Thursday, actress Subah Shah Humyra posted a photo of herself with a person, implying that he was her boyfriend. But after a day, she now claims that he is only a friend and not a lover.

However, she blurred the man's face before posting the photo to her Facebook timeline, which initially suggested he was her boyfriend. However, she later told Kaler Kantho that he is a friend, not a lover.

"He is not my lover. If I ever have an affair, everyone will know about it. The person in the photo I shared is a close friend of mine," Subah stated.

"I did not reveal his identity or expose his face! Husband or boyfriend! He may be neither! Owing to an issue, I have hidden his face. The most significant aspect of our relationship is that he is my very good friend and a friend in need. We Bengalis know nothing about anyone and put praise and condemnation on them. This is our ethnic issue, she wrote on Facebook.

"Do wives just refer to their husbands as Mr. Perfect? If husbands and boyfriends were so ideal, there would be no divorces or broken relationships. But sometimes a good friend is the ideal person for someone. Stop making my friends my boyfriends or husbands without knowing," she added.
 

Pressure to speed cuts in carbon pollution took a back seat at UN climate talks that ended late Thursday night, as
emerging economies, including China, demanded that rich ones vastly scale up climate financing.

The stand-off over 10 days of technical negotiations in Bonn stymied progress across a raft of issues, including how to minimise the social costs of transitioning to clean energy, how to quantify countries' adaptation needs, and how to help economies already devastated by climate-amplified extreme weather.

This puts even more pressure on the COP28 climate summit in oil-rich United Arab Emirates in December. There, nearly 200 nations will review a "global stocktake" of how far off track the world is from achieving the Paris climate treaty goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Under current policies, the planet will warm nearly twice that much by 2100, according to the UN's climate science advisory panel.

"Climate change is not a North versus South issue," UN Climate chief Simon Stiell said at the closing plenary on Thursday.

"This is a tidal wave that doesn't discriminate. The only way we can avoid being swallowed by it is investing in climate action."

A long-standing tug-of-war at UN climate talks pits the European Union against a powerful negotiating bloc: the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), which includes China, India and Saudi Arabia.

The EU, along with some of the world's poorest and most climate-vulnerable nations, seeks an accelerated timetable for slashing greenhouse gases, and wants the consensus-based UN forum to call for the phasing out of fossil
fuels.

But their drive for more ambitious reductions is undercut by the yawning gap between the comparatively small amounts of money mobilised by rich nations historically responsible for global warming and the trillions needed by developing nations to green their economies and cope with existing climate impacts, or "loss and damage".

From billions to trillions 

"The difficulties of making substantive progress on loss and damages reflect the reluctance of developed countries on getting into real engagement,"
Cuba's lead negotiator said Thursday, speaking on behalf of the G77 + China negotiating bloc, which comprises 134 countries and 80 percent of the world's population.

Confidence in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan and other wealthy nations has been further undermined by the failure to deliver on a promise first made in 2009 to provide the developing world $100 billion a year by 2020.

"We stand by our climate finance commitments," a delegate from the European Union insisted, pointing to a report jointly authored by Canada and Germany saying the $100 billion promise would finally be kept in 2023.

More crucial still, rich nations say, will be tapping into the private finance that can leverage billions into trillions.

That objective will be front and centre next week in Paris at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

 'Missed opportunity' 

More broadly, accelerating action will dominate a September climate summit in New York hosted by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who decried on Thursday the lack of progress to date.

"Countries are far off track," he said. "I see a lack of ambition; a lack of trust; a lack of support; a lack of cooperation."

Guterres also took aim at what he called "the polluted heart of the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry".

"Let's face facts," he said. "The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It's fossil fuels, period."

The UN chief's words were starkly at odds with those of embattled COP28 president -- and head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company -- Sultan al-Jaber, who suggested last month that fossil fuel emissions could be reduced through carbon capture technologies.

In a stopover at the talks in Bonn, however, he said for the first time that the "phase-down" of fossil fuels was "inevitable". But al-Jaber failed to outline a roadmap or his expectations for COP28. "It's time to shift out of listening mode into action mode," said Alden Meyer, a senior analyst at climate policy think tank E3G. "It was a bit of a missed opportunity not to do so here." The stalemate in Bonn does not bode well for COP28, others said. "The gap between the Bonn political performance and the harsh climate reality feels already absurd," said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia. "Climate impacts stay no longer on paper. People are feeling and suffering from it now."

