LONDON, Oct. 3--Climate campaigners said on Tuesday they expected a British government report on the global costs of climate change to make it clear that major concerted action was needed now.
The full report, an outline of which will be presented by former World Bank chief economist Nick Stern to a closed-door meeting of G8 environment ministers in Mexico later on Tuesday, is expected to be published later this month.
“The central message is that the problem is urgent, we have the technology to start addressing it now, we need to start addressing it now and there is no excuse for delay,“ Greenpeace climate change campaigner Steve Sawyer told Reuters.
Climate campaigners said Stern’s outline report to the third follow-up meeting after the July 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland was expected to lay out a range of climate scenarios but leave the final choice of action to political leaders.
Despite a remark from British finance minister Gordon Brown last Monday that the report would be published within days, Stern’s office has denied he will present the conclusions to the Monterey meeting or that a publication date has been set.
Campaigners based their assessments of the report’s content on earlier drafts but have not seen the final version, which they say will make the case for urgent global action to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
At its core will be the need for the developed world to help rapidly industrializing nations like China and India develop low carbon economies and help offset the effects of global warming on poorer developing countries in Africa.
Stern’s report was expected to outline a range of scenarios of what is likely to happen--economically and socially--at various levels of temperature increase, the campaigners said.
Scientists predict that average global temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius (36 and 43 Fahrenheit) over the next century, driven mainly by so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
“All of our work shows that once you go beyond two degrees warming we are moving from very nasty impacts into uncharted waters,“ WWF climate change chief Keith Allott said.
New research from WWF shows that at two degrees between 90 and 200 million more people are at risk from malaria, while over three degrees the figure shoots above 300 million.
Likewise, a two degree rise puts up to 50 million people at risk from rising sea levels due to melting ice caps, while at three degrees the figure surges to 180 million people.

Thai protestors hold banners during a demonstration in front of the Singaporean embassy in Bangkok after the Thaksin family announced it would sell its share in Shin Corp to Singapore's Temasek Holdings. (AFP File Photo)

BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct. 3--Thailand’s commerce ministry has said it has asked police to investigate the 1.9-billion-dollar sale of top telecoms company Shin Corp. to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings by the family of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, AFP said.
Under the tax-free deal, which sparked the crisis leading up to last month’s coup, Thaksin’s family sold its 49 percent stake in Shin Corp., the telecom giant the premier founded before entering politics, to Temasek in January.
An anti-corruption panel set up by the military, which ousted Thaksin in a bloodless coup on September 19, is looking into whether his family wrongly avoided paying tax on the sale.
The commerce ministry said it has also asked police to investigate whether the sale violated foreign ownership laws governing telecoms.
“We submitted the case to the police on September 28 to investigate alleged violations of foreign ownership rules,“ said a ministry official who declined to be named.
“It depends on findings but the police could bring the case to the court.“
Public outrage over the deal snowballed into months of street protests in Bangkok demanding Thaksin’s resignation over alleged abuse of power and corruption.
The prolonged political turmoil culminated in the coup. Thaksin was in New York at the time of the putsch, and currently lives in exile in London.
Under Thai rules, foreign investors can own up to 49 percent in Thai telecom companies but the question is whether other local entities acted on Temasek’s behalf.
A spokeswoman for Shin Corp. declined to comment.
A Temasek executive told Newsweek magazine last month that the company complied with all laws and regulations in Thailand when it took over Shin Corp.
After the 49-percent buyout of Shin Corp, a Temasek-led group of investors increased its total stake to 96 percent through a mandatory offer for the outstanding shares.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, Oct. 3--Nicaragua wants to build a waterway like the Panama Canal that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at a cost of $18 billion, President Enrique Bolanos said on Monday.
According to Reuters, he told a meeting of Western Hemisphere defense ministers in Managua it would take 12 years to finance, design and build the canal.
“It is not only feasible but it is necessary,“ Bolanos told the ministers in a presentation of the canal plan.
The waterway would link the Pacific with Lake Nicaragua, also known as Lake Cocibolca, and then with the Escondido river which empties into the Caribbean at the port of Bluefields.
The canal would be able to handle large ships of up to 250,000 deadweight tonnage, Bolanos said, and would be complementary to the Panama Canal.
Panamanians will vote in a referendum on Oct. 22 on whether to expand their canal. Nicaragua says there would still be demand for a new waterway even if the Panama Canal is expanded.
The dream of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua goes back to the 16th century when the country was ruled by Spain.
The United States originally planned to build a canal through Nicaragua before switching to Panama in the early 20th century after a French canal construction company there went bankrupt.

