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The UN Climate Conference (COP29), world’s largest climate conference that brought together nearly 200 countries in Baku, Azerbaijan, wrapped up with a hard-fought agreement on climate finance but uncertainties over the climate crisis mitigation still looms large. Tripling finance to developing countries from $100 billion to $300 billion annually by 2035, aiming to scale up finance to $1.3 trillion from public and private sources, will be of little use if the issue of “who pays what is not decided” and the fund committed is not delivered in time.

NEW YORK: As the United States — and the world — prepares for another Trump administration, revisiting the question of whether Bernie Sanders could have defeated him in 2016 may seem unproductive. Eight years ago feels like ancient history. Yet reframing the question “Would Sanders have won?” to “What lessons from Sanders can help shape a better future for US politics?” proves more relevant than ever.

In a big boost to the Latin American Left, Uruguay’s left wing opposition candidate Yamandu Orsi became the country’s new president after defeating convincingly the candidate of the ruling far right coalition Alvaro Delgado in the presidential elections held on Sunday, November 24.

KOLKATA: It is not often that an interview given by a country's leader to a foreign media creates a major political controversy at home. But a recent interview given by Dr Mohammad Yunus, Chief Adviser to the caretaker Bangladesh administration, has done just that, generating a fresh domestic debate questioning his motives.

WASHINGTON DC: While much of the world has long recognized that the U.S. has been fighting a proxy war against Russia by arming Ukraine to the teeth, proof of a new twist in that story emerged recently from no other a source than the savagely pro-business Wall Street Journal.

KOLKATA: In Bangladesh, interim Chief adviser to the caretaker regime, Dr Mohammad Yunus has tasted success in an entirely unintended manner: He has succeeded remarkably in bringing about a political unity of sorts. Defying conventional wisdom and analysis, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have opposed the ban declared against the Awami League (AL) by the present rulers. Both parties have also strongly pressed for early elections in Bangladesh.

Finally, it seems the developed world has realised its omissions and at COP29 meeting in Baku, most western nations agreed to a new Climate Fund to save the planet from catastrophic climate changes due to harmful emissions. However, India, Malawi, Bolivia, and Nigeria have rejected the deal, terming it as insufficient.

COP29 came out with a new draft finance deal on the last day of the summit on November 22, but it frustrated the stakeholders so much that they dubbed it a ‘slap on the face’. It had proposed $250 billion yearly, but left out specifics on how these funds will be raised, such as grants, loans, government sector, public sector, or private sector. Such a level of criticism triggered a closed door talks that overran the scheduled time throughout the night, and the sources say that the COP29 summit has raised the finance target to $300 billion per year by 2035.

HELSINKI: In Finland, the liberal-conservative National Coalition Party and the far-right Finns Party, whose members together add up to nearly 90 percent of the current government, have united around a shared political project: authoritarian neoliberalism. The right-wing government is taking from the poor to give to the rich while dismantling Finland’s rule-of-law state and civil society.

LONDON: Every day, another lurch nearer the precipice. The British Establishment appears bent on dragging the country to war without telling anyone. As anticipated, it seems that Keir Starmer has authorised Ukraine to fire British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia and that Kiev has commenced doing so.