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Lineup of G8 leaders at a summit this year in L’Aquila, Italy.

Obama Shakes Hands With Libya's Qaddafi President Obama's gesture was his latest effort to reach out to controversial world leaders in an attempt to improve the United States' standing around the world that he says was damaged by former President Bush's unilateral diplomacy. [Pic in URL: US President Barack Obama, right,and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi pictured during the G8/G5 summit in L'Aquila, Italy Thursday July 9, 2009. (AP) President Obama shook hands with Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi Thursday, a sign that relations have improved considerably between the U.S. and the North African nation. The two met as they posed for...

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi has lashed out at the United States by likening the 1986 U.S. Strikes on Libya to Osama bin Laden's terror attacks on the United States in 2001. He was speaking Thursday in Rome, where he is on a three-day official visit. In a speech to Italian lawmakers, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi urged the world to understand the reasons that motivate terrorists. He called for dialogue with terrorists, saying, "One must talk to the devil, if it brings about a solution." While condemning al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, he implied there was little difference between bin Laden's...

UNFORTUNATELY, Chi na's president had to dash home to suppress ethnic riots. Had he stayed in Italy at the recent G-8 summit, he could have continued the Herculean task of disabusing Barack Obama of his amazingly durable belief (shared by Congress) that China -- and India, Brazil, Mexico and other developing nations -- will sacrifice their modernization on the altar of climate change. China has a more pressing agenda, and not even suppressing riots tops the list. China made this clear in June, when its vice premier said, opaquely, that China would "actively" participate in climate-change talks on a basis...

A split between rich and poor nations in the run-up to climate-change talks widened on Thursday. India rejected key scientific findings on global warming... Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers. He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions,

Russia’s provocative U-turn signalled clearly that G8 pronouncements are immaterial and should not be taken too seriously. In reality, Moscow has no intention whatsoever to cut its emissions in the near future. Quite the opposite. Just over a month ago, the Russian President announced that his country intended to increase CO2 emissions by 30% by 2020. No wonder that G8 states find it impossible to agree on a credible, short-term emissions target as the developing world is demanding. No wonder then that India and China remain opposed to any target setting. Neither can afford to sign up to mandatory emissions...

House Democratic leaders must be in a state of shock. The EPA announced that the Waxman-Markey Bill, the cap-and-trade bill, would not “materially effect global carbon concentrations in the atmosphere.” Why then are Americans being asked to take on $9 trillion ($9,000,000,000,000) worth of spending from 2012-2050 for nothing? Sen. Inhofe (R - Okla.) said “that unilateral action by the U.S. will be all cost for no climate gain…. acting alone through the job-killing Waxman-Markey bill would impose severe economic burdens on American consumers, businesses, and families, all without any impact on climate.”

Note: The following text is a quote: July 9, 2009 Global G-8 operation targeting cash couriers nets more than $7 million NAPLES, Italy - Law enforcement agencies from the Group of Eight (G-8) countries announced today the results of an unprecedented multilateral cash courier operation, which netted more than $3.5 million dollars in 81 cash seizures and detected another $4.2 million in undeclared currency at ports of entry around the world. The operation was developed through the G8 Roma/Lyon group and illustrates the value of close, real-time, international collaboration in identifying and fighting currency smuggling. Cash smuggling is a crime...

Benedict XVI returns to the principal themes of his social encyclical reaffirming the need for a global commitment to development, to eliminate "social inequality and structural injustices that are no longer tolerable." The social question has become an "anthropological” issue which implies a way of conceiving man in truth, body and soul. Prayers for Honduras and a farewell ahead of holidays in Les Combes (Aosta Valley). Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "The absolutism of technology, which finds its clearest expression in certain practices contrary to life�, could "draw dark scenarios for the future of humanity": Benedict XVI returns to warn against...

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "The absolutism of technology, which finds its clearest expression in certain practices contrary to life”, could "draw dark scenarios for the future of humanity": Benedict XVI returns to warn against a development that is only concerned with technological progress, bringing with it the manipulation of embryos, abortion, euthanasia, sterilization, birth control under the pretext of wanting to promote human development. At today's Angelus address the pontiff reiterated the views expressed in his recently published social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. "Acts that do not respect the true dignity of the person - said the pope - even...

MIDI SITE FOR Lookin' Out My Back Door

NEW DELHI: Has India blinked in the climate change negotiations? This seems to be the case as at the Major Economies Forum meeting in Italy, India has gone back on some of its key principles -- like a refusal to accept emission caps -- that it held to be non-negotiable till just before the G-8 meet in Italy. In the course of some tough negotiations, India appears to have bent a bit in the face of pressure from industrialized countries, and the biggest compromise at the MEF was to accept that all countries would work to reduce emissions in order...

L'AQUILA, Italy -- President Obama's debut performance at a G-8 summit is playing to rave reviews from his counterparts Friday, with Italian President Silvio Berlusconi telling reporters the American "has done everything absolutely right" on foreign policy so far. "I was impressed but so were all our colleagues. I can tell you that we are all very favorably impressed with President Obama," he said. The praise follows a day after the leaders gathered here for the Group of Eight leading economies summit greeted Mr. Obama with applause when he showed up for their traditional group photo.

As nature and science continue to take the steam out of the global-warming balloon, the recent G8 summit produced a tentative promise that leading industrialized nations won't let the planet's temperature rise higher than 3.6 F above some arbitrary period before tailpipes. Since the earth has cooled 1.8 F (1 C) since 1998, it's unlikely action will be required anytime soon. So what do the "leaders" propose to do if on some distant date the planet exceeds their capricious temperature limit? They didn't say. But warmists' unshakable egoism notwithstanding, humans are powerless to alter the climate, intentionally or otherwise. How...

18:1010/07/2009 L'AQUILA, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday he had been given an example coin of a possible global currency at the G8 summit in Italy, adding that all aspects of reserve currencies were under discussion. "We are discussing both the use of other national currencies, including the ruble, as a reserve currency, as well as supranational currencies," the Russian leader said at a news conference following the G8 summit. Medvedev showed reporters an example of a coin of a supranational currency, which he called a "united future world currency." "This is a symbol...

L'AQUILA, Italy (AFP) – US President Barack Obama cranked up pressure on Iran by saying Friday world leaders were "appalled" at post-poll violence and would not stand idly by while Iran builds a nuclear weapon. Welcoming a rare consensus on Iran among the globe's most powerful nations at the L'Aquila summit, Obama told reporters he hoped Tehran would recognize that "world opinion is very clear". The G8 joint declaration expressed "serious concern" over post-election violence in Iran but called for a negotiated resolution to the standoff over Tehran's nuclear programme, giving it until September's G20 summit. "And that's been always...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a revamp of the global currency system, saying Thursday that the dollar's supremacy is outdated. "We need to ask the question: shouldn't a world that is politically multi-polar correspond to a multi-monetary world economically?" he said in a news conference during a summit of world leaders in L'Aquila, Italy. Sarkozy compared an overhaul of the global currency system to the enlargement of the Group of Eight structure to encompass fast-growing emerging economies, which were invited to join the Italian summit. He said the supremacy of the dollar belongs to the post-Second World War era...

Wealthy nations agree on temperature cap in fight against global warming.... leaders of the world's richest industrial countries pledged Wednesday to seek dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to slow dangerous climate change. They agreed for the first time that worldwide temperatures must not rise more than a few degrees. However, their goals are nonbinding, and it's far from clear they will be met. The wealthy nations failed to persuade the leaders of big developing countries to promise to cut their own fast-spreading pollution, unable to overcome arguments that the well-established industrial giants aren't doing enough in the...

The news from Italy is that the G8 leaders have decided to keep the Earth from warming 2 degrees Celsius. This is significant mainly because the Earth isn't warming up in the first place, and just what would this bunch of stuffed suits really do about it if it were? This is disturbing on so many levels - we had to discuss a few of them. In other delusional news, we also found out that the col More..lective good vibes from dashboard crystals are what are actually preventing the Earth from crashing into the sun, and that objects are held...

A unilateral attack by Israel against Iran to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions would be an "absolute catastrophe," AFP quoted French President Nicolas Sarkozy as warning on Thursday. Sarkozy was speaking after a summit of the Group of Eight and other leaders in Italy at which they agreed on the need to pursue a negotiated deal with Tehran to halt its nuclear program.

Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world's economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. We were...

Add this to the list of apologies..."In the past the United States has fallen short of meeting it's responsibilities"...(Video)

U.S. President Barack Obama (C) and France's President Nicolas Sarkozy (R) take their places with junior G8 delegates for a family photo at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, Italy, offered some world leaders the opportunity to squeeze in a visit to meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. The pope then used the occasion to present leaders with a special copy of his first social encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth"), which the Vatican released July 7, the day before the G-8 summit began. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met with the pope in a 25-minute closed-door meeting July 9. Australia is not part of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, but was among the...

International Organizations = Global Incompetence L'AQUILA, Italy (AP) - President Barack Obama and other leaders at the Group of Eight summit have struck a new agreement on fighting global warming. Consider the ridiculousness of this statement by our president: “We have agreed for the first time that average global temperatures must rise by no more than 2C."This is folly. Why not demand the wind stop blowing? It spreads air pollution around and messes up women's hair-dos. Why don't they just have Obama rebuke the global atmosphere? "Peace, be still!" No, wait. That was Jesus calming the seas...Santa Claus and Witches...

Pope Benedict XVI (C) poses with the wives of leaders of South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, India, the European Commission and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) at the Vatican July 8, 2009. VATICAN CITY, JULY 8, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI was visited today by the wives of some of the presidents and prime ministers in Italy for the Group of Eight meeting; he used the occasion to urge these influential women to help Africa. The audience was in a room adjacent to Paul VI Hall, where the Pope held today's general audience. Filming by the Vatican Television Center showed the...

L’AQUILA, Italy—President Barack Obama is likely to come home from a series of back-to-back international summits here without agreement on the crux of a global deal to limit climate change, after developing countries balked at setting numerical targets to reduce their carbon emissions, U.S. officials said

Hopes of a deal on climate change at the Group of Eight industrialised nations summit in Italy were today hanging by a thread. As world leaders sat down for a working lunch at the start of a three day meeting of the G8, it emerged that negotiations had failed to reach agreement on halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Summit negotiators, who do the hard bargaining before the heads of state arrive to complete the agreements, failed to make progress on the issue in talks that continued late last night. China and India are understood to have blocked any mention...

“Europe wants avant-garde legislation but China is putting up resistance, which I sampled yesterday during my one-on-one with the Chinese president,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, the host of the summit meeting, said Tuesday evening of the climate change negotiations. The breakdown on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020 and to...

ROME, July 7 (Reuters) - Rich nations sought to persuade China and India on Tuesday to agree to a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at a summit of major economies in Italy later this week. Environment ministers or senior officials from the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) met in Rome, trying to end deadlock over a declaration that could be a step towards a new U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. "Positions have not shifted," a delegate said of the talks, called at the last minute to help leaders agree a...

CHINA'S President Hu Jintao has abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy, returning home early to deal with ethnic violence in the north-western region of Xinjiang that has left at least 156 dead in China's . The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website that Mr Hu had left for China "due to the situation" in energy-rich Xinjiang, which borders central Asia, where 156 people have been killed, 1080 injured and 1434 arrested in unrest between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs since Sunday. Late yesterday, mobs of Han Chinese wielding clubs, metal bars, cleavers and axes had melted...

The United States is opposed to enacting a new set of financial sanctions against Iran that are due to be discussed in the G8 summit next week, diplomatic officials in New York reported Friday. According to officials, sanctions against Iran are expected to top the G8's agenda. Sources are also predicting a pointed debate between the heads of the industrialized nations over an appropriate response to Iranian authorities' suppression of reformist demonstrations in Iran led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and other Iranian opposition leaders. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in a newspaper interview earlier in the week that the...

The United States is opposed to enacting a new set of financial sanctions against Iran that are due to be discussed in the G8 summit next week, diplomatic officials in New York reported Friday. According to officials, sanctions against Iran are expected to top the G8's agenda. Sources are also predicting a pointed debate between the heads of the industrialized nations over an appropriate response to Iranian authorities' suppression of reformist demonstrations in Iran led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and other Iranian opposition leaders.

The dollar was broadly higher on Monday after developments at the Group of Eight meeting of finance ministers helped reinforce the currency's status as global reserve currency. The statement that emerged from the meeting in Lecce, Italy did not specifically mention currency markets, with finance ministers from the U.S., Canada and elsewhere instead focusing on exit strategies from their emergency spending packages and bank rescues amid signs the economic crisis may have hit bottom. Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, also voiced positive views on the dollar's reserve status, helping ease concerns about the greenback's global status. At the same time,...

G8 prepares for global recovery By Guy Dinmore in Lecce, Italy Published: June 13 2009 12:32 | Last updated: June 13 2009 12:32 G8 finance ministers on Saturday agreed that their economies were showing “increased signs of stabilisation” and for the first time started to craft exit strategies to counter the inflationary impact of their stimulus measures. A draft communique of their ministerial meeting in Lecce – a Baroque city in southern Italy that was sealed off for two days of talks – noted a recovery in stock markets, a decline in interest rate spreads, improved business and consumer confidence...

SNIPPET: "(ANSA) - Genoa, June 11 - Six Italians were arrested Thursday on suspicion of plotting to attack Group of Eight summit facilities. The Rome-based group was trying to revive the Red Brigades terrorist organisation that plagued Italy in the 1970s and '80s, officials said." SNIPPET: "The six, including two men from Genoa, one from Milan, a Sardinian pro-independence militant and an old-guard Red Brigades terrorist, have been taken into custody on terrorism charges. Five have been taken to prison and one, reportedly found with a bomb, was placed under house arrest because of his age. The arrests were the...

Italian investigators are focusing their attention on a shadowy group thought to be based in Bologna after a string of bomb attacks beginning in the Christmas period. A Red Brigades logo was found near a murder scene in 2002 They suspect that a number of letter bombs received by EU officials, including European Commission President Romano Prodi, are the work of Italian anarchists. An Italian-based group calling itself the Informal Anarchist Federation has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Investigators believe the group has fewer than 300 members in Italy. The previously unknown group shares the Italian initials - FAI -...

ROME (AP) — Italian police arrested six people Thursday in raids on a group of suspected radical leftists who were allegedly planning a terror attack, authorities said.

Italy has failed to meet its commitments to reduce poverty in Africa and has lost credibility in its relationship with the region, a group backed by high-profile campaigners Bono and Bob Geldof warned on Thursday. Anti-poverty group ONE, founded by singer and activist Bono, warned that Italy faces being embarrassed at the Group of Eight summit it will host next month. The G8 – the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia – laid out ambitious plans at a meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005, to increase aid to Africa by US$25 billion a year by 2010,...

A day ahead of the opening of the G-8 summit of energy ministers in Rome, the United States and Italy signed a cooperation agreement on clean coal and carbon capture technology. The accord on clean coal and carbon capture technology was the first signed by the United States with a foreign nation. U-S Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the problem of carbon capture has still not been resolved. His Italian counterpart, Italy's Minister for Economic Development Claudio Scajola said the aim of the accord is to exchange know-how, coordinate joint projects, develop new technologies and identify sites to store carbon...

The environment ministers of rich and emerging nations were looking Wednesday to Washington for new leadership at talks in Sicily on combatting global warming. "We are all encouraged by the new position of the United States," Italian host Stefania Prestigiacamo said as the three-day meeting kicked off. "It is an important signal on the issues of the environment and technology." The start of the talks coincided with Earth Day, an occasion US President Barack Obama used to launch a push for historic climate change legislation in the United States. "The American people are ready to be part of a mission,"...

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will order his ministries to draft a "Green New Deal" this week to counter the twin threats of climate change and the economic downturn, a report said on Sunday. Aso will order a stimulus package focusing on slashing greenhouse gases at a meeting of his global warming advisory panel Wednesday, the business daily Nikkei said citing unnamed government sources. The report came as new US President Barack Obama vowed to lead the world on climate change as he set about shredding his predecessor's global warming policies with new measures to encourage the development of fuel-efficient...

Leaders of 20 major developed and emerging economies are expected during a summit in London on April 2 to ensure that their stimulus measures to address the global financial crisis will also lead to the creation of a low-carbon world economy, according to a senior British official. The Group of 20 leaders are also expected to reaffirm their commitment to advance trade liberalization to ward off protectionism, said Simon Fraser, director general for Europe and Globalization at Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. "We must make sure that the actions that we take in dealing with this crisis help to equip...

Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country's imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to "regulate the internet". Speaking to Italian postal workers, Reuters reports Berlusconi said: "The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets... I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the internet." Italy's G8 presidency begins on January 1. The role is taken by each of the group's members in rotation. The holder country is responsible for organising and hosting the G8's meetings...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for "drastic" measures to shore up banks and extend lines of credit to the world's poor Friday and pledged to support European and American efforts to rethink the global financial architecture. He also said the era of self-regulation among the biggest banks and other money-lending institutions had ended. Ban spoke at a closed meeting with top U.N. agency heads, economic advisers and the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund focusing primarily on the global financial crisis which was to continue Saturday. His opening remarks were released by the United Nations. .... The global...

TOKYO (AFP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set this week to be the highest-ranking sitting US official to visit the site of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, which bitterly divides opinion six decades later. No sitting US president or vice president has ever paid respects to the dead of the US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a sore point for many survivors in Japan. Pelosi will travel to Hiroshima for a meeting of parliament speakers from the Group of Eight major industrial nations. Pelosi, who is second in line to the presidency, is a member of Barack...

Russia's links to West scrutinized after Georgia 2008-08-31 MOSCOW (Reuters) - European heavyweights Germany and Britain questioned Russia's ties with global institutions on Sunday, a day before EU leaders meet to decide what action to take over the Kremlin's intervention in Georgia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent troops and tanks into Georgia this month to stop what he called a genocide against separatist regions, but he now faces growing condemnation in the West, which accuses Russia of occupying parts of Georgia. Georgia's pro-Western government, which last week severed diplomatic ties with Russia, said it had pulled out of a long-standing...

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

Seven of the world's leading industrialised nations have jointly condemned Russia's decision to recognise Georgia's breakaway regions. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and UK said Moscow's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia violated Georgia's integrity and sovereignty. Earlier, the UK's foreign secretary said Western countries should re-examine their relations with Russia. David Miliband also warned Russia not to start a new Cold War. Speaking during a visit to Ukraine, Mr Miliband said Moscow had not reconciled itself with the new map of the region and that the West should should look at ways to reduce its dependence on...

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, warned Russia that it must withdraw its troops behind the boundaries of two disputed Georgian enclaves as she secured a ceasefire agreement that leaves open the possibility of continued incursions. America's chief diplomat arrived in the Georgian capital Tblisi for talks with a deeply suspicious President Mikheil Saakashvili, who sought to strengthen guarantees of a complete Russian pullback. In the end, the pro-Western Georgian leader had little option but to accept the accord on a day that Russia threatened to target Poland with its full arsenal. Before the arrival of international monitors, Russia...