The New York Times reports: "The Chinese Ministry of Defense confirmed that the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, had failed to conclude a joint declaration, and it blamed 'the individual country (countries) out of the region.' In a statement on its website, the ministry implied, but did not name, the United States as the main reason for the breakdown in the discussions...The meeting was split between countries that agreed with China and those that strongly disagreed, including Australia, Japan and the United States, two senior diplomats involved in the talks said."
Bloomberg News reports: "The leaders of China and Taiwan plan to meet Saturday for the first time since their civil war seven decades ago, shaking up the island's politics two months before an election that could lift the opposition to power...The tete-a-tete, which Ma was seeking before he leaves office next year, ensures the politically divisive China issue remains at the center of Taiwan's presidential election. The meeting will appeal to those who see greater reconciliation with Asia's largest economy as necessary or inevitable, but it also risks driving some voters closer to opposition leader, Tsai Ing-wen, whose party officially supports independence.'This is a major, major breakthrough in cross-strait relations,' said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The meeting will be largely symbolic, an opportunity for Ma to leave his mark on history, Li said. Both sides said no new deals were expected from the encounter."
The New York Times reports: '"This will have a big impact, because China has been burning so much more coal than we believed,' Mr. Yang said. 'It turns out that it was an even bigger emitter than we imagined. This helps to explain why China's air quality is so poor, and that will make it easier to get national leaders to take this seriously.' The new data, which appeared recently in an energy statistics yearbook published without fanfare by China's statistical agency, show that coal consumption has been underestimated since 2000, and particularly in recent years. The revisions were based on a census of the economy in 2013 that exposed gaps in data collection, especially from small companies and factories."