Record-high greenhouse gas emissions and diminishing air pollution have caused an unparalleled acceleration in global warming, 50 top scientists warned Thursday in a sweeping climate science update.

From 2013 to 2022, "human-induced warming has been increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade," they reported in a peer-reviewed study aimed at policymakers.

Average annual emissions over the same period hit an all-time high of 54 billion tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases -- about 1,700 tonnes every second.

World leaders will be confronted with the new data at the critical COP28 climate summit later this year in Dubai, where a "Global Stocktake" at the UN talks will assess progress toward the 2015 Paris Agreement's temperature goals.

The findings would appear to close the door on capping global warming under the Paris treaty's more ambitious 1.5C target, long identified as a guard rail for a relatively climate-safe world, albeit one still roiled by severe impacts.

"Even though we are not yet at 1.5C warming, the carbon budget" -- the amount of greenhouse gases humanity can emit without exceeding that limit -- "will likely be exhausted in only a few years," said lead author Piers Forster, a physics professor at the University of Leeds.

That budget has shrunk by half since the UN's climate science advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gathered data for its most recent benchmark report in 2021, according to the Forster and colleagues, many of whom were core IPCC contributors.

- Unintended consequences -

To have even a coin-toss chance of staying under the 1.5C threshold, emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other drivers of warming generated mostly by burning fossil fuels must not exceed 250 billion tonnes (Gt), they reported.

Bettering the odds to two-thirds or four-fifths would reduce that carbon allowance to only 150 Gt and 100 Gt, respectively -- a two- or three-year lifeline at the current rate of emissions.

Keeping the Paris temperature targets in play would require slashing CO2 pollution at least 40 percent by 2030, and eliminating it entirely by mid-century, the IPCC has calculated.

Ironically, one of the big climate success stories of the last decade has inadvertently hastened the pace of global warming, the new data reveal.

A gradual drop in the use of coal -- significantly more carbon intensive than oil or gas -- to produce power has slowed the increase in carbon emissions. 

But it has also reduced the air pollution that shields Earth from the full force of the Sun's rays.

Particle pollution from all sources dampens warming by about half-a-degree Celsius, which means -- at least in the short term -- more of that heat will reach the planet's surface as the air becomes cleaner. 

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth System Science Data, the new study is the first in a series of periodic assessments that will help fill the gaps between IPCC reports, released on average every six years since 1988.

- Deadly heat -

"An annual update of key indicators of global change is critical in helping the international community and countries to keep the urgency of addressing the climate change crisis at the top of the agenda," said co-author and scientist Maisa Rojas Corradi, who is also the environment minister of Chile.

Co-author Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a co-chair of the 2021 IPCC report, said the new data should be a "wake-up call" ahead of the COP28 summit, even if there is evidence that the increase in greenhouse gases has slowed.

"The pace and scale of climate action is not sufficient to limit the escalation of climate related risks," she said.

Researchers also reported a startling rise in temperature increases over land areas -- excluding oceans -- since 2000.

"Land average annual maximum temperatures have warmed by more than half a degree Celsius in the last ten years (1.72C above preindustrial conditions) compared to the first decade of the millennium (1.22C)," the study reported.

Longer and more intense heat waves will pose a life-and-death threat in the coming decades across large swathes of South and Southeast Asia, along with areas straddling the equator in Africa and Latin America, recent research has shown.

Speakers at a discussion today demanded forming national environment commission to face climate change impacts and protect environment.

They came up with the demand at a roundtable marking the World Environment Day 2023 at Jatiya Press Club in the city.

With the theme "BeatPlasticPollution, 'Ecosystem Restoration", World Environment Day is being observed today across the globe. Marking the day, Association of Development Agency in Bangladesh (ADAB) arranged the discussion.

NGO Affairs Bureau Director (additional secretary) Tapon Kumar Biswas, Jatiya Press Club Senior Vice-President and Forum of Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh (FEJB) General Secretary Hasan Hafiz, media researcher and writer Shamima Chowdhury, COAST Foundation Executive Director Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, ADAB Vice-Chairperson valiant freedom fighter Majeda Shawkat Ali addressed the roundtable, among others.