BOURNEMOUTH, UK, Oct. 3--The opposition Conservatives turn their attention on Tuesday to topics such as drug addiction, Britain’s economic competitiveness and foreign affairs, Reuters reported.
The third day of the Conservatives’ annual conference in the English resort of Bournemouth starts with a “hot topic“ debate on whether alcohol abuse is a bigger problem for society than drug addiction.
The centre piece of the morning session is a discussion, led by Conservative economics spokesman George Osborne, of Britain’s economy and how to make it more competitive.
The Conservatives argue that the Labour government’s finance minister, Gordon Brown, has undermined the competitiveness of the economy with high tax and too much regulation.
The Conservatives’ new leader, David Cameron, has sought to steer the party to the centre of British politics after three successive elections defeats by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair since 1997.
Most recent opinion polls have put the Conservatives ahead of Labour, but the next general election is not expected until 2009.
Cameron’s decision to abandon the party’s traditional policy of calling for tax cuts has caused rumblings of discontent in the party, with some prominent Conservatives saying it is essential for the party to stick to a tax-cutting policy.
Cameron has also come under fire for being slow to announce other policies. But he says that the party must prepare the groundwork carefully for the next election.
The party does not plan to announce its policies until a policy review is over towards the end of next year.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Oct. 3--New Zealand and China are on track to secure a free trade deal but there are tough issues to overcome, AFP quoted Trade Negotiations Minister Phil Goff as saying Tuesday.
Goff met Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai in Auckland Monday to discuss the free trade deal, which is aimed to be completed by April 2008.
“Progress is about what we would have expected to date,“ Goff told Radio New Zealand.
He said Bo was committed to reaching a conclusion to the negotiations, although he warned the issues to be resolved would get thornier.
“As we get further into the negotiations you get closer to the tough issues and this is the first developed country China has attempted to negotiate a free trade agreement with,“ Goff said.
“So the nature of this agreement is more comprehensive, more wide-ranging than any other agreement they have sought.“
Trade between the two countries is worth $6.18 billion (US$4.1 billion) annually.
During a visit to New Zealand in April, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the negotiations had run into problems in agriculture and services but he signaled his determination for the issues to be resolved.
China has been most worried about freeing up agricultural trade and in particular reducing barriers to New Zealand’s dairy exports, while New Zealand is most concerned about the impact on local manufacturers.
New Zealand has been pushing for phased-in tariff reductions to address the concerns of both sides.
The ninth round of negotiations between the two countries is due to get underway in Wellington next week.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Oct. 3--European airlines found themselves in a legal limbo after the United States and the European Union (EU) failed to reach an agreement on transatlantic passenger data transfer by the Sunday deadline, Xinhuanet reported.
The passenger name records (PNR) agreement, reached by the EU and US in 2004 to allow airlines to transfer passengers’ personal data to US authorities, expired on Oct. 1 as was ordered by the EU’s highest court.
A European Commission official confirmed Monday that airlines in Europe are legally responsible and could be sued by passengers if they continue to transfer data to US authorities, unless the national legislation of the EU country concerned states otherwise.
However, under US law, airliners could be barred from landing on US soil if the information about the passengers has not been transferred.
Britain has introduced interim measures to fill the legal void. It remains to be seen if other EU countries will follow suit.
The European Court of Justice in May ruled the 2004 deal illegal due to incorrect legal basis. It gave the EU until October 1 to negotiate a replacement deal with the US.
The expired deal obliged air carriers to forward passengers’ phone numbers, credit card details, family links, addresses and other information to the US authorities 15 minutes before the departure of the flight.
The deal has sparked intense debate in the EU as critics say it is a serious infringement on the privacy of European citizens, and safe use of the personal data may not be guaranteed.
A European Commission spokesman said Monday that talks are ongoing between the EU and the US despite a “temporary breakdown“ on Saturday.
He said the United States has given EU negotiators a draft agreement “with new elements,“ which had been initialed by US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who is responsible for the deal on the American side.
But he refused to be drawn on what “new aspects“ have been required by the US in its proposal, citing “its confidential and restricted nature.“

MOSCOW, Oct. 3--Talks on a deal to combine Russian aluminum companies Rusal and Sual to create a world-leading company in the sector, due to be signed on Tuesday, were hard but ultimately successful, AFP quoted the Vedomosti daily as reporting.
Unnamed investment bankers quoted by the daily said that Rusal’s chief Oleg Deripaska was finally convinced to allow the IPO of Rusal within the next three years, letting up to 10 percent of its share out into the stock exchange, to meet one of Sual’s principal demands.
Sual also managed to dispel doubts voiced by Glencore International, which is reported to obtain 14 percent of shares in the new group, and which had protested what the Swiss company saw as the disproportionally high share that Sual would hold in the new company.
Sources said that Glencore International protested after conducting its own technical audit of Sual’s factories, but added that the conflict was safely resolved and that Sual would have the 21.5-percent share in the new company as originally planned.
The Kommersant daily meanwhile reported that Valery Draganov, now chief of the lower house of parliament’s commission on economic policy, entrepreneurship and tourism, would become the new company’s deputy director tasked with relations with the authorities, leaving his post in the State Duma.
Earlier on Monday, the Wall Street Journal had reported that the deal would be inked “as early as today“.
According to the US business daily, Rusal would take over Sual and the aluminum assets of Glencore to create a group with a market capitalization of 30 billion dollars (23.5 billion euros).
The combined group would produce 4.0 million tons of aluminum per year, more than the 3.6 million tons produced by Alcoa of the United States, the world’s biggest group at present.

TOKYO, Oct. 3--Finance Minister Koji Omi said Tuesday that the Japanese economy has finally beaten deflation, breaking from the government’s previously stated view that mild price falls continued.
“Looking at the economy in general, we can declare an end to deflation,“ said Omi, who was appointed by new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week.
“It is unnatural for us not to announce the end to deflation at this moment,“ he told a press conference.
According to AFP, the government has so far been cautious about publicly declaring an end to almost eight years of falling consumer prices and Omi said his remarks were personal and not the official view.
Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Hiroko Ota took a more cautious stance, saying: “Since energy prices are the factor behind the rise (in inflation), we have to watch movements carefully.
“Oil prices are declining now. I want to watch the impact,“ the former professor, who also took up her post in Abe’s new cabinet last week, told a separate press conference.
Asia’s largest economy had been trapped in a deflationary spiral since the late 1990s but is now on course for its longest post-war expansion.