Abigail Borah, Confronts Tod Stern at Climate Conference

1. America’s chief negotiator at the climate conference in Durban, South Africa Tod Stern, is backtracking on a position that has drawn sharp criticism from fellow envoys regarding the US timetable for future climate change talks. Denying that the US opposes any further action to address global climate change until after 2020, when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol talks expire.

Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old Middlebury College junior interrupted Todd Stern’s address to delegates, saying that she would speak for the United States because Mr Stern had forfeited the right to do so, writes the NYTimes

“I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot,” said Ms. Borah, who is attending the conference as a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement. “The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty.”

Putin Fingers Hillary

2. In an unusually aggressive move, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir V Putin has accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of instigating protests over last weekend’s election results, after she criticized the vote as “dishonest and unfair”.

“She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” Mr. Putin continued. “They heard the signal, and with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.” via NYTimes

Read earlier coverage of Russian election results.

Angelina Goes to War

Photograph by Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello for Newsweek3. Janine di Giovanni writes an intimately personal and sometimes reverential portrait of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut in ‘Blood and Honey’ about the war in Bosnia. In her own words:

As a journalist who lived through the siege of Sarajevo, I saw Muslims, Serbs, and Croats who had formerly lived side by side and been friends viciously turn on each other. I witnessed the ethnic cleansing, the burning of houses, the columns of refugees pouring from the country, and, once, a dog running down the street with a human hand in its mouth. I went to see Blood and Honey with an especially critical eye. I was on the lookout for inauthentic details, since other films I have seen about Bosnia left me irritated and annoyed: Why hadn’t the director done more research? Why couldn’t someone tell the true story of the brutal war in the heart of Europe at the end of the 20th century?

Angelina’s Shrinking Body

Reading escalating commentary about Angelina Jolie’s shrinking physical self, Anne sugeested that the actress was probably eating less and less because of her humanitarian work. This may be the case. Us Weekly (not the ultimate bastion of journalistic integrity) will write tomorrow that Angelina: