Free Republic

You probably missed some pretty big news over the weekend: China and the United States agreed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. If you’re old enough to remember the ozone scare, that was mostly caused by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. A 1987 agreement banned those, giving rise to HFCs as a replacement, which don’t cause an ozone hole but do heat up the atmosphere a lot. Why is this a big deal? On its own terms, it will do a lot to restrain global warming, eliminating perhaps half a degree Celsius of expected warming over a century. But...

March 2, 2008 Activist tells HSBC: drop US division John Waples and Iain Dey THE shareholder activist Knight Vinke has presented Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC, with four options to sever ties with HFC, its troubled American banking business. The proposals have been made in a series of private meetings between Eric Knight, who heads the activist-investor group, and Green, ahead of HSBC’s full-year results, which are due to be published tomorrow. These results will show record profits of $24 billion (£12 billion) for HSBC, but they will be scarred by the bank’s huge exposure to America’s sub-prime mortgage crisis....