ADAB Chairperson Abdul Matin chaired it while its director AKM Jasim Uddin gave the welcome address.

The speakers said there is framework and time-befitting law in the country to face the impacts of climate change.

Proper implementation, application and coordination of the framework and laws are needed to prevent environment pollution and concerned efforts are needed for that, they said.

Scientists have succeeded in saving samples of ancient Arctic ice for analysis in a race against time before it melts away due to climate change, they said this week.

The eight French, Italian and Norwegian researchers camped in Norway's Svalbard archipelago in March and April, braving storms and mishaps to preserve crucial ice records that can be used to analyse what the Earth's climate looked like in the past and chart the devastating impact human activity is having on it now.

The Ice Memory Foundation team extracted three huge tubes of glacier ice on Svalbard. They, like others collected by the 20-year project launched in 2015, will be preserved for future scientific analysis at a research station in Antarctica.

Analysing chemicals in such deep "ice cores" provides valuable data about centuries of past climatic and environmental conditions, long after the original glacier has disappeared.

But it is a race to preserve this "ice memory". Experts warn that as global temperatures rise, meltwater is leaking into ancient ice and risks destroying the geochemical records it contains before scientists can collect the data.

When the Ice Memory team set up camp in March on Holtedahlfonna, one of the highest and most northerly glaciers in the Arctic, the first hitch was the weather.

Instead of the expected -25 degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Farenheit), fierce winds forced the temperature down to -40C, delaying drilling for several days.

Then, once they had bored a 24.5-metre (80-foot) hole in the ice, water from the melting glacier rushed into it.

Even though radar data collected since 2005 showed there was some meltwater inside the Holtedalhfonna glacier, "we did not expect to find such an extended, abundant and saturated aquifer in the selected drilling site, at the end of winter", explained Jean-Charles Gallet, snow physicist at the Norwegian Polar Institute and expedition coordinator.

"Glaciers are not only dramatically losing their mass but also their cold content."

- 'Dramatic climate change' -
Aquifers are underground reservoirs of freshwater or saltwater that permeate the ice crystals in glaciers and weaken them.

"Seeing all that water in the glacier gave us the clearest evidence yet of the effects that dramatic climate change is having in the Arctic," said Daniele Zannoni, a member of the team from the Ca' Foscari University in Venice.

Human-caused carbon emissions have warmed the planet by 1.15 degrees Celsius since industrialisation, powered by fossil fuels, began the 19th century. Studies indicate that the Arctic is warming between two and four times faster than the global average.

On Friday, the United Nations said the world's 40-odd "reference glaciers" -- those for which long-term observations exist -- are more than 26 metres thinner now on average than in 1970.

The pressure of the meltwater rushing into the Holtedalhfonna drill hole damaged two of the team's driller motors, forcing them to relocate to the summit of the Dovrebreen glacier, 13 metres higher up.

When drilling resumed, the researchers succeeded in extracting three ice cores 50-75 metres long. The strata and air bubbles trapped in these precious translucent cylinders, just a dozen centimetres in diameter, could contain up to 300 years of climate history.

- Race against time -
The race is on for glaciologists, who "are seeing their primary material disappear forever from the surface of the planet", Jerome Chappellaz, president of the Ice Memory foundation, told AFP on April 3.

"It is our responsibility as glaciologists of this generation to make sure a bit of it is preserved."

When the researchers had three ice samples, the temperature in Svalbard shot up to -3C, turning part of the route back to their base at the Ny-Alesund research station into a treacherous torrent of water.

Two of the ice cores made it to base but the third is still stuck at the drilling site, waiting for more clement weather to be shipped out.

In the meantime, Ice Memory has put out an international plea to other researchers.

"We do need (them)... rapidly to collect samples from endangered glaciers or to save... already collected ice cores, to preserve these very precious data in the Ice Memory sanctuary in Antarctica," said paleoclimatologist and Ice Memory vice-chair Carlo Barbante.

"If we lose archives like this, we will lose the memory of human alteration of the climate," stressed Ice Memory director Anne-Catherine Ohlmann.

"We will also lose crucial information for future scientists and policymakers, who will have to make decisions for the well-being of society."