Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, Wangari Maathai, Desmond Tutu and a host of other celebrities descended here on Tuesday for the climate summit, rubbing shoulders with NGOs dressed as angels, penguins and trees. As television crews chased celebrities around the sprawling summit venue — the Bella Centre — and scrums broke out to enter the rooms where they were speaking, the relatively few NGO representatives allowed inside found innovative ways of spreading...

India, China and 128 other countries briefly walked out of the climate change talks here today in protest against the failure of industrialised countries to make firm commitments on greenhouse gas emission cuts in the years beyond 2012. The walkout by the developing countries followed an exchange between Australian and African delegates at a meeting called to set emission reduction targets for the industrialised countries. Australia refused to make any commitment on...

For generations of China watchers, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was an objective interpreter of the tumultuous events which unfolded in the Peoples’ Republic.  Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was one of the world’s leading scholars on China, a political scientist who skirted the minefield that her subject’s often fraught relations with India laid before her peers with integrity, wit and an objectivity of consideration rare in the field of Sinology. Taking to academia at...

World leaders arriving at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen next week will be greeted with over100 real-life stories demonstrating the devastating impact global warming has on lives and livelihoods of people around the world. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today installed the UN Climate Wall - high-tech touch-screens broadcasting the sights and sounds of a changing climate - near the conference hall where the majority of the world's heads...

"Draft treaty can be used as a starting point for further talks" Copenhagen: With climate change talks set to enter the crucial second stage here, India on Sunday rejected points in the draft treaty that wants all countries to cut emissions, agree to a peaking year and subject their mitigation actions to international scrutiny. With the official draft treaty circulated on Friday creating clear divisions among 194 countries, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh...