Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe said he would respect a ruling by the constitutional court that bars him from holding a third consecutive term in office.

The court yesterday voted 7-to-2 against permitting Colombians to vote on whether to lift the ban on third terms, court President Mauricio Gonzalez told reporters in Bogota. The magistrates rejected the initiative -- which may have let Uribe stand for office in May -- in part because it endangered checks and balances provided for in the 1991 constitution.

BANGALORE: A top Indian Institute of Science climate expert J Srinivasan, who has also worked with the UN's Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), has said that the system of checks and balances usually applied for scientific assertions ‘‘did not work'' in the case of IPCC's assertion that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.

‘‘It is a blanket statement. It should have been checked by a referee before being made public," said Srinivasan, who heads IISc's Divecha Centre for Climate Change.