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WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 after four years of increases, the government said Wednesday ahead of a key United Nations meeting next week on climate change. The Department of Energy (DoE) said greenhouse gas emissions in the world's biggest polluter fell by 1.5 percent in 2006, the first decline since 2001. Measured against US economic growth of 2.9 percent last year, the department said greenhouse gas intensity fell by 4.2 percent, the largest yearly decline since 1990, its base year. President George W. Bush welcomed the DoE report as confirmation of his administration's...

SINGAPORE, Oct. 22 — Renewed concerns about the health of the American economy sent Asian stocks sharply lower today, and European stocks also registered declines in early trading. Following a dramatic decline by stock prices in the United States on Friday — the 20th anniversary of the 1987 “Black Monday” stock market crash — investors in Asia sold off stocks on worries that the United States mortgage crisis would crimp demand among American consumers for Asia’s exports. Hong Kong’s benchmark index of share prices fell by almost 3.3 percent, while in Japan the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped by...

Here is my case for why a weaker dollar hurts America. First, a weaker dollar translates into a cut in the real spending power of American consumers--in effect, a reduction in real income. Second, a weaker dollar weakens the role of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Why should investors and central banks around the world invest in US assets when their value is steadily declining? Third, the chances of a weaker dollar leading to a sharp reduction in America's trade deficit is highly unlikely since 40% of the current balance is due to oil imports that are...

It’s been a few weeks since September 12th, so if your early-pregnancy test colors positive, go claim your car, fridge or computer. Russia ’s imploding population has birthed schemes to nudge couples to conceive. September 12th was proclaimed the Day of Conception in the Ulyanovsk region of Russia . Pairs who “give birth to a patriot” nine months later on June 12th, Russia Day, win cash, cars, and other goodies. Prizes to procreate - how grim. One would think making babies would be reward enough. But Russia’s population dearth reflects negative 21st Century attitudes toward children. Between poverty, immorality, avarice...

In 1961, only one half of 1% of Canadians told census takers they were not attached to any religious body. The figure rose to 4.3 % in 1971 and 16.2% in 2001. After the Second World War, 67% of Canadians told Gallup they had been in a church or synagogue over the previous seven days. By 1990 this figure had fallen by nearly two thirds to 23%. Gallup says it's now less than 20%. In 1961, 90% of Quebecers said they had been to church in the last seven days, and the Catholic church had one priest for every 500-700...

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....

For at least the last twenty years the cultural and political elites of the United States have championed the cause of multiculturalism by claiming that diversity was something that made all of us better. Little effort was ever made to define precisely just what was meant by diversity, difference or most crucially "better." Nor was there any significant research that provided empirical support for the claim that multiculturalism and diversity translated into better people, better communities, better organizations and businesses or a better country. But now a considerable amount of solid evidence about multiculturalism is in, and it suggests that...

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. I finally saw a column on the Internet that said what I told you in my May 11th column ("The Pluses of the Dollar Decline"). A lower dollar ain't all that bad!! And from no less than Bloomberg News!! Well, let's talk about that just a bit more. In an article dated July 23rd, Bloomberg finally became the most prominent member of the small club of analysts and financial writers that point out the most obvious fact out there: the dollar is in the rifle sights of just about every other country...

It's August. It's hot — very hot! It's supposed to be a quiet time in politics. But this year, because of the ridiculously advanced and compressed primary and caucus schedule next winter, the campaign season is already upon us - even though it's August. Some recent developments: 1) This Saturday's Iowa Straw Ballot: Rudy and McCain long ago dropped out of the event. Romney has spent millions to win it, including months of statewide TV ads. He is leading in the polls in Iowa and should also win this event, which is a small test of organizational skill. The key?...

It is 1am and there is a man in my tent. He is lying on his back waving his legs in the air. "Excuse me," I say. "But this is my tent." Instead of apologising, he giggles. He shows no sign of departing. Instead he replies: "Nice one, babe! Come on in and we'll have some fun together." Fun!? It is raining, I am covered in mud and my temper is about to snap like an over-stretched rubber band. ~~~snip~~~

America has been slowly but systematically and certainly redefined to the point that current generations struggle to understand what America is now. They can’t decide if it’s friend or foe, a beacon of light or a symbol of evil. America has lost its collective soul, but not by accident. America has been redefined. I’m not just talking about the overt re-writing of history, changing facts to accommodate the agenda or dropping out entire lessons from the past, so that we’ll be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again soon. I’m talking about the conscious agenda to “redefine” nearly everything we...

