World

LEGAZPI, Philippines — Typhoon Hagupit knocked out power, left at least three people dead and sent nearly 900,000 into shelters before it weakened Sunday, sparing the central Philippines the type of massive devastation that a monster storm brought to the region last year.

Shallow floods, damaged shanties and ripped off store signs and tin roofs were a common sight across the region, but there was no major destruction after Hagupit slammed into Eastern Samar and other island provinces. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometres per hour (kph) and gusts of 170kph on Sunday, considerably weaker from its peak power but still a potentially deadly storm, according to forecasters.

The typhoon, which made landfall in Eastern Samar late Saturday, was moving slowly, dumping heavy rain that could possibly trigger landslides and flash floods.

Traumatised by the death and destruction from Typhoon Haiyan last year, nearly 900,000 people fled to about 1,000 emergency shelters and safer grounds. The government, backed by the 120,000-strong military, had launched massive preparations to attain a zero-casualty target.

Rhea Estuna, a 29-year-old mother of one, fled Thursday to an evacuation centre in Tacloban — the city hardest-hit by Haiyan — and waited in fear as Hagupit's wind and rain lashed the school where she and her family sought refuge. When she peered outside Sunday, she said she saw a starkly different aftermath than the one she witnessed after Haiyan struck in November 2013.

"There were no bodies scattered on the road, no big mounds of debris," Estuna told The Associated Press by cellphone. "Thanks to God this typhoon wasn't as violent."

Haiyan's tsunami-like storm surges and killer winds left thousands of people dead and leveled entire villages, most of them in and around Tacloban.

Nearly a dozen countries, led by the United States and the European Union, have pledged to help in case of a catastrophe from Hagupit (pronounced HA'-goo-pit), disaster-response agency chief Alexander Pama said.

The EU commissioner for humanitarian aid, Christos Stylianides, said a team of experts would be deployed to help assess the damage and needed response.

"The Philippines are not alone as they brace up for a possible hardship," Stylianides said, adding that the European Commission was "hoping that the impact will be less powerful than a year ago, when Typhoon Haiyan left a devastating imprint on the country".

Two people, including a baby girl, died of hypothermia in central Iloilo province Saturday at the height of the typhoon, Pama said at a news conference. Another person died after being hit by a falling tree in the eastern town of Dolores, where the typhoon first made landfall, according to Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.

Two women were injured when the tricycle taxi they were riding was struck by a falling tree in central Negros Oriental province.

Displaced villagers were asked to return home from emergency shelters in provinces where the danger posed by the typhoon had waned, including Albay, where more than half a million people were advised to leave evacuation sites.

Nearly 12,000 villagers, however, will remain in government shelters in Albay because their homes lie near a restive volcano.

While officials expressed relief that the typhoon had not caused major damage, they were quick to warn that Hagupit — Filipino for "smash" or "lash" — was still on course to barrel across three major central Philippine islands before starting to blow away Tuesday into the South China Sea.

MOSCOW — With its warm, fluffy brown grains, buckwheat is the ultimate comfort food for Russians and as sanctions hit home, it is flying off the shelves in a shopping frenzy dubbed the “buckwheat panic”.

Hard-hit by falling oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed over the Kremlin’s role in the Ukrainian crisis, Russia is seeing a catastrophic depreciation of the ruble and steep inflation.

But while Russians grumble about the rising price of chicken, cheese or sausage, it was only when rumours spread of buckwheat supplies running low that shoppers dashed out to fill their trolleys.

Buckwheat “is not just a food, it is a national idea”, Russia’s leading business daily, Vedomosti, wrote recently in an editorial.

While in the West buckwheat is more seen as a trendy food for the health conscious, in Russia it is a traditional staple, predating potatoes.

The cereal, which originates from India and Nepal, was first introduced to the Russians in the 13th century by the Mongol invaders. It was cultivated by Byzantine monks, leading to its name in Russian of “grechka”, which sounds like Greek.

Buckwheat can be eaten at any meal in Russia, whether simmered with milk as a porridge for breakfast, served with chopped liver for lunch, or even stuffed inside a roast piglet at a special dinner.

It is ubiquitous in the cafeterias of Russian schools and kindergartens, hospitals, military barracks and prisons.

This autumn as Russians began to feel the effects of sanctions and the retaliatory embargo on most Western foods ordered by President Vladimir Putin, news spread of a low harvest in Russia’s buckwheat heartland — the Altai region in Siberia.

Due to a drought, Russia’s buckwheat harvest fell this year to just under 600,000 tonnes, against the usual 700,000 tons.

Buying just in case

That was hardly a disaster, but media reports were enough to spark panic demand among consumers with people storming shops across several regions.

“In Moscow, people see a television news report about a buckwheat crisis in Penza,” a city 600 kilometres away, and “in just four days they buy up buckwheat stocks that would normally be enough for two months”, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily wrote.

One supermarket chain in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg even introduced a five-pack limit for buckwheat purchases.

Even though buckwheat is homegrown and so little affected by sanctions or the falling ruble, the price of a packet of buckwheat rose from around 30 rubles to 50 rubles ($0.93) in Moscow and doubled in some regions.

“People store up on buckwheat — which can be kept for a long time — because they do not know what to expect from the [Western] sanctions,” said Galina, a trader at a Saint Petersburg food market.

There have been “buckwheat crises” in the past, most recently sparked by a 2010 drought, said Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Centre for Political Technologies.

But what is different now is that “there is no question of a real shortage of buckwheat”, said Dmitry Rylko of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies.

While initially there was no problem with supplies, “excessive demand sparked” the buckwheat crisis, said Alexey Alexeyenko, a senior official at Russia’s food safety agency, Rosselkhoznadzor.

Russian media called the phenomenon “hysteria” or even “buckwheat psychosis.”

A survey conducted in late November by the Levada Center pollster found that almost a third of the Russians had stocked up on buckwheat in recent weeks.

Buckwheat stockpiling is more a symbol of troubled times, Rylko said, calling it “a sacred food for Russians that disappears at the onset of any signs of crisis.”

The Kremlin’s retaliatory embargo banning Western food imports has hit Russian consumers hard.

Prices have gone up 30 to 40 per cent for basic foods such as eggs, pork, chicken, frozen fish and sausage since the counter sanctions were imposed.

MOSCOW — French President Francois Hollande said after an impromptu visit to Russia for crisis talks with Vladimir Putin on Saturday that a ceasefire could take hold in eastern Ukraine in the next few days.

The Russian president, who met Hollande during his stopover at a Moscow airport after a trip to Kazakhstan, said he also hoped an agreement would be reached soon to shore up a shaky truce reached for east Ukraine on September 5.

Hollande's unexpected visit underlined the West's concern about the conflict between government forces and pro-Russian separatists, and about Putin's increasingly hostile anti-Western rhetoric as he defies calls to do more to end the crisis.

Hollande, the first head of a leading Western power to meet Putin in Russia since Moscow annexed the Crimea peninsula in March, urged all parties to respect the September 5 truce deal.

"The ceasefire that will be proclaimed tomorrow or the day after must be completely respected," Hollande said in comments broadcast on French television after the talks at Vnukovo Airport, southwest of Moscow, without giving details.

"France's role is to search for solutions and prevent problems from degenerating," he added. "I wanted today, alongside President Putin, to send a message of de-escalation. Today that message is possible."

Putin, who looked nervous before he greeted Hollande with a handshake, said they had held detailed discussions on ending the violence in which more than 4,300 people have been killed in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine since April.

"I very much hope that in the nearest future a final decision on ceasing fire will be taken," Putin told reporters.

Day of silence

In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, President Petro Poroshenko said a preliminary agreement had been reached to hold new talks on Tuesday on implementing the steps agreed under the September 5 ceasefire deal reached in the Belarussian capital, Minsk.

It was not clear whether Hollande and Putin were referring to these new talks or to a separate, new ceasefire plan.

Poroshenko said the latest round of talks on implementing the 12-point peace plan known as the Minsk protocol would focus on agreeing a schedule for all measures to be taken.

The proposed date of December 9 coincides with a promised "Day of Silence”, when both sides say they will observe a truce.

Putin said Russia would respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. But that may not reassure Kiev and its Western allies, including the United States, who view the annexation of Crimea as an illegal seizure of Ukrainian territory.

Hollande made clear he was alarmed by a speech by Putin on Thursday in which the Kremlin chief accused Russia's enemies of trying to bring a new Iron Curtain down around Russia.

NATO and Western powers accuse Moscow of sending troops and weapons to back the rebels. Moscow denies this and says it is not party to the conflict.

Hollande last month suspended indefinitely the delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers ordered by Russia because of the conflict in Ukraine. Putin said they did not discuss the deal but he hoped Paris would stick to the contract.

MANILA — A powerful typhoon roared into the eastern Philippines on Saturday, bringing lashing rain and strong winds that felled trees, ripped off tin roofs and toppled power lines in areas still bearing the scars of a super typhoon 13 months ago.

About 1 million people had already fled to shelters by the time Typhoon Hagupit made landfall, in what a UN agency said was one of the world’s biggest peacetime evacuations.

As the storm barrelled in from the Pacific, power was cut across most of the central island of Samar and nearby Leyte province, including Tacloban City, considered ground zero of the devastating super typhoon Haiyan last year.

“The wind is blowing so strongly, it’s like it is whirling,” Mabel Evardone, an official of the coastal town of Sulat in Eastern Samar, said on local radio. “The waters have risen now.”

There was no word of any casualties.

Hagupit had weakened to a category 3 storm, two notches below “super typhoon”, but could still unleash huge destruction with torrential rain and potentially disastrous storm surges of up to 4.5 metres, the weather bureau PAGASA said.

The eye of the typhoon hit the town of Dolores, Eastern Samar at 9:15pm (1315 GMT), PAGASA said, adding the storm maintained its strength, with winds of up to 175kph near the centre and gusts of up to 210kph.

“We can expect that heavy rains were dumped on Eastern Samar because Ruby hovered for a long time over the coastal areas,” weather forecaster Jori Loiz said on radio, referring to the local name of typhoon Hagupit.

The weather bureau said Hagupit — which means “lash” in Filipino — maintained its projected path towards Masbate, Romblon and Oriental Mindoro provinces, slightly north of areas devastated by super typhoon Haiyan last year.

PAGASA earlier said the storm was moving north northwest at 16kph (10 mph).

“Ruby’s lashing will be severe,” Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas told government radio. “Let’s be alert. Let’s evacuate to prevent any harm to your families.”

Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific cancelled about 100 flights to central and southern Philippines on Saturday.

Residents of low-lying villages and landslide-prone areas have fled to schools, civic centres, town halls, gyms and churches, the national disaster agency said.

“We received reports about a million people evacuating already. There is increased awareness to make early action and co-operate and do pre-emptive evacuation,” Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, said in a television interview.

At least 50 municipalities in the central Philippines and the southern part of the country’s main Luzon Island were at risk of storm surges, the Science and Technology Department said.

The typhoon was unlikely to hit the capital Manila, home to around 12 million people, the agency said.

“Typhoon Hagupit is triggering one of the largest evacuations we have ever seen in peacetime,” said Denis McClean, spokesman of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva.

Relief agency Refugees International said in a statement it was “deeply concerned” that evacuation centres may not be safe.

“A damage assessment of designated evacuation centres in typhoon-affected areas indicated that in some places — such as Eastern Samar, where Hagupit is headed — less than 10 per cent of evacuation centres were likely to withstand future typhoons,” the group said.

Lessons Learned

The United States had offered to send nine C-130 transport aircraft, three P-3C Orion, and medical and relief workers, said Major Emmanuel Garcia, commander of the Armed Forces’ 7th civil relations group.

Other foreign governments also sent word they were ready to help the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation, he said.

The islands of Samar and Leyte were worst-hit by 250kph winds and storm surges brought by Typhoon Haiyan in November.

“There has been a tremendous amount of learning from last year,” said Greg Matthews, emergency response adviser at the International Rescue Committee. “There have been reports from our field officers and partners that people are evacuating themselves. They are aware of the situation.”

Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall, left more than 7,000 dead or missing and more than 4 million homeless or with damaged houses. About 25,000 people in Eastern Samar and Leyte still live in tents, shelters and bunkhouses.

International humanitarian agencies and non-government groups, which have been supporting Haiyan-devastated communities in the central Philippines, are preparing to mobilise aid and relief efforts in the aftermath of Typhoon Hagupit.

Soldiers were deployed to urban centres, particularly in Tacloban City, where widespread looting broke out after Haiyan.

“The soldiers will help our police counterparts in maintaining peace and order, and prevent looting incidents,” said Colonel Restituto Padilla Jr, armed forces spokesman.

BASEL — Washington insisted Thursday it was not seeking confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine crisis as Moscow lashed out over biting sanctions which have pushed its economy to the brink of recession.

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russia not to isolate itself as efforts to resolve the conflict took centre stage at a meeting of the 57 members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the northern Swiss city of Basel.

“It is not our design or desire that we see a Russia isolated through its own actions. Moscow could rebuild trust and relationships if it simply helps to calm turbulent waters,” Kerry said at the start of the two-day meeting.

“The United States and countries that support Ukraine’s sovereignty and rights do not seek confrontation.”

Diplomats at the meeting called for a renewed effort to implement a truce brokered by Russia on September 5 that has been frequently broken, sending the death toll from the conflict soaring to 4,300.

Swiss President and acting OSCE chair Didier Burkhalter said the conflict in Ukraine had fueled a broader crisis of European security, with a surge in military activity by Russia — whose aircraft have made several forays into NATO airspace — sparking increasing unease.

“Security has deteriorated markedly in Europe. Trust between Russia and the West has eroded. We have seen a dangerous increase in military activity and belligerent rhetoric lately,” he said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that the conflict had raised the spectre of “a new division of Europe”.

“We have not advanced as much as we would like in defusing this crisis. The danger of a new escalation cannot be ruled out,” he told journalists.

With East-West relations at frosty levels not seen since the Cold War, Russia’s decision this week to cancel a project to build a massive gas pipeline that would bypass Ukraine and deliver energy directly to southeastern Europe further complicated ties.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday Russia was now a “strategic problem” for the EU which would not accept “blackmailing on energy matters”.

An elusive ceasefire

Meanwhile a lasting ceasefire remained elusive in eastern Ukraine.

Since the Minsk deal, fighting has continued around the flashpoint Donetsk Airport and a fresh truce agreed there appeared to have crumbled Wednesday just hours after it was signed.

A separate truce planned for the Lugansk area Friday was also shrouded in uncertainty as rebel leaders have complained about the terms.

Heavy rocket fire rang out throughout the night in Donetsk, an AFP reporter said, and the Ukrainian army on Thursday reported more than 70 rebel attacks on its positions in the past 24 hours.

“It is not a Ukrainian crisis, it is not an OSCE crisis, it is about Russian aggression,” said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Basel.

Kerry, who met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the OSCE conference, accused Moscow of torpedoing the deal it had brokered by continuing to support rebels in eastern Ukraine.

“Russia continues to supply new weapons and increase support for armed separatists” and thus is failing “to live up to an agreement that it actually negotiated and signed”.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who also held talks with Lavrov, urged Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.

Putin says sanctions ‘a pretext’

US President Barack Obama said Moscow was unlikely to shift its stance until the reality of sanctions, which were “having a big bite” on its economy, sunk in.

