Roundup - 19/12/2009

• The summit at Copenhagen has ended with no satisfactory deal reached. A last minute agreement was achieved in last minute negotiations between the USA and BASIC(Brazil, South Africa, India and China), but he deal did not include specific national emissions targets or any means of independent verification for the cuts. However, the deal did include an acknowledgment that a limit should be placed at 2 degrees centigrade of climate change and provisions were made for a climate fund that could provide $100 billion a year from 2020 onward.
  
  China has said that it has not placed any conditions on its own announced cuts in carbon intensity and would therefore press on in any case. Many at the conference were disappointed that the USA did not take the lead by announcing bigger cuts but others believe that negotiations stalled because China was unwilling to accept international verification of its emissions cuts.
  
  
  
• Chinese billionaire Wang Wenxiang has been sentenced to death for arranging the murder of a business rival. The victim, Zhong Yishi, had brought lawsuits against Wang over defaulted payments relating to a construction project. Wang then contracted his personal secretary, Bai Peng, to kill Zhong. Bai was also sentenced to death. A migrant worker, Yu Yi, hired to help with the murder was sentenced to death with two years reprieve.
  
  
  
• Cambodia has agreed to expel 20 ethnic Uighurs wanted by China. The group fled China after ethnic tensions erupted into riot in Urumqi in July. Cambodia has said that it does not know where the Uighurs will go but that it expects them eventually to return to China. Cambodia is theoretically obliged by international law not to return refugees to a country where it is likely they will be tortured or executed.