Afghanistan elections: Karzai vs Karzai, as Abdullah withdraws

On Saturday the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said a decision by Abdullah to pull out would not affect the vote’s legitimacy.

Waheed Omar, Karzai’s campaign spokesman, said the “election has to go ahead and the people of Afghanistan have to be given the right to vote”.

 

His view was echoed by the IEC chairman, Azizullah Ludin, who said “there was no alternative under the law” to a second round.

Insurers warn of the chill blast of climate change in new report

The cost of insurance will soar across Britain unless urgent measures are taken to halt the rise in global temperatures, industry experts will warn this week.

By Jamie Dunkley, City Reporter (Insurance and Pensions)Published: 10:21PM GMT 31 Oct 2009
The Association of British Insurers, whose members control about 15pc of the FTSE 100, will reveal the findings of its latest report into the subject. This will show that a four degree rise in global temperatures could result in the cost of extreme inland floods – those expected to hit the UK once every 100 years – rising by 30pc to £5.4bn.
The study into the financial impact of rising temperatures across the world claims this could happen by 2060. The association will add that the UK is likely to get windier too, with the cost of a once-in-a- century windstorms rising 14pc to £7.3bn. One in six properties across the UK are at risk from flooding from river, sea and surface water. This equates to about 5.2m properties across the country. In 2007, the insurance industry was left with a £3bn bill after summer floods devastated large parts of the country.

The ABI will give warning at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December, that without global agreement on reducing emissions, weather related costs will continue to rise. This would lead to more expensive and harder to obtain insurance protection.
Andrew Torrance, chairman of ClimateWise, an industry lobby group, and chief executive of Allianz Insurance in the UK, added that insurers could also be left with tougher capital requirements.
“The climate models strongly suggest that we are going to see more frequent and more extreme weather events,” he said. “This will increase the level of weather related claims paid by insurers generally and bring greater volatility to claims levels. This means that insurers will need to hold more capital.”
ClimateWise is also looking to increase pressure on governments attending the climate change conference. The group wants the developed world to agree a 40pc cut in emissions by 2020 and to reach a deal on the size and structure of a financing package to help the developing world tackle climate change.
“The expected increase in flood claims underlines the need to improve flood defences and limit development on flood plains,” Mr Torrance added. “This will enable the insurance industry to continue to make insurance available as widely as possible.”

Utility companies compete for £100bn wind farm prize

The rights to build wind farms off the coast of Britain up to 50 times the size of the biggest present plants are expected to be handed to consortiums of major utilities, with the prize Norfolk field likely to go to Scottish Power and Vattenfall.

By Rowena Mason, City ReporterPublished: 7:40PM GMT 31 Oct 2009

The awards are due to be made official by the Crown Estate by the end of next month, with the first turbines entering the water by 2014 Photo: Reuters
The 5,000 megawatt Norfolk development will be three times larger than the giant London Array farm under construction in the Thames Estuary – due to be crowned the biggest in Europe when the first of its 341 turbines start working in 2012.
Another utility consortium called Forewind, including RWEnpower Renewables, Scottish & Southern Energy, Statkraft and StatoilHydro, is believed to be the frontrunner for the even bigger 10,000 megawatt Dogger Bank plot in the North Sea.

The awards are due to be made official by the Crown Estate, the body responsible for licensing offshore wind farms, by the end of next month, with the first turbines entering the water by 2014.
It is the third and most ambitious round of licensing, that aims to create a revolution in Britain’s offshore wind industry allowing the country to hit its climate change targets. The wind farms will cost billions of pounds to construct, with substantial subsidies from the Government through green taxes.
Other available plots are a 5,000 megawatt zone in the Irish Sea, a 2,500 megawatt area in the Humber Estuary, a 1,000 megawatt near Hastings and a series of smaller fields.
Only a handful of offshore wind projects are currently generating electricity, with capacities of 60 to 200 megawatts each. But Britain’s total output must grow to 33,000 to 40,000 megawatts if it is to generate a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The country will have to spend £100bn on developing offshore wind capacity if it is to hit climate targets.
Spokesmen from RWEnpower Renewables for the Forewind consortium and Scottish Power said they had been “bound by confidentiality agreements” and could not comment.
The Crown Estate declined to comment, but confirmed it would be announcing the winners by the end of the fourth quarter this year.
Centrica, the owner of British Gas and one of the UK’s most committed investors in wind farms, last week warned that subsidies would need to continue until 2020 if offshore renewables are to be viable.

Uproar over new planning rules to help build wind farms and nuclear power stations

Radical changes to the planning system to help build wind farms, nuclear power stations and new roads are likely to cause a storm of protest across Britain, Andrew Gilligan reports.

By Andrew GilliganPublished: 9:00PM GMT 31 Oct 2009
The small Welsh village of Brechfa, about ten miles north-east of Carmarthen, has lost its post office and pub – but, if two power companies have their way, it will soon be getting 76 new wind turbines.
Each will rise as high as 145 metres, the height of a 35-storey building, and they will ring the area, making it home to the third-biggest collection of turbines in Britain. There are ten nearby already. Up close, the noise they make is like an idling aircraft.

“They are going to industrialise the countryside,” says Nick Wadham, a local protester against the scheme. Caroline Evans, another resident, says the sound can travel more than six miles.
She had an email from a woman in a nearby village who said she had not slept for three nights after the turbines were installed.
But this battle is not just another local campaign. Brechfa is on the front line of perhaps the most dramatic change to the British planning system in two generations.
Its 43-turbine wind farm, and a 33-turbine scheme at next-door Llanllwni, will be among the first projects decided under radically new arrangements: about to come into force, as yet unnoticed by the general public, but likely to cause a storm of protest across the countryside.
From March, all planning applications for “major national infrastructure” – including larger wind farms, trunk roads, power stations, ports, airport expansion and overhead pylon lines – will be decided not by local councillors, or ministers, but by a new unelected “superquango”, the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).
The organisation will be the sole judge, and one with huge powers. It can grant not just planning permission but also the power to compulsorily seize private property, close roads and footpaths and extinguish Green Belt protection.
Indeed, if a developer is eyeing up your land for some new scheme, the IPC can grant that developer access to it – even allow him to dig “exploratory” holes in it – before planning permission has even been applied for, let alone given.
The IPC aims to decide all applications, however complicated and controversial, in just ten months or less – even new nuclear power stations, of which it expects to do two in its first year.
The presumption, under new Government-set “national policy statements,” will be for development. There will be no rights of appeal to anyone, not even (in most circumstances) the courts. “You will not be able to judicially review our decisions, only our failure to follow our own processes,” says Sir Michael Pitt, the commission’s new chairman, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.
The urbane figure of Sir Michael will be the IPC’s public face. Does he realise he could soon be the most unpopular man in Britain? Is he looking forward to the climate campers occupying his reception area? “I think all the commissioners understand what they’re taking on,” he says, smiling.
Sir Michael says that the old way – where controversial schemes were typically considered first by a judge or planning inspector at a public inquiry, with the final decision in the hands of a minister – took far too long, rewarded “timewasting” and worked against the national interest. Many would, for instance, agree that Britain needs new power stations – but the planning process for the nuclear plant at Sizewell B, in Suffolk, famously lasted five years.
The new regime, Pitt insists, will actually give people “better engagement” as well as being quicker. Developers will have to prove they have consulted the community before the IPC even accepts their application.
The process may be brief but it will be open, unlike ministerial decision making. There will still be public hearings – although much shorter ones, with the IPC having the power to block any point they deem “irrelevant” or which has already been made “in any form or by any other person.”
Nor will you be allowed to object to the idea that Britain should have, for instance, more wind farms or bigger airports – only to the particular circumstances of the one proposed.
How often will the IPC actually reject any application? “Those that can get their way through the pre-application [consultation] process are going to be the strongest cases,” says Sir Michael. So not very often, then? “I would not rule out the possibility of us turning down a number of applications.”
Back in Brechfa, the locals are deeply cynical about the IPC’s promise of engagement. “This has been set up to push small people like us out of the way,” says Caroline Evans. “The wind farms have started their consultation exercise – but they’re not consulting us, they’re telling us. It’s dictation, not consultation.”
