GASHUUNII KHOOLOI, Mongolia: Top Mongolian officials donned dark green baseball caps reading “Save our planet” and set up chairs and tables in the sands of the Gobi desert for a Cabinet meeting aimed at drawing attention to climate change.

The meeting of 12 government ministers was held in scorching heat in Gashuunii Khooloi, a sandy valley in South Gobi province, about 415 miles (670 kilometers) south of Ulan-Bator, the country’s capital.

The ministers, dressed in suits and ties, arrived in the desert in jeeps after a 15-hour journey. Officials planted a Mongolian flag in the ground, set up long tables and chairs in the fine, golden sand and discussed climate change against the backdrop of a vast expanse of desert and a bright blue sky.

“Mongolia is feeling the impact of global climate change,” Prime Minister Batbold Sukhbaatar said at the one-hour meeting.

Batbold pointed to the recent winter as an example of problems Mongolia faces. The winter was the harshest in decades and a fifth of the country’s livestock died.

The government blames global warming for a decrease in rainfall and says that rising average temperatures have caused many rivers and springs to dry up and snow cover to melt. It also says the frequency of natural disasters and drought has jumped.

The site for the meeting was chosen because parts of it used to be arable land, said Badarch, head of social policy for South Gobi province, who like some Mongolians uses only one name.

“Five years ago, there used to grow many edible plants in this valley and there were fewer sand dunes. Now look here,” he said. “The valley is completely covered with sand. The sand dunes are moving and taking more space each year.”

Minister of Natural Environment and Tourism Gansukh Luumed said Mongolian herders’ traditional way of life is under threat. “Global climate change accelerates the desertification process in Mongolia. Currently, 70 percent of Mongolian land is affected by desertification.”

In December, Nepalese officials held a Cabinet meeting at Mount Everest to highlight the danger global warming poses to glaciers. It followed an underwater Cabinet meeting in the Maldives in October to underline the threat of rising sea levels.

The government said it hoped that delegates attending global climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, in November would reach a decision that is “favorable for landlocked, developing countries … very much affected by climate change and desertification.”

SYDNEY: A French skyscraper climber nicknamed “Spiderman” was arrested Monday after scaling a 57-story building in Sydney with his bare hands.

Alain Robert, known for climbing some of the world’s tallest and best-known buildings without ropes or other equipment, was arrested at the top of the Lumiere building downtown.

He climbed the building in about 20 minutes, as dozens of people watched from below.

“I’m sad he’s been arrested, but hopefully he’ll get out soon and we can have some champagne,” said his agent, Max Markson.

He has not yet been charged. Last year, Robert was fined 750 Australian dollars ($676) for climbing the 41-story Royal Bank of Scotland building in Sydney.

Many of his past climbs have resulted in arrests and fines.

The 48-year-old has climbed more than 70 skyscrapers around the world, including the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, according to his website.

BEIJING: China gave Google Inc approval to keep operating its Chinese search page, resolving a months-long censorship dispute that had threatened its future in the world’s top Internet market.

The move, announced by Google on Friday, removes another thorn in U.S.-China relations and reflects Beijing’s desire to be seen as friendly to major foreign companies in spite of ideological differences, analysts said.

Shares of Google rose 2.4 percent as the news erased some concerns that China would eject the company for taking a hard line against Internet censorship. But analysts said Google’s position in China remained fragile and that the country likely would account for a fraction of Google’s revenue for some time.

“It’s good for Google that they still have some presence. But they’re clearly in a more compromised competitive position,” said Ryan Jacob of the Jacob Internet fund, which holds Google shares.

“Google is going to have a very difficult time gaining share, and will probably lose share over time.”

Google embarrassed China in January by drawing global attention to Beijing’s Internet censorship practices, a function of the government’s belief that keeping a tight grip on information helps it maintain control.

The Internet company also accused Chinese hackers of orchestrating a sophisticated cyber attack on Google and other major U.S. companies.

Google then declared that it was no longer willing to offer censored search results. This exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing, which were also sparring over China’s currency, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and Tibet.

Washington has forcefully argued against Internet censorship and demanded that Beijing investigate and explain the alleged cyber attacks.

Over the months, tensions between the two countries have eased. But analysts said that while the United States would likely welcome the Google agreement, deeper divisions over freedom of information, Internet policy and cyber security would likely continue.

Google said on Friday that China had renewed its webpage license, which means it can continue to run the Chinese language search site google.cn.

Last week, Google offered Beijing a face-saving compromise: it stopped automatically rerouting google.cn to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Now, visitors to google.cn must click once to go to the Hong Kong page.

BERLIN: Octopus oracle Paul predicts Spain will beat Holland and win the World Cup.

Paul’s pick was carried live Friday on TV stations around Europe. The world-famous octopus could be seen sitting on a tank marked with a Spanish flag for only a few minutes before grabbing out a mussel and devouring it, while completely ignoring the Dutch tank — indicating a Spanish victory in Sunday’s final match in the World Cup.

Paul correctly predicted Germany’s wins over Argentina, England, Australia and Ghana and the country’s loss to Spain and Serbia.

