Author: Web Desk

The disappearance of a star Chinese dealmaker has left his bank struggling to reassure clients and staff, people with knowledge of the matter said on Monday, and has heightened concerns about “key man risk” for investors.

Shares of China Renaissance Holdings 1911.HK fell by as much as 5% on Monday, following a record low in the previous session after the investment bank said it could not contact its founder, chairman and CEO Bao Fan.

The stock ended the day up 0.1% in the Hong Kong market that rose 0.8%.

Though the reasons for Bao’s disappearance are unclear, his case follows a series of incidents in which high-profile executives in China have gone missing with little explanation during a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

Some of them reappeared as abruptly as they disappeared.

China Renaissance said on Thursday in a stock exchange filing that it had no information that Bao’s “unavailability” was related to its business, and that its operations were continuing normally.

China Renaissance co-founder Kevin Xie and its investment banking head, Wang Lixing, who are running the company in Bao’s absence, have asked staff not to believe or spread rumours, according to two sources and copies of their messages to staff seen by Reuters.

“At such a critical moment, everyone should trust the company. Don’t fret and stumble. It’s OK to encounter some difficulties in the short term,” Wang said in his message posted on the company’s Wechat group on Friday.

According to two sources and some media reports, authorities took Bao away earlier this month to assist in an investigation into a former colleague, Cong Lin, the company’s former president.

All the sources, who have knowledge of the matter, declined to be identified due to its sensitivity.

A spokesperson for Beijing-based China Renaissance declined to comment on specific details and referred Reuters to its exchange filing made on Thursday.

Xie and Wang did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on Monday.

Beijing’s public security bureau also did not respond to request for comment. Asked during a daily news conference on Friday whether the banker had been detained, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said he was not aware of the situation.

The Hong Kong-listed stock, which climbed as much as 3.5% early on Monday, gave up all those gains and fell to as low as HK$6.82. It hit an all-time low of HK$5 on Friday but later recovered some ground to close at HK$7.18, down 28%.

‘Key man risk’

Bao, also China Renaissance’s controlling shareholder, started the firm in 2005 as a two-person team, seeking to match capital-hungry startups with venture capitalist and private equity investors.

It firm later expanded into services including underwriting, sales and trading.

Known to be well connected in the corporate world, Bao was involved with tech mergers including the tie-up of ride-hailing firms Didi and Kuaidi, food delivery giants Meituan 3690.HK and Dianping, and travel platforms Ctrip 9961.HK and Qunar.

“What happened to China Renaissance highlighted the key man risk with some Chinese companies,” Li Nan, professor of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said.

“A group of Chinese financial institutions rose quickly over the past few years on one to two controllers’ efforts, while it makes these companies particularly vulnerable to any negative headlines that show the controllers are in trouble.”

Key man risk generally refers to the threat posed to a company from over-reliance on a limited number of personnel for decision making.

While it is not uncommon in China for authorities to take away business executives for various reasons, Bao’s disappearance comes against the backdrop of more than two years of sweeping regulatory crackdown on technology companies.

“This should once again remind foreign investors of the relative level of regulatory and governance risk associated with Chinese equities,” said Propitious Research analyst Wium Malan, who publishes on Smartkarma platform.

Source: Voice Of America

Two 16th-century sculptures, jewels of French Renaissance art, have been on display since 1908 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But thanks to modern technology and an unusual agreement, precise 3D copies will be made and installed in the French castle where the originals long resided.

The facsimiles plan is the fruit of a rare partnership between the Met, as the New York museum is known, and the Dordogne department in southwestern France.

The statues, both from the early 1500s and by an anonymous sculptor, represent Biblical scenes entitled “Entombment of Christ” and “Pieta With Donors.”

A tourism promotion agency in the Dordogne, Semitour, will be working with the Atelier of Fac-Similes Perigord (AFSP) to make the replicas over the coming months.

For nearly 400 years, the originals graced the chapel of the Biron chateau in the Dordogne.

Built on a strategic promontory, the sprawling fortress comprises buildings from different eras, including a dungeon dating to the 12th century.

