Reports last week said that Tahaya Buchanan had simply walked into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta, despite the existence of a nationwide alert seeking her arrest. In fact, she apparently did this repeatedly for quite some time, because, you see, she worked there.
Buchanan had been indicted in New Jersey for insurance fraud in 2007, and a warrant for her arrest was issued that December and was posted to the National Crime Information Center in January 2008. New Jersey prosecutor Michael Morris said they believed Buchanan had been working for Homeland Security in New Jersey in 2007, and might have been transferred to the department’s immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation.
That’s where authorities lost track of her. “We found it surprising [and] alarming,” Morris said, “that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster, and we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered.” You don’t? I do. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, a USCIS spokesperson said on Wednesday that the bureau was still investigating the matter and that she “did not have information available as to whether the office regularly checks its employee list against national criminal warrants.” Because why would it do something like that?
Talks have resumed at the international climate change summit in Copenhagen after a walkout by developing countries.
The protest was led by African nations, which accused rich countries of trying to wreck the existing UN Kyoto Protocol.
The G-77 group of developing nations want talks on a second period of commitment to Kyoto to be given priority over broader discussions on a long-term vision for co-operative action.
At the moment Kyoto calls on rich nations to curb emissions, but does not apply to developing countries.
The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, says the move is regrettable, describing it as a protest over process, not a walkout over policy.
After six days of little progress in Copenhagen, the US climate envoy earlier said the possibility of a deal on climate change hung in the balance.
The world’s leaders will be arriving in the Danish capital over the next few days for the final round of negotiations.
Leaders met overnight in an informal session with the conference president. They emerged announcing that there was still a lot of work to be done to arrive at a new deal that could somehow align the interests of rich and poor countries.
The conference centre was closed for what was supposed to be a day of rest, but across Copenhagen people were meeting in cafes, hotel foyers and at the ministry of foreign affairs.
That is where the 48 environment ministers spent the day locked in talks with the Danish President of the proceedings and Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official.
He believes the biggest resistance to a strong deal is coming from China.
Chinese negotiators do not want to sign up to an agreement that involves inspectors visiting the country to verify progress on climate commitments.
“Actions – how will they be measured, reported on and verified in the case of action the countries take on their own or in the case of actions that countries take with international support?” Mr de Boer said.
“Do we need to enhance the reporting obligations of all countries? In other words, a lot of things on reporting and on transparency and on being sure that whatever is committed to is actually achieved.”
The European Union has now joined the United States in criticising a draft agreement by the UN that says that developing nations will only reduce their emissions if they receive financial help.
Dessima Williams speaks for the 43-member association of small island states.
“We want a legally binding agreement that retains the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol and the convention but escalates the expectation and the voluntary commitment of the developing countries,” Ms Williams said.
She says her association agrees with that, but the developed world and rich countries will not agree to that.
“A way has to be found to come to an agreement that is both politically and legally acceptable to all. That’s why we have the few days ahead – that’s a tough one,” she said.
Separate agreements?
It is so tough that many are now suggesting that there should be two separate agreements reached in Copenhagen.
The developed world wants a completely new treaty which would bring China and the US into the fold. Neither country is currently a member of the Kyoto Protocol.
They reject the Kyoto agreement precisely because it does not impose emissions reduction targets on all countries.
There was also a vital escape clause in Kyoto, especially for Australia.
It allows Australia to omit its greenhouse gas emissions from land use in the overall calculations of carbon emissions.
Despite Australia’s official carbon emissions readings, figures revealed today showed that the country actually emitted 82 per cent more in 2007 than it did in 1990; the result of including land use emissions in the sums.
Sean Cadman, a forest and climate consultant for the Wilderness Society, is among a group of environmentalists outraged that Australia is trying to have land use removed from the new agreement, but wants to be allowed to use the emissions saved from good practices on the land to be offset against Australia’s fossil fuel emissions.
“Australia has been seriously under-reporting its emissions from that sector since they started,” Mr Cadman said.
“They use extraordinarily poor quality data inputs which in our view and our analysis of the real data – because we’ve now got real data – is what has been being reported as a sink.
“In other words, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is probably in fact an emission.
“So we haven’t been accounting properly for the fact that we’ve been turning old growth forests into regrowth, that we’ve been clearing forests for plantations, all of those things.
“Now what’s on the table here for the first time is to see that countries have to report properly for those emissions.”
More than 110 heads of state are due to arrive on Wednesday for an intense 48 hours of final negotiations.
