Justice delayed in India

It's hard to know what to think about news from India that seven former employees of Union Carbide, the U.S. chemical giant that owned the plant in Bhopal blamed for the world's worst industrial accident, had been sentenced to jail terms for negligence. The seven plant officials received two-years in jail and fines of 100,000 rupees, about $2,100 in U.S. currency, in contrast to the severity of the 1984 accident, which killed at more than 3,000 people immediately and as many as 25,000 in subsequent years, according to the Reuters international news service. The former Union Carbide subsidiary that owned the plant, Union Carbide India Ltd., was fined 500,000 rupees for the release of toxic gases near Bhopal's teeming slums. Union Carbide has since paid $479 million in fines to the Indian government, was acquired by Dow Chemical Co., and sold its stake in the Indian subsidiary to another company, which renamed it Eveready Industries. But it isn't very hard to empathize with hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the Bhopal courthouse to complain that the sentences were too light and took far too long -- more than 25 years -- to be handed down. Some of the protesters carried signs that said "hang the guilty" and "they are traitors of the nation," Reuters said. "They may have been punished, but what about us? There are so many of us who have not received any compensation," one of the victims, Shanta Bai, told Reuters. Activists told Reuters that as many as 100,000 people who were exposed to the toxic gases suffer from cancer, blindness, immune and neurological disorders, and female reproductive disorders, and that some women living near the plant gave birth to children with birth defects.

Obama admits failure at climate change conference

Well, at least we know they don't believe their own fantastic rhetoric. We're speaking, of course, of U.S. President Barack Obama's statement today that he understands why people view the just-concluded climate change summit in Copenhagen as a failure. "I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," Obama said in an interview with PBS Newshour, according to the Reuters international news service. The conference ended with a nonbinding agreement to limit carbon emissions blamed for global warming, far short of a 50 percent reduction that was the stated goal of industrialized nations at the summit. But Obama, who was instrumental in overcoming sharp differences with China and India just to arrive at a nonbinding deal, said the fact that any agreement was reached at all was an important step. "Rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in whcih nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were," Obama said. "We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries -- not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters." Developing economic powers China, India, Brazil and South Africa, which were resistant to any deal that could limit their growth, signed on to the agreement at the last minute after Obama's personal intervention. "At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said. But many European participants had far less positive evaluations of the final agreement, however. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the deal "flawed and chaotic" and Sweden called it a disaster for the environment, Reuters said. British Environment Minister Ed Miliband told the Guardian newspaper on Monday that China had "hijacked" emission-reduction efforts, but Beijing accused England of trying to drive a wedge between developing nations to force them into an unfavorable agreement, Reuters said.

Copenhagen climate deal turns out to be less than expected

Maybe this really was the best that could be achieved, and the agreement concluded the Copenhagen climate summit really is "meaningful and unprecedented," as U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday. "For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change," Obama told reporters, according to Cable News Network (CNN). And for what it's worth, that's doubtlessly true. But for people who were hoping world leaders would begin to take seriously the threat posed by a warming climate that is causing earth's glaciers to melt, Friday's agreement did not anywhere near far enough. Environmentalists want nations to agree to a binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists blame for the higher temperatures. Comparisons over the centuries are not possible because accurate records were not kept before the 1800s. Obama said the countries had agreed to keep emissions at a level that would allow temperatures to rise less than two percent annually, a goal that would slow but not stop the warming. This is going to be the first time in which (many countries voluntarily) offered up mitigation targets," Obama said. "I think that it was important to essentially get that shift in orientation moving." Reuters said. Obama reportedly worked closely with China and India, the world's largest developing economies that have objected to emissions limits that could impede their progress, to get them to go along with the new agreement, Reuters said. The deal requires nations to put their emissions-reduction commitments into writing for consultation purposes, after which they could become binding commitments, Reuters said.

Water on the moon changes a lot of assumptions

This week's realization that there probably is water on earth's moon raises a lot of questions -- not the least of which being, "what other things don't we know about space that we think we do know?" NASA scientists reached the startling conclusion about the presence of water after analyzing data from an instrument they supplied to to India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite, that country's first unmanned moon mission, according to the New York Times. The device detected the widespread presence of hydroxyl, a molecule composed of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of water, on a celestial body long considered completely dry. The discovery was published this week on the Web site of the journal Science. What may be even more surprising is that the finding actually replicates earlier findings of the Apollo missions, which brought back lunar soil containing evidence of water decades ago but were attributed to contamination from the moist earth atmosphere, the Times said. The data also confirms findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which passed the moon 10 years ago on its way to Saturn, and the Deep Impact spacecraft sent to study the comet Tempel 1, the Times said. “It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive,” Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told the Times. "It's like somebody painted the globe." Taylor co-wrote a paper analyzing the Chandrayaan-1 data. NASA scientists now are examining the possibility that the moon's hydroxyl could be used to supply water and even oxygen for future manned missions to the moon, or for a permanent installation there, the Times said. But that's just like humans to see this new discovery in terms of human beings. Maybe it means that there is or was another type of life on the moon or on other planets in our solar system, life that we don't even begin to understand or know how to recognize. And maybe, just maybe, it means that a lot of our other assumptions about earth and space are incorrect.

War means big business -- U.S. tops list of weapons exporters

Just when it seemed Washington was ready to resume its expected role of helping to bring sanity to world affairs comes word of a congressional study finding the United States was involved in more than two-thirds of worldwide arms sales last year. The study, released Friday by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, found U.S. arms sales increased 50 percent in 2008 to $37.8 billion despite the worldwide recession, according to the New York Times. The report shows the United States is by far the world's largest arms trader, with Italy a distant second at $3.7 billion and Russia third at $3.5 billion. The report said U.S. arms sales increased nearly 50 percent from 2007. The increase was attributed by the report "not only to major new orders from clients in the Near East and in Asia, but also to the continuation of significant equipment and support services contracts with a broad-based number of U.S. clients globally. The study, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations," was written by Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in international security at the CRS, a division of the Library of Congress. Top buyers of U.S. arms and equipment in the developing world were United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the report said, while main buyers of Russian armaments were China, India and Venezuela. Arms sales to major oil exporting countries helps keep the trillions of dollars they earn in circulation and keeps the world economy in some sort of balance, but is an enormous temptation to become aggressive and start wars.

Sri Lanka government about to defeat decades-long insurgency

Reports from Sri Lanka say the government is in control of the entire coastline and has cornered the Tamil Tigers in what could be the end of the 25-year insurgency. Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa said Saturday that his military had "finally defeated" the insurgents after a generation-long war that killed thousands of civilians, saw the first use of suicide bombings and of women and children in terrorist attacks, and included assassinations of many Sri Lankan political leaders and, allegedly, of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi. According to the Associated Press, the Tamil Tigers rebel group, which had been fighting for the establishment of an independent state for the minority Tamils in the island nation, was calling for peace and for negotiations with the government in Colombo. It was a far cry from the 1980s when the Tamil Tigers operated a virtual state in the country's north, commanded a navy and controlled a smuggling network, the AP said. The vast majority of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese, mostly Buddhist and speak the Sinhala language; the Tamils come from India, are primarily Hindu and speak Tamil, according to the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations. But the government has rejected entreaties for a truce, even from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and pressed on with a massive bombing campaign against the remaining rebels. Tigers spokesman Selvarasa Pathmanathan told the AP that U.S. President Barak Obama call on Wednesday for a peaceful resolution of the conflict was welcome, but did not agree to Obama's request for lay down their weapons.