| Analysis: Bali leaves concessions needed
In the face of this mounting hostility, the Americans softened their stance, allowing the text to pass – a considerable step for a country that had never ratified the Kyoto protocol. Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesian environment minister and president of the Bali conference, brought down his gavel to loud cheers. At last, the world had agreed to talk again about the shape of a new international framework to avert dangerous climate change. Until recently the US was implacably opposed to formal talks on what would replace the Kyoto protocol – the world's only multinational treaty binding countries to cut their emissions – when its main provisions expire in 2012. Washington officials said talk of replacing the protocol was “premature", despite the worries of Kyoto supporters that work must begin soon to allow time for national parliaments to ratify any agreement struck on the international stage.
'Til Next Paycheck, a Stimulus
SO NOW WE KNOW. WHEN RECESSION looms in an election year, true fiscal conservatives in Washington are rarer than atheists in foxholes. All these years of sedulous editorials and earnest commencement speeches and hackneyed coffee-shop straw polls calling for bipartisan arm-locking in Washington weren't able to accomplish what a little consumer distress and recessionary panic have brought forth. That is, calls from politicians of every stripe and odor agreeing that they ought to lay a bit of coin in constituents' pockets: Just a gesture, mind you, a courtesy, nothing asked in return except maybe you give us a thought in the voting booth sometime, and say hello to your mother for me, will you? It's telling enough that the president's "stimulus" or "growth" proposal came free of any politically sticky demands for making his early-decade tax cuts permanent.
Carphone to defy the gloom and confound doubters with robust trading
Carphone Warehouse will next week defy fears that it is mired in the gloom enveloping retailers with a robust trading statement revealing a near 20 per cent rise in mobile phone connections. The group’s third-quarter trading update on Friday is expected to meet expectations with 15 per cent year-on-year growth in mobile phone connections to 3.8 million. Carphone’s broadband service is also on track with more than 100,000 net additions expected in the quarter. Last week shares in Europe’s biggest mobile phone retailer suffered a sharp fall as investors offloaded retail stocks after a disappointing trading statement from Marks & Spencer. .
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