Bottom line: I did not want to lie to my readers.

And puffing up their expectations for COP 26 would be doing exactly that.

A few paragraphs in, I was overwhelmed by deja vu making me look back on my files.

I’d already written the piece. five years ago, ahead of the Paris summit.

My skepticism was based on my covering COP 17 in Durban, back in 2011,

That meeting overran by more than 24 hours before delegations from nearly 200 countries arrived at a deal that would put the world on the the path to climate salvation.

It could not be said to actually save the world for the generations to come.

But it set a pattern that could be picked up in Paris.

Sound familiar?

My earlobes glow red with embarrassment when I recall that I actually told my readers and listeners this.

Within a day, Canada has reneged on the deal struck in Durban.

Just as the United States under President Donald Trump pulled out of the climate convention agreed in Paris four years later.

No punitive measures have been taken against either of these world powers.

Neither will there be anything more than  tsk tsk against India watering down the anti-coal mood of the Glasgow Agreement.

As a United Nations Correspondent in the 1970s, I recall all three of these nations taking an uncompromisingly  tough line against the apartheid regime.

They would not have brooked any backsliding on the arms embargo slapped on Pretoria in 1977. Rightly so.

Yet when it  comes to saving the planet, they give themselves some wriggle room.

I am an inveterate multilateralist. I never fail to support the United Nations against critics who dismiss it as a talk shop.

I am also a journalist committed to telling the unvarnished truth.

This means I cannot allow myself to be led by the nose to report on breakthroughs in fighting climate change that are nothing more than meaningless compromise.

Where is the commitment we expected from developed countries to pay developing countries to assuage the damage done by climate change?

So today, as they try to pick up the pieces and paint the bravest picture they can of what occurred in Glasgow, let me ask those journalists: Are you ready to do it all again at Sharm El Sheikh? 

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The World Press Freedom Index puts it top of the continental list and ranks it 23rd in the world.

The Paris based non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders has been publishing its annual world press freedom index for 25 years.

This year the Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden are judged to be the freest in the world.

For the eighth successive year Eritrea is at the bottom of the list of 180 countries.

South Africa is in 31st position – the same place it occupied last year.

The organisation calls 2020 a decisive year for the world media and says its difficulties have been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic.

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There has been a furious social media reaction to what Dr Jean-Paul Mira said on live French television.

Jean Paul Mira is head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris.

He was being asked on the LCI television channel about testing COVID 19 vaccines. 

Mira said the value of this being done in Europe and Australia was undermined by the number of people there using personal protective equipment.

He suggested, by his own admission provocatively, that it would be more effective in parts of Africa, where there are no masks, no treatment and no intensive care.

Mira’s apologized to those who were hurt, shocked or felt insulted at his remarks clumsily expressed.

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There’s increasing anger at the richer countries failing to make concessions necessary for an agreed statement from meeting known as COP25.

The anger is directed at the United States, Brazil, Australia and China as the final session on Friday stretches on and on.

Protestors have dumped horse manure and staged a fake hanging outside the venue in Madrid.

They say the EU has come with new long-term goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but the rich countries have spend two week arguing about technical details like carbon trading.

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Footage of the victims released by the terror groups show a woman begging for her life.

The organization that goes by its French acronym ACF confirmed that a Nigerian staff member, two health workers and two drivers were abducted in  Damasak in Borno state near Nigeria’s border with Niger last week. One driver died in the attack.

ACF says the workers had devoted their lived to helping feed people in a country where more than half of the 200 000 population live below the poverty line.

Boko Haram and a splinter group Islamic State West African Province operate in Borno state with government forces unable to curb them.

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It is not hard to see how Meyer has become the most popular writer in Afrikaans.

This very contemporary page-turner will thrill his fans in his huistaal and doubtless earn him many more followers in English and the other languages he is translated into.

This the second book of Meyer’s that I have read and Afrikaans and by far my favorite.

I am sure the Afkrikaanse Taal en Cultuur Vereniging, if they still exist, will have something disparaging to say about the amount of English that appears in the Afrikaans edition. Ma dis die way Vaughn Cupido, Bennie Griessel se vertroude sidekick praat.

The book juxtaposes two stories: Griessel and Cupido investigating the murder of a private eye, formerly a member of the police VIP protection unit who was thrown off the luxury Rovos Rail between Cape Town and Pretoria; and the bid to draw an exiled former liberation fighter Tobel Mpayipheli back into the fray. 

This technique can so easily become complex and annoying.

Meyer handles it well by initially changing between the two stories every few chapters and then decreasing the wait until approaching the denouement he switches between the two after a few paragraphs.

Meyer never names the president captured by three Indian billionaires. He doesn’t have to.

The suspense is maintained until quite literally the last page.

It is underpinned by some thorough and masterful research that includes taking  a trip on the luxury train. Tough work, but someone has to do it.

I particularly enjoy his descriptions of Bordeaux.

Character development of Mpayipheli, nom du guerre Umzimzingeli who seeks  a quiet life as French documented Daniel Darret, is particularly endearing.

We can only hope the corruption and state capture he writes about is something of the past.

If he is not, we must pray there are dedicated law enforcement professionals like Griessel and Cupido to counter it. 2019-06-01 

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He was speaking at the  South African Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg.

Dominque de Villepin says the Africa Europe partnership will be driven by crisis management.

This is evidenced in the Sahel by the security crisis posed by jihadism from  Mali to Nigeria.

There is no simple military solution to this.

The root causes are the lack of political and social inclusiveness and the accountability of administrations and elites.

Crisis management is necessary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Horn of Africa.

De Villepin says there are wider issues.

“We are facing huge challenges and difficulties. The world’s stability is at stake. We can see it everyday. We can see it today in the decision taken by the US administration to transfer the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We have seen it in the last week in the decision Donald Trump to renounce the nuclear agreement with Iran. The world has not sufficient backbone to be able to stand  such challenges alone, ” says de Villepin.

He believes it is necessary to reinforce the backbone of the world. 

The first of these involved reinforcing the axis of Paris, Berlin, Moscow and China to give more stability and perspective to Eurasia.

The second axis requiring reinforcement is Europe and Africa.

This will give a bigger capacity for the world to stand in front of  both local and global crisis that threaten to emerge again like in the cold war era.

There was a special mentality  and rules that applied in that era.

Today there are no regulations or any help to monitor the dificulties  that arise. 

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Doctors making this claim cite a study in  Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Kenya.

The results of the study are carried in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It says HIV is often diagnosed late when after it’s already ravaged the immune system.

The researchers prescribe a cocktail of drugs at the start of HIV therapy to  treat opportunistic infections.

Their trial involved 1 805 patients over the age of five.

Normally more than one in ten would died within weeks of diagnosis.

The test showed a fall in deaths and other diseases associated with HIV infection.

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It’s challenge will be to make the promises made at  previous summits a reality.

It’s common cause that of the poor countries most hardest his by climate change, 36 are in sub Saharan Africa.

700 million Africans don’t have light or access to electricity

Abdeladim Lhafi COP 22 commissioner believes Marrakesh offers an opportunity to deal with this.

“All countries must together with countries of the South to complete projects that will ensure the security of all Africa,” he says

The summit lasts for ten days.

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