Victoria Wadham says: “We didn’t choose the IPC. They’re chosen to get the result the Government wants and shift the blame. We can’t sack them. It’s not democratic. Democracy is supposed to work from the bottom up.”
And across the nation as a whole, countryside groups say the Government, and the IPC, are tilting at windmills – or rather wind farms. “The case for the planning system causing inordinate delays has been hugely overstated on the basis of two or three extreme cases,” says Neil Sinden, policy director of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Government figures show that the average major project currently takes two years to get through planning. But even with the IPC, the new compulsory pre-application process means it is unlikely to take less than fifteen months – a saving of only nine months.
Others say that the definition of “nationally necessary” projects has been drawn too widely. Some power stations may indeed be needed. But is airport expansion genuinely imperative for Britain’s future? How does that sit with the Government’s declared objective to cut C02?
And, for all Sir Michael’s belief that IPC knows what it’s taking on, its resources do not seem up to the huge scale of its task. The IPC will decide around 45 major projects each year – many both complex and controversial. It will cover the whole of England and Wales. But it will do so with just 110 staff, including all the commissioners themselves, some of them part-time. That is about the same number as work for the planning departments of two or three medium-sized London boroughs.
“They are going to face huge, if not insurmountable, challenges in delivering on their promises,” says Mr Sinden. The fear is that in order to keep within their timescale, the IPC will cut corners and skimp on scrutiny. Sir Michael says that he will increase staffing and call on specialist expertise if necessary.
But perhaps the most telling objection to the new order comes from the Suffolk MP and former environment secretary, John Gummer, whose constituency includes Sizewell C, one of the two new nuclear power projects the IPC will decide upon.
“The inquiry into the previous power station, Sizewell B, did take a long time but by the end my constituents were in favour because they felt their views had been heard,” says Mr Gummer. “But if people feel they’re not being listened to, they will not put up with it. There will be so much anger that it will actually take longer, politicians will have to intervene anyway or Swampy will rule.”
The Government sees Britain’s planning system as a problem, a blockage on development – a view that also informs its separate, if equally controversial, proposals to downgrade the protection of heritage buildings.
But nothing arouses more passion in Middle England than planning, conservation and the countryside. Could ministers have given us the next poll tax?

Greenhouse effects: Batteries

Tony Juniper

The average British household uses 21 batteries a year. As a nation, we throw away more than 600m every year — that’s getting on for almost 20,000 tons of them, almost all of which finish up in landfill sites.
Most batteries contain heavy metals, which can leak into the ground when the casing corrodes, polluting the land and groundwater.
Recycling is one way to reduce the environmental impact of battery use. The metals and plastic casing can be recovered and re-used. Computer and other electrical-goods retailers, such as Currys and PC World have battery-collection boxes in most stores.
Our council has battery-recycling collection points at the council office, household-waste recycling centres and Waitrose. Contact your council, or visit savebatterywaste.com to find out about recycling-collection points in your area. A few local authorities organise kerbside collection services.
We can do much better than this. The battery recycling rate in Britain is at 2-3% — compared with more than 50% in Belgium. Better still, however, would be to avoid new batteries altogether.
Batteries are not an efficient way to power devices. The energy used to manufacture one is about 50 times greater than the energy it will provide. You should use mains power instead, wherever possible. Having a dynamo light system fitted to your bicycle can also do away with that frantic scrabble for a useable set of lights.
If you do need to use batteries, rechargeable ones are a greener option. They will save you money because they can be used over and over again. In addition, using rechargeables reduces the number of batteries manufactured. Do not put rechargeable batteries in a smoke alarm, however. The last bit of power can go quickly and without warning.
The USBCell is a battery that charges from a computer USB port, removing the need for a separate charger (usbcell.com). So far it is available only in AA size, but the manufacturer says others are coming. Its nickel–metal hydride (NiMH) composition makes it less toxic than nickel–cadmium batteries. It also has the advantage of lasting for a greater number of recharge cycles.
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com

US Military Deaths in Afghanistan Region at 831

October 31, 2009

US Military Deaths in Afghanistan Region at 831

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:31 p.m. ET

As of Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009, at least 831 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Of those, the military reports 641 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 71 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, three were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.

There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.
——
The latest deaths reported by the military:

– No new deaths reported.

——

The latest identifications reported by the military:

– Air Force civilian Frank R. Walker, 66, Oklahoma City; died Wednesday of non-combat related medical causes at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan; assigned to the 72nd Civil Engineering Directorate, Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.

– Army Pfc. Brian R. Bates, Jr., 20, Gretna, La.; died Tuesday in Kandahar, Afghanistan of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

– The following seven soldiers died Monday of wounds suffered when the MH-47 helicopter they were aboard crashed in Darreh-ye Bum, Afghanistan. Montgomery, Lyons, McNabb, Hernandez Chavez and Mueller were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Regiment (Airborne), Hunter Army Airfield, Ga.; Metzger and Bishop were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.:

– Army Chief Warrant Officer Michael P. Montgomery, 36, Savannah, Ga.

– Army Chief Warrant Officer Niall Lyons, 40, Spokane, Wash.

– Army Staff Sgt. Shawn H. McNabb, 24, Terrell, Texas.

– Army Sgt. Josue E. Hernandez Chavez, 23, Reno, Nev.

– Army Sgt. Nikolas A. Mueller, 26, Little Chute, Wis.

– Army Sgt. 1st Class David E. Metzger, 32, San Diego

– Army Staff Sgt. Keith R. Bishop, 28, Medford, N.Y.

——
On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/

Low-carbon ventures ask US Dragon’s Den for support

Tricia Holly Davis

Four entrepreneurs will travel to America this month to face a Dragons’ Den-style panel of investors offering up to £13m to develop their lowcarbon technologies.
Each of the hopefuls will get 10 minutes to pitch their idea, from energy-saving solutions to renewable power devices.
The trip has been organised by the Setsquared Partnership, a collaboration of the universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey set up to nurture early-stage technology companies.
“Raising venture capital in Britain has been tough,” said Robert Beat of Bristol-based Silicon Basis, one of the firms going to the event in Boston. “Investors here are mostly saving their capital for existing investments and concentrating on late-stage technology, so the chance to pitch to American investors is well timed.”
Beat hopes to raise £400,000 to build a prototype of his low-energy microchip and another £4m to take the product to market. He said the technology would use a quarter of the power of typical programmable chips while in operation and a tenth of the power in stand-by mode. He estimates the potential global market at £50 billion a year.
David McSherry, founder of Bath-based Cormarent, which is developing a tidal power system, said planning delays and concerns about grid capacity had made British investors wary of backing renewableenergy technology.
McSherry said his deep-sea turbines had few moving parts to reduce the risk of mechanical failure and maximise electricity output. He needs £13m to test a prototype and build a large-scale demonstrator.
Peter Davies of Bath-based Green Running will be pitching for about £2m to move his energy-efficiency technology out of the lab phase. Green Running’s tool monitors equipment, such as air-conditioners, and calculates how much power they use during the day. It can also track gas and water consumption, and temperature and humidity. Davies believes that there are 500,000 potential customers in Britain.
Cascoda, from Southampton, is looking for £5m to develop its low-power wireless devices, which automate and control heating, air-conditioning and lighting systems.
The trip, co-funded by UK Trade & Investment, is the first formal early-stage investment mission for British clean-tech firms. It could help to create jobs and factories, and bolster green exports. Britain’s clean-tech industry is worth about £106 billion, or 3.5% of the global market. Only 10% of green goods and services are exported.
David Connell, a senior research associate at Cambridge University, said firms might be tempted to agree to majority American ownership, or even to relocate to America, to tap into the billions of dollars of start-up funding available from the government there.
Clean-tech industry has overtaken biotech and software as America’s largest sector for venture capital, with about £600m of transactions in the third quarter against Britain’s £75m, said Cleantech, a research group.
Nigel Taunt of Impax, a clean-energy investment firm, blamed British investors’ reluctance on the recession and the fact that many still viewed new technologies as high risk.
Simon Bond of Setsquared urged the government to support small venture investments of between £250,000 and £2.5m. “We are perilously close to losing a generation of start-ups because of the lack of early-stage seed funding,” he said.
Bond said the four entrepreneurs had been selected for the trip because they were at the stage where they were ready for investment. A similar expedition is planned for China.
“Going before the American dragons is scary but also exciting,” said McSherry. “I’ll be practising my pitch a lot.”
Green Idea Solar-powered racing cars hit 60mph
Cars powered by the sun may sound a bit far-fetched but they are surprisingly capable. The World Solar Challenge, a 2,000-mile race north to south across Australia, has been held every two years since 1987 and last week was won by an outsider — a team of students from Japan’s Tokai University. Their car led from the first day and zipped along at up to 60mph. The students struck only one problem, a flat tyre, but were still a day ahead of the rest of the field.

Copenhagen is only the start of climate change

Editorial
The Observer, Sunday 1 November 2009
THERE ARE five weeks left to the opening of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen. Virtually every national leader is expected to gather in the Danish capital in an attempt to hammer out a deal to bring unity to the battle against global warming. All that is required is an agreement to find a method to achieve one simple goal. Emissions of carbon dioxide from the planet’s factories, power plants, cars, planes and homes must be made to peak in a few years so that by 2020, a substantial decline in the world’s output of greenhouse gases will have begun.
Only then, say scientists, will it be possible to prevent global temperatures from rising by 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. This figure, they argue, is the maximum warming that our planet can tolerate. If we go beyond it, we will face global calamity in the form of spreading deserts, increasingly violent storms, destruction of swaths of farmland, flooding and widespread loss of life. It is a grim list, one that should guarantee delegates give maximum concentration to their work in Copenhagen. This is their last chance, if not to save the world, then at least to prevent major losses of life later in the century. Failure should not be an option.
Yet there are now signs that a deal which would tie every nation on Earth to a declared cut in their carbon emissions, and which would do so much to tackle global warming, will not be achieved.
Despite the urgency of negotiators’ work and despite the fact they have been meeting regularly for the past two years in order to prepare for this summit, most observers now believe it is unlikely that a strong, ratifiable agreement will be signed on 18 December, the meeting’s final day.
A key problem has been the failure of Barack Obama’s administration to pass a climate change bill in time for Copenhagen. This has left the US, the world’s major carbon emitter, unable to participate meaningfully in discussions. Without an American lead, not much can be achieved, it is argued. Thus the talk is of squandered opportunities instead of expectations of breakthroughs. Agreeing long-term global deals is simply beyond human nature, suggest the sceptics, obsessed as we are with our own local, short-term concerns.
Politicians have known for a long time that this day was approaching and should have realised they would have to sit down to work out a meaningful agreement. However, it would be premature to suggest that everything that has happened over the past two years has been a waste of time and to dismiss, out of hand, the talks that will take place in Copenhagen – no matter how unsatisfactory they turn out to be. Much has happened in the run-up to the summit to indicate there is sufficient goodwill in the political system to tackle the crisis posed by global warming – if not at Copenhagen then in the following months and years.
China, once the most difficult nation to convince about the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, has pledged that it will make “substantial reductions” in its citizens’ individual carbon output. Countries such as Indonesia and Norway, as well as the European Union, have promised to make tight, binding cuts. Europe has also proposed to make significant contributions to a £90bn a year fund that would help developing countries cut their carbon emissions while the US has begun a process that should lead it to establish carbon emission legislation.
A few years ago, such progress would have seen improbable. Today, it is a reality. The world may not get a good global warming deal from the Copenhagen summit, but enough has been gained in its preparations to suggest that a binding agreement will eventually be signed. Whether that can be done in time to halt the worst effects of climate change is a different issue.

Ex-banker offers green way for firms to clean up with Delphis Eco

Danny Fortson

Two years ago Mark Jankovich received a multi-million pound job offer from Goldman Sachs. He turned it down and went into toilet cleaning instead.
It’s not a decision most City bankers would make but the former head of family wealth management at Coutts & Co has no regrets about turning his back on his former life. “I called my wife and said, ‘I just can’t do this’. I was hating it. I didn’t believe in it. I wanted to find something more useful to do,” said Jankovich, 40.
First, he set up a private-equity firm to invest in his native Zimbabwe. He spent a year raising money but returned it to investors after Robert Mugabe won the presidential election last June. He then began casting around for environmental business ideas and found Delphis Eco, which makes biodegradable cleaning chemicals, through a Google search. The company had been started a few years earlier in Liverpool by two business partners. Its range, for everything from toilet cleaners and hand sanitisers to industrial disinfectants, uses plant-based ingredients, such as coconut oil, that break down naturally.
The range was the first in Britain to receive the EU’s Eco-label accreditation, given only to products made from sustainable sources that are proven to be as effective as conventional rivals.
When Jankovich learnt of Delphis Eco, however, it was on the brink of collapse. “It was in an absolute tailspin. A lot of time and money had been spent on research and development. They had hocked a lot to keep the dream alive. It was scary to step into a business like that,” he said.
He was convinced that the opportunity was good enough to take a risk. Businesses and organisations are under pressure to go green and switching from hazardous chemicals to ones that are environmentally friendly is an easy way to make a significant difference, especially for big concerns such as supermarkets or rail firms that have many shops, offices and washrooms that need constant cleaning.
Jankovich invested £500,000 to buy out the founders a year ago. Since then he has been spreading the word about environmentally-friendly cleaning. Bunzl uses Delphis products in its green cleaning range. J Sainsbury, Tesco and Marks & Spencer, local councils and the Metropolitan Police have also expressed an interest.
Delphis Eco is still small. It has fewer than 10 staff and relies on two contract plants to make the chemicals. Jankovich is hoping to raise £2m of venture capital to compete with Johnson Diversey and Ecolab, which dominate the market.
“Much of this is about opening the eyes of consumers,” he said. “They simply don’t know or don’t think about the fact that they can get ‘green’ chemicals.”

Iran to try Bahai’s as spies for Israel and for blasphemy

The trial was postponed in August at the request of defense lawyers, who said they needed more time to prepare.

 

Iran had previously linked the group to Israel, saying they had received orders from Israel to undertake measures against the Islamic system. Iran has refused since its 1979 Islamic revolution to recognize Israel.

 

The Baha’i International Community, which represents the faith worldwide, has denied the charges against the group, saying they were members of a committee that tends to the needs of Baha’is in Iran.

 

Exiled Baha’i leaders allege that hundreds of followers have been jailed and executed in Iran in the past three decades. The government denies it has detained or executed people for their religion.

 

The Baha’i faith was founded by Shi’ite clergymen in Iran in the 19th century and more than 300,000 live in the Islamic state.

 

Iran’s Shi’ite religious establishment considers the faith a heretical offshoot of Islam.