22 October 2015, TruthDig, ‘The Drone Papers’ Offer Even More Reasons to End Remote-Controlled Wars. The recent publication by The Intercept of the “The Drone Papers” should have made an explosive splash both in the media and Washington, D.C. But the leak of classified documents has so far generated only modest media coverage (as of this writing, The New York Times has yet to cover it), and there has been no acknowledgment of it by elected officials. The documents were provided by an anonymous source to an outlet with a strong reputation for muckraking journalism. They reveal how the CIA—an agency with no mandate to fight wars—and the Joint Special Operations Command vie for control of the remote-controlled battles fought in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. They also make clear that the U.S. is well aware of the vast civilian carnage from drones. In Afghanistan, “[d]uring one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets,” wrote Jeremy Scahill, who led the reporting. Scahill further determined that “the military designated people it killed in targeted strikes as EKIA—‘enemy killed in action’—even if they were not the intended targets of the strike.” The intrepid journalist has spent years tracing the inner workings of U.S. drone programs, revealing the results in his 2013 book “Dirty Wars” and a documentary film of the same name. Read More here
22 October 2015, BBC News, Bonn climate talks: Questions over cash dominate. Negotiators meeting in Germany say that questions over cash are the biggest barrier to a new global climate deal. The Bonn talks are the last chance for delegates to clarify their positions before the Paris conference that aims to seal a new binding treaty. Developing country delegates said clear guarantees on finance must be a core part of that compact. Officials said that finance was likely to be the very last issue to be resolved before a deal is struck. Money has always been at the root of difficulties in solving the climate issue. Developing countries point out that while they had done least to create the problems associated with more carbon in the atmosphere, they were the ones already feeling the greater impacts of a warming world. Howls of protest They have long sought significant flows of finance to help them curb their emissions and to cope with the storms and droughts expected to be more common in a changing climate. In Copenhagen in 2009, as countries tried to put together a comprehensive agreement, the richer nations promised to provide $100bn a year in climate finance from 2020. That deal ultimately failed, but countries are hoping to conclude a more ambitious agreement in Paris in December. Read More here