The Swedish government wants next week’s European Council to pledge to pay out billions of euros to help poorer countries cope with the effects of climate change.

Senior advisers to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt have begun a round of bilateral discussions with other EU member states to seek promises of money from 2010. Today (3 December) EU ambassadors will begin their first round of negotiations on how much the EU should pledge in ‘fast-start’ finance to the least-developed countries.

Paying a fair share

In October, EU leaders promised to pay their “fair share” of the international climate finance bill, estimating the need for upfront cash to be €5 billion-€7bn per year in 2010-12. The European Commission estimates that the EU could contribute around one-third of this total. The UK has promised £800 million (€884m) for 2010-12. The Netherlands is ready to give €300m. The German government is still discussing a possible pledge.

Last month the UN’s top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, urged rich countries to pledge $10bn (€6.64bn) per year for three years to kick-start immediate action in developing countries.

A first draft of next week’s EU summit communiqué states: “The Copenhagen agreement should include provisions on immediate action after Copenhagen starting in 2010 and acknowledges that this requires scaled-up financial support.” The draft contains a space to insert a figure on finance over 2010-12.

Eventually, developing countries will need billions of euros to adapt to unavoidable climate change and to get their economies on a green path. European leaders have agreed that the total bill could run to €100bn annually by 2020, with money to come from public and private sources. But at this stage EU leaders are not expected to spell out more details on their possible longer-term contribution.

EU officials have largely given up hope of Copenhagen delivering a legally binding agreement, but the European Council is expected to call for a legal text to be drawn up within six months of the Danish talks.

Fact File

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For two decades, the western Balkans has been a real-life testing ground of the foreign policy of the European Union. While nobody wanted it that way, the EU’s common foreign and security policy was born in the context of the Balkan wars in the 1990s. Since then, the Balkans has been the frontier for the EU’s evolving foreign policy.

It was a difficult birth, and we learned hard lessons. As a result, we are today more capable of working for peace and stability.

In recent years, the European perspective has helped stabilise the western Balkans. The prospect of and conditions for joining the EU have driven democratic and economic reforms forward.

Croatia is nearing the finishing line, after four years of negotiations. We have free-trade arrangements in place with the rest of the western Balkans – the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo. We are also working to extend visa-free travel next January to the countries that have met the EU’s conditions, especially the issuing of biometric passports.

Still, this progress remains fragile. Despite relative political stability in the region, there is no ‘end of history’ in sight. We cannot afford to lull ourselves into complacency when facing dangerous political minefields in the western Balkans, either in the form of bilateral problems between certain countries, or domestic stalemates in others.

Therefore, we must continue what I would call a policy of political de-mining in the western Balkans. That means tackling these problems one by one, by combining the EU’s soft power and classical tools of diplomacy.

We have seen some successes, such as the recent agreement on arbitration to solve the border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, which was signed in Stockholm on 4 November. This enabled us to unblock and resume Croatia’s accession talks after a long break.

Next, we want to see progress on the name issue of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The country is a positive example of the EU’s gravitational pull and has performed impressively in EU-related reforms after years of stagnation. This enabled the European Commission last month to recommend opening accession negotiations with the country.

The governments in both Skopje and Athens have a fresh and strong mandate and have started to engage in serious talks. There should now be a real chance to settle this difficult bilateral issue, which has hampered progress in that corner of the region for 18 years.

Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains in a self-inflicted political stalemate that has dragged it backwards recently. In October, together with Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, I met the leaders of the country on two occasions in Camp Butmir in Sarajevo to try to unblock the stalemate.

Bosnia and Herzegovina risks being left permanently behind the other countries of the region in EU and NATO integration. We offered its leaders a package of measures – including constitutional changes – that would jump-start the country’s EU and NATO integration.

I hope, for the sake of their citizens and the western Balkans as a whole, that the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina will commit themselves to a compromise that will help the country move forward. This is the last chance for the present generation of political leaders to bring the country into the European mainstream, which is deeply wanted by its citizens.

Our policy of stabilisation – sometimes also called enlargement – in the western Balkans has wider implications for the EU’s foreign policy and its global role. We must learn from our experience there and apply these lessons when developing a more robust and effective foreign policy.

With the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty soon, we stand before a historic opportunity to move the EU’s foreign policy and global role to a new level.

The EU’s credibility as a global actor continues to rest on our ability to shape our own immediate neighbourhood. In south-eastern Europe we can make a real difference. This is where the EU’s common foreign and security policy has proven its value.

Olli Rehn is the European commissioner for enlargement.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Under investigation for sexual misconduct, freshman U.S. Rep. Katie Hill is set to resign, she announced Sunday. Her downfall has been swift.

