EU leaders meeting in Brussels are under pressure to give the UN climate talks in Copenhagen a firm signal of their commitment to tackling global warming.

The EU sees itself as a world leader in this area, having pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

A higher target of 30% has been suggested – but only if similar pledges are made by other industrialised powers.

Sweden, chairing its last EU summit, has dismissed speculation that the EU could offer 30% as an incentive to get a really ambitious global deal at Copenhagen.

In the current turbulent economic conditions the 30% figure is widely seen as over-optimistic.

Elusive target

The environmental group WWF wants the EU leaders to commit to “at least 30%”.

But in an open letter to Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, the powerful lobby group Business Europe, representing major industrial concerns, urged the EU not to go above 20%.

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And Poland’s EU Affairs Minister, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, has said the EU must not go above 20% without an “impact assessment”.

The EU summit conclusions on Friday are unlikely to call for a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen – something that was long touted as a goal but is now looking increasingly remote.

Now, the EU is talking about achieving a global climate agreement by mid-2010. It will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

But Sweden is reported to be pushing for a target figure that the EU might offer as a boost to the Copenhagen talks.

So the discussions over dinner on Thursday are expected to focus on the EU’s “fast start” contribution – that is, early funding to help the world’s poorest countries adapt to climate change.

At their October summit, the EU leaders acknowledged that global financing of about 5-7bn euros (£4.5-6.4bn) annually would be needed in 2010-2013 to launch climate adaptation projects in the developing world.

Inevitably Europe’s struggle to deal with high unemployment and economic stagnation colours the climate debate.

But at least the EU does not have to engage in more haggling over the Lisbon Treaty.

The Bank of England stuck to its plan to buy as much as 200 billion pounds ($326 billion) in bonds as officials seek to ensure the economy’s escape from the longest recession on record.

The Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mervyn King, kept the target for its asset-purchase program unchanged today, as predicted by all 38 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The central bank also held the bank rate at a record low of 0.5 percent, according to a statement in London.

Policy makers said last month that the most “natural” time to assess the so-called quantitative easing program again will be in February, when they will have more evidence of the economic pickup and new forecasts. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said today he wants to keep up support for the economy until a recovery is secured.

“They should do more quantitative easing, but they probably won’t,” said Alan Clarke, an economist at BNP Paribas in London. “They’ll probably pause. The first interest rate hike is a long, long way off.”

The pound rose against after the decision. Sterling was up 0.5 percent against the dollar on the day, trading at $1.6288 as of 12:29 p.m. in London. The yield on the 2-year gilt climbed 6 basis points to 1.166 percent.

Rate Survey

The bank’s decision to keep the interest rate unchanged was predicted by all 53 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Iceland’s central bank cut the main interest rate by 1 percentage point to 10 percent today. The Swiss National Bank left its benchmark, the three-month Libor target, at 0.25 percent, while taking its first step to exit emergency measures by stopping purchases of corporate bonds.

King said last month he has an “open mind” on whether to do further bond purchases as he weighs the risk that withdrawing stimulus too soon will jeopardize the recovery. The Bank of England has now spent more than 187 billion pounds of newly created money on bonds. The bulk of its purchases have been in gilts, with corporate securities accounting for the rest.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is trying to cement the economy’s recovery in time to win the next election, due by June next year. Britain’s opposition Conservative Party had support from 38 percent of voters, compared with 30 percent for the ruling Labour Party, a Populus opinion poll for the London-based Times showed this week.

State governments are collecting record revenues from tobacco companies but spending less and less of it on antismoking programs, especially in New York, a group of health and advocacy organizations said in a report released Wednesday.

In the report, titled “A Broken Promise to Our Children,” the organizations said state governments had reduced spending by 15 percent, to $567 million, for smoking prevention and cessation programs in the fiscal year that ended in September.

State spending on antismoking programs accounted for only 2.3 percent of the more than $25 billion that states are expected to collect from tobacco taxes and payouts from the $246 billion settlement that states reached with tobacco companies in 1998, the groups said in their 11th annual report since the settlement.

“It’s a travesty that only a small fraction of tobacco settlement funds is actually being used to support tobacco prevention programs in states,” Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association — one of the groups behind the report — said in a statement.

States are not required to spend the money on antismoking programs. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported Wednesday that states had to fill a cumulative budget gap of $145 billion this year because of unprecedented revenue declines.

States’ tobacco-related revenue has grown because 14 states have raised taxes on tobacco in the recession and the payouts from the 1998 tobacco settlement increased in 2008.

New York State made some of the largest cuts to antismoking programs, reducing them by $25.2 million, or 31 percent, the groups said, adding that it did so “despite having a successful program that has reduced smoking to well below national rates.”

Other states that made large cuts last year were Colorado, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Only one state, North Dakota, has smoking prevention and cessation programs at the level recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the report said.

Matt Anderson, budget spokesman for Gov. David A. Paterson of New York, said the state had to cut the programs to help fill a $3 billion deficit.

U.S. President Barack Obama has accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize with the acknowledgment that he is only at the beginning of his “labors on the world stage.”

In a speech prepared for the awards ceremony Friday in Oslo, Norway, Mr. Obama said his “accomplishments are slight” compared to other Nobel laureates such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. He said activists who have been “jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice” or serve as humanitarians around the world were far more deserving of the honor.

The first-year U.S. president also acknowledged the irony of his accepting the Nobel Peace Prize as he prepares to send an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. He told the gathered dignitaries the war against the Taliban and al Qaida terrorist network was a conflict the U.S. did not seek — a reference to the response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and near Washington, D.C.

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