On the more cheerful side...

[heliopausa]

Life is getting busier and busier in the streets around me - everyone's gearing up for Tet, with frantic cleaning and gift-buying and planning to get back home (wherever home is).  Last weekend, though,

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[heliopausa]

The newspaper article I linked to shows lots of different local waterways, rivers and lakes - all of which were benefitting from the drive to cut down on plastic bags, of course. :)

The report is relatively brief and clear (i.e. for that sort of report!) and spells out the remaining political/diplomatic problems as well as the process used so far. I really liked how it highlighted the human side of international negotiations, as well as showing the political hurdles - for example the part about bringing critics in as facilitators of discussions, and even the part about providing "decent food" as contributing to the overall positive atmosphere - sounds absurd, but I can see very well (speaking as a vegetarian who has oh-so-often found herself looking glumly at just the salad bar, no hot food, and half the salads being scattered with bacon anyway!) how a constant niggling sense of injustice about food could bring down a conference. (We can assume all the negotiators are much more mature and less greedy than I am, of course, but even so...)