He also predicted that Germany will win over Uruguay in Saturday’s match for third and fourth place.

BERLIN: Prescient Paul, the octopus oracle who has correctly predicted the outcome of every World Cup match played by Germany, is branching out and will weigh in on the final between Spain and the Netherlands.

The Oberhausen Sea Life Aquarium confirmed Thursday that Paul will cast his suction-cupped arms wider in his next prognostication and for the first time pick a game in which his home country is not involved.

Aquarium spokeswoman Tanja Munzig says the floppy football fan will make his choice on the Germany-Uruguay match Friday morning, then pick the winner of Sunday’s final in Johannesburg.

He had been Germany’s media darling through the World Cup until he correctly picked Spain to defeat Germany Wednesday night. Most Germans now envision him fried in garlic butter.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah courts have appointed their first female judges — a move praised by women’s rights activists Thursday as a boost for a judicial system often accused of favoring men.

Suraya Ramli and Rafidah Abdul Razak, formerly officials at the government’s Islamic judicial department, were named Shariah court judges for Kuala Lumpur and the administrative capital of Putrajaya in May, but the appointment was only announced in the past week by Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Najib said the step was meant to “enhance justice in cases involving families and women’s rights” in Malaysia, where nearly two-thirds of the country’s 28 million people are Muslims.

Women have long complained they face discrimination in cases involving divorce, child custody rights, inheritance, polygamy and other disputes in Islamic courts, which handle matters involving family and morality for Malaysian Muslims.

Rights activists have said they receive hundreds of complaints each year from women because Shariah courts are slow to penalize ex-husbands who fail to pay child support. Men are also known to find it relatively easy to divorce their wives while taking a greater share of the couple’s property.

Norhayati Kaprawi, a prominent Malaysian Muslim women’s activist, said the appointments were long overdue.

“What they must focus on is ensuring that they deliver justice and take into consideration … the realities of Muslim women’s lives,” Norhayati said.

Meera Samanther, president of Malaysian group Women’s Aid Organization, said fair representation within the justice system was “a necessity.”

Suraya, 31, could not immediately be contacted Thursday, and Rafidah, 39, declined to immediately comment. Court officials could not be reached to elaborate on what cases the judges have handled so far.

Female judges are common in Malaysia’s secular courts, though most top posts are held by men.

PAYERNE, Switzerland: A solar powered aircraft was flying in circles high over Switzerland at first light on Thursday, well on its way to completing a historic round the clock flight, the crew said.

Solar Impulse is attempting to make the first such flight on purely solar energy, defying the hours of darkness to keep aloft for more than 24 hours.

Applause and cheers broke out at mission control at Payerne airbase in western Switzerland as dawn broke at 5.43 am (0343 GMT) with the experimental plane still in the air.

“It’s the first time ever that a solar airplane has flown through the night,” said team chief Bertrand Piccard.

The experimental aircraft was likely to land at Payerne at about 8.30 am (0630 GMT).

Flight director Claude Nicollier said at the mission control centre at Payerne airbase that the flight had gone well overnight as pilot Andre Borschberg guided the experimental aircraft towards a landing after dawn.

“It went better than that,” Nicollier said.

The plane emerged from pioneering hours in the night running only on the earlier 14 hour daytime charge its batteries took from its array of 12,000 solar cells on wings the size of an airliner’s.

“It’s a super flight, better than nominal,” added Nicollier, a former space shuttle astronaut.

Nicollier said 57-year-old Borschberg was “very positive” after more than 22 hours in the air in the single seater, having been forced to stay alert for the full period.

“He is in very good spirits physically and mentally,” said Nicollier.

The high-tech single-seater aircraft took off on the historic attempt in the early hours (0451 GMT) of Wednesday.

The controllers decided as darkness fell later in the day to press on with the night flight, despite fears that a sudden burst of strong high altitude wings at dusk had deprived Solar Impulse of some of the stored energy to last the night.

WASHINGTON: Americans are increasingly obsessed with Facebook and many young women check their page even before using the bathroom in the morning, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

Thirty-four percent of the women aged 18 to 34 surveyed by Lightspeed Research for Oxygen Media said checking Facebook was the first thing they did in the morning, even before washing their face or brushing their teeth.

Twenty-percent admitted they sneak a peek at Facebook during the night while 26 percent said they get up in the middle of the night to read text messages.

Thirty-nine percent of the 1,605 social media users aged 18 to 54 surveyed for Oxygen Media, a service of entertainment giant NBC Universal, in May and June described themselves as “Facebook addicts.”

Fifty-seven percent of the women aged 18 to 34 said they talk to people online more than face-to-face and 31 percent said they feel more confident about their online persona than their real life one.

Sixty-three percent of the young women said they use Facebook as a career networking tool, but 42 percent said they did not think there was anything wrong with posting photos of themselves visibly intoxicated.

Forty-eight percent of the young women said they find out about news through Facebook while 41 percent said they use Twitter to keep up to date.

Fifty percent of single women aged 18 to 34 said it’s okay to meet and date other singles they meet through Facebook compared with 65 percent of single men.

