Barack Obama is to invite China to join the United States in an effort by the world’s two biggest polluters to stop global warming running out of control. Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State, is to raise the prospect of a ‘strong, constructive partnership’ to combat climate change on a visit to Beijing next week, and the President is seriously considering a proposal from many of his most senior advisers to hold a summit with the Chinese leadership to launch the plan. Last week, China’s ambassador to the US, Zhou Wenzhong, made it clear that his government would welcome ‘co-operation on energy and climate change’ with the US. Such unprecedented teamwork would transform the world’s prospects for agreeing radical measures to combat global warming, and – senior Obama administration officials believe – lay the foundation of a new relationship between the two most powerful countries in the world. Related articles * Chance for a green alliance that could still save the world For years, progress towards negotiating a new international climate change treaty has been bedevilled by the two superpowers, each refusing to commit itself to action unless the other goes first, […]
PARIS — Picture this: prospective parents excitedly clicking through an online catalogue, ticking off the optimal mix of traits for their yet-to-be-conceived child. Will they opt for blue eyes or brown. Perhaps green, for a touch of originality? What colour skin? And do they want a boy or a girl? Are they aiming for an Olympian athlete, or will they stack the deck in favour of intellectual prowess? Why not both? For some people, this would be a dream come true. For others, a nightmare of widening inequality touching on eugenics. For biologists, it raises acute questions about evolution. The principle of species change through natural selection was set down by Charles Darwin, who was born 200 years ago on February 12. But what ‘natural selection’ means when it comes to Homo sapiens is hard to define. It has already been challenged by medicine, habitat, diet and other factors that affect lifespan, reproduction and survivability. Genetic selection means our species’ evolutionary path would be even more radically changed. We are not there yet — but this vision clearly does not belong to the hazy future of science fiction. Dozens of clinics […]
After taking his first flight as President on Air Force One last night, Barack Obama will be making heavy use of the big blue jet next week, flying out of Washington four out of five days. When asked whether the President found the White House confining, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told Friday’s press briefing, ‘he is a bit of a restless soul. Travel for a ‘restless soul The President will make day trips Monday and Tuesday of next week to conduct town hall meetings selling his economic stimulus program. On Monday, he will travel to Elkhart, Indiana where in the past year the unemployment rate has jumped from 4.7 percent to 15.3 percent, Mr. Gibbs said. Then on Tuesday, Mr Obama will fly to Fort Myers, Florida where the jobless rate has risen from 6 percent a year ago to 10 percent now. Celebrating Abe’s birthday After spending Wednesday back in Washington, on Thursday the president will fly to Springfield, Illinois to speak at a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday. He will return to the White House later that day. On Friday afternoon the Obama family will head home to Chicago for the […]
WASHINGTON – – President Barack Obama’s push to revamp the costly and inefficient U.S. healthcare system was facing delay even before Tom Daschle, who was chosen to head the initiative, withdrew his nomination as health secretary. With the administration and Congress preoccupied with righting the foundering economy, work on Obama’s promise to make affordable care available for all Americans has been limited in Obama’s first weeks in power. Health care reform advocates are pushing for quick action and want Congress to act by the end of the year, well before lawmakers start political maneuvering for congressional elections next year. But the Democratic-led Congress is taking longer than expected to approve Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which has topped $900 billion in the Senate, and Obama has to cope with a budget deficit some estimate could top $1 trillion this year. Creating a comprehensive plan to control soaring healthcare costs and cover 46 million uninsured Americans has eluded previous administrations and is an ambitious goal for lawmakers with so much on their plates. Daschle’s decision to withdraw from consideration as Health and Human Services Secretary on Tuesday, citing a political backlash over his late income tax payments, […]
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts. It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened - yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated. Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake - of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again. It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world. Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
