NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Copenhagen summit: Change we can't yet believe in

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Nov. 16 (Editorial) - Confirming yesterday what had already been apparent for some months, Barack Obama and other leaders yesterday said that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal at Copenhagen. They said the 22 remaining days were just too few in number to secure binding emissions targets and overcome the divisions between the developed and developing world. This could be viewed as a realistic assessment. Mr Obama said that we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The British government's view is also optimistic. As long as political targets and outline commitments are agreed at Copenhagen, why should it matter that a few more months are taken to thrash out the details, if the end result is a package that is workable and enforceable? Rather a good package later than a weak package now. After all, the same thing happened to the Montreal protocol on CFCs, which took a year to harden up but remains the best of its kind.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The missing link in the climate change debate

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Adam Corner - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - From 10:10 to the government's Act On CO2 campaign, it is now widely accepted that tackling climate change will require tackling behaviour change too. But until now, a key piece has been missing from the puzzle – psychology. The study of human behaviour has been conspicuous by its absence from the climate change debate.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Memo reveals commander's fears

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By David Batty - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The most senior British soldier to die in Afghanistan foreshadowed his own death by warning that a shortage of helicopters was endangering troops. Less than a month before he was killed by a roadside bomb, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe told his superiors that soldiers would die because they were being forced to take more trips by road.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Healthcare one step closer

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michael Tomasky - Oct. 14 (News Analysis) - t will be fascinating to see the Republicans' next move. They can count noses as well as Democrats can. Do they start to send signals that they're folding up their tent, or do they dig in their heels now?

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iran: Talking is the only option

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 02 (Editorial) - No sane person should wish for the talks that started yesterday at a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva to fail. The half-hour meeting between William Burns, the US delegate, and his Iranian counterpart, Saeed Jalili, was the first official encounter the two nations have had in over 30 years. If this meeting marks the start of a substantive dialogue which has been so woefully lacking for three decades then that is, by a long measure, the most desirable outcome. The alternatives to engagement are appalling. Bombing Iran?s nuclear facilities – the option that Israel has been lobbying and training its pilots for – would, at the very best, only delay a nuclear bomb by a few years. It would turn the probability that Iran is making the bomb into a ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Keeping Iran honest

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Scott Ritter - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Rather than representing the tip of the iceberg in terms of uncovering a covert nuclear weapons capability, the emergence of the existence of the Qom enrichment facility could very well mark the initiation of a period of even greater transparency on the part of Iran, leading to its full adoption and implementation of the IAEA additional protocol. This, more than anything, should be the desired outcome of the "Qom declaration".

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average - 11 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Climate change's cold reality

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Muhammad Cohen - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - Developing countries will account for an estimated two-thirds to three-fourths of greenhouse gas increases over the next decade, yet nothing in the Copenhagen agreement will even slow that trend. Industrialised countries simply must hope – and pay an estimated $140bn annually – for developing countries to pursue green policies.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

For all Obama's talk of overhaul, the US has failed to wind in Wall Street

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Joesph Stiglitz - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - What went wrong? Have the right lessons been learned? Could it happen again? The anniversary of the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy and the freezing of the credit markets that followed is an occasion for reflection.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Russia battles growing insurgency

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Luke Harding - Sep. 05 (News Report) - The spectre of suicide bombers penetrating into the heart of Moscow came back to haunt Russia today after authorities said they had shot dead five militants, two of whom had explosive belts and tickets to the capital.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

We're pumping out CO2 to the point of no return. It's time to alter course

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Sep. 01 (Opinion) - Scientists now say peak temperatures will not fall back. Join me in taking the 10:10 pledge – it?s the best shot we?ve got left Until a few months ago, government targets for cutting greenhouse gases at least had the virtue of being wrong. They were the wrong targets, by the wrong dates, and they bore no relationship to the stated aim of preventing more than 2C of global warming. But they used a methodology that even their sternest critics (myself included) believed could be improved until it delivered the right results: the cuts just needed to be raised and accelerated. Three papers released earlier this year changed all that. The first, published in in February, showed that the climate change we cause today will be "largely irreversible ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Indian children crippled by uranium

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Gethin Chamberlain - Aug. 30 (News Report) - Observer investigation uncovers link between dramatic rise in birth defects in Punjab and pollution from coal-fired power stations Their heads are too large or too small, their limbs too short or too bent. For some, their brains never grew, speech never came and their lives are likely to be cut short: these are the children it appears that India would rather the world did not see, the victims of a scandal with potential implications far beyond the country?s borders. Some sit mutely, staring into space, lost in a world of their own; others cry out, rocking backwards and forwards. Few have any real control over their own bodies. Their anxious parents fret over them, murmuring soft words of encouragement, hoping for some sort of miracle that ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The real Ted Kennedy

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dan Kennedy - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - Ted Kennedy was the quintessential public man who overcame adversity to serve Massachusetts with honour Those of us who live in Massachusetts always had a different relationship with than did the rest of the country – and, for that matter, the world. Depending on your point of view, Kennedy was either an icon of progressivism or an avatar of evil. What he was not, except to those of us who were fortunate enough to be his constituents, was a regular guy who went about the mundane business of representing his state in the US Senate with diligence, seriousness and joy. For us, Kennedy was not a symbol. He was a real-life human being. The final stage of Kennedy?s home-state career – that of the eccentric but beloved uncle – goes back to ...

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Inside Operation Panther's Claw with British troops in Afghanistan

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Sean Smith, Keme Nzerem, Giobanni Ulleri - Aug. 19 (Special Report) - As Afghanistan prepares for an election, award-winning photographer Sean Smith, stationed with British troops during Operation Panther's Claw, finds many soldiers becoming frustrated at the inexperience and lack of discipline of the Afghan National Army.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Taliban hardliners spread out to undermine Afghanistan election

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jon Boone - Aug. 18 (News Report) - The Taliban leadership has redeployed some of its most hardline foot soldiers into areas of Afghanistan where local insurgents are reluctant to disrupt the country's elections on Thursday. Details of the move emerged as a statement, said to carry the authority of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, reiterated that the movement would attempt to stop Afghans from voting.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

'Evil and Orwellian' – America's right turns its fire on NHS

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Andrew Clark - Aug. 12 (News Report) - The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Wife of Pakistan Taliban leader killed

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Haroon Siddique - Aug. 05 (News Report) - Missile hits house of Baitullah Mehsud's father-in-law, killing Mehsud?s wife and two militants, officials say The wife of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a US missile strike, two Pakistani intelligence officials and an army officer said today. Two militants were also killed by missiles that struck the house of Mehsud?s father-in-law in Makeen, a village on the Afghan border, shortly before 1am local time, Reuters reported. In June, . Since then, the US has increased its drone attacks, which the Pakistani public believe kill innocent civilians. Mehsud, a former bodybuilder and smuggler, is the most prominent of Pakistan?s Taliban leaders. His Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group has allies across the ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

As Swat's exiles journey home, gunfire suggests problems may not be over

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Declan Walsh - Jul. 27 (Special Report) - Small comforts carry big hopes in the Swat region of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. The misery of war could be nearing an end now; and, after 12 weeks of battles between the Pakistan army and the Taliban, exiled residents are flooding home.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama faces long summer of delay

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ed Pilkington - Jul. 27 (News Analysis) - A healthcare package in the balance; unfinished business on climate change; a precarious economy and deficit; foreign policy setbacks on Iran and North Korea. Six months into his presidency, and with a holiday in Martha's Vineyard beckoning, Barack Obama might have hoped by now to have notched up a big victory or two in his ambitious agenda for change. The reality looks a little different.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Christian right aims to change history lessons in Texas schools

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Chris McGreal - Jul. 22 (News Report) - The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God. Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Nissan's plug-free electric car

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Bibi van der Zee, Adam Vaughan - Jul. 21 (News Report) - Nissan has developed a revolutionary plug-free technology that it claims will make charging electric cars easier and faster. The wireless charging system is based on the concept of inductive charging, the same electromagnetic field technology used to charge an electric toothbrush. Nissan has scaled it up for use in their Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) electric car, which can charge in a compatible parking bay without the need for wires. Today's electric car owners, by contrast, have to carry a mains plug aboard to recharge.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Gambling with peace: how US bingo dollars are funding Israeli settlements

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Chris McGreal - Jul. 20 (Special Report) - For the winning punters chancing their luck at Hawaiian Gardens' charity bingo hall in the heart of one of California's poorest towns, the big prize is $500. The losers walk away with little more than an assurance that their dollars are destined for a good cause. But the real winners and losers live many thousands of miles away, where the profits from the nightly ritual of numbers-calling fund what critics describe as a form of ethnic cleansing by extremist organisations.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Britain's green revolution will power economic recovery

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Gordon Brown - Jul. 12 (Opinion) - Two centuries ago, Britain was at the forefront of a new industrial age that transformed our small island into the workshop of the world and a global economic powerhouse. Now we must once more harness the expertise of our engineers and scientists - and the ambition of our entrepreneurs - to embrace a green revolution that will significantly change the way we all live and work. At a historic summit in Italy last week, G8 leaders agreed to limit global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels and cut their emissions by 80% by 2050.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Streets of Tehran left empty as protesters wait in vain for sign

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Robert Tait, Ewen MacAskill - Jun. 22 (News Report) - A deadly crackdown on opposition demonstrators appeared tonight to have punctured the most serious protest movement in Iran since the 1979 revolution, as an eerie quiet settled on Tehran and the regime turned its attention to more familiar enemies overseas.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Iran police use teargas on election protesters, witnesses say

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Jun. 20 (Breaking News) - Iranian riot police beat protesters and fired tear gas as violence erupted in Tehran today when thousands of members of the opposition movement took to the streets in open defiance of the country's supreme leader.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Wishful thinking from Tehran

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Abbas Barzegar - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - Iran is a deeply religious society. Of the Shah's mistakes nepotism, autocracy, and repression were fought by communists and liberals for decades with no success, but it was his attack on the religious establishment that led to his almost overnight demise.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer