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest.

Each speaker at the climate summit has been allotted three minutes. While some nations are expected to make commitments on emissions, progress may be deemed inadequate by many of the estimated four million people that took to the streets in global protests against climate change on Friday, thousands of whom thronged the UN at the weekend.

The summit is also a major personal test for Mr Guterres, the top official at the UN since the beginning of 2017. The former prime minister of Portugal’s tenure has been plagued by global conflict. Wars in Syria and Yemen have intensified during that time and a UN peace process in Libya that he personally spearheaded collapsed earlier this year, calling the world body's relevance into question.

Mr Guterres has said that while there is limited ground for the UN to solve conflicts, climate change is an issue where the world body can prove its value and take a global leadership role. Monday's summit will put that statement to the test, said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group.

“The secretary general has struggled to find a really powerful case for why the UN matters, emphasising issues like conflict prevention and fairer migration rules that have not resonated globally,” said Mr Gowan.

“His efforts to mediate in cases such as Cyprus and Libya have failed, but his new focus on climate change this year has won a lot of political and media attention, and he has smartly tied his diplomatic work to the Climate Strike movement.

“There has been a sense that the fight against global warming has been adrift since the Paris agreement. I think Guterres has found a cause that he can use to prove the UN's relevance.”

The Paris pact was intended to keep temperatures from rising to more dangerous levels. It called on almost 200 countries to set voluntary targets to reduce their emissions, but many large nations, including the US, are off track.

Heat waves that killed hundreds in Europe this summer, as well as floods and the Amazon fires have reawakened the opportunity for collective action. There is a broad scientific consensus that warmer oceans are supercharging hurricanes, making Category 4 and 5 storms more common. The latest research also suggests that warming may be affecting global atmospheric currents, increasing the frequency of ultra slow-crawling hurricanes such as last month's Dorian and 2017's Harvey.

But the evidence has not yet resonated in US policymaking.

Mr Trump has rolled back dozens of environmental regulations, saying they place an intolerable burden on the American economy. Reiterating his resistance he last week blocked the state of California's attempt to set its own rules on auto emissions. The case is now headed for the Supreme Court, with 23 other US states joining California in suing the Trump administration.

In Brazil, Mr Bolsonaro wants to open the Amazon to greater commercial activity, with activists saying that forest clearing caused by fires is aiding that goal. And in China, state-owned companies want to increase the number of coal-fired energy projects, although the country has said it is seeking to reduce carbon emissions in other ways.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr Guterres stressed that cities and businesses would be attending Monday's summit, noting that they were pushing ahead in efforts to assess climate risks and respond accordingly, even if some governments are not.

The goal of the summit is that a "very meaningful number of countries" announce their commitment to a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, said the secretary general.

Under such a pledge, nations would aim to achieve a carbon footprint of zero by minimising their emissions and offsetting any that remain through such actions as planting trees that absorb excess carbon dioxide.

Mr Guterres also hinted that China, represented by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, may be among the attendees who commit to new measures.

“I believe that China will be one of the few countries that will be ahead of time in relation to the commitments made, those nationally determined contributions made in Paris," he said.

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Company/date started: 2015

Founder/CEO: Mohammed Toraif

Based: Manama, Bahrain

Sector: Sales, Technology, Conservation

Size: (employees/revenue) 4/ 5,000 downloads

Stage: 1 ($100,000)

Investors: Two first-round investors including, 500 Startups, Fawaz Al Gosaibi Holding (Saudi Arabia)

MATCH INFO

Tottenham Hotspur 0 Everton 1 (Calvert-Lewin 55')

Man of the Match Allan (Everton)

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
THE CLOWN OF GAZA

Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah 

Starring: Alaa Meqdad

Rating: 4/5

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

The Sand Castle

Director: Matty Brown

Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea

Rating: 2.5/5

The more serious side of specialty coffee

While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.

The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.

Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”

One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.

Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms. 

The specs
 
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
SQUADS

Bangladesh (from): Shadman Islam, Mominul Haque, Soumya Sarkar, Shakib Al Hasan (capt), Mahmudullah Riyad, Mohammad Mithun, Mushfiqur Rahim, Liton Das, Taijul Islam, Mosaddek Hossain, Nayeem Hasan, Mehedi Hasan, Taskin Ahmed, Ebadat Hossain, Abu Jayed

Afghanistan (from): Rashid Khan (capt), Ihsanullah Janat, Javid Ahmadi, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi, Asghar Afghan, Ikram Alikhil, Mohammad Nabi, Qais Ahmad, Sayed Ahmad Shirzad, Yamin Ahmadzai, Zahir Khan Pakteen, Afsar Zazai, Shapoor Zadran

SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20APPLE%20M3%20MACBOOK%20AIR%20(13%22)
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EProcessor%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Apple%20M3%2C%208-core%20CPU%2C%20up%20to%2010-core%20CPU%2C%2016-core%20Neural%20Engine%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDisplay%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2013.6-inch%20Liquid%20Retina%2C%202560%20x%201664%2C%20224ppi%2C%20500%20nits%2C%20True%20Tone%2C%20wide%20colour%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMemory%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%208%2F16%2F24GB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStorage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20256%2F512GB%20%2F%201%2F2TB%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EI%2FO%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Thunderbolt%203%2FUSB-4%20(2)%2C%203.5mm%20audio%2C%20Touch%20ID%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EConnectivity%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Wi-Fi%206E%2C%20Bluetooth%205.3%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBattery%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2052.6Wh%20lithium-polymer%2C%20up%20to%2018%20hours%2C%20MagSafe%20charging%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECamera%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%201080p%20FaceTime%20HD%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EVideo%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Support%20for%20Apple%20ProRes%2C%20HDR%20with%20Dolby%20Vision%2C%20HDR10%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAudio%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204-speaker%20system%2C%20wide%20stereo%2C%20support%20for%20Dolby%20Atmos%2C%20Spatial%20Audio%20and%20dynamic%20head%20tracking%20(with%20AirPods)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EColours%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Midnight%2C%20silver%2C%20space%20grey%2C%20starlight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EIn%20the%20box%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20MacBook%20Air%2C%2030W%2F35W%20dual-port%2F70w%20power%20adapter%2C%20USB-C-to-MagSafe%20cable%2C%202%20Apple%20stickers%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20From%20Dh4%2C599%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Long read

Mageed Yahia, director of WFP in UAE: Coronavirus knows no borders, and neither should the response

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