The News in 2 Minutes

From The Associated Press

UN conference adopts global warming pact

BALI, Indonesia—Two weeks of international climate talks marked by bitter disagreements and angry accusations culminated Saturday in a last-minute U.S. compromise and an agreement to adopt a blueprint for fighting global warming by 2009.

Now comes the hard part.

Delegates from nearly 190 nations must fix goals for industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while helping developing countries cut their own emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.

Negotiators also will consider ways to encourage developing countries to protect their rapidly dwindling forests — which absorb carbon dioxide.

“This is the beginning, not the end,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told The Associated Press following the contentious climate conference, which stretched into an extra day. “We will have to engage in more complex, long and difficult negotiations.”

Those gathering on the resort island of Bali were charged with launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Fed planning to crack down on shady mortgage lenders

WASHINGTON, D.C. — People taking out home mortgages may gain new protections soon against shady lending practices as the Federal Reserve seeks to back even the riskiest borrowers, already hit hardest by the housing and credit crunches.

Rules expected to be proposed Tuesday would apply to loans made by all types of lenders, including banks and brokers. The plan from the Fed, which has regulatory powers over the nation’s financial system, could be finalized next year. The effective date would be know then.

The Fed is considering:

â

Barring lenders from penalizing subprime borrowers — those with spotty credit or low incomes — who pay their loans off early.

Forcing lenders to make sure that borrowers, especially subprime borrowers, set aside money to pay for taxes and insurance.

Restricting loans that do not require proof of a borrower’s income.

Examining lenders’ failure, in some cases, to consider a borrower’s ability to repay a home loan.

Improving financial disclosure so people better understand the terms and conditions of their mortgages and get this information when it is most useful.

Curtailing abuses in mortgage advertising.

Musharraf says Pakistan saved from destruction

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ?—President Pervez Musharraf lifted a six-week-old state of emergency Saturday, telling a skeptical nation the crackdown was to save Pakistan from a conspiracy rather than ensure his own political survival.

But Musharraf also made clear he would keep a tight lid on dissent, entrenching limits he imposed under the emergency including strict curbs on press freedom and the replacement of independent-minded judges with jurists friendlier to the U.S.-backed leader. Opponents have said the changes set the stage for national elections next month to be rigged, and have threatened to hold mass demonstrations.

Musharraf said in a nationally televised speech that the emergency helped slow the spread of Islamic militancy but the country still faces a “grave situation” with the approach of Jan. 8 parliamentary elections that will determine who will form the next government.

He said unnamed conspirators had hatched a plot with members of the judiciary to derail the country’s transition to democracy, and he warned political parties to avoid stirring up trouble.

Tuesday hearing set on employer sanctions law

PHOENIX ?—A federal judge says he’ll rule quickly on a request to at least temporarily block implementation of Arizona’s new law to suspend or revoke licenses of businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

U.S. District Neil Wake scheduled a hearing next Tuesday on the challengers’ request for a temporary restraining order and also to set a “prompt and fair schedule” for a longer injunction that the challengers also want.

But Wake also said his decision on the request for a temporary order may be influenced by the challengers’ tardiness in adding the state’s 15 county attorneys to the lawsuit.

Wake last Friday dismissed the original lawsuit because it didn’t name the county attorneys as defendants as well as state officials. The challengers refiled the lawsuit Sunday to add the county attorneys.