Russia tries to hang on to its carbon credits, UK wins a fossil booby prize and US negotiator charms the Indians

Russia's credit riches

Russia is such a dark horse at these talks that you would barely know it was here, let alone it was the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Not only does the country give no briefings or make any public appearances, it has steadfastly refused to divulge its position. What it is clearly trying to do in secret negotiations, though, is hang on to its 4-6billion "assigned amount units" (AAUs) — effectively credits to emit billions of tonnes of carbon. These go back to the early 1990s before Russia's economy crashed, but they are still valid and if Russia is allowed to carry them over into another Kyoto round, it will be able to go for years without having to even think about reducing emissions. Indeed, when other countries' AAUs are included, there exists the real possibility that the rich world could effectively sign up to a deal that only forces it to cut emissions by 6% on 1990 figures. That's a 1% increase on cuts agreed at Kyoto 1997. That's progress.

New shoots for forest plan

Yesterday we berated the EU for not putting language that protected natural forests back into the proposed final text. This provoked an immediate response: in a new "open non-paper" (no 39) we find the key words restored but with some major differences. Not only has the protection been watered down, but a country that must remain nameless (OK, it's the US) has put brackets round some of it. That effectively means that forest protection is still open to negotiation. Someone out there really wants plantation palm oil forests to be seen as the same as old growth forests.

Gushing and Pershing

It's just a straw in the wind, but sometimes the body language of negotiators says it all. Jonathan Pershing, the US chief negotiator, was spotted this morning being greeted by a clearly overjoyed Indian delegation. "We have just had a meeting with your team. It went very well indeed," said the Indians. Pershing was also effusive. Does this mean the Indians and the US have stitched up a deal? Who knows, but whispers from inside the talks suggest that it is moving to distance itself from the G77, the political grouping of poor countries which it traditionally sits with, and wants to sit at the rich man's table.

US and UK land fossils booby prize

At the end of every negotiating day, the massed ranks of the non-government groups award "fossils" to the country they think has done the most to set the talks back. Yesterday the US and Britain were joint winners of the prestigious but dishonourable award for their statements that a legally binding agreement could be delayed by very many months.

One of the greats of Spanish literature, he spent decades in exile in the Franco era

The Spanish literary lion Francisco Ayala, who has died aged 103, enjoyed a remarkable privilege: attending a major international conference to mark his own centenary. With dozens of books to his name, he was more acclaimed for novels and short stories than for his stylish textbooks on social sciences, although he saw his academic and creative works as an organic whole.

Ayala lived through the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, defended the Spanish republic that was declared in 1931 and spent decades in exile as a result of the fascist regime that followed. He once declared: "I bear no ill-will against anyone over my exile. What I do resent is the human condition, sometimes seen at its very worst – but that, you can find anywhere." This outlook pervaded his writings. He portrayed an essential goodness in humanity that was easily dislodged in times of crisis, when people will readily exploit and oppress others. His collection Los Usurpadores (The Usurpers, 1949) reflects his view of the exercise of power as trespass against one's fellow humans.

Ayala was born in Granada to a petit-bourgeois, liberal family. His mother was a talented artist, his father a cultured but unsuccessful businessman. As a child, he read everything within reach, from comics to Don Quixote. He was 16 when his family moved to Madrid, where he later studied law. His literary debut, Tragicomedia de un Hombre Sin Espíritu (Tragicomedy of a Man Without Spirit, 1925) was followed by Historia de un Amanecer (A Dawn Story, 1926). They were minor novels in a dated style, but he was soon caught up in the set of avant-garde writers known as the Generation of 1927. By his graduation in 1929, he was in the circle around José Ortega y Gasset's cultural publication Revista de Occidente. El Boxeador y un Ángel (The Boxer and the Angel, 1929) and Cazador en el Alba (The Huntsman at Daybreak, 1930) showed his vanguard credentials while Indagación del Cinema (Explorations in Cinema, 1929) pioneered film criticism.

A postgraduate grant took Ayala to Berlin to study philosophy and sociology. There, he met the Chilean Etelvina Silva Vargas, whom he married in 1931. After collecting his doctorate in Madrid, he became a parliamentary clerk and a lecturer on civil rights and social legislation. In 1936, he was lecturing in South America when Franco rebelled, and hastened home to serve the republic in a variety of offices, including a diplomatic mission to Prague.

His younger brother Rafael was shot for desertion, his father jailed and summarily executed. The writer later admitted that he would have been prepared to shoot his wife, daughter and himself rather than be captured. As Franco's troops closed on Barcelona, Ayala escaped to Latin America.

In Argentina he returned to fiction, addressing moral and political themes. In El Hechizado (The Bewitched, 1944), Los Usurpadores and La Cabeza del Cordero (The Lamb's Head, 1949), Ayala established his mature voice. The latter stories, dealing with war as experienced intimately, achieved a more humane and universal reading of the Spanish conflict than other writers (André Malraux, George Orwell) who dwelt on its political and military dimensions.

He taught sociology, engaged in journalism and translation (including Rilke and Thomas Mann) and, in Buenos Aires, produced his Tratado de Sociología (A Treatise on Sociology, 1947). In 1950, Ayala travelled to Puerto Rico to found a magazine and publish further in social and cultural studies.

In 1956 he moved to the US, where he taught Hispanic literature and finished his best-known novels, Muertes de Perro (Death As a Way of Life, 1958) and El Fondo del Vaso (The Bottom of the Glass, 1962). Like Historias de Macacos (Monkey Stories, 1955), these dark tales savagely satirised tyranny.

When Ayala first returned to Spain, in 1960, he described it as "a kind of pilgrimage" to an unknown homeland. Some outstanding intellectuals of the era, including the future Nobel laureates Vicente Aleixandre and Camilo José Cela, later published a welcome-home message. Ayala was grateful; little of his work had surfaced under Francoist censorship. Like other literary exiles of 1939, his name was on university curricula across the Atlantic long before it won fame in Spain.

In New York, the widowed Ayala met Carolyn Richmond, an expert on the Spanish novelist Leopoldo Alas, and then on Ayala himself, many of whose works she edited or translated. She became his second wife in 1999.

His definitive homecoming awaited Franco's demise. Meanwhile, alongside his own works of fiction, he published extensively on classical and contemporary literature. By 1972, his genius was acknowledged in Spain, when he won the Critics' Prize for the trilogy El Jardín de las Delicias (The Garden of Delights, 1971). The post-Franco transition to a vibrant, democratic culture came from "exhaustion from the effort of having done without for so long", he said.

Having retired in 1977 from his university career, Ayala settled in Madrid in 1980. Three years later, he won the National Prize for Narrative with his two-volume memoir Recuerdos y Olvidos (Memories and Things Forgotten, 1982-83) and was elected to the governing authority of the Spanish language, the Real Academia Española (RAE), devoting his inaugural lecture to the rhetoric of journalism. Well into his 90s, he turned up for weekly meetings of the RAE.

Ayala won Spanish literature's highest honour, the Miguel de Cervantes prize, in 1991, years ahead of the already Nobel-garlanded Cela, and was himself a perennial candidate for the Nobel from 1996. He was awarded the National Prize in Spanish Letters in 1988 and the Prince of Asturias literary prize in 1998, but professed a disdain for honours. However, the Cervantes prize had a special meaning for him. The spirit of Cervantes, he said, had been present in everything he wrote since struggling through Don Quixote at the age of eight.

To mark the fourth centenary of Cervantes's masterpiece, Ayala published in 2005 La Invención del Quijote (The Invention of Don Quixote), representing 65 years of his writings on Cervantes. The RAE's anniversary edition of Don Quixote, running to 1m copies, features Ayala's preface. Granada's Ayala Foundation, created by Andalusian universities and local authorities, hosted a symposium in 2004, exploring Ayala's relationship with the Americas, and sponsored the filming of some of his stories. In 2005, he travelled with Crown Prince Felipe to open the Ayala library in the Instituto Cervantes, Stockholm.

Ayala launched his own website on his 95th birthday, claiming to be so familiar with computers that he had forgotten how to write by hand. Accepting the invitation to his centenary conference, he said: "They seem determined that I should keep on having birthdays ... I wouldn't want to spoil the show."

He is survived by Carolyn and his daughter, the art historian Nina Ayala Mallory, from his first marriage.

• Francisco de Paula Ayala García-Duarte, writer, born 16 March 1906; died 3 November 2009

Spain’s unemployment figures are truly shocking. Almost one in every five workers is out of a job. Only Latvia faces a worse problem. The Spanish employment minister, struggling to put on a brave face, points out the rate of increase is slowing, but that is cold comfort to the millions on the dole. Spain faces a long, hard battle to get back the jobs it has lost.

At 19.3 percent in September, the jobless figure is more than double the EU average of 9.2 percent.


[...] The European Commission sees no improvement in employment for the next two years, while some economists forecast further deterioration. The government is preparing another stimulus package, this disease will be around for years to come.

The new jobless numbers come as the European Commission projected Tuesday that the Spanish economy won’t return to growth until 2011 and the government’s budget deficit will likely reach double digits this year and next.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said that Spain’s economy would begin emerging from recession “at the end of this year or the beginning of 2010″, though he acknowledged that unemployment - now nearly 18 percent - would remain high for some time.

Satellite photos indicate that Iran has increased production at a uranium mine, underscoring the need for wider UN inspections to determine whether the country is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Evidence of stepped-up activity at the Gchine mine, near the Persian Gulf coast city of Bandar Abbas, is seen in pictures obtained by Bloomberg News and the Washington-based New America Foundation, according to four nuclear analysts who examined the images. The mine could produce enough uranium to craft at least two atomic bombs a year, experts said.

Poor countries forced to make a stand over lack of commitment from rich nations on emissions cuts, claims African delegate

See the countries' negotiating positions here (pdf)

Rich countries today piled pressure on Africa not to derail climate talks after the poorest countries in the world shocked the UN by walking out of the official negotiations, demanding that their concerns be met.

The chair of the Africa group of nations, Kamel Djemouai, was recalled from Barcelona by the Algerian government and other African delegations reportedly received "strong" phone calls from their capitals urging them not to imperil the last negotiations before Copenhagen. Algeria admitted that its negotiator had been recalled but it was denied that this had anything to do with Africa's stand.

The African bloc complained that rich nations' carbon cuts were far too small to avoid catastrophic climate change, and refused to participate until more was done. The move forced the UN to abandon several sessions and reschedule others to give rich countries more time to debate emissions cuts. Countries have agreed to devote 60% of the remaining time to those discussions.

France has been supportive of Africa's position ahead of the climate change talks in Copenhagen. But French negotiators are known to have been angered and dismayed by the African move. "They are shooting themselves in the foot," said one French diplomat.

The Guardian has learned that Africa's intervention was not a spur of the moment decision by negotiators. The decision to make a stand to try to force rich countries to increase their commitments was taken in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last month when African heads of state met to coordinate their positions before the talks.

"It was a political act, not a negotiating stand. The negotiators here in Barcelona were told to make a dramatic action," said one source close to the group.

"We took a risk and it worked. We are very pleased with the reaction," said Bruno Sekoli, head of the Lesotho national climate office and chair of the least developed countries group of the world's poorest nations.

"Africa had no choice because of the reality of climate change. The negotiations have been going a long time and have not shown much progress. It's not about money. Climate change is an issue of life or death for us. The developed countries have to shift policies. A bad deal is not good for Africa or vulnerable countries," said Sekoli.

"The impacts of climate change have come too soon, so soon. I am scared to think of the consequences," he said.

He added that the reaction from other developing countries had been heartening. The G77 group of 130 countries, the Alliance of Small island states and others in Latin America all supported the African stance.

Their move was credited with reminding delegations that the ultimate point of the talks is to reduce emissions. Until now the negotiations have been dominated by concerns of the US and China and have seemed irrelevant to many of the poorest countries which are already feeling the effects of climate change.

"Their move leaves Africa in a much stronger position. So far Africa has not been recognised in the talks at all," said Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

"It's a moral stance, it points out the difference between a good and a bad deal. A good deal is defined by what is good for the planet. Africa will feel the consequences most of a bad deal," said Huq. "If you are an African country you have much more at stake than a rich country. They are rightly confused by the talks and angry."

Hugh Cole, climate adviser for Oxfam in Southern Africa: "African countries have drawn a line in the sand this week. They are not willing to accept a bad deal in Copenhagen which will spell disaster for millions of their poorest people. Rich countries must now stop trying to dodge and delay their responsibilities — deliver the emissions cuts the science demands and the climate finance poor communities desperately need."

The Africa group of nations is a new political grouping in the UN climate talks, reflecting the continent's increased unity, and desire to work together. It is led by the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, but is negotiating separately in the talks even though many of its members are part of larger political groupings like the G77 plus China, and the Least Developed Countries (LDC).

• This article was amended on 5 November 2009. The original referred to Meles Zenawi as president of Ethiopia. This has been corrected.

Plans are afoot to build a new museum in Guernica, the former capital of the Basque country (and still seen as the cradle of the Basque culture). According to The Art Newspaper, "The concept is to create a modest-sized venue for temporary exhibitions and to commission artists' interventions in the landscape."

Guernica already receives a moderate amount of tourism, due to its painful place in European history as the site of a massive aerial bombardment from Hitler (on behalf of Spain's General Franco). It also has a very good peace museum to commemorate the atrocities. See Pictures from Guernica.

But politicians clearly hope the new museum could have the same effect it had on Bilbao, turning what was always referred to as an 'industrial backwater' into the vibrant center of tourism it is today.

If plans go ahead, would a case be made to return Picasso's famous painting to the town that inspired it? The artist's depiction of the bombing of Guernica is currently housed in the Reina Sofia in Madrid, but the Basques could make a good case for it to be moved.

See pictures of the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

New Guggenheim in the Basque Country? originally appeared on About.com Spain Travel on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 08:19:51.

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Met police sees papers alleged to link Mark Thatcher to coup plot

From the windows of the £3m Casa Flores mansion in one of the Costa del Sol's most exclusive and luxurious enclaves, there are unspoilt views across woodland and immaculate golf courses to the shimmering Mediterranean Sea.

It is safe to say that the breathtaking view from this most desirable and expensive of spots is a world away from the one seen from behind the bars of Equatorial Guinea's infamous Black Beach prison.

The connection between these two extremes of luxury and degradation lies in the people who inhabit them. For while Black Beach has been home to coup plotter Simon Mann, Casa Flores is the comfortable and discreet retreat of his old friend and drinking partner, Sir Mark Thatcher.

This ochre-coloured mansion tucked away in the exclusive El Madroñal estate is where Lady Thatcher's son came to enjoy the luxuries of wealth while escaping the glare of publicity, and the public shame, caused by his self-confessed involvement in the so-called "Wonga Coup".

Guarded by security cameras and private guards who patrol the gated estate, he has led a life of discretion – only spoiled by a tiff over unpaid monthly rent of £5,500 with his landlord and friend from Harrow school, Stephen Humberstone.

He has even found time to divorce his first wife, Diane, and slip down the road to Gibraltar to marry again – this time to Sarah Russell, sister-in-law of Daily Mail boss Lord Rothermere.

As of today, however, the focus was back on Thatcher as authorities in Equatorial Guinea insisted the case against him was still open, despite Mann's release.

The current head of the country's supreme court, José Olo Obono, said his country would not give up its attempts to put those it suspected of taking part in the coup plot on trial. "We want to pursue all those who are implicated in the case," he said. He named Thatcher as one of the main suspects, though there has been no attempt to extradite him from Spain.

If the former prime minister's son was ever unwise enough to appear in Equatorial Guinea, Olo Obono would show him documents that, he said, proved his participation in the coup plot. "There is uncontrovertible evidence that he helped finance the coup. We have documents that prove that. I'd love to talk to him."

Thatcher himself was not, however, available to answer the allegations at his Spanish house today. A gardener who answered the bell at the gates which give on to a drive running up to the secluded house said that he and his wife had gone shopping for the day. A Jeep Cherokee and a sports car, possibly a Porsche, were the only signs of his new life that could be glimpsed from a gateway which bore the warning "property protected by security systems".

The estate, in the hills above San Pedro de Alcantara, is not the only foreign spot where Thatcher has tried to make his life. His former home was in South Africa, the country where he both prospered and got to know Mann's "Wonga" plotters.

Five months after the botched 2004 coup, Thatcher's South African idyll came to an abrupt end. He was arrested at his Cape Town house by police investigating his role in the shambolic plot.

He eventually struck a plea bargain with prosecutors, admitting that he had given one plotter, the South African pilot Crause Steyl, $275,000 (£168,000) to buy a helicopter. After first claiming that he thought it was for an air ambulance, Thatcher eventually admitted he had suspected it "might be used for mercenary activity".

He was given a $450,000 fine and a four-year suspended sentence, and was acutely aware of the disgrace. "I will never be able to do business again," he told Vanity Fair. "Who will deal with me?" Worse still, he now has a criminal record and is barred from the US, where his ex-wife now lives with their daughter.

Ely Calil, the British-Lebanese millionaire whom authorities in Equatorial Guinea also want to interview about the coup, came to Thatcher's defence in a Daily Telegraph interview last year. "He was like a prize to Simon [Mann]," Calil said. "They got drunk in South Africa together and who knows what they talked about, but he had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with a coup."

Even among the coup plotters, who dubbed him "Scratcher", he was always a strange figure. "Thatcher was despised as arrogant, pushy and not very bright," said author Adam Roberts, who interviewed him for his book The Wonga Coup. Aware that he was not fully accepted by the former SAS men and other plotters, Thatcher occasionally introduced himself with the phrase: "Hello, I'm charmless Mark."

"Not the sharpest pebble on the beach," one plotter told Roberts. Another contemporary said he had "an ego the size of a herd of elephants and the attention span of a gnat".

Thatcher matched their scorn by ignoring later pleas for help. A letter written by Mann from prison said Thatcher appeared to ignore calls to help him: "Scratcher asked them to ring back after the grand prix was over! This is not going well."

Now that Mann is free from jail, Thatcher's old drinking partner will have an opportunity to tell the world exactly who was involved – and how – in the plot. Thatcher will be hoping Mann retracts evidence he gave, possibly under pressure, in Malabo. Then, Mann claimed that Thatcher had provided $350,000 in funding and "was not just an investor, he came completely on board and became a part of the management team".

UN and EU pile pressure on US to set ambitious carbon cuts and timetables to improve chances of deal at Copenhagen

With just five days' formal negotiations left before the start of crucial UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month, key figures in the negotiations are showing clear signs of impatience at the US position.

At international climate talks in Barcelona, the United Nations and European Union, backed by international environment and development groups, today piled pressure on the US to set more ambitious targets and timetables to cut greenhouse emissions in order to reach an agreement.

"We expect American leadership. President Obama has created great expectations around the world. Now we urge [the US] to contribute in the way that we have," said Andreas Carlgren, Swedish environment minister talking on behalf of the EU presidency.

In a clear reference to the US, he added: "We are prepared to cut a deal. Other countries should demonstrate leadership and step up their current pledges."

Countries accept that the Obama administration's hands have been tied by delays in Congress but they urged the president to show more personal leadership and to instruct his negotiators to be less intransigent.

"I remind the US that it is not the only country in the world that has to have discussions with its domestic parliament," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment minister who will host the talks in Copenhagen.

"The expectation out there worldwide among populations and the young [is for] the US to deliver on one of the key challenges of our century. The Americans will have to come up [with an offer] one way or another," she said.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) echoed the call for more ambition from the US. "We need to see clear targets from the US at Copenhagen," he said.

But US chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing responded that the US wanted a deal. "Notions that the US is not making an effort is not correct. To apportion blame is not the constructive thing to do. We do not want to be outside [an agreement]. We have the best chance to [make an agreement] if we can implement something domestically. We and Congress recognise the need to move forward," he said.

Pershing accepted that China had moved significantly to reduce its emissions, but said that it needed to go further. "It is very clear that China has taken enormous steps to reduce greenhouse gases. We look forward to an aggressive [next] step from China," he said.

However, groups like Greenpeace accused the US of doing too little. In a letter sent to Obama today they said: "Our critical assessment is that the [US] legislation pending in Congress in the crucial near term will be a perpetuation of business as usual and it will not decrease emissions in the US."

"The continuation of business as usual means doing nothing to reduce emissions. The US position is to reduce US emissions by 17% below 2005 levels. This is far short of what science demands and what Europe has committed to achieve. The 17% reduction shrinks to an actual 4% if measured against 1990 levels." This is the accepted benchmark year used by the Kyoto protocol.

"Congress and parliaments [around the world] have set themselves up to pass new laws to reduce emissions. It is the collective effort that should be reflected," said Pershing.

But if you can get away from the cathedral and the Barrio de Santa Cruz, you'll find the city has a lot more to offer than just these sights. I've made this list of the 50 best things to do in and around Seville to help you get the most out of your trip:

50 Things to Do in and Around Seville

Best Things to Do in Seville originally appeared on About.com Spain Travel on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 09:50:41.

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