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Russia

This Cigarette-Crazy Nation May Finally Get Public Smoking Ban

RIA NOVOSTI (Russia) KOMMERSANT (Russia)

Worldcrunch

MOSCOW - Smokers, so much for the wild East. The public smoking bans already in place in Western Europe look set to expand to Russia by 2015, RIA Novosti reports. The Russian Duma will be voting on new smoking legislation that includes restrictions on advertising and sales of cigarettes, as well as a general ban on smoking in public places.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is the proposed law’s biggest cheerleader. The Prime Minister has said that the total ban on smoking has already been instituted in the Russian White House, where his government is based, RIA Novosti reports.

Medvedev noted that there are slightly fewer smokers among the government than in the general population: One in five Duma members smokes. There are 44 million smokers in Russia, which is one third of the total Russian population, including children.

Russia has the highest percentage of smokers in the world, Kommersant reports. Not unsurprisingly, the president of the National Medical Association says the sooner smoking is banned in public places, the better.

But not everyone agrees: Lev Rubinshtein, a poet, says that if people perceive repression against smokers, they might pick up a cigarette as an act of protest, Kommersant reports.

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Economy

"Fox Guarding Henhouse" — Fury Over UAE Oil Sultan Heading COP Climate Talks

Even with months to go before the next COP, debate rages over who will chair it. Is it a miscalculation or a masterstroke to bring the head of an oil company to the table?

Participants of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin

Leaders, including Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and CEO of the National Oil Company, at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, held this May in Berlin.

© Imago via ZUMA Press
Ángela Sepúlveda

-Analysis-

The controversy has already begun ahead of the next COP climate conference in November. The 28th United Nations Conference on Climate Change will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's largest producers and exporters of oil.

Not only will the UAE host, but presiding over the conference will be Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and CEO of the National Oil Company (ADNOC).

“It's like a fox guarding the henhouse,” said Pedro Zorrilla, a spokesperson for Greenpeace Climate Change. Alongside 450 other international organizations, the NGO has signed a letter addressed to UN president António Guterres, calling for Al Jaber’s dismissal.

For the letter's signatories, the Sultan represents "a threat to the legitimacy and effectiveness" of the conference, they write. "If we have any hope of addressing the climate crisis, the COP must not be influenced by the fossil fuel industry, whether that be oil, gas or coal."

The figure of the presidency may only be symbolic, but Zorrilla points out that the president has decision-making power in this type of international meeting, where nations are expected to agree on concrete decisions to curb the climate emergency. "They are the ones who set the agenda."

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