The planet is heating up – and so are global geopolitics. With less than two months until the crucial United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, the United States (US) and China must commit to cooperate on the existential challenge global warming represents. But bilateral relations remain burdened by mistrust, antagonism, and even warmongering. Technically, the US and China are both willing to cooperate on climate change.

President Joe Biden pledged Tuesday to "double" United States (US) contributions towards a goal of mobilizing US$100 billion for countries hardest-hit by global warming, a move hailed as a rare piece of good news in the climate crisis.Experts said the announcement would take the American contribution to the commitment, made by developed countries ahead of the 2015 Paris agreement, to approximately US$11.4 billion annually."This will make the United States a leader in public cli

The Taliban on Tuesday thanked the world for pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid to Afghanistan, and urged the United States (US) to show "heart" to the impoverished country.A donor conference in Geneva on Monday ended with pledges of US$1.2 billion in aid for Afghanistan, which was taken over by the hard-line Islamist group last month in a lightning offensive that took retreating US troops by surprise.Afghanistan, already heavily dependent on aid, is facing an

Myanmar’s shadow government has called for a “people’s defensive war” against the country’s military, prompting a flare-up in fighting in borderlands, according to media reports, as several powerful ethnic groups expressed support for the call to arms.Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), formed by the elected legislators who were deposed in a 1 February coup, issued the call for the nationwide uprising on Tuesday. “With the responsibility to pro

During the Irish famine in the 1840s, as more than one million Irish citizens died, vast quantities of food were exported from Ireland to Britain.

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction. About 28 percent of the 138,000 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world

As recently as three months ago, the global economy seemed to be on track for a relatively robust recovery. The supply of COVID-19 vaccines had expanded in the developed countries, raising hopes that it would spill over to developing countries in the second half of 2021 and into 2022.

Over the past two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has made remarkable progress in managing disaster risk. But countries can never let down their guard. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its epicentre now in Asia, and all its tragic consequences, has exposed the frailties of human societies in the face of powerful natural forces.As of mid-August 2021, Asian and Pacific countries had reported 65 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 1 million deaths.

Three-quarters of people in the world’s wealthiest nations believe humanity is pushing the planet towards a dangerous tipping point and support a shift of priorities away from economic profit, according to a global survey.The Ipsos Mori survey for the Global Commons Alliance (GCA) also found a majority (58 percent) were very concerned or extremely concerned about the state of the planet.Four in five respondents said they were willing to step up and do more to regenerate the global commons.The

Ivory Coast began a roll-out of vaccinations against Ebola on Monday, after the country recorded its first known case of the disease since 1994, the health ministry said."Health workers, close relatives and contacts of the victim" were the first to be vaccinated, getting jabs from 5,000 doses sent from Guinea, spokesman Germain Mahan Sehi said.Ivorian health workers had previously said that vaccinations of "targeted groups" had already begun on Sunday.The single identified