In Moscow, Putin lashed out at the West for using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to restrain a muscular Russia with sanctions.

“Every time someone believes Russia has become too strong, independent, these instruments get applied immediately,” he said, referring to the sanctions that have pushed the country towards recession coupled with falling oil prices.

However, Putin said in his state of the nation address he would not sever ties with the West despite the confrontations with Brussels and Washington.

In Basel he received backing from ally Belarus, whose Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei slammed the West for “double standards” in the Ukraine crisis.

“We have come close to a dangerous line,” he warned.

During the year that Switzerland has headed the OSCE, the organisation has seen its standing swell in step with the deepening Ukraine crisis.

In its biggest operation ever, it currently has some 500 people on the ground monitoring the tattered September truce.

NEW YORK — Thousands of demonstrators blocked streets, snarling New York City traffic into early Thursday morning, after a grand jury decided not to charge a white police officer for causing the death of an unarmed black man with a chokehold.

Mostly peaceful protests sprang up on Wednesday evening throughout Manhattan, including at Grand Central Terminal, Times Square and near Rockefeller Centre, after the panel opted not to indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo.

Police reported about 30 arrests by mid-evening, but declined to provide updated figures overnight.

The US Justice Department said it was investigating whether the civil rights of the dead man, 43-year-old father of six Eric Garner, had been violated.

Garner was accused of illegally selling cigarettes on a sidewalk when Pantaleo put him in a chokehold from behind and tackled him with the help of other officers. Police said he had resisted arrest.

The city’s medical examiner said police officers had killed Garner by compressing his neck and chest, and ruled the death a homicide, adding that Garner’s asthma and obesity had contributed to his death.

The encounter on Staten Island was captured on a video that spread over the Internet and fueled a debate about how US police use force, particularly against minorities.

The video shows Garner arguing with police, saying, “Please leave me alone”, before Pantaleo puts him in a chokehold. With officers holding him down, Garner pleads with them, saying repeatedly, “I can’t breathe”.

The grand jury’s decision poses the biggest challenge yet for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in January promising to repair relations between black New Yorkers and the police department.

Ferguson Shooting

Last week, the city of St Louis saw rioting, burning and looting after a grand jury in Missouri declined to prosecute a white policeman who shot dead the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in the suburb of Ferguson.

By contrast, the New York protests were civil. Police allowed demonstrators to block traffic briefly before coaxing them to move on. Marchers snaked through the streets for hours, chanting and bumping up against throngs of tourists.

One group brought traffic on the West Side Highway along the Hudson River to a standstill. Later, a few hundred demonstrators crossed a bridge into Brooklyn.

In one of several “die-ins”, demonstrators lay on the pavement silently about a block from where the Christmas tree lighting ceremony was under way at Rockefeller Centre.

US Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters in Washington that the Justice Department, which is already probing the circumstances of the Missouri shooting, would also examine the Garner case, as well as the local inquiry into it.

Chokeholds are prohibited by New York police regulations, but the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the municipal police union, said the officers involved in the Garner incident had acted within the law.

Keiha Souley, 35, was driving his taxi cab on Broadway when protesters blocked traffic, and said he did not mind the delay.

“You’ve got to stand up sometime,” he said.

Hundreds of protesters also marched in other cities including Washington DC and Oakland, California.

On Staten Island, near the place where Garner was apprehended, black 40-year-old banker Daniel Skelton complained: “A black man’s life just don’t matter in this country.”

Garner’s stepfather Benjamin Carr, also at the scene, called for calm. “We don’t want no Fergusons here,” he said. “All we want is peace.”

Pantaleo expressed his condolences to Garner’s family in a statement, saying: “It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner.”

But Garner’s widow Esaw Garner told a news conference: “There’s nothing that him or his prayers or anything else will make me feel any different. No I, don’t accept his apologies.”

HONG KONG — The founders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Occupy movement surrendered to police Wednesday in a symbolic move, as they try to take the protests off the streets after more than two months of rallies punctuated by violence.

Dozens of supporters, carrying yellow umbrellas which have become a symbol of the movement and shouting “I want true democracy without fear!”, surrounded the trio as they turned themselves in at a central police station.

However, Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man and Chu Yiu-ming quickly emerged from the station, saying they had not been arrested despite admitting “participating in unauthorised assembly”.

“We have not been arrested so we are allowed to leave with no restriction on our liberty,” said Tai.

He told AFP there were “political considerations” behind their swift release to avoid crowds flocking to the protest zones, but said it was inevitable they would eventually be arrested.

“I don’t think the matter will be resolved on this occasion, later we may be arrested, even prosecuted for more serious offences,” Tai added.

The three had been joined by 82-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, a prominent pro-democracy supporter, who also gave himself up.

About 40 other supporters waiting outside the police station also queued up to fill out forms turning themselves in.

“This is for the fortune of the next generation,” said secondary school teacher April Fan, 55.

Police said Wednesday afternoon that 24 people had so far surrendered.

“They were explicitly told by the interviewing officers that illegal occupation of public places was an unlawful act and they should stop such act immediately,” a statement said.

“Police will conduct follow-up investigations based on the information provided.”

The founders’ “surrender” and their call to end the road blockades followed violent clashes between protesters and police outside the government headquarters late Sunday which left dozens injured.

Tai said the Occupy movement would now take a different approach to promoting democracy, including through education and a new social charter.

Protesters began blocking three major intersections in late September to demand free leadership elections in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. One has since been cleared by police.

China insists that candidates for the 2017 leadership vote must be vetted by a loyalist committee, which demonstrators say will ensure the election of a pro-Beijing stooge. 

China refuses to budge despite the student-led protests and Hong Kong’s current leader Leung Chun-ying has also taken a tougher line since Sunday’s violence.

On Wednesday, he rejected a call made by three students on hunger strike, for the constitutional reform process to be re-launched. 

‘Pain for justice’

Leung’s office said in a statement there was no legal way to restart the process. 

“Expressing views on constitutional reform through illegal and confrontational means is bound to be futile,” it added.

Public support for the protesters has waned. A survey last month showed 83 per cent of respondents want the road blockades to end.

Anti-Occupy demonstrators outside the police station swore and held up placards of the three Occupy founders in striped jail uniforms.

“Support the government to enforce the law!” they shouted, and “Eat shit!” 

Analyst Sonny Lo said the Occupy trio were handing themselves in to “reignite” the movement by regaining the moral high ground.

“They are trying to turn public opinion back from a low point... they are trying to take responsibility and face possible legal charges” which could gain renewed sympathy from the public, he said.

Despite the Occupy call to retreat, the student protesters on hunger strike vowed they would continue “suffering pain for justice”.

Teenage protest leader Joshua Wong and two fellow students, who began fasting late Monday, read out their emotional open letter to Leung from their tent outside government headquarters. 

“We believe we are doing better by suffering pain for justice than you are by having big meals,” they said in the letter, renewing calls for dialogue on political reform.

LIMA — This year may end as the hottest on record, the UN’s weather agency said Wednesday as it recounted a tale of rising seas, crippling droughts and floods since January.

“The year 2014 is on track to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, on record,” the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Lima.

Provisional data for 2014 shows that 14 out of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century, it added.

“There is no standstill in global warming,” WMO chief Michel Jarraud said in a press statement.

“What we saw in 2014 is consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. Record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods destroyed livelihoods and ruined lives,” he said.

“What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface, including in the northern hemisphere.”

The global average air temperature over land and sea surface for January to October was about 0.57OC above the average of 14OC for a reference period from 1961-1990, the WMO said.

It was 0.09OC above the average for the decade 2004-2013.

