Latest News Clips 2014.02.17

Bengo’s Latest News Clips 2014.02.17

1. China and Taiwan Hold First Direct Talks Since ’49

The New York Times FEB. 11, 2014

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Wang Yu-chi, left, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, and Zhang Zhijun, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, greeted each other before their meeting on Tuesday in Nanjing, China. Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Representatives of Taiwan and China held their first official talks on Tuesday since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, a meeting expected to produce few concrete results but one that was a symbolic development in the easing of the two sides’ longtime rivalry.

The setting was a resort hotel in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which was at times the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China before its government fled to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces.

“Before today’s meeting, it was hard to imagine that cross-strait relations could get to this point,” said Wang Yu-chi, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council.

The improved ties were “hard-earned through efforts of generations,” said Zhang Zhijun, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. “We should cherish it and work together to maintain this favorable momentum.”

China considers Taiwan to be a part of its territory that must eventually be reunited. It has reacted angrily in the past to steps seen as moving the self-governed island toward formal independence.

In 1995 and 1996, it fired missiles into waters around Taiwan ahead of its first democratic presidential election, and it regularly denounced Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s independent-leaning president from 2000 to 2008.

Since the 2008 election of President Ma Ying-jeou, who favors closer ties with the mainland, Beijing has taken a more conciliatory approach. Cross-strait trade has nearly doubled over the course of Mr. Ma’s presidency, reaching $197 billion last year. Nearly three million Chinese traveled to Taiwan last year, constituting the largest single group of visitors after Taiwan’s easing of restrictions on mainland arrivals starting in 2008.

The two sides signed a landmark trade agreement, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, in 2010. Those negotiations were carried out by semiofficial bodies: Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.

A follow-up agreement to the trade accord that lifts barriers on cross-strait trade in services has been held up in Taiwan’s legislature as it debates possible effects on Taiwanese companies.

Until now, representatives of China and Taiwan had met only through unofficial organizations or through retired officials, as Beijing has resisted any steps that might be seen as recognizing Taiwan’s sovereignty.

2. Medal price tag: What do athletes sacrifice for the sake of Olympic glory?

RT FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Behind the Olympic triumphs there are horrific, but also inspiring stories of a painful road to success. Russia’s Evgeny Plushenko skates despite pins implanted in his spine and Poland’s Justyna Kowalczyk wins her 10km ski race with a broken foot.

Hardly a year has passed since Plushenko, 31, had major surgery on his spine – a twelfth operation during his figure skating career – which fired back with debilitating pain through much of his Olympic training.

The 2006 Turin Olympic champion suffered a back injury at the European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia in January 2013 where he fell performing a triple axel during a short program.

Medics recommended he withdraw from the competition since the injury aggravated the back problem that Plushenko had been suffering from for about a year before the incident. He even had to take baths with scalding water five times a day during the Championship to ease the pain.

In late January last year, he successfully underwent a surgery in Tel Aviv to replace intervertebral disc.

“That was the most difficult surgery in my career and in my life. I had to learn walking anew, getting up from bed,” Plushenko said earlier this week in an interview with Kommersant daily. He recalled that when he first got on ice after the operation, he felt like a beginner rather than a professional and had difficulty performing even simple figure skating elements.

Back then, Plushenko said, he could not even imagine that he would be able to make it to the Sochi Games. In September, the skater performed his first flip since the operation.

At the Sochi Olympics, the Russian skating legend scored 168.20 for the free skate program – his most difficult in terms of combination of elements in over a decade. Priceless for his fans, the performance, along with a successful short program, helped Russia to win its first gold in Sochi in the team skating event.

“You know what he did? No one has any idea…There was one chance in a thousand that he would be able to come back [to sport],” his wife, Yana Rudkovskaya said. Plushenko was training 10 hours a day before Sochi, she added.

Unfortunately, on Thursday, Plushenko had to withdraw from the men’s individual event after injuring his back during the warm-up.

“I withdrew because of severe back pain,” he said, adding that he tried his best to end his career on a positive note, and was preparing to compete in the individual event. “God probably said: ‘Evgeny, it’s time to finish.’ I believe that’s the only way to stop me.” Plushenko added that he has lots of plans for the future, but would likely not take part in competitive skating. “But still, I say neither ‘no’ nor ‘yes’,” he said.

3. Flooding and storms in UK are clear signs of climate change, says Lord Stern

Author of 2006 report says recent weather is part of international pattern and demonstrates urgent need to cut carbon emissions

Conal Urquhart

theguardian.com, 13 February 2014

Flooding on Somerset Levels

Flooded houses in the village of Moorland on the Somerset Levels. Writing in the Guardian, Lord Stern says failure to cut emissions will result in 'even more devastating consquences'. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The devastating floods and storms sweeping Britain are clear indications of the dangers of climate change, according to Lord Stern, the author of a 2006 report on the economics of climate change.

Writing in the Guardian, the crossbench peer said the flooding and storm damage demonstrate the need for Britain and the rest of the world to continue to implement low-carbon policies to reduce the probability of greater tragedies in the future.

He said the five wettest years and the seven warmest years in the UK have happened since 2000, which is explained by a clear body of evidence showing that a warmer atmosphere contains more water and causes more intense rainfall. When this is combined with higher sea levels in the English Channel, the risk of flooding increases.

Recent UK weather is part of an international pattern of extreme weather which proves the dangers of climate change and the need to cut carbon emissions, Stern said.

"If we do not cut emissions, we face even more devastating consequences, as unchecked they could raise global average temperature to 4C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

"The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity."

Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, noted that Australia has just had its hottest year on record, Argentina one of its worst heatwaves in late December, while parts of Brazil were struck by floods and landslides following record rainfall.

He said that delay is dangerous: "Inaction could be justified only if we could have great confidence that the risks posed by climate change are small. But that is not what 200 years of climate science is telling us. The risks are huge."

Britain must continue to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act, he said. This commits the UK to cut its emissions by at least 80% by 2050.