Decline and fall of the Washington hawks By Toby Harnden Last Updated: 1:20am BST 25/05/2007 The hawks have flown the nest. Across the Bush administration, the uncompromising intellectuals determined to use American power to revolutionise foreign affairs and confront dictators are departing, exhausted and disillusioned. Robert Joseph resigned quietly, reportedly because he could not accept the six-party deal with N Korea Now, the dovish career diplomats who viewed the hawks as unwelcome ideological interlopers have reasserted control and rule the roost. President George W Bush, many of the hawks fear, has been so undermined by the spectre of defeat in...

An article in The Wall Street Journal (April 12) breathlessly informs us of the latest fad on the Incredible Shrinking Continent -- "As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit: Islam's Rise Gives Boost To Militant Unbelievers; The Celebrity Hedonist," the headline teases. The "Celebrity Hedonist," isn't geriatric frat-boy Hugh Hefner, but Michel Onfray, a 48-year-old author dubbed "France's high-priest of atheism" in the Journal piece. Reporter Andrew Higgins describes the doyen of disbelief -- commander of the faith-less -- strutting onto the stage of Caen's 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium, dressed in black from head to toe, to deliver...

Britain Was Once Great Britain By Dennis Prager Tuesday, April 10, 2007 It is painful to see the decline of Great Britain. Greatness in individuals is rare; in countries it is almost unique. And Great Britain was great. It used to be said that "The sun never sets on the British empire." That is how vast Britain's influence was. And that influence, on balance, was far more positive than negative. Ask the Indians -- or the Americans, for that matter. The British colonies learned about individual rights, parliamentary government, civil service and courts of justice, to name of few of...

The number of applications to Yale declined 9.7 percent from the class of 2010 to the class of 2011, while the number of minority applications declined 7 percent.

Date of the inversion David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Sunday, April 01, 2007 The question, at what precise moment did Western Civilization capsize, continues to interest me. (It is still floating, but upside down in the water.) I've brought it up before. Once, for instance, I called attention to a fine book by the historian John Lukacs, A Thread of Years, in which, through a series of anecdotes, one for each year from 1901 to 1969, he reviews the decline, fall and final extinction of "the idea of a gentleman." Note the terminal year. For long I've mentioned...

INVESTORS will be scrambling for safety this morning with another fall on the local share market expected after Wall Street ended a horror week with a 120 point drop on Friday. Equities are struggling for traction amid the global sell-down in stocks triggered by last Tuesday's plunge on the Shenzhen and Shanghai markets, pushing investors away from volatile investments and into cash and bonds. The March S&P/ASX 200 futures contracts is pointing to a 1 per cent fall on the local share index, and markets are expected to be volatile from the opening. The equity market volatility comes amid a...

BERLIN -- Germany's population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2006 and recorded the biggest drop since the country's reunification in 1990, the government said Friday, days after launching financial incentives designed to stall falling birth rates. The number of births, meanwhile, was the lowest since World War II. At the end of 2006, the number of people living in Germany stood at an estimated 82.31 million, 130,000 below the total at the end of 2005, the Federal Statistics Office said. Germany's population grew in 2001 and 2002. But since then, a birth rate among the lowest in Europe...

Population peaked in Dec. 2004 at 128 mil. The Yomiuri Shimbun The nation's population peaked in December 2004 at 127.838 million, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Wednesday, citing its revision of monthly population estimate reports. The revision was made based on the the national census of October 2005. The estimated population for October 2005 was 127.768 million, while in October 2004 it was 127.787 million, meaning the population shrank 19,000 in a year. The population includes foreigners who stay in Japan for three months or more. According to the ministry, the population rose and fell in 2004, peaking...

When the "corporate prayer" movement first started in 1996, few people in Holland took any notice. Why should they have done so? After all, Holland's manifest destiny was to become a fully secularized country, in which prayer was considered at best an irrational but harmless pastime. That was then. Cue forward to 2006, when prayer in the workplace is fast becoming a universally accepted phenomenon. More than 100 companies participate... ...The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a...

Link to story [Bloomberg is link only, per FR posting policy]

The sagging dollar fell Thursday to its lowest level against the pound in 14 years amid a rise in U.K. house prices and a seasonal rally in the British currency. The dollar also declined against the euro and yen. In morning trading in London, the pound hit $1.9562, up from $1.9462 late Wednesday in New York -- its strongest showing against the dollar since September 1992, before Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The pound last reached the $2 level on Sept. 8, 1992

No one, of course, wants to see the dollar in a free fall. And no question, it has retreated against some currencies. But worried? We aren’t. The dollar isn’t weak at all. Indeed, it’s trading 19% above its level in the mid-1990s, smack in the middle of the Internet boom. True, it’s come off the highs it set in early 2002, when foreign investors still spooked after 9/11 were desperate to invest in a safe haven with sound markets, the rule of law, low interest rates and fast economic growth. That pushed the buck up sharply. ...The other is that,...

<p>USA Today does not allow us to excerpt or post their articles. Usually, there is little of interest in this liberal rag, but this morning, they are reporting a tidbit of good news.</p> <p>According to the article, Medicaid spending is down 1.4 percent for the first nine months of the year -- 5.4 percent after adjusting for health care inflation. This is the first decrease since the program was created as part of LBJ's Great Society in 1965.</p>

AMERICA IS FINISHED as a great power. Not because it no longer possesses the resources, but because it has lost the will. That was brought home to me on both ends of a recent trip through London's Heathrow airport en route to Phoenix. * No great power permits its citizens to be discriminated against. Yet just keep your eyes open as you go through security at Heathrow (or any other international airport). Off goes your jacket. Off comes your wife's jacket, like yours, to be deposited in a heap in a plastic bin headed through a machine designed to detect...

Those who enjoy the mordant pessimism implicit with studying and understanding thermodynamics are well aware that all things born are doomed to die. It all goes to pieces; it sucks and then you die; all we are is dust in the wind. In the end it is entropy that reigns supreme. Perhaps that's the force of nature that Wallace Stevens crowned The Emperor of Ice Cream. Eventually, it all breaks down, regardless of the advertised Mean Time Between Failures. We can easily figure this stuff out for mechanical systems. You draw the fishbone, isolate the failure mode and build the...

Greenspan sounds optimistic note on housing: report By John Shinal, MarketWatch Last Update: 12:49 PM ET Oct 7, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that last week's rise in weekly mortgage applications could signal that the ``worst may well be over'' for the U.S. housing industry, according to a report of a speech Greenspan gave in Canada on Friday. Greenspan was referring to an Oc.t 4 report from the Mortgage Bankers Association which showed that mortgage applications rose a seasonally-adjusted 11.9% for the week ending Sept. 29, the largest increase in more than a...

Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, speckled with abandoned strip mines and declining villages, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. ..Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A hundred years ago, a burgeoning, land-hungry population killed off the last of Germany's wolves. Today, it's the local humans whose numbers are under threat.. Home to 22 of the world's 25 lowest-birthrate countries, Europe will lose 41 million people by 2030 even...

A Los Angeles Times editor, hoping to give his journalists a break from reporting the often grim news in America's second-largest city, offered an unusual morale booster Monday: pony rides. Managing Editor Doug Frantz ..."I hope it boosted morale..." Like many major U.S. newspapers, the Times, forced to compete with news Web sites on the Internet, has seen circulation decline.

A once-great American political party has become a pesthole for socialist radicalism. The whining of its principals, people without princples, is now incessant. Take the so-called "outing" of a CIA employee, for example ...(snip) This fall, I think, all their rhetoric, all their lies, contrary to the pronouncements of their propaganda arm, the mainstream media, will come home to haunt them. All the claims of impending victory for them, including a retaking of the House, the Senate or both, may turn out to be so much whistling in the wind....(snip)

Wearing work boots and carrying flashlights on a spring day last year, a band of architects and developers picked their way through the dim interior of the American Brewery. They looked like archaeologists combing through an ancient ruin, which, in some ways, is exactly what the brewery is. Built in the 1800s, the American Brewery has stood empty these past 33 years, a ghostly reminder of a distant past when the city's manufacturing muscle was on display in working-class neighborhoods such as this one in East Baltimore. Rain drips from a hole in the roof and puddles on the floor....

June 5, 2006 Vol. 7 No. 23 Gun Sales Rise as Crime, Accident Rates Fall U.S. Statistics Source Last Year* Trend Firearm & Ammunition Sales U.S. Dept. of the Treasury Up 2.6% to $2.1 billion Up 27.7% since 1998 Firearms Produced for Retail Sale Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) 2,947,008 22.8 million total since 1998 Firearms Imported for Retail Sale U.S. Census Bureau 1,845,366 10.7 million total since 1998 Right to Carry Laws National Rifle Association (NRA) Passed in 2 more states Now in 40 states; 9 added since 1998 Firearm Crimes Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...

