Free Republic

The Kyoto Protocol committee has blocked Romania from selling carbon credits over concerns about irregularities in the country's carbon emissions data, Romania's environment ministry said Sunday. In December, Romanian Environment Minister Laszlo Borbely said the country hoped to earn some 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion) from selling carbon offsets. But the committee that monitors Kyoto Protocol compliance decided to suspend Romania from the programme due to "irregularities observed" in Bucharest's 2010 greenhouse gas emissions data, the environment ministry statement said. The suspension has immediate affect, and Bucharest must put in place an "adequate" system for monitoring emissions before it can...

WASHINGTON -- A group of pro-American intellectuals and former policy makers from former Soviet bloc countries have written an open letter to the Obama administration urging it to significantly strengthen its diplomatic and security ties with the region. The signatories warn that the post-Cold War alliances with the United States that helped usher in democracy and bring the region into trans-Atlantic security agreements are in danger of slipping away. The letter was published in the Polish daily "Gazeta Wyborcza" on July 16 and signed by 22 prominent thinkers and ex-foreign ministers, prime ministers, and presidents from Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech...