麻豆约拍

Environmentalists have welcomed China pledging to stop building coal power plants abroad. We hear about the likely impact from Byford Tsang, a China expert at the climate campaign group e3g. And we get reaction from South Africa, where Chinese money was due to be funding new coal fired power, from energy analyst Chris Yelland in Johannesburg. Also in the programme, a multi-billion dollar project to build a new electric train line to link Egypt's Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts, due for completion in 2027, is being described as the Suez Canal on rails. Mohamed El Assar is an Egyptian journalist at Fortune magazine, and explains the background to the project. Siemens is one of the contractors on the rail line, and its chief executive, Roland Busch discusses the potential economic benefits it might bring to Egypt. And Professor Wei Liang, who specialises in international trade at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California considers whether the line is likely to become a genuine alternative to the Suez Canal. Plus, the east African nation of Kenya has become the first market in which video streaming platform Netflix has launched a free service, in a bid to persuade people to sign up to a full subscription. Kenyan technology blogger Kaluka Wanjala tells us how significant a move this is.

Today's edition is presented by Mike Johnson, and produced by Matthew Davies, Russell Newlove and Russell Padmore.

(Picture: A coal fired power plant. Picture credit: Getty Images.)