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A signal of progress came Monday when French President Emmanuel Macron announced support for an initiative — spearheaded by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley — to transform the global financial system to provide more liquidity to climate-vulnerable nations. “The injustices in today’s world are unsustainable,” and crises are exacerbating them, he said, calling for a “huge financial shock” to provide more low-interest, long-term funding to help developing nations deal with climate damages. French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 7, 2022. | Pool photo by Ludovic Marin Over the next 13 days of talks, leaders and country negotiators will gather here in an effort to make good on past pledges to slash planet-warming emiss...

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has attracted criticism for detaining political opponents. | Pool photo by Yves Herman President Joe Biden will press human rights issues in a bilateral meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Friday, with senior administration officials telling reporters on a call Tuesday that the U.S. has “raised repeated concerns” about jailed activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah. The news: Biden will meet with El-Sisi on the sidelines of the COP27 U.N. climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where the host country has attracted criticism for detaining political opponents. Abd El-Fattah’s case has attracted global attention, with his health deteriorating amid a 200-plus day hunger strike. A prominent figure in the 2011 uprising in Egypt, Abd El-Fattah...

The person spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing U.S. officials. The framework that Kerry announced Wednesday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh – two days before President Joe Biden’s own scheduled visit to the COP27 conference – seeks to address two competing pressures: Developing countries are ramping up demands that wealthy countries such as the U.S. provide trillions of dollars to help them cope with the intensifying disasters of a warming planet. But getting that kind of aid past GOP opposition in Congress is not “in the zone of reality,” as Kerry said at an appearance in September. The likelihood of Congress approving climate aid is set to become even bleaker in January, after Tuesday’s midterm elections pushed Republicans closer to taking control of the House. Instead, Kerr...

The person spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing U.S. officials. The framework that Kerry announced Wednesday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh – two days before President Joe Biden’s own scheduled visit to the COP27 conference – seeks to address two competing pressures: Developing countries are ramping up demands that wealthy countries such as the U.S. provide trillions of dollars to help them cope with the intensifying disasters of a warming planet. But getting that kind of aid past GOP opposition in Congress is not “in the zone of reality,” as Kerry said at an appearance in September. The likelihood of Congress approving climate aid is set to become even bleaker in January, after Tuesday’s midterm elections pushed Republicans closer to taking control of the House. Instead, Kerr...

Non-proliferation experts say that Iran’s current stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium is sufficient for one nuclear bomb, if enriched further. Building an actual weapon, however, requires additional steps and time, as well as a decision by the Iranian regime to do so. The IAEA report also estimated that as of Oct. 22, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile was 3673.7 kilograms, a decrease of 267.2 kilograms since the last quarterly report in September. These numbers significantly exceed the limits imposed under the original 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. While the U.S. withdrew from the deal in 2018, the other signatories to the deal, including Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — continued to implement it. As a reaction to the U.S. withdrawal, Ira...

The raft of ambitious climate actions is “going to shift the paradigm for the United States and the entire world,” Biden said. He added: “We’re proving a good climate policy is a good economic policy.” Despite those words, the U.S. has faced continued grumbling throughout this week’s conference about Washington’s stinginess in providing the hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid that representatives of developing nations are demanding. Biden also faces the impending reality of weakened political power at home, if Republicans take control of the House as expected after Tuesday’s midterm elections. Other potential mood spoilers for Biden’s appearance include food and water shortages that have left conference attendees cranky, human rights and privacy violations by the Egyptian govern...

Biden’s visit to Sharm El-Sheikh, delayed by the U.S. midterm elections, was just a few hours long as he headed for Cambodia and then on to next week’s G20 summit in Indonesia. But it drew cautious welcomes from delegates who simultaneously recognized the necessity of U.S. engagement in efforts to fight climate change, while also acknowledging that it has not proven a reliable partner. “Veterans of this process will tell you that they have been more than frustrated with many pledges that are not substantiated with finance and timelines. This time is different,” said Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypt’s former investment minister and the United Nations’ high-level champion for climate action. “We need this political leadership.” The summit takes place amid a storm of global challenges — a looming rec...