She began the month a rising star in the Democratic party, but this week the House Ethics Committee announced it would investigate allegations that the congresswoman from Santa Clarita had a sexual affair with congressional aide in violation of House rules. She denied the allegation, but the scandal has been fueled by an ongoing series of sordid revelations.

“It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community, and our country,” Hill wrote in a letter to constituents Sunday that was also posted on her Facebook page.

“This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation. Having private photos of personal moments weaponized against me has been an appalling invasion of my privacy. It’s also illegal, and we are currently pursuing all of our available legal options.”

Hill is in the midst of a messy divorce, and the conservative publication RedState.com published a series of articles including intimate texts and a nude photo that appear show that Hill and her husband had a longstanding sexual relationship with a 24-year-old female campaign staffer. Hill acknowledged that affair and apologized to her constituents for her poor judgement Wednesday.

In a letter sent to her constituents, she acknowledged having a relationship with a campaign staffer. The first openly bisexual congresswoman from California, Hill and her husband dated a woman who worked on her campaign, according to texts and graphic photos provided to RedState.com. The outlet published a nude photo of the Congresswoman in a series of articles accusing Hill of sexual impropriety.

In a letter, Hill apologized to voters for the relationship with the campaign staffer.

“During the final tumultuous years of my abusive marriage, I became involved in a relationship with someone on my campaign,” Hill’s letter said. “I know that even a consensual relationship with a subordinate is inappropriate, but I still allowed it to happen despite my better judgment.”

Hill also said she had contacted U.S. Capitol Police after intimate photos of her and another person were published by RedState, images she said were “published by Republican operatives on the internet without my consent.”

But that hardly quelled her critics.

It’s an alleged affair with her Congressional legislative director Graham Kelly that has her in the hot seat. According to the New York Post, Hill paid Kelly ran election bonus in April of $5,100 — nearly twice the amount other campaign staffers received.

Hill has repeatedly denied the affair, blaming the allegation on a smear campaign by her Republican opponents and an abusive husband.

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“Allegations that I have been involved in a relationship with Mr. Kelly are absolutely false,” Hill wrote.

Rarely has a congresswoman been investigated for alleged sexual impropriety. It’s a case that tested the Democratic Party’s leadership, which has taken a strict stance against sexual misconduct since the MeToo movement began.

The House voted in 2018 to prohibit sexual relationships between lawmakers and their employees.

Hill defeated then-Rep. Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, in November to represent the 25th Congressional District, which includes Santa Clarita Valley and portions of the northern San Fernando Valley, Antelope Valley and eastern Ventura County. Since then, Hill had been viewed as a rising star among Democrats and a prime target of Republicans, who see winning back her seat as a part of the path back to power in the House.

City News Service contributed to this report.

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I recently joined a few homeschooler and alternative education forums, and there’s a term getting thrown around that I was not too familiar with known as “unschooling.” So, naturally, I decided to investigate.

Luckily, homeschool/unschool consultant and advocate Jenni Mahnaz explained it to me. “Unschooling is a trust-based educational model that relies on trust in the child/learner to be naturally curious and to guide their own learning,” she says. “It’s the way humans learn naturally, and always have.”

Essentially, kids are taken out of the traditional classroom environment and instead learn from being out in the world. It sounds like a dream come true for any child — and I’m sure the majority of working adults would love it too! (That’s probably why I left corporate America to become a freelancer, but this is not about me. Back to our kids!)

Mom Lindsey explains, “It’s homeschooling for the crunchy crowd. It’s child-led and no curriculum. Less structure than homeschooling.”

I’m not stereotypically crunchy, but some things about unschooling are appealing. I would like my 4-year-old to learn from his own interests and — call me crazy — lead his own life, instead of always being told what to do and learn. I think this is how he will figure out who he is and the person he wants to be over time. Why should he wait until the age of 35 like I did?

At the same time, we let our child play hooky from his preschool today because he didn’t feel like going this morning. He then had a tantrum when I tried to get him to put on his clothes and get into a car to go food shopping. I’m not sure I could handle all this self-directed living every day.

When I complained to Mahnaz about our morning, she said, “Sometimes I let my kids dictate when and how they leave the house. Why not? I do it for myself all the time. When I can/need to, I offer the same to them. When I can’t, I empathize and do my best to offer an alternative focus.”

Mom Christina allows for self-directed learning in her house and at a self-directed learning center. “I don’t like the term unschooling, but I suppose that’s what we’re doing,” she says. “I don’t see any reason to rush into a curriculum. Evidence suggests that starting math or reading earlier doesn’t yield lasting advantages. And teaching concepts before developmentally appropriate for an individual may lead to lifelong loathing/avoidance of a subject, like those that say ‘I’m not a reader’ or ‘I’m bad at math.’ They may not have been allowed to approach reading and math on their own terms in a way that worked for them.”