Are future national park trips for America’s youth likely to be on-line virtual experiences rather than the real thing? A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist says there may be cause for concern. Oliver Pergams, research assistant professor in biological sciences at UIC, reports in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental Management that a rise in at-home entertainment activity, such as playing video games and surfing the Internet, corresponds with a decline, in per capita terms, in visits to U.S. national parks. Rising oil prices showed a strong association as well. The turnaround began in 1988 after a...

Immigration has become a great crisis in the United States and Europe ...Nowhere is the situation more critical, however, than in Russia, which is being flooded by hordes of illegals. To put it mildly, Mother Russia has an empty womb... Her population is sinking precipitously, thanks to unrestricted abortion and financial hardships ... there were officially 1.6 million abortions (and probably many unreported) in 2005, while 1.5 million children were born. ...Meanwhile... Russia is finding itself under increasing pressure from numerous illegal immigrant groups – particularly from Islamic groups from Central Asia and from the Chinese. ...[Even]worse, Russia has been...

{Snip} Over the past few years, as other western democracies have shuffled quietly along, France has by turns stunned, exasperated and bemused. This week's massive one-day protest, drawing 1m-3m people on to the streets, was no exception (see article). {Snip} But the underlying difficulty will remain: the apparent incapacity of the French to adapt to a changing world. {Snip} Yet the striking feature of the latest protest movement is that this time the rebellious forces are on the side of conservatism. Unlike the rioting youths in the banlieues, the objective of the students and public-sector trade unions is to prevent...

Gnawing leisurely on the remains of a moose carcass, the wolf pack's alpha male seemed unaware that mortal danger was coming ever closer. Suddenly the eight-member rival pack burst into view. The alpha scrambled to his feet, but too late. Howling and barking, the enemy chased him down and mercilessly attacked, killing the hapless victim within a couple of minutes. It's not unusual for the gray wolves on Isle Royale National Park to target each other, said John Vucetich, a Michigan Tech University wildlife biologist who witnessed the carnage from an airplane in January. But the rival pack's brazen invasion...

On Friday night in Torino Luciano Pavarotti, close to the last gasp of his career, sang the last gasp of grand opera, Puccini’s glorious Nessun Dorma. You have to wonder: Will this Winter Olympics prove to be the last gasp of Europe, the big blowout before the Islamic hordes engulf it? It seems impossible to believe that the cheerful young Euro-Olympians who passed before the cameras are really intent upon the demographic suicide the pundits predict. They all seemed so alive, so optimistic, so vigorous, so free. And yet if they go on like their parents and don’t make more...

What's Left Of Unix? Vendors are scrapping over what remains of a once-hearty market. By Charles Babcock, InformationWeek Jan. 23, 2006 For 35 years, the Unix operating system has been a mainstay of the computer industry, from its origins as a time-sharing system used by horn-rimmed academics to its central role running some of today's most powerful servers. But enthusiasm for this sophisticated piece of code is in decline as sales flatten, while Linux, the Unix-like alternative, thrives. Which leads to the inevitable question: Is Unix itself on the wane? The past few years haven't been kind to Unix. Two...

WASHINGTON - Natural gas futures fell sharply for the third straight day on Thursday after the U.S. government said inventories rose last week, a reflection of the recent mild weather but still a surprise to the market. The price of crude, heating oil and gasoline also declined, reversing a recent upward trend in the petroleum complex. Among the flurry of data released by the Energy Department was a detail that highlighted one impact of soaring energy prices in 2005: for the first time since 2001, total demand for petroleum and related products declined from the previous year. Energy demand is...

NEW YORK - Natural gas futures plunged 10 percent Tuesday, settling at their lowest level in three and a half months amid forecasts calling for mild U.S. weather over the next week. It was the third straight decline for natural gas prices, which have fallen 23 percent since Wednesday, and the selloff triggered a decline in other energy futures. The drop in energy prices knocked down the shares of integrated oil and gas companies and independent petroleum producers. February natural gas futures fell $1.261 to settle at $11.022 per 1,000 cubic feet on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was...

It was a year of goodbyes -- some noble, some less so -- as journalism's old guard departed from the spotlight. And it was a year when some of media's biggest institutions started thinking, in earnest, about reinvention. Dan Rather took his colorful metaphors and erratic temperament from CBS in March, his reputation marred by a flawed report about President Bush and the National Guard. Peter Jennings, suave and substantive, died tragically of lung cancer in August. Ted Koppel, who brought wit and heft to late-night news, left ABC's ''Nightline" in November, headed for less grueling work at HBO. Aaron...

The Associated Press Thursday, December 22, 2005; 6:06 AM ... State 2005 Population Percent Change Ala. 4,557,808 0.7 Alaska 663,661 0.9 Ariz. 5,939,292 3.5 Ark. 2,779,154 1.1 Calif. 36,132,147 0.8 Colo. 4,665,177 1.4 Conn. 3,510,297 0.3 Del. 843,524 1.6 D.C. 550,521 -0.7 Fla. 17,789,864 2.3 Ga. 9,072,576 1.7 Hawaii 1,275,194 1.0 Idaho 1,429,096 2.4 Ill. 12,763,371 0.4 Ind. 6,271,973 0.7 Iowa 2,966,334 0.5 Kan. 2,744,687 0.4 Ky. 4,173,405 0.8 La. 4,523,628 0.4 Maine 1,321,505 0.5 Md. 5,600,388 0.7 Mass. 6,398,743 -0.1 Mich. 10,120,860 0.2 Minn. 5,132,799 0.7 Miss. 2,921,088 0.7 Mo. 5,800,310 0.7 Mont. 935,670 0.9 Neb. 1,758,787 0.6 Nev....

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn't anything happening in the senate? Why do the senators sit there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What laws can the senators make now? Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting at the city's main gate on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. He has even prepared a scroll to...

Please read note in first comment. "It may seem strange that so much effort* is being focused on an animal that 25 years ago was known to only a handful of Antarctic scientists and that went by the ungainly name of Patagonian toothfish. But Chilean sea bass today have become the signature species in a battle of global proportions. Put in very blunt terms, the world is running out of fish. According to a study published in July in Science, marine species diversity has declined by 10 to 50 percent in the last half-century, and a 2003 report found that...

End of Europe? Benedict XVI’s first foreign excursion as pope has occasioned a massive electronic and pulp outpouring highlighting the secularized Europe he would confront on his visit to his homeland. Germany’s number one newspaper, Der Spiegel, greeted the pontiff with a five-part in depth series, backed by a massive public opinion poll, titled: “When the German Pope Returns Home, He’ll Find an Un-Christian Land.”Joseph Ratzinger reportedly choose his papal name to honor St. Benedict, the founder of the monastic order bearing his name, which is often credited with preserving Christianity and Western civilization by reinvigorating the church in the...

BIMINI, Bahamas — The bulldozers moved slowly at first. Picking up speed, they pressed forward into a patch of dense mangrove trees that buckled and splintered like twigs. As the machines moved on, the pieces drifted out to sea. Sitting in a small motorboat a few hundred yards offshore on a mid-July afternoon, Samuel H. Gruber — a University of Miami professor who has devoted more than two decades to studying the lemon sharks that breed here — plunged into despondency. The mangroves being ripped up to build a new resort provide food and protection that the sharks can't get...

The paradox of the year is why so many Americans tell pollsters they feel bad about an economy that's been so good, with solid job growth and corporate profits, rising wages and home prices, and a huge decline in the budget deficit. Perhaps one reason is because the media keep saying the economy stinks. That's the conclusion of... the Media Research Center, which finds that so far this year 62% of the news stories on the Big Three TV networks have portrayed the U.S. economy in negative fashion. The "negative full length TV news stories on the economy outnumbered positive...

A university in Shanghai is offering China's first class on homosexuality and gay culture and several hundred students have applied for the 100 openings, a professor in charge of the course said Tuesday. Professor Sun Zhongxin, one of the course's instructors at the prestigious Fudan University, said its introduction resulted from strong interest among undergraduates. "I used to teach gender study for undergraduates and found they were very interested in the topic of homosexuality," Sun said. The class is full, but "students are still applying," Sun said.

<p>"I don't go to church, and I don't know one person who does," says Brian Kenny, 39, who is studying psychotherapy and counseling at Dublin Business School. "Fifteen years ago, I didn't know one person who didn't."</p> <p>Church attendance in Ireland, though still among the highest in Western Europe, has fallen from about 85% to 60% from 1975 to 2004, according to the Dublin Archdiocese.</p>

ELCA Reports 4.9 Million Members In 2004 CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) reported a baptized membership of 4,930,429 in 10,585 congregations in 2004. That figure represents a decrease of about one percent or a reduction of 54,496 baptized members from 2003, according to the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary. In the past 14 years, the ELCA baptized membership has decreased about 300,000 down from 5,240,739 members reported in 1990. More than half the decline occurred between 2002 and 2004. The combined decrease for these three years resulted in a drop of 169,448 baptized members....