Summit Conferences

President Bush, under pressure from allies, Saturday agreed to host a summit of world leaders before leaving office, to work on responses to the global financial crisis, including more rigorous international oversight of markets. But Bush, flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso as he announced the meeting, emphasized his view that toughened financial regulations should respect free and open markets.

So many world leaders have converged on the United Nations over the last week that at one point billionaire Bill Gates was left cooling his heels on East 46th Street in a "pedestrian freeze" while a presidential motorcade whizzed the wrong way down 1st Avenue. The founder of Microsoft was on his way to a U.N. summit to donate $167.8 million to eradicate malaria. Which makes you wonder: Which president was that anyway?

Facing wide public indignation over Mexico's crime epidemic, President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed new steps to fight kidnapping and other violent offenses. He called for anti-abduction squads, special high-security prisons with separate areas for kidnappers, closer tracking of cellphones and more aid for local authorities. Calderon summoned governors and police officials from across Mexico to chart a way out of a crisis that has dominated the news and put the nation's leaders on the defensive.

As leaders of the world's major developed nations meet this week in a tranquil mountain resort in Japan, their gathering probably will be overshadowed by the turbulent global economy and deepening unrest over soaring oil and food prices. And the question on many minds is whether the Group of 8 leaders will be able to do anything about it. "This is going to be one of those events that shift people's thinking about the world," said Tim Condon, chief Asia economist for ING Financial Markets in Singapore.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe skipped a regional summit Saturday addressing the deepening crisis over the country's contentious presidential election, giving southern African leaders little chance to step up the pressure on him. The summit reflected Mugabe's growing isolation, as well as cracks in the usually uniform solidarity with him exhibited by the Southern African Development Community.

Finance officials from the world's top economic powers endorsed a plan Friday aimed at preventing another financial crisis like the credit and mortgage debacles that erupted in the United States and quickly sent tremors around the globe. "Rapid implementation" of the plan "will not only enhance the resilience of the global financial system for the longer term but should help to support confidence and improve the functioning of the markets," the Group of 7 officials said in a joint statement.

After two weeks of often rancorous negotiations here that resulted in a last-minute compromise to appease the United States, United Nations climate talks unexpectedly dissolved into turmoil today, reflecting the disarray in the global community about how to deal with rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived early today to help resolve the last-minute snags, which pushed the summit into an extended session.

The European Union threatened Thursday to boycott President Bush's climate summit in Hawaii next month if the United States didn't allow specific targets for carbon emission reduction to be included in a draft text being prepared at a summit here this week. The text is a "road map" for negotiations to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The latest draft calls for industrialized countries to reduce emissions 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The U.S.

Here's a recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming: 1. Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world. 2. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground. 3. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030.

The fight against global warming has given a new boost to a long-stymied environmental cause: saving the rain forests. Under a scenario that has gained widespread support, developing countries would be paid billions of dollars a year to not raze their trees. The money would come from rich industrial nations, which would pay to offset their voluminous greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.