Africa in the firing as climate finance promises aree missed

Climate Finance Promises Not Met
African Climate Policy Centre Releases
Updated Report on 'Fast Start Finance'

DOHA, QATAR - Today - The African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), a centre of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and an integral part of the Climate for Development in Africa programme (ClimDev-Africa), released an update on its detailed report on the current provision of climate finance that shows only a small fraction, less than 11%, of currently provided climate finance meets the UN commitment of being "new and additional." The report finds that there are many lessons to be learnt from the current 'fast start finance' system, which was supposed to deliver $30 billion in 'new and additional' funding to developing countries, and was agreed at the Copenhagen climate conference.   Launching the updated report, Fatima Denton, Coordinator of ACPC, said, 'The experience with the "fast-start" pledges and discussions of the $100 billion promise suggests that the adequacy and predictability of climate finance may remain very low if the future climate finance architecture reflects current practice. Current practice is that only one dollar in every ten is new and additional.' "African countries, as well as many other developing countries, are vulnerable to climate change and are among those least likely to have the resources required to withstand its adverse impacts - yet there has not been any indication that the magnitude of climate finance will meet the scale of what is needed." Denton said. "The insufficient transparency and slow disbursement of the financial resources pledged by developedcountry parties as "fast start" finance for the period 2010-2012 is worrying for Africa." Emannuel Dlamini,Chair of the African Group of Climate Change Negotiators, said. "We call on developed countries to fullyimplement their commitments relating to financial resources and the transfer of technology as animportant step towards addressing the common challenge of climate change." Dlamini said. 'Long-term climate finance needs to be accountable and transparent. In Africa, we need to know how much is new, where it is coming from, and whether it will be directed to the adaptation projects that are desperately necessary,' Dlamini said.   The updated study shows that: The total amount of funds that are both "new and additional" (as agreed in Cancun) is between 9-11%.  "The key lesson from the updated report is that developed countries should commit (at COP18) to provide a detailed climate finance roadmap 2013-2020 by which they demonstrate how they intend to fulfil the 100 billion promise by 2020, i.e. a scenario showing the gradual increase of climate finance between 2013 and 2020." Denton said. "Such a scenario would include intermediate targets (say for 2013 and 2017), the share of public finance, and provide clarity on the mix of both direct budget contributions form developed countries as well as alternative sources of public finance." Denton concluded. View the original article here

KATE MIDDLETON PREGNANT

Kate Middleton is pregnant, Buckingham Palace has confirmed!
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a baby, according to an official statement just released by palace officials, who confirm that Kate Middleton and Prince William, both 30, are adding a royal boy or girl to their mix.

Kate has been admitted to the hospital for Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a "very acute morning sickness, which requires supplementary hydration and nutrients," according to the duke and duchess' official website.

Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby.

The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted with the news.

The Duchess was admitted this afternoon to King Edward VII Hospital in Central London with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. As the pregnancy is in its very early stages, Her Royal Highness is expected to stay in hospital for several days and will require a period of rest thereafter. 

The official statement of Kate Middleton's pregnancy comes after an exhaustive set of baby rumors that have dogged the couple ever since their royal wedding in April 2011:

• On the pair's recent royal tour in Asia, Catherine declined wine in favor of water on several occasions, fueling speculation that she was expecting. Prince William also told a little boy that he wanted "two" children.
• Just a week earlier, Star magazine had breathlessly (and creepily?) declared that the couple had conceived on a "passionate night together" following the London Olympics.
• In November 2011, just six months after the wedding, In Touch pronounced Kate six weeks along, but summer 2012 came and went without, obviously, a royal birth. (Palace officials had shot down those rumors anyway.)
• Also in November 2011, Catherine declined to taste a peanut butter paste at a UNICEF event, leading to gossip that she was expecting. (Pregnant moms apparently often avoid peanut butter to help prevent allergy issues.)
• In Touch claimed in June 2012 that the Duchess of Cambridge was showing signs of a baby bump.
• Also in June 2012, Us Weekly vowed that the royal couple were planning to conceive "between September 2012 and summer 2013."
• In September 2012, Star magazine showed off photographic evidence that Kate was sporting a baby bump on her and Will's royal tour, where she was also seen drinking only water. Many, however, cried Photoshop.
• In November 2012, Kate's "close friend" Jessica Hay claimed to Australian tabloid New Idea that Catherine was expecting and that the couple would make an announcement "in December." (Looks like she was right!)

The new royal baby will obviously be the first for William and Catherine, who married in 2011 after a 10-year on-and-off courtship. He or she will be Queen Elizabeth II's third great-grandchild (after Savannah and Isla Phillips), Prince Harry's first niece or nephew and will make Pippa Middleton a proud aunt.
Our biggest congratulations to the Palace! And for the rest of us: buckle up. It's going to be quite a year.

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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Coming to Select HTC One Handsets, Confirmed

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Coming to Select HTC One Handsets, Confirmed

"We know HTC fans are excited to get their hands on Google's latest version of Android," HTC said in a statement. "At this point in time, we can confirm that we have plans to upgrade our HTC One X, HTC One XL and HTC One S to Jelly Bean."

Besides confirming an impending roll out of Google's latest operating system, HTC remained mum on other details, like specific dates, and told users to "stay tuned" for more information regarding the upgrades.

In addition to the global One X, One XL and One S models, national carrier versions of the handsets for AT&T and T-Mobile will also get a taste of Jelly Bean. Though there's been no word yet on whether other devices, such as the One V and Evo 4g LTE, will be included in the upgrade plans.

After delays due to a patent battle with Apple, the HTC One X finally launched in the U.S. via AT&T earlier this year. With a 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 resolution display, the smartphone boasts an excellent overall performance, as well as a great camera.

While the HTC One S sports a smaller screen, measuring in at 4.3-inches with a resolution of 960 x 540, the device offers a slim design and great performance.

Yet, when powered by the latest version of Android 4.1, both devices will provide a smoother user interface, making it easier to add application icons and widgets to homescreens, as well as a more interactive notification system.

For more information on the sweet new features of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), check out Brighthand for all the details.

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Watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show tonight? We have the backstage scoop on the Angels’ hair and makeup

The sexiest show on earth, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, will be televised tonight and although many will be tuning in to see the elaborate costumes, fancy lingerie and performances from Rihanna and Justin Bieber, we can’t forget about the beauty. After all, while a million-dollar bra is hard to come by, anyone can try their hand at the hair and makeup done on the Victoria’s Secret Angels. Even better, we have the complete low-down on how to achieve both.

Makeup artist Tom Pecheux gave Victoria’s Secret models such as Miranda Kerr and Doutzen Kroes a look that featured sultry brown eyes, glossy, barely-tinted lips and earthy cheeks. And given just how much skin is on display, the Angels’ bodies were given a sun kissed glow with help from the brand’s Beach Sexy line of bronzers and self-tanners.

Hair guru Orlando Pita is no stranger to celebrity tresses and brought the va-va-voom to Angels’ hair for the runway show. Pita created effortlessly tousled waves to complement the models’ beach-ready bodies with Victoria’s Secret So Sexy hair products. Pita even managed to give model Karlie Kloss bouncy natural-looking extensions despite having recently cut her hair into a short bob.

And if you look really closely while watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show tonight, you will see that the Angels’ nails are painted in a soft pink shade. This new line of VS Nail Lacquers will be launching in January 2013 and include shades such as “Bitten” and “Peep Show,” which is a glittery metallic pink.

Key Victoria’s Secret products used:

Cheek:
VS Makeup Illuminating Face Powder in Next to Nude ($18, victoriassecret.com)
VS Makeup Luminous Mineral Blush Duo in Pleasure ($15, victoriassecret.com)

Eyes:
VS Makeup Eye Shadow Quad in “Eye Contact” ($18, victoriassecret.com)
VS Beauty Rush Ultimate Look Shadow Trio in “Most Wanted” ($9,victoriassecret.com)
VS Beauty Rush Precision Line eye pencil in “Foxy” ($9, victoriassecret.com)
VS Makeup Extra-lengthening mascara ($12, victoriassecret.com)

Lips:
VS Beauty Rush Glossy Tint Lip Sheen in “Better than Bare” ($9, victoriassecret.com)

Body:
Beach Sexy Flawless Airbrush Instant Bronze Body Spray ($12, victoriassecret.com)
Beach Sexy Tan Enhancing Shimmer Lotion ($12, victoriassecret.com)
Beach Sexy Bronze Body Powder with Shimmer ($24, victoriassecret.com)

Hair:
So Sexy Style Tame & Smooth Instant Detangler ($14, victoriassecret.com)
So Sexy Style Hold & Finish Hairspray ($14, victoriassecret.com)

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The Ozone Problem is Back – And Worse Than Ever

Jim Anderson of Harvard University was showing him some weird data he had collected. Since 2001, Anderson and his team had been studying powerful thunderstorms by packing instruments into repurposed spy planes and B-57 bombers, among the only planes capable of flying into the storms “without having their wings ripped off,” Anderson said. To his puzzlement, the instruments detected surprisingly high concentrations of water molecules in the stratosphere, the usually drier-than-dust uppermost layer of the atmosphere. They found the water over thunderstorms above Florida, and they found it over thunderstorms in Oklahoma—water as out of place as a dolphin in the Sahara.

