How do we stand up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

EU-Africa summit fails; Gaddafi uses France as a doormat; Israel rejects IAEA; and more

Mexicans on ice, Europeans balk on Darfur, CIA hits delete, Mortgage relief’s real winners, Dollar trap, China and CO2, Havana renaissance, Calderón and Plan Mexico

A former CIA analyst breaks down the latest White House breakdown

Toad smoking, Clown Army, Systematic abuse of women worldwide, Peace recruiters barred, Zimbabwe worse than Darfur, US claims right to kidnap anyone, Pakistan deports Code Pink

Palestine peace plans attempt to institutionalise apartheid...As Mahmoud Abbas, the quisling ‘leader’ of the Palestinian Fatah administration, and Ehud Olmert were cosying up for the photo call with George Bush and Condaleeza Rice, thousands of ordinary Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah, Hebron, Nablus and Bethlehem in protest at the Annapolis conference, which they saw as against the interest of the Palestinian people..

Another climate demo, this time a big march in London, as part of global day of action. Plus details of simultaneous Vegan climate demo...

At the Duke of York cinema, Brighton Monday, December 10th at 6.30pm. Showing 'The Iron Wall' and an hour of local SchMOVIES Films include the No Borders Camp, The Smash EDO campaign, Naked Bike Ride and the Save Omar Campaign..

Back in December 2004, Tasmanian logging company, Gunns Ltd, decided to sue the activists attempting to stop them from trashing an ancient forest, home to the world’s tallest hardwood trees...

A303 Stonehenge tunnel/road cheme officially scrapped. Copper in speeding conviction shocker!

Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, has concluded that the Bush White House pressured the U.S. EPA to ease toxics reporting requirements for businesses. The Toxics Release Inventory was born in 1986 and serves as a community right-to-know tool, requiring that companies report annually on their toxic pollution. However, the EPA, apparently under pressure from the White House Office of Management and Budget, recently revised the TRI reporting requirements, allowing companies to file less-informative reports and eschew reporting altogether if they emit less than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, up from the previous trigger of 500 pounds. The reporting changes, the GAO said, mean that industry will have to file 22,000 fewer reports a year. The EPA's own analysis found that the relaxed reporting changes would save industry a paltry $6 million a year, but the GAO countered that the agency's estimate was off the mark and overstated the savings by up to 25 percent. More important, the GAO said the EPA's calculations "masked the disproportionately large impacts" that the eased reporting rules would have on communities.



source: Associated Press

see also, in Grist: EPA sued by 12 states over relaxed toxic-chemical rule

Perhaps jealous of the recent oil spills in San Francisco, Russia, and South Korea, Norway has had a spill of its very own. Oil company StatoilHydro says a mistake transferring crude from an offshore oil platform to a tanker resulted in up to a million gallons of black liquid flowing into the North Sea. The spill, likely the second-largest in Norwegian history, occurred 125 miles from shore, and officials don't expect the muck to reach land. Which really isn't much consolation to the sea life.



sources: Associated Press, Reuters, BBC News, Agence France-Presse

"Hollywood has gone from the capital of conspicuous consumption to the cutting edge of conspicuous conservation," Arianna Huffington declared recently. Case in point: A two-day Hollywood Goes Green summit that wraps up today. At the summit, tech giant IBM announced a plan to design new technologies that will increase computing capacity by a factor of 10 while using 50 percent less power by the end of 2010. (Which seems somewhat irrelevant to a Hollywood shindig, but a lot of computing goes into special effects, animation, and other movie-making needs.) And at a panel on marketing green messages, Paula Silver, founder of indie-film producer Beyond the Box Productions, advocated for making green seem normal in movies. "At the end of the day it's the good stories that really win," Silver said, adding that environmental messages have "to be part of the story and not just the story." Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth notwithstanding, of course.



sources: CNN Money, Business & Media Institute

New York City taxicabs purchased after Oct. 1, 2008, will be required to get at least 25 miles per gallon, and those purchased after fall 2009 will have to get 30 mpg -- so, basically, will have to be hybrids, according to a rule adopted by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. The city's iconic Crown Victoria cabs currently get around a measly 10 mpg.



sources: The New York Sun, Associated Press

Automakers must have been bad this year, because Santa has given them a big holiday disappointment. And by Santa we mean U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii, who today declared that California has the authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles, and tossed out automakers' lawsuit against the state. Automakers had sued in 2004 when California passed a law requiring vehicles on its roads to produce 30 percent less greenhouse gases by 2016. Sorry, suckas! That's one down, one to go in California's fight to do right by the climate and the people who breathe its air; the state can't implement its program until it receives a waiver from the U.S. EPA. California has sued to speed up that decision; an EPA spokesperson says the determination will come down by the end of December. If the EPA says yea, as many as 16 other states may implement California's standards.



sources: Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle

see also, in Gristmill: California judge rules against automakers in lawsuit against Calif. tailpipe GHG standards