Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Bella Rousse has been racked by protests since its dictator Alexander Lukashenko stole an

election in August. Our correspondent meets with the probable actual winner, a modest former

teacher now in exile who holds out great hope for Bella Rousse to become a democracy.

And have you ever watched candy floss or cotton candy being made? The sweet fibers seem to

come together from nowhere. Turns out if you feed the machine plastic instead of sugar,

you get the makings of a medical great filter for a face mask.

First up though.

I've asked the mine workers of the country for a greater output of coal. I'm confident that we are

doing the best to produce it. In 1948 the British politician Emanuel Shinwell appealed to people

to avoid wasting coal. But just as I am asking the miners for a greater effort to give you

the coal you need, I also asked users of fuel at work and at home to burn coal carefully

and to avoid waste. Then coal was seen as key to a prosperous future. Now it's seen

as a means to a hotter and deadlier one. It accounts for nearly half of the global energy

systems carbon dioxide emissions. This week a United Nations report laid out how coal

use must be drastically reduced if there's to be any hope of reaching the Paris agreements

target of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The UN's Secretary

General Antonio Gutierrez urged the world to get rid of it. It is time to put a price on

carbon, to face out fossil fuel finance and then fossil fuel subsidies, to stop building

new coal power plants and alt-call power financing domestically and overseas.

The report this week from the United Nations and a group of international climate researchers

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