She continues, “The things I want my young people to learn most are creative problem solving, collaboration and compassion. The latter two, I believe, are nurtured by time spent with a variety of people for prolonged periods facilitated by experts in respectful communication. That’s why we chose a self-directed learning center two days a week.”

When talking about this idea with one mom friend she was concerned her child would choose to just watch TV and play video games all day if he could. I’m sure mine would too, especially after our TV detox!

Unsurprisingly, this is a big concern when it comes to unschooling. Mahnaz says, “Every family handles this differently. Radical unschoolers would say, ‘So what? If learning happens all the time then learning happens while video games are played. If we restrict it, it will just become more of an obsession.’ Less radical unschoolers might say, ‘Let’s compromise in a way that feels good to all of us.'”

Mahnaz explains that unschooling is about a partnership with the child(ren) so there is no one size fits all answer on this. “The key, however, is the mindset in which the challenge is approached. Unschoolers would not generally say, ‘Turn it off because I said so,’ because that’s not partnership, that’s control.”

Agile Learning Centers, if you can find one near you, allow kids to direct their own education, but might offer more of a compromise for parents who don’t want their children to learn entirely at home.

Development Psychologist Peter Gray is a leader in the unschooling field, and I’ve been enjoying his book, “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.”

He writes,”Children are biologically predisposed to take charge of their own education. When they are provided with the freedom and means to pursue their own interests, in safe settings, they bloom and develop along diverse and unpredictable paths, and they acquire the skills and confidence required to meet life’s challenges.”

He goes on, “There is no need for forced lessons, lectures, assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age into classrooms or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system of schooling. All of these, in fact, interfere with children’s natural way of learning.”

Unschooling might be the hippie version of homeschooling, where we allow our kids to lead their own learning. It might seem outrageous to some parents, but it’s something that seems natural to me and something I will explore.

Of course, I will also have to figure out a way to unschool while still getting my child out the door with shirts and pants on. But those are just minor details that shouldn’t phase any cool and unschooled household, right?

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High school baseball rules now will require a pitching restriction policy based on the number of pitches thrown in a game.

The revised pitching policy in Rule 6-2-6 was one of six rules changes approved by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Baseball Rules Committee at its June 5-7 meeting in Indianapolis. The rules changes were subsequently approved by the NFHS Board of Directors.

Each NFHS member state association will be required to develop its own pitching restriction policy based on the number of pitches thrown during a game to afford pitchers a required rest period between pitching appearances.

“We’re pleased that the rules committee worked in conjunction with the NFHS Sports Medicine Advisory Committee to find an acceptable and reasonable modification to this rule in order to emphasis the risk that occurs when pitchers overuse their throwing arm,” said Elliot Hopkins, NFHS director of sports and student services and staff liaison for baseball.

The Baseball Rules Committee also revised Rule 2-32-2 regarding sliding into home plate. The revised language states: “At home plate, it is permissible for the slider’s momentum to carry him through the plate in the baseline extended.” The committee altered this rule since the physical design of home plate makes it difficult for a runner to break momentum on a slide – as opposed to the other three elevated bases which are elevated. 

The committee also revised Rule 3-3-1, which states the umpire has the ability to give three warnings to a coach or player before he or she is removed from the game.

“Officials now have the opportunity to provide a tiered warning system for coaches or players,” Hopkins said. “It provides the coaches or players with a teachable moment to change their unsportsmanlike behavior in order to stay in the game.”

A new article 6 was added to Rule 8-3 to provide a rules reference for an existing ruling in the Baseball Case Book. The new article reads: “When a plate umpire hinders, impedes or prevents a catcher’s throw attempting to prevent a stolen base or retire a runner on a pickoff play, if an out is not made at the end of the catcher’s initial throw, the ball shall be dead and all runners shall return to the bases occupied at the time of the interference.”

The rules committee also approved an addition to Rule 8-4-2, which states that any runner is out when he is physically assisted by a coach. This rule change supports a revision in Rule 3-2-2 Penalty, which states that the runner shall be called out immediately when he is physically assisted by a coach.

A complete listing of the baseball rules changes will be available on the NFHS website at www.nfhs.org. Click on “Activities & Sports” at the top of the home page, and select “Baseball.”

According to the 2015-16 NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey, there are 486,567 boys participating in baseball at 15,899 schools across the country, and 1,203 girls playing the sport in 260 schools.