While water in the stratosphere might seem innocuous, the finding made Anderson “profoundly worried,” he recalls. From the decades he had spent studying the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer—the thin gauze of molecules in the stratosphere that blocks most incoming ultraviolet radiation—Anderson knew that water could, through a series of chemical reactions, destroy ozone.

It was when he told Emanuel that violent thunderstorms seemed to be heaving water high into the atmosphere that his MIT colleague expressed his skepticism. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed “you’d need an updraft of 100 miles an hour” to do that, Emanuel said. Impossible.

Anderson persisted, and by early 2012 he had demonstrated the connection. Scrutinizing data from the high-altitude flights, he showed that summer thunderstorms were indeed injecting water molecules into the stratosphere. There, sulfate aerosols (from industrial pollutants as well as volcanoes) attract the water molecules like a sponge and, plumped up, provide a bed for chemical reactions that destroy ozone. The destruction can persist for days or weeks. Oh, and one more thing: The violent storms that inject water vapor into the strato­sphere might be getting more powerful and more frequent under the influence of global warming.

Anderson had made a revolutionary connection between climate change and ozone loss. For three decades, scientists have shouted themselves hoarse insisting the two planetary threats were separate and unrelated. “What Anderson did is piece together all of the complicated parts—how you can inject water in higher and higher amounts into the upper atmosphere and how that causes ozone destruction—and come up with this alarming possibility,” says atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, who has done pioneering work on the ozone layer. “He’s identified a really important mechanism.”

And if Anderson is right and the ozone layer is under renewed attack, then all of the potential consequences of that threat are back like a bad dream from the 1980s: more ultraviolet light reaching the ground; more cases of skin cancer and cataracts; damage to plankton and other organisms that support ocean life; and withered crops that could lead to skyrocketing food prices.

***

Anderson, courtly and white-haired at 68, is writing in longhand at his desk in Harvard’s Mallinckrodt Laboratory early on a sunny autumn morning. The surrounding offices are still dark and empty; Anderson has been at it for over an hour, he says.

But scholarly research isn’t his only passion. He’s also shown unusual devotion to teaching undergrads, lacing an introductory physical sciences class with pragmatic case studies, such as having students calculate their personal energy use. “When I started, I was teaching freshman chemistry the old way, where the idea was to flunk 90 percent of the students,” says Anderson. “But that wastes a huge amount of creative talent and drives students away from science, never to return.”

So Anderson revamped the course, doing his best to liven it up. “Every day he made something explode or set something on fire,” says Adam Cohen, an associate professor who teaches the course now. Anderson has since poured his teaching philosophy into a chemistry textbook he has been writing for years. It’s almost ready for publication, and he proudly shows off the cover he designed adorned with a zippy red Tesla, the high-end electric car. He has one on order. (Read more about the Tesla and its creator on p. 72.)

Anderson’s love of research took root early, in the machine shop that his father, chairman of the physics department at Washington State University in Pullman, built in the family’s basement. It was there that Anderson, born in 1944, built his first model plane, at age 6, and where by seventh grade he was constructing boats.

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Pardis Sabeti, the Rollerblading Rock Star Scientist of Harvard

Pardis Sabeti pulls a BMW SUV into the breezeway at Harvard’s Northwest Laboratory, an airy, minimalist structure of smooth concrete, tropical hardwood, and lots and lots of glass. The 36-year-old hyperkinetic physician and geneticist renowned for her computational approach to studying evolution and public health directs a 22-member laboratory that occupies prestigious top-floor space in this citadel of science. On this Sunday afternoon in October, she is meeting two of her graduate students to work on, of all things, a holiday greeting card. (The tradition began in 2008 when she bought everyone cheesy holiday sweaters from Kmart for a group photo; last year’s card featured a full-blown re-enactment of Raphael’s famous Vatican fresco The School of Athens, depicting the accumulation of knowledge through reason.) Daniel Park, 33, is already in the passenger seat of Sabeti’s car when Dustin Griesemer, a 24-year-old MD-PhD candidate, climbs into the back. Sabeti, wearing modishly rectangular eye­glasses and brown knee-high boots, starts the five-mile drive to Sky Zone, an indoor trampoline park.

Twenty minutes later, Sabeti, Park and Griesemer are snaking between packs of grade-schoolers to check out a pit called the Foam Zone. They sit down at a metal table near the snack bar and Griesemer explains why this year’s card should play off the viral music video “Gangnam Style.” Sabeti takes out her phone and watches on YouTube as an impeccably dressed South Korean rapper named Psy dances in horse stables, saunas, buses, motorboats and subways. The group is in agreement: A “Gangnam Style” homage will be impressive even if lab members aren’t hurtling through the air. The trampoline park will have to wait for another time.

With that settled, they head back to Harvard Square, and the conversation in the car segues to music, as it often does with Sabeti. Besides being an award-winning scientist, she’s the lead singer and bass player in the indie rock band Thousand Days, which has released four albums. “I have no innate sense of flux or flow or spatial cadence,” she says, explaining why the melodies in Thousand Days songs “go all over the place.” (Still, the band, which can sound like a spikier, more energetic version of 10,000 Maniacs, received an honorable mention in a Billboard World Song Competition.) “I have no sense of structure.”

What she unquestionably does have is a fierce determination to succeed. Her single-mindedness has led to a groundbreaking tool to determine whether a specific variation of a given gene is widespread in a population as a result of having been favored by natural selection. And her recent work to understand the genetic factors that influence individual human responses to diseases like malaria, as well as her genetic analyses of pathogens to pinpoint potential weaknesses, could potentially lead to new approaches to treating, and perhaps eradicating, deadly scourges. Beyond that, Sabeti says she wants to show the world that the best way to produce top-flight scientific work is to nurture researchers’ humanity and empathy—and have fun.

Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute, a genomics research center affiliated with MIT and Harvard, has known Sabeti since the late 1990s, when she was an undergraduate advisee at MIT. “She had this boundless optimism that she could make [MIT] a better place,” he says. And so, along with being class president, playing varsity tennis, serving as a teaching assistant and publishing original research, Sabeti started MIT’s Freshman Leadership Program. The five-day curriculum—focusing on “inclusivity, empowerment, value defining and leadership skill building”—is still going strong.

“She was able to create this just through sheer force of will,” Lander says. “She has this force of will and a caring about making the world a better place, really fixing the world.”

***

Pardis Sabeti was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1975, where her father, Parviz, was a high-ranking official in the shah’s government. Two years later, on the cusp of the Iranian revolution, the Sabeti family fled to the United States, eventually settling in Florida. “My father took one of the toughest jobs in the government because he cared about his nation more than himself,” Pardis says. “His courage and conviction have always driven me to want to make a difference.”

In the early 1980s, Pardis’ mother, Nancy, bought some old textbooks, a chalkboard and a couple of school chairs and set up a makeshift summer school in the family’s home for Pardis and her sister, Parisa, who is two years older. Parisa, assigned the role of teacher, put together lesson plans and gave out report cards; Pardis directed the “performing arts” and helped run phys ed. The wide-eyed, toothy Sabeti sisters undoubtedly made for a cute tableau, but the work they were doing was intense and focused. “She would teach me everything that she had learned the year before in school,” Pardis says. When September rolled around, Sabeti was almost two years ahead of her classmates.

It was during those years that Sabeti first discovered her love for mathematics. “My sister taught me addition and subtraction and multiplication and division,” she says, “so by the time I got to school, I knew it all, and when we’d do the times tables, I was just focused on doing it faster than anybody else. I already had the information, so it just got me to focus on excellence.”

That focus continued straight through high school—she was a National Merit Scholar and received an honorable mention on USA Today’s All-USA High School Academic Team—and at MIT, where she majored in biology and had a perfect 5.0 grade-point average. After graduating in 1997, she set off for Oxford, England, on a Rhodes scholarship, to pursue research on human genetic resistance to malaria.

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Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix it?

Making dinner shouldn’t be fatal. But millions of people in the developing world die each year from illnesses linked to smoke spewing out of crude stoves—a scourge that has frustrated experts for decades. Now a Washington, D.C.-based group with a new approach hopes to place “green” stoves in 100 million homes worldwide by 2020.

Part aid organization, part venture-capital broker, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has raised $158 million to help develop, market and distribute clean-burning cookstoves. Championed by celebrities such as Julia Roberts, the initiative is ramping up in Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. “Cooking kills, and it doesn’t have to,” says Alliance director Radha Muthiah. “It’s the fifth-biggest killer in developing countries.”

Some three billion people prepare meals at rudimentary stoves that burn wood, dried dung or coal and that produce choking smoke or lack proper ventilation. Because cooking chores most often fall to women, and children are typically at hand, they are the primary victims of smoke-related respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “Having an open fire in your kitchen is like burning 400 cigarettes an hour in your kitchen,” says Kirk Smith, a professor of global environmental health at the University of California at Berkeley.

The two-year-old Alliance is the most concerted effort yet to coordinate the world’s many clean-stove projects, from arranging financing sources to establishing quality-control standards. The organization doesn’t sell cookstoves but works with manufacturers, distributors and others to supply a range of stove types; it also plans to broker microfinancing to help poor households afford those wares. The goal: stimulate a global clean-stove market that’s self-sustaining, in contrast to past aid programs that gave away or subsidized new stoves with limited success. The Alliance enjoys growing support partly because of the potential environmental benefits of cleaner cooking. Open-fire stoves produce nearly as much black carbon soot as diesel cars and trucks worldwide.

To be sure, convincing poor rural families to change traditional cooking habits is tough. And designing an affordable stove that won’t harm health remains a challenge. Take so-called rocket stoves, with insulated, closed combustion chambers allowing for more complete incineration of firewood; they save on fuel but don’t eliminate smoke or black carbon. Newer stove designs with built-in fans generate much less smoke, but are pricey. “There’s a lot more work to be done,” Smith says.

Women who’ve begun using cleaner stoves attest to the positive changes. “I used to get sick and cough all the time,” recalls Vandana Dubey, of Jagdishpur, India, who appears in an Alliance video. Now she’d like to start a business with other women: “Something that shows we matter.”

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WELGAMA’S “MANAMALA” TALK

Rosy has blushed to hear Welgama’s “manamala” talk

Yesterday minister Welgama has given a flirty answer to an answer asked by the parliamentarian Rosy Senanayake. This has invoked a huge laughter in the parliament. 
Their conservation was as below:
Welgama: “I came to the parliament 19 years ago. This is the happiest day in my life because this is the first time I am questioned by such a beautiful lady.”
Rosy: “Thank you very much. So why don’t you answer in the same happy mood.”
Welgama: “Please wait a bit… I still feel the tremors… I can’t even talk.”
Rosy: “You better not mix up your words.”
Welgama: “I can’t express myself here…but I can tell you if you meet me outside the parliament.”
Rosy Senanayake has stated that it is very discriminative of women to talk like that.
Watch the video below:

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Abu Dhabi 2012

 

World Luxury Fashion Week presents collections from leading luxury fashion brands of the world, to an exclusive and select group of private clients and invited guests, from the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) region.

The host city, Abu Dhabi, is the capital of the UAE, the wealthiest Emirate, which is rapidly establishing itself as the luxury fashion capital of the Middle East.

Over the next eighteen months, this reputation will be further enhanced as over seventy luxury fashion boutiques open in Abu Dhabi, a trend which is forecast to continue for some years.

World Luxury Fashion Week epitomizes Abu Dhabi’s relentless pursuit as a centre of excellence, and the will proudly takes its place as another world-class annual signature event.

The inaugural World Luxury Fashion Week is being staged at the new and iconic Jumeirah at Etihad Towers; a contemporary and innovative design symbol of the new Abu Dhabi – modern, sophisticated and luxurious.

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World Fashion Week® (WFW)

serves as the global voice of Fashion, as “Olympic Style” global platform for the national fashion industries around the world. As an internationally reaching event and network for trade and fashion professionals, the annual event provides a forum for worldwide exposure and recognition, with a major role in contributing to the harmonious growth and development of the global fashion industry, working towards a greater good of harnessing and supporting relationships to keep the global fashion industry sustainable and fair. 

With its unique vision and innovation, WFW is a leading global trade event and milestone for the international fashion community. WFW annual event refresh a new global face and development of local, national and international fashion sectors, a new meeting roof for designers, buyers, traders, international media and representatives from the world´s creative industries, ensuring the global reach of its activities.

WFW recognizes the immense talent raising from all corners of our world, to strive and provide new opportunities for the global fashion industry, leading and upcoming fashion designers, its global reach and expansion, raising awareness for social and human development, becoming a major global fashion movement, leading to economic growth and sustainable world peace.

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