AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIA
The Age, Melbourne, on greenhouse gases: Late this year, the people of the Carteret Islands gave up. Rising seas had turned their home, low-lying atolls off Papua New Guinea, into a salty and difficult place to live. The decision was made to move, 10 families at a time, to drier ground on nearby Bougainville.
These islanders were just one of nature's many victims in 2005. From creeping oceans to terrifying hurricanes, this was the year Mother Nature reminded us who has the upper hand.
While you can never categorically attribute one weather event to global warming - the system is too chaotic -- the events of this year revealed the human hand on the climate levers.
A new high
In 2005, research found that levels of carbon dioxide, the main global-warming gas, were higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. In Australia, it was the hottest year since records began. Signs of a warming world were everywhere: widespread coral bleaching in the Caribbean, Arctic sea ice shrinking to record-low levels; glaciers on Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet suddenly racing towards the sea and melting.
So what needs to be done? Another year has passed, and with it, 7.5 trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. The window of opportunity to turn around the slow-moving beast that is the climate system exists only for the next 10 years.
GREECE
Kathimerini, Athens, on alleged illegal interrogation of immigrants: The brewing controversy involving the alleged abduction and interrogation of five Pakistani immigrants living in Greece raises a number of crucial questions. The law, of course, gives the intelligence services the power to interrogate terrorism suspects. Nevertheless the authorities chose the illicit path in a way that does not appear to be an accident.
It seems that politicians are to blame but for more than just illicit actions by secret agents. Such practices are not exclusive to Greece's intelligence services. Under pressure to combat international terrorism, many European governments have yielded to the temptation of tolerating and in some cases giving the green light to dubious practices.
But the case in Greece has taken a farcical dimension. The climax was the publication on Sunday of the names of seven Greek intelligence agents who took part in the alleged abductions and interrogations. Even if it is proved that certain agents exceeded on orders from above the limits of their responsibility or that they broke the law, the publication of their names is still not warranted. This is especially the case when a probe has been launched into the case.