Damaged and rebuilt repeatedly through the centuries, the chateau has belonged since 1978 to the Dordogne department, which declared it a historic monument, Dordogne president Germinal Peiro said during a visit to the Met.

Digital copy

The technology to be employed in copying the sculptures was described to AFP by Francis Rigenbach, who heads the Perigord atelier, and C. Griffith Mann, the Met’s medieval art curator.

Using 3D scanners to make digital images of the sculptures, artisans will be able to create replicas without having to move or disturb the monumental originals.

“By making a digital ‘cast,'” said Rigenbach, “we can employ non-invasive techniques” to produce identical copies.

He added that “90 percent of the artistic work” will involve reproducing signs of wear, such as the patina on the ageing marble originals — though both statues are considered exceptionally well-preserved.

The replicas, to be returned to their original spots in the Biron chapel, will cost around 350,000 euros ($375,000), Rigenbach added.

His atelier is famed for having copied the celebrated Lascaux cave — including its prehistoric wall art — for a museum in Montignac, in northern Perigord.

That allows visitors to feel as if they were visiting the cave itself, which was closed 60 years ago to avoid damage to the fragile site, said Sebastien Cailler, who manages the Biron chateau.

“And when you see these facsimile sculptures in Biron, you’ll surely feel the same emotion as if you were standing before the originals,” he told AFP in New York.

The two statues, whose value was recognized by historians and collectors in the late 18th century, were sold in 1907 by the last marquis of Biron to wealthy American banker John Pierpont Morgan, who was then president of the Met board.

In the 1950s, Dordogne and the Biron castle negotiated with the Met for four years in a vain effort to recover the statues.

In 2018, Perigord officials revived talks with the Met; four years later, technological tests were undertaken, and then on February 15, the agreement was signed in New York.

This type of unusual deal ensures that art works can exist in two places, Mann said, while adding that his museum, with its millions of annual visitors, “seems like the safest place to have the sculptures for their long-term preservation.”

Source: Voice Of America

The White House brought out two of the nation’s top doctors Tuesday to urge all Americans to update their COVID-19 and influenza vaccinations in the next six weeks as the holiday season approaches.

The nearly $500 million effort will focus on reaching older Americans and communities hardest hit by the virus, which has killed more than 1 million and infected nearly 100 million in the U.S. since the pandemic began.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently reporting a “substantial” decrease in weekly deaths, which it attributes to two factors. The first is high levels of population immunity, which are a result of either vaccination or prior infection. The second is improvements in early treatment for high-risk patients.

The White House said it would increase vaccination efforts over the next six weeks by investing $350 million into community health centers for vaccination events or activities that encourage vaccination. The federal Department of Health and Human Services will also award $125 million in grants to organizations that serve older adults and people with disabilities so they can support those communities.

Additionally, the federal agency that oversees the government-funded health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid now has expanded powers to enforce compliance from nursing homes, which are required to offer vaccines to residents.

The U.S. has donated 665.2 million vaccine doses to 116 countries, the White House said. And last week, the Biden administration asked Congress for $1 billion in supplemental funding for global COVID-19 efforts. That funding, the White House told VOA on Tuesday, would support ongoing vaccination campaigns and test-and-treat programs. The money would also go toward integrating COVID-19 vaccination into the schedule of routine vaccines, which is how the spread of the polio virus was neutralized. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was largely responsible for a 99% reduction in global polio transmission as a direct result of the vaccination campaign.

Dr. Fauci’s ‘final message’

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday made what may be his final appearance at the White House to emphasize that the vaccine is both safe and effective, but that immunity and protection diminish over time. Fauci, at 81, retires later this year after 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“My final message — it may be the final message I give you from this podium — is that please, for your own safety and for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible, to protect yourself, your family and your community,” he said.

Fauci acknowledged to VOA that misinformation and denialism — some of it coming from the White House during the early days of the pandemic — adversely affected the fight against the quickly changing virus. Critics of then-President Donald Trump say his mixed messages about the virus, his minimization of the situation and his unfounded medical pronouncements were detrimental.

“I contradicted those, which set off a whole series of things in my life,” Fauci said.

