Countries, investors pledge billions for clean energy tech
Government and business leaders are banking on clean energy technology to fight global warming, kicking off this week’s high-stakes climate change negotiations by pledging billions of dollars to research and develop a technical fix to the planet’s climate woes.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande will launch a joint initiative on Monday after a diplomatic push in recent weeks ahead of the Paris climate conference.
A key goal is to bring down the cost of cleaner energy. At least 19 governments and 28 leading world investors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires George Soros and Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal, and Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba, have signed on so far.
“It’s quite a big deal,” said Jennifer Morgan, global climate director for the World Resources Institute. “It brings a new kind of burst of energy into the conference right at the beginning on something very important.”
The U.N. climate summit formally opened Sunday afternoon with a minute of silence for the victims of this month’s Paris attacks and vows not to let terrorism derail efforts to slow or stop climate change. A few miles away in Paris, police trying to secure the nation against new violence sprayed tear gas on protesters who defied a ban on demonstrations and lobbed projectiles.
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Pope brings peace message to Central African Republic
BANGUI, Central African Republic — Flanked by Vatican bodyguards in flak jackets and machine-gun-toting U.N. peacekeepers, Pope Francis plunged Sunday into conflict-wracked Central African Republic and urged the country’s Christian and Muslim factions to lay down their weapons and instead arm themselves with peace and forgiveness.
Francis issued the appeal from the altar of Bangui’s cathedral after arriving in the badly-divided capital on the final leg of his three-nation African tour.
Schoolgirls dressed in the yellow and white of the Holy See flag and women wearing traditional African fabric dresses emblazoned with the pope’s face joined government and church authorities to welcome Francis at Bangui airport amid tight security.
Cheering crowds lined his motorcade route — about five kilometers (three miles) of it in his open-sided popemobile. The crowds swelled again at a displacement camp, where children sang him songs of welcome and held up hand-made signs saying “Peace,” ”Love” and “Unity.”
“My wish for you, and for all Central Africans, is peace,” Francis told the nearly 4,000 residents in the St. Sauveur church camp. With the help of a Sango translator, he then led them in a chant: “We are all brothers. We are all brothers.”
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AP Interview: Iraqi envoy: Paris attack marks new global war
The wave of suicide bombers and gunmen who terrorized Paris marked a new stage in the war against extremism that will leave no country in the world untouched, Iraq’s foreign minister said Sunday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Iraq has long known that Islamic State extremists posed a fundamental danger and the Nov. 13 attacks on innocent people enjoying a night out were a demonstration to the West of the Islamic State group’s determination to sow fear by killing as many people as possible. A total of 130 people died and hundreds were injured in the attacks on the Bataclan concert venue, bars and restaurants, and the national stadiums.
“The world took too long to react against Daesh and al-Qaida. In 2004, 11 years ago, I said terrorism had no religion, had no country, had no particular beliefs. And in 2012, I said that we were in a third world war. Now, you will see that no country can live in peace, quietly,” al-Jaafari said, using the Arabic acronym for the group, which he said has nothing to do with Islam.
Al-Jaafari spoke on the sidelines of international climate negotiations, which is bringing together more than 140 world leaders. He said the decision to attend the global conference was a sign of solidarity and trust in France’s ability to protect people at the highest level.
Now, he said, countries must take initiative against the group.
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Images, analysis released of Cleveland officer shooting boy
CLEVELAND — Prosecutors in Ohio on Saturday released a frame-by-frame analysis of the surveillance camera footage first made public a year ago that shows a white Cleveland police officer fatally shooting a black 12-year-old boy who had a pellet gun.
The additional images taken from surveillance video at a recreation center where Tamir Rice was shot and killed don’t appear to contain any new or substantive information. The new footage was released in the “spirit of openness,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty.
The analysis also doesn’t show whether Tamir, as police officials have maintained, was reaching into his waistband for the pellet gun when then-rookie patrolman Timothy Loehmann shot him less than two seconds after getting out of the car.
The enhancement by a video expert will be presented to a grand jury that will decide if Loehmann or his field training officer should be charged criminally for Tamir’s death. Loehmann shot Tamir outside Cudell Recreation Center on Nov. 22, 2014.
Saturday’s release of the enhancement comes the same day that attorneys for the boy’s family asked the prosecutor to allow their use-of-force experts to testify before the grand jury. The request follows the release of reports by use-of-force experts hired by prosecutors that concluded the shooting was justified because the officers had no way of knowing that Tamir’s pellet gun wasn’t a real firearm.