World leaders must step into the ongoing UN climate change negotiations, to remove roadblocks and ensure their negotiating teams can lay the groundwork for an agreement at landmark talk in December, an influential group of former leaders has urged. The Elders – a group including former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, the Mozambican politician and widow of Nelson Mandela, and Mary Robinson, formerly president of Ireland and a UN high commissioner – made their call on Friday, as the latest round of pre-Paris negotiations ended with many key issues left open. --Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 4 September 2015