“People who have correct information, who take science seriously, who don’t have strange, way-out theories about things but base what they say on evidence and data need to speak up more,” Fauci said, “because the other side that just keeps putting out misinformation and disinformation seems to be tireless in that effort. And it’s going to be very difficult.”

Well-known figures, including several U.S. legislators, have spread what critics say is misinformation about the virus. That’s what led the social media site Twitter to suspend Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2021, though the site’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, reinstated her account this week.

Other legislators have opposed President Joe Biden’s vaccine policies and mandates, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who said “the CDC continues to make recommendations that ignore science, erode public trust, and target Americans’ healthcare freedom” in response to a CDC vote to make COVID-19 a required vaccine for public schoolchildren.

Much misinformation has gained a wider audience on social media networks, White House officials said. As White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha put it: “You can decide to trust America’s physicians, or you can trust some random dude on Twitter. Like, those are your choices.”

As the doctors were speaking at the White House, a Twitter user replied, in real time, to VOA’s line of questioning, saying, “They ruined public trust. Most will never trust public health again. Myself included.”

Source: Voice Of America

The World Health Organization said Monday it was thrashing out a new list of priority pathogens that risk sparking pandemics or outbreaks and should be kept under close observation.

The WHO said the aim was to update a list used to guide global research and development (R&D) and investment, especially in vaccines, tests and treatments.

As part of that process, which started Friday, the United Nations’ health agency is convening more than 300 scientists to consider evidence on more than 25 virus families and bacteria.

They will also consider the so-called Disease X, an unknown pathogen that could cause a serious international epidemic.

“Targeting priority pathogens and virus families for research and development of countermeasures is essential for a fast and effective epidemic and pandemic response,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan.

“Without significant R&D investments prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it would not have been possible to have safe and effective vaccines developed in record time.”

The list was first published in 2017.

It currently includes COVID-19, Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Nipah, Zika and Disease X.

For each pathogen identified as a priority, experts will pinpoint knowledge gaps and research priorities.

Desired specifications for vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests can then be drawn up.

Efforts are also made to facilitate clinical trials to develop such tools, while efforts to strengthen regulatory and ethics oversight are also considered.

The revised list is expected to be published before April 2023.

Pandemic treaty

The pathogen threat sessions come as the WHO prepares for the next round of talks toward a pandemic treaty.

An intergovernmental negotiating body is paving the way toward a global agreement that could eventually regulate how nations prepare for and respond to future pandemic threats.

They are due to meet in Geneva from December 5 to 7 for a third meeting to draft and negotiate a WHO convention or other kind of international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response.

A progress report will be presented to WHO member states next year, with the final outcome presented for their consideration in 2024.

An initial draft text for the December meeting emerged last week.

The Panel for a Global Public Health Convention, an independent coalition of statespersons and health leaders, said the draft did not go far enough, despite its bright spots.

The panel said Monday that more should be done to establish accountability and clear timelines for alert and response to avoid damaging consequences when an outbreak emerges.

“Once an outbreak is detected, there are often a few critical hours to report, assess and act to stop the spread of a disease before it becomes virtually unstoppable,” the panel said in a statement.

“The current draft does not go far enough to call out the urgency needed to either prepare for disease X or known pathogens, or to respond at the early stage,” it said.

“From December 2019 when information about the new coronavirus was suppressed, to multiple countries taking a ‘wait and see’ approach when Covid-19 cases were first reported … we’ve seen the damaging consequences of inaction at the onset.”

Source: Voice of America

NASA’s Orion capsule reached the moon Monday, whipping around the back side and passing within 80 miles (128 kilometers) on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit.

The close approach occurred as the crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon. Because of the half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers in Houston did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon, more than 232,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) from Earth.

It’s the first time a capsule has visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo program 50 years ago, and represented a huge milestone in the $4.1 billion test flight that began last Wednesday. Orion’s flight path took it over the landing sites of Apollo 11, 12 and 14 — humanity’s first three lunar touchdowns.

The moon loomed ever larger in the video beamed back earlier in the morning, as the capsule closed the final few thousand miles since blasting off last Wednesday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, atop the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA.

