'Abnormal the new normal' with climate
DOHA, QATAR - Pointing to the destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy and other weather disasters this year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an international climate conference Tuesday that it was time to "prove wrong" those who still have doubts about global warming.
DOHA, QATAR -
Pointing to the destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy and other weather disasters this year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an international climate conference Tuesday that it was time to "prove wrong" those who still have doubts about global warming.
Ban, addressing delegates at the annual U.N. climate talks, said that time is running out for governments to act, citing recent reports showing rising emissions of greenhouse gases, which most scientists say are causing the warming trend.
"The abnormal is the new normal," Ban told environment ministers and climate officials from nearly 200 countries. "This year, we have seen Manhattan and Beijing under water, hundreds of thousands of people washed from their homes in Colombia, Peru, the Philippines, Australia."
"The danger signs are all around," he said, noting that ice caps are melting, permafrost thawing and sea levels rising.
Delegates at the two-week talks that are set to end Friday are discussing future emissions cuts and climate aid to poor countries, issues that rich nations and the developing world have struggled to agree on for years.
Suspect held in subway-push death
NEW YORK - New York City police are questioning a suspect in the death of a subway rider who was shoved onto the tracks.
New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said that investigators recovered security video showing a man fitting the description of the assailant working with street vendors near Rockefeller Center. Police went there Tuesday and took him into custody.
Witnesses told investigators that they saw the suspect talking to himself Monday afternoon before he approached Ki-Suck Han, of Queens, at the Times Square station, got into an altercation with him and pushed him into the train's path. Police said that Han tried to climb a few feet to safety, but got trapped between the train and the platform's edge.
Oldest person dies at 116
MONROE, GA. - The woman who was listed as the world's oldest person has died in a Georgia nursing home at age 116.
Besse Cooper died peacefully Tuesday afternoon in Monroe, according to her son Sidney Cooper. Monroe is about 45 miles east of Atlanta.
She was declared the world's oldest person in January. In May, Guinness World Records learned that Maria Gomes Valentin, of Brazil, was 48 days older. Valentin died June 21.
In brief:
* NEW YORK - FedEx said Tuesday that it will be offering some employees up to two years' pay to leave the company starting next year. FedEx has said previously that the buyouts should reduce "fixed head count by several thousand people."
* CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Harvard has formally recognized Harvard College Munch, a group promoting discussions and safe practices of kinky and alternative sex. The school has no record of a similar group being recognized in its 376-year history. Munch joins 400 other independent student organizations on campus.
Meanwhile . . .
* LONDON - Award-winning novelist Nancy Huston won Britain's Bad Sex in Fiction award Tuesday for her novel Infrared, whose tale of a photographer who takes pictures of her lovers during sex proved too revealing for the judges.
* NEW YORK - Stocks closed little changed Tuesday on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 13.82 points at 12,951.78 after trading in a narrow range of just 82 points. The Standard and Poor's 500 was down 2.41 points to 1,407.05. The Nasdaq composite was down 5.51 at 2,996.69.
- Daily News wire services