Six percent of the young single women use it as a way to “hook up” as opposed to 20 percent of men.

Men aged 18 to 34 are also more likely than female counterparts to break up using Facebook — 24 percent for men compared with nine percent for women, the survey found.

InsideFacebook.com, a site dedicated to the social network, said meanwhile that Facebook’s growth slowed in the United States in June as it picked up only 320,800 new monthly active users last month compared with 7.8 million in May.

Inside Facebook said the slowdown in growth could “simply be a blip.”

“But in the years we’ve been tracking the demographic data, we’ve rarely seen a dip like this, so we would tend to favor the idea of a root cause,” it said.

“One possibility is that we’re finally seeing the backlash from heavy media attention to Facebook privacy issues — some of which were real, some the result of confusion and sensationalism,” it added.

CHENGDU: Yang Gangkun calls out to two pandas lying on their backs chewing bamboo. They push themselves up and slowly amble over for their morning workout in a breeding centre in southwest China.

The 24-year-old is a panda keeper at the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan province — which will soon offer contestants from around the world a chance to help look after the endangered animals for a month.

As Yang dangles an apple fixed to a rod over the wall of their enclosure, Jing Jing and Xiao Yatou stand up on their hind legs and reach awkwardly for the treat with their big paws — an exercise aimed at bulking them up.

“The best is when you’re on duty and you walk on the partition between enclosures,” says Yang, after the eight pandas he cares for with 14 other keepers have retired to their indoor air-conditioned pens.

“When it sees you, the panda runs over. When you run, it follows and runs too. It’s like it’s studying the way you are, it’s great.”

Officials at the base are planning to give animal lovers from around the world the opportunity to sample Yang’s job by launching a global search for six panda keepers as part of an awareness campaign on the plight of the animals.

Organisers say that from August, they will be looking for “bright, articulate and engaging individuals from China and around the world, who care deeply about conservation issues” to spend one month in Chengdu.

The winners will “learn how unique these animals truly are, assist researchers and scientists there, and help raise awareness by blogging to millions of people around the world about their experience,” organisers note.

Full details of the competition and how to enter are yet to be released.

Yang, who recently graduated in veterinary studies, secured his position a few months ago and has been working flat out since then in a job deemed crucial to the survival of pandas, of which there are just 1,600 left in the wild.

He gets up at 6:30 every morning to get to the base outside Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital, on time. Once there, he feeds the pandas he looks after, cleans their enclosures and makes them work out.

Twice a week, Yang has to stay overnight with the pandas, sleeping near the enclosures to make sure nothing happens to them — all for a monthly base salary of just 1,000 yuan (150 dollars).

Huang Xiangming, head of the animal management department at the base, says that when it first opened in 1987, the centre only had six pandas, rescued starving from the wild. It now counts 84 permanent residents.

He says panda keepers are especially needed at times of mating in spring and birthing, which starts during the summer. These rituals are vital, as the animals’ notoriously low libido has frustrated efforts to boost their numbers.

“We barely rest during these two important times. Our workers just throw themselves into looking after the pandas,” Huang said.

“They make such great efforts — some even postpone their weddings.”

Nearly 300 pandas have been bred in captivity in various centres in China, and researchers are now looking at ways to send captive-bred pandas into the wild to boost the number of animals roaming free.

The difficult task got off to an inauspicious start when Xiang Xiang, a male cub, was trained to adapt to the wild and released into nature in 2006. He was found dead 10 months later, apparently killed by wild pandas.

China has started construction on a centre that will help captive pandas adapt to the wild, and researchers also plan to send pregnant pandas into the semi-wilderness in an effort to introduce their cubs to a natural environment.

“We spent the last 50 years saving the giant panda. We are going to spend the next 50 years helping them re-adapt to living in the wild,” said the base’s director-general, Zhang Zhihe.

The six lucky amateur panda keepers might get to interact with some of the stars of the base, such as Mei Lan, the three-year-old who was born in Atlanta in the United States and returned to China earlier this year.

Under agreements between Beijing and Washington, any offspring of pandas on loan to the United States must be returned to China within two to three years of their birth.

Chen Min, Mei Lan’s keeper, was tasked with calming down the recent arrival, who took some time to adapt to her new Chinese environment, and she says the female panda still has a temper.

“Sometimes, if she doesn’t do her exercise well, we won’t give her an apple and she gets very angry. She’ll just ignore you and go to sleep,” she says with a smile.

But for Chen, who has been at the centre for over a decade, it’s all worth it.

“When I first arrived, there were relatively few pandas. Now there are a lot, and you can say it’s partly thanks to our contribution.”

NEW YORK: The US government is launching a program nicknamed “Perfect Citizen” to detect cyber assaults on private U.S. companies and government agencies running critical infrastructure, the Wall Street Journal said in its online edition.

The surveillance by the National Security Agency would rely on sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid or nuclear power plants that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, the unnamed sources told the newspaper.

Defense contractor Raytheon Co recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million, a person familiar with the project told the Journal.

A National Security Agency spokeswoman declined to provide comment to Reuters on the report and representatives of the Department of Homeland Security and Raytheon did not immediately return requests for comment.