“If November and December maintain the same tendency, then 2014 will likely be the hottest on record, ahead of 2010, 2005 and 1998,” the WMO said.

“This confirms the underlying long-term warming trend.”

The interim report for 2014 aims at guiding 195 countries striving for a global climate change pact, due to take effect by 2020.

At the deal’s centre is a roster of national pledges to roll back carbon emissions — invisible, heat-trapping gases released by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

“Our climate is changing and every year, the risks of extreme weather events and impacts on humanity rise,” said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change staging December 1-12 talks in Lima to draft the outlines of the pact.

It must be signed in Paris in December 2015, and will seek to meet a UN target to limit warming to 2OC over pre-industrial levels. 

The WMO said the sea surface temperature for the year so far was the highest on record — about 0.45OC above the 1961-1990 average. 

It was particularly high in the tropical Pacific, approaching, but not triggering, the threshold for the destructive El Nino weather phenomenon.

For January to June, ocean heat measured to depths of 700 and 2,000 metres were both the highest on record, reflecting the ocean’s role in absorbing heat from the warming atmosphere.

Heatwaves, floods, drought

Other highlights from the statement:

— Heatwaves occurred in South Africa, Australia and Argentina in 2014, while exceptional cold waves occurred in the United States in winter, in Australia in August and in Russia in October.

— Sea levels in early 2014 reached a record high for the time of year, driven by thermal expansion as the oceans warmed and runoff from melting icesheets and glaciers. 

— Flooding struck Britain, parts of the Balkans, Argentina, Russia and the southeastern and eastern US. In August and September, millions of people were hit by flooding in northern Bangladesh, northern Pakistan and India.

— Severe drought gripped the southern part of northeastern China, and parts of the Yellow River and Huaihe River basins failed to get even half of the summer average rainfall. 

Worrying rainfall deficits were reported in parts of central America, central Brazil and the city of Sao Paulo, as well as parts of California, Nevada and Texas and the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland.

— On the positive side, tropical cyclone activity has been below normal, so far. As at November 13, 72 tropical storms were recorded, fewer than the 1981-2010 average of 89.

On November 20, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said global temperatures in October, as well as for the entire year so far, were the hottest on average since record-keeping began in 1880.

The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a massive report finished this year, said warming on current emission trends was on track for roughly double the UN target.

HONG KONG — Three founders of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement called Tuesday for an end to street demonstrations to prevent more violence and take the campaign to a new stage, but it wasn’t clear whether student protesters, who make up the bulk of the activists, would heed the call.

Professors Benny Tai Yiu-ting and Chan Kin-man and Pastor Chu Yiu-ming said they planned to surrender to police on Wednesday to take responsibility for protests that have shut down parts of the Asian financial centre for more than two months.

Instead of street protests, the three said they hope to continue the campaign through networking among civic groups, community organising and education in democracy and human rights.

The three are founders of the Occupy Central movement, which is trying to force China’s government to scrap its requirement that candidates in an inaugural 2017 election for Hong Kong’s leader be approved by a panel chosen by Beijing. However, the three represent only one faction of demonstrators, most of whom are students.

Joshua Wong, a prominent student leader, said Monday that he and two other members of his group would go on an indefinite hunger strike to press their demands.

“We admit that it’s difficult in the future to have an escalated action, so besides suffering from batons and tear gas, we would like to use our bodies to direct public attention to the issue,” Wong said Tuesday. “We are not sure if the hunger strike can put pressure on the government, but we hope that when the public realises the student hunger strike, they will ask themselves what they can do next.”

In the early hours of Monday, police armed with pepper spray, batons and riot shields clashed with activists carrying umbrellas as authorities moved to clear them out an area in front of the Hong Kong government complex where activist had been camped out.

The compound was forced to shut temporarily and the semiautonomous city’s Beijing-backed leader said public patience was wearing thin, adding that police would “continue to take decisive action to enforce the law”.

In a statement read to reporters, Tai, Chan and Chu said their surrender also would serve as a “silent denunciation of a heartless government”.

