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LE BOURGET, France (AP) -- France presented negotiators from 190 nations with what it called a "final draft" of an unprecedented climate deal to slow global warming and urged them to approve it on Saturday. The deal, called the "Paris agreement," would limit rising temperatures and sea levels, and eventually hold man-made emissions to the levels that nature can absorb. If the pact is approved, nations would be committed to keeping the rise in global temperatures by the year 2100 compared with pre-industrial times "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and "endeavor to limit" them even more, to...

Can anybody identify the negotiators with Kerry at the Iran talks? I am particularly interested to know the name of the short guy with the long hair who is always sitting next to John Kerry. See image below

BANGKOK (AFP) - Negotiators here are working on the world's most ambitious pact yet against global warming, but questions are growing about how to force governments to live up to the promises they make. Week-long talks in Bangkok are aimed at laying the groundwork for global action after the Kyoto Protocol's commitments run out in 2012 for rich nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for heating up the planet. The United States is the main holdout from the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it is too costly. But Kyoto signatories such as Canada, Japan and some southern European countries are all...

NEW YORK - Delegates flying to Kenya next week for a global conference on climate are watching the turn of U.S. election seasons as much as the rise in temperatures in their effort to cool planetary warming. Talks to extend the Kyoto Protocol's caps on greenhouse-gas emissions beyond 2012 have been marking time while governments try to draw the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto, into the process. The Nov. 7 U.S. congressional elections may help their cause, but the diplomat presiding over the talks says 2008 will be the watershed. "I would imagine it" — U.S. involvement — "would take...

Negotiations are intensifying between the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said he expects to introduce amendments next week on Assembly Bill 32 -- which would make California the first state to impose pollution caps on industries to combat global warming. The Democratic leader said in an interview that he intends to address governance and enforcement concerns of environmentalists, business groups and the Schwarzenegger administration to pass the bill by the Aug. 31 close of the legislative session. "This bill is going to be on the...

<p>SACRAMENTO – The Legislature is scheduled to vote tonight on a $131 billion state budget that contains a 10 percent boost in school funding after legislative leaders and the governor agreed on the sweeping plan yesterday.</p> <p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger not only gets much of what he wanted in the spending proposal, but as he runs for re-election he also might get a rare on-time budget, one that is in place before the new fiscal year begins Saturday.</p>

Immediately after Malbrunot and Chesnot were abducted, President Jacques Chirac launched an intense effort to secure their freedom. At the same time, he saw a chance not only of circumventing the US authorities in Baghdad, but torpedoing a potential Washington-Damascus rapprochement over joint military border action. To this end he took three steps: 1. He formed a special panel at the Elysee Palace of French intelligence officers and diplomatic advisers with good connections in Arab countries, such as the former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who is well remembered in Washington for his contribution to the 1993 American military debacle...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders said they were near a final deal on the overdue state budget Thursday night after the governor abandoned some proposed fee increases and agreed to pump more money into higher education. Republicans, however, balked at a rewritten deal involving local government finances, and Schwarz enegger and legislative leaders met into the night trying to resolve the differences. "We are at this hour stuck on local government," Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman said late Thursday. The Republican governor and lawmakers are two days late finishing work on the $103 billion spending plan, which relies heavily on...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Only a day after complaining budget talks were moving too slowly, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that progress was being made and negotiators will work through the weekend. "I've asked the legislative leaders to stay here, I will be staying here because I demand that we get this budget done on time," Schwarzenegger told reporters. "I told them that the people have elected us to do the budget, to balance the budget and get it done on time and that's what we are going to do." Although lawmakers and the administration have missed the state's constitutional deadline...

Arctic drilling may get second chance in Congress WASHINGTON - A seeming parliamentary error by Democrats may result in enough votes to produce a final energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, Senate Republicans said. A Republican proposal for drilling in the pristine refuge, which stretches over 19 million acres (7.7 million hectares) in northern Alaska, was thought to be dead after the Democratic-controlled Senate approved a broad energy bill last month that would keep ANWR closed. Energy legislation cleared by the Republican-led House last year would allow drilling in ANWR. President...