“This is one of those days that you’ve been thinking about and talking about for a long, long time,” flight director Zeb Scoville said while awaiting to resume contact.

As the capsule swung out from behind the moon, onboard cameras sent back a picture of Earth — a blue dot surrounded by blackness.

Orion needed to slingshot around the moon to pick up enough speed to enter the sweeping, lopsided lunar orbit. If all continues to go well, another engine firing will place the capsule in that orbit Friday.

Next weekend, Orion will shatter NASA’s distance record for a spacecraft designed for astronauts — nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth, set by Apollo 13 in 1970. And it will keep going, reaching a maximum distance from Earth next Monday at nearly 270,000 miles (433,000 kilometers).

The capsule will spend close to a week in lunar orbit, before heading home. A Pacific splashdown is planned for Dec. 11.

Orion has no lunar lander; a touchdown won’t come until NASA astronauts attempt a lunar landing in 2025 with SpaceX’s Starship. Before then, however, astronauts will strap into Orion for a ride around the moon as early as 2024.

NASA managers were delighted with the progress of the mission. The Space Launch System rocket performed exceedingly well in its debut, they told reporters late last week.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket caused more damage than expected, however, at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. The force from the 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust was so great that it tore off the blast doors of the elevator.

Source: Voice of America

Former Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger is returning to the media company as CEO less than a year after he retired, a surprise appointment that comes as the entertainment company struggles to turn its streaming TV services into a profitable business.

Iger, who retired last year after 15 years as chief executive, has agreed to serve as CEO for two more years, Disney said in a statement late on Sunday. He will replace Bob Chapek, who took over as Disney CEO in February 2020.

While Chapek steered Disney through the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney disappointed investors this month with an earnings report that showed continued losses at its streaming media unit that includes Disney+.

“The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period,” Susan Arnold, chair of Disney’s board, said in the statement.

In June, Disney’s board voted unanimously to extend Chapek’s contract for three years.

Through Chapek’s short tenure, Disney became engulfed in an internal culture war after being accused of remaining silent on Florida legislation that would limit classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Iger exited Disney on a high note as the company led the entertainment industry’s battle against Netflix in the streaming wars. The economic slowdown and high interest rates have hurt Disney+ as the company prepares for deep cost cuts.

“I am an optimist, and if I learned one thing from my years at Disney, it is that even in the face of uncertainty – perhaps especially in the face of uncertainty – our employees and Cast Members achieve the impossible,” Iger said in a memo to employees seen by Reuters.

The leadership change caught employees by surprise, one company source said.

Source: Voice of America

Let the sticker shock begin: The upcoming U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, a time when families and friends typically celebrate with groaning sideboards, a stuffed turkey, and a more-is-better-than-less attitude, is going to cost roughly 20% more than last year, according to estimates compiled by the American Farm Bureau Federation in an annual survey of grocery prices.

Blame it on the weather, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or corporations’ drive to maximize profits, all of which have had a hand in rising food prices, but this year’s jump is the largest since the Farm Bureau’s first Thanksgiving dinner cost survey in 1986.

Coupled with last year’s 14% increase, which was the second-largest, the price of a “classic” meal of turkey, stuffing, green peas, sweet potatoes, cranberries, rolls and pumpkin pie for 10 people has risen more than a third since 2020, at the outset of the worst U.S. inflation surge in 40 years, from $46.90 to $64.05.

“That kind of increase we recognize is a burden on some families, no question about that,” said Roger Cryan, the Farm Bureau’s chief economist, though he noted that discounting as the holiday approaches may allow consumers to lower the bill.

U.S. consumer prices rose 7.7% on an annual basis in October and had been increasing by as much as 9.1% earlier this year, triggering a Federal Reserve effort to tame price pressures with aggressive interest rate increases.

Food prices, particularly items bought for home consumption, have risen even faster, hitting a 13.5% annual rate in August and still rising 12.4% annually last month, a shock to one part of the household budget where prices had dependably increased less than incomes.

As food prices have risen, a U.S Census survey showed the share of households reporting food scarcity rising from 7.8% in August 2021 to 11.4% as of early October.

“If you’re in the grocery store right now, you see it, in any grocery store you go to, people making tradeoffs,” San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said last week. “How many people can they invite? What are they going to serve? Are they going to trade down? Are we having a different kind of meal? Are we not having as many options?”

Skip the stuffing?

As with other goods and services, there is a broad set of forces behind the Thanksgiving food spike.

An outbreak of avian flu cut turkey flocks, and while supply is adequate the Farm Bureau said the harvest of smaller birds along with higher feed prices has raised the cost of that Thanksgiving centerpiece by 21%, to an average $1.81 per pound in the 224 stores where surveyors checked prices during the Oct. 18-31 period.

That accounted for about half of the $10.74 increase in the full price of the classic meal this year. The largest percentage rise was for packaged stuffing, up 69% to $3.88, while a 1-pound tray of carrots and celery was up just 8%, to $0.88, and the price of cranberries fell 14%, to $2.57 for a 12-ounce bag.

For food items generally, key inputs like fuel and fertilizer prices have skyrocketed, said Wendiam Sawadgo, an agricultural economics professor at Auburn University, with some fruit farmers in Alabama, for example, now spending $1,000 an acre on fertilizer compared to around $600 in 2018.

“A big chunk was Ukraine and Europe not having fertilizer production for a good while. That was a big problem,” he said.

Grocery store margins also rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Net profit after taxes hit 3% in 2020 and 2.9% in 2021, compared with an average of around 1.2% from 2015 through 2019, according to data from the Food Industry Association. Those were the highest margins the association has seen in reports dating back to 1984.

Andy Harig, a vice president at the association, said high demand for food at home early in the pandemic, when restaurants were closed or in-person dining was considered risky, gave food retailers leverage to boost profits. He said consumers also bought more higher-margin products like seafood during the crisis, while changes in shopping — including the rise in food delivery — let stores trim labor costs.

But he also said the net profit figure is expected to fall back to the long-run industry average of between 1% and 2%.

“It’s a penny industry,” Harig said. With restaurants recovering and wages rising, margins are likely already declining.

Last-minute bargains

Still, the rising cost of necessities has been top of mind for U.S. officials, with consumer sentiment near a low point after a year when average gas prices reached $5 a gallon. Thanksgiving-related travel this year may at least be cheaper than it was, with airline and fuel prices having declined recently.

And there may be some respite on the food front as well.

Walmart Inc., for example, said earlier this month that it would leave prices for Thanksgiving staples unchanged from last year and keep them in effect through Christmas, including turkey for under $1 a pound.

Discounted turkey prices often lure consumers to grocery stores and supermarkets, and bargains intensify as the holiday approaches. The Farm Bureau noted that frozen turkey prices had fallen to 95 cents a pound as of this week.

Auburn’s Sawadgo said that shopping for alternatives can also bring down the cost, with one of his personal favorites, collard greens, selling right now at $1.14 a pound, down 3 cents from last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Sawadgo recently priced the goods for a Thanksgiving dinner for six at about $70.76, up 19% from $59.50 for the same basket last year.

“If you are not someone who shops the ads, this might be the year to do that,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

A last-minute fight over emissions cutting and the overall climate change goal is delaying a potentially historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries’ carbon pollution.

“We are extremely on overtime. There were some good spirits earlier today. I think more people are more frustrated about the lack of progress,” Norwegian climate change minister Espen Barth Eide told The Associated Press. He said it came down to getting tougher on fossil fuel emissions and retaining the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times as was agreed in last year’s climate summit in Glasgow.

“Some of us are trying to say that we actually have to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees and that requires some action. We have to reduce our use of fossil fuels, for instance,” Eide said. “But there’s a very strong fossil fuel lobby … trying to block any language that we produce. So that’s quite clear.”

Several cabinet ministers from across the globe told the AP earlier Saturday that agreement was reached on a fund for what negotiators call loss and damage. It would be a big win for poorer nations that have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate disasters despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.

However, the other issues are seemingly delaying any action. A meeting to approve an overall agreement has been pushed back more than two-and-a-half hours with little sign of diplomats getting together for a formal plenary to approve something. Eide said he had no idea when that would be.

Concerns about emissions proposals

The loss and damage deal was a high point earlier in the day.

“This is how a 30-year-old journey of ours has finally, we hope, found fruition today,” said Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman, who often took the lead for the world’s poorest nations. One-third of her nation was submerged this summer by a devastating flood and she and other officials used the motto: “What went on in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan.”

The United States, which in the past has been reluctant to even talk about the issue of loss and damage, “is working to sign on,” said an official close to negotiations.

If an agreement is accepted, it still needs to be approved unanimously late into Saturday evening. But other parts of a deal, outlined in a package of proposals put out earlier in the day by the Egyptian chairs of the talks, are still being hammered out as negotiators head into what they hope is their final session.

There was strong concern among both developed and developing countries about proposals on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, known as mitigation. Officials said the language put forward by Egypt backtracked on some of the commitments made in Glasgow aimed at keeping alive the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid 19th century.

Some of the Egyptian language on mitigation seemingly reverted to the 2015 Paris agreement, which was before scientists knew how crucial the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold was and heavily mentioned a weaker 2-degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) goal, which is why scientists and Europeans are afraid of backtracking, said climate scientist Maarten van Aalst of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center.

Ireland’s Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan said: “We need to get a deal on 1.5 degrees. We need strong wording on mitigation and that’s what we’re going to push.”

‘Hope to the vulnerable’

Still, the attention centered around the compensation fund, which has also been called a justice issue.

“There is an agreement on loss and damage,” Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told the AP early Saturday afternoon after a meeting with other delegations. “That means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for.”

New Zealand Climate Minister James Shaw said both the poor countries that would get the money and the rich ones that would give it are on board with the proposed deal.

It’s a reflection of what can be done when the poorest nations remain unified, said Alex Scott, a climate diplomacy expert at the think tank E3G.

“I think this is huge to have governments coming together to actually work out at least the first step of … how to deal with the issue of loss and damage,” Scott said. But like all climate financials, it is one thing to create a fund, it’s another to get money flowing in and out, she said. The developed world still has not kept its 2009 pledge to spend $100 billion a year on other climate aid — designed to help poor nations develop green energy and adapt to future warming.

“The draft decision on loss and damage finance offers hope to the vulnerable people that they will get help to recover from climate disasters and rebuild their lives,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

The Chinese lead negotiator would not comment on a possible deal. European negotiators said they were ready to back the deal but declined to say so publicly until the entire package was approved.

The Egyptian presidency, which had been under criticism by all sides, proposed a new loss and damage deal Saturday afternoon and within a couple hours an agreement was struck but Norway’s climate and environment minister Espen Barth Eide said it was not so much the Egyptians but countries working together.

According to the latest draft, the fund would initially draw on contributions from developed countries and other private and public sources such as international financial institutions. While major emerging economies such as China would not initially be required to contribute, that option remains on the table and will be negotiated over the coming years. This is a key demand by the European Union and the United States, who argue that China and other large polluters currently classified as developing countries have the financial clout and responsibility to pay their way.

The planned fund would be largely aimed at the most vulnerable nations, though there would be room for middle-income countries that are severely battered by climate disasters to get aid.

An overarching decision that sums up the outcomes of the climate talks doesn’t include India’s call to phase down oil and natural gas, in addition to last year’s agreement to wean the world from “unabated” coal.

Several rich and developing nations called Saturday for a last-minute push to step up emissions cuts, warning that the outcome barely builds on what was agreed in Glasgow last year.

It also doesn’t require developing countries such as China and India to submit any new targets before 2030. Experts say these are needed to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal that would prevent some of the more extreme effects of climate change.

Youth say ‘keep fighting’

Throughout the climate summit, the American, Chinese, Indian and Saudi Arabian delegations have kept a low public profile, while European, African, Pakistan and small island nations have been more vocal.

Many of the more than 40,000 attendees have left town, and workers started packing up the vast pavilions in the sprawling conference zone.

At the youth pavilion, a gathering spot for young activists, a pile of handwritten postcards from children to negotiators was left on a table.

“Dear COP27 negotiators,” read one card. “Keep fighting for a good planet.”

Source: Voice of America