“Tomorrow’s battleground is expansive and now is the time to transform the people’s strength into a sustainable civil society movement, to sow the spirit of democracy deep into the community,” they said in the statement.

Tai said it wasn’t clear whether police would simply send them home, or detain them for inciting the protests, which the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have denounced as illegal.

While the trio’s call to end the protests threatened to fracture the movement, Tai denied they were abandoning the demonstrators.

“We just urge the occupiers to consider the importance to understand that the fight for democracy is a long battle,” he said.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s leader said Monday that pro-democracy protests were “in vain” after police used pepper spray and batons on students trying to storm government headquarters, in some of the worst violence since the rallies began.

With the student-led protests now into their third month and frustrations mounting, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hinted that further police action may be imminent, in his most forceful comments in recent weeks.

“I have pointed out before that Occupy Central is not only illegal but it will also be in vain,” Leung said, describing the continued protests as “intolerable”.

“Now the [public] demand for police clearance is increasing. From now on, police will enforce the law without hesitation,” he told reporters.

On Monday afternoon the high court granted an injunction ordering the clearance of several parts of the major protest site in Admiralty district, according to bus operator Kwoon Chung, which made the application.

It approved the removal of “obstructions” to traffic on and around stretches of Harcourt Road, a multi-lane highway through the heart of the financial district currently blocked by barricades and hundreds of tents. 

Police have previously waited for such injunctions before moving in to clear roads.

The government offices in Admiralty were closed on Monday morning and the city’s legislature suspended after protesters broke through police lines and occupied a major road outside the complex overnight.

After a night and morning of intermittent violence student leader Alex Chow told reporters that democracy groups would discuss the way forward for the movement in the coming few days — “whether to advance or retreat”.

Protesters began staging mass sit-ins on major roads in three districts on September 28, demanding free leadership elections for the semi-autonomous Chinese city in 2017.

China’s communist authorities insist candidates for the election must be vetted by a loyalist committee, which the protesters say will ensure the election of a pro-Beijing stooge.

‘Angry and tired’ 

There was frustration and pessimism in Admiralty Monday following the clashes. 

“We feel a mixture of things: angry, tired, upset. All the emotions are quite negative and tense,” said student Eppie Chan.

Police arrested 40 people and 11 officers were injured in the overnight clashes, a spokesman said. A total of 37 people received hospital treatment.

Authorities said they had “no other choice” but to use pepper spray and batons to force back protesters from the government complex.

But some demonstrators said they had been unfairly targeted.

“They [police] are supposed to protect the citizens, not [hurt] us. We saw what they did so we don’t trust them any more,” said account clerk Justin Yan, 22.

Others voiced doubts over the direction of the movement.

“The crowd was not prepared for the battle last night... they were put into a difficult situation and didn’t know how to handle it,” said translator Mayson Ng.

“They [student leaders] don’t have a strategy.”

The Admiralty site had calmed by Monday afternoon after a chaotic morning which saw protesters at a nearby shopping arcade clash with police.

The protests drew tens of thousands of people at times during their first weeks, but numbers have dwindled as the movement’s leaders struggle to keep up momentum.

Frustrations have grown amongst the demonstrators as Beijing refuses to budge on the vetting of candidates, while support for them has waned among residents weary of the transport disruption.

Police cleared a protest site in the Mongkok district last week, making more than 140 arrests, but sporadic scuffles have continued there.

A smaller camp blocks another busy road in the shopping district of Causeway Bay.

A British colony until 1997, Hong Kong enjoys civil liberties not seen on the Chinese mainland, including freedom of speech and the right to protest.

But fears have been growing that these freedoms are being eroded under Chinese rule.

The city’s financial secretary John Tsang said Monday the continued protests could harm the city’s economy in the long run.

“If the occupation were to continue, no doubt our international image could be seriously damaged,” he told reporters. “That kind of internal damage would be very difficult to heal.”