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<p>Demonstrators protesting killings by police in New York and Missouri were arrested Monday after they chained themselves to doors and a flagpole at the Oakland Police Department headquarters.</p> <p>A live-stream video via Blackout Collective shows demonstrators blocking a doorway outside the headquarters and singing, “Calling out the violence of the racist police” as they were taken into custody by officers.</p>

Climate talks in Lima ran into extra time amid rising frustration from developing countries at the “ridiculously low” commitments from rich countries to help pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The talks were designed to draft a blueprint for a global deal to fight climate change, due to be adopted in Paris late next year. But developing countries argued that before signing on they needed to see greater commitments that the industrialised countries would keep to their end of a bargain to provide the money needed to fight climate change. Countries are also divided over the initial commitments countries...

PANAMA CITY - Cuba will attend the Washington-backed Summit of the Americas for the first time, host nation Panama said Friday, edging two adversaries closer to a possible joint appearance by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro. The United States is expected to attend but has not yet announced whether Obama will lead the U.S. delegation, a development that would stir protest from the influential anti-Castro lobby. Washington has said Cuba should be excluded, but Secretary of State John Kerry indicated a softening of that position in a speech in Miami on Wednesday when he said, "We must get beyond...

It has become a mainstay on supermarket shelves across the UK: fresh green asparagus, flown in to satisfy culinary desires well beyond the brief domestic growing season. But Britain's love of year-round asparagus could now be at risk - due to climate change. Of the 14,000 tonnes of asparagus imported to the UK last year, the majority - some 8,000 tonnes - came from Peru, the world's biggest exporter of the crop. Experts warn that Peruvian production of the vegetable, which has soared in the past decade, is likely to be hit by extreme weather that scientists say will become...

Pulling a worn, yellowed copy of the 1992 U.N. climate change convention from her handbag, Farhana Yamin points to the paragraph that states its goal: To stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous warming. It doesn't provide any guidance on how to do that. But Yamin does. And, in a historic first, dozens of governments now embrace her prescription. The global climate pact set for adoption in Paris next year should phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, says the London-based environmental lawyer. "In your lifetime, emissions have to go to zero. That's a message people...

The real part of the climate change negotiations started yesterday in Lima. Bolivian President Evo Morales took the spotlight at the United Nations summit as he pointed the finger at developed countries for their responsibility for climate change and suggested creating a world court to judge climate crimes. “Developing countries are the ones that struggle the most because of climate change even though they are the least responsible for it,” Evo Morales said, speaking alongside UN heads and several ministers. “After 30 years of negotiations, we haven’t reached any important climate change agreement. We have failed and now we are...

Packing potatoes at his vegetable stand on a sun-baked street in Caracas's hillside Catia slum, Jesus Jimenez fondly recounts voting for late president Hugo Chavez. Like millions in Venezuela's poor "barrios," the chatty father of 14 worshipped the larger-than-life Chavez and benefited from his welfare programs, especially Cuban-staffed free health centers and substantial pension rises. So after Chavez's death last year, Jimenez naturally voted for the leader's hand-picked protege Nicolas Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver who vowed to continue the idiosyncratic brand of socialism known as "Chavismo". Now, though, he struggles to make ends meet as inflation...

I do not believe that climate change deniers exist. I have heard the statistics and have seen the graphs, but I am not convinced. So I do what the supposed deniers do – I ignore them and move on. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with friends and colleagues about climate change, I would ask that you do one thing – skip over the discussion about the deniers. By talking about the deniers, the debate focuses on how to fix the problem of denial rather than climate change itself. Not everyone has to believe in it; what...

Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a mentor to President Barack Obama, said the administration's carbon rule for power plants is "a remarkable example of executive overreach" that raises "serious constitutional questions." Tribe, who submitted joint comments to the Environmental Protection Agency with coal producer Peabody Energy Corp., said the agency should withdraw its plan to cut emissions from power plants because it reverses decades of federal support for coal. "The Proposed Rule lacks any legal basis and should be withdrawn," Tribe and Peabody wrote in their filing, which law firms for the company said was submitted to EPA on...

International climate talks in Lima, Peru, are entering their final week, with few hints of whether a newfound optimism that marked the start of negotiations will ultimately translate into an agreement that would rein in climate change. Poorer nations are struggling to nail down significant, steady funding from industrialized countries to help them cope with the damage from climate change and to develop their economies without relying on fuels such as coal. Over the years, participants at U.N. climate talks estimated that $75 billion to $100 billion annually in public and private funding was needed to help poor countries cope...

Old habits die hard. The media are so enamored of the continuing (and largely contrived) story about the great Republican civil war that they fail to appreciate that the real internecine fight is being waged on the other side of the aisle. I grant that there's a lot of shouting today among Republicans. But it's a ritual skirmish over whether a government shutdown would force the president to withdraw a signature measure — last time, Obamacare; this time, executive amnesty. From opposite sides of the (Democratic) spectrum, Schumer and Warren are trying to remake and reorient the Democratic Party post-Obama....

Antarctic sea ice reached a record high this year, topping 20 million square kilometers (nearly 8 million square miles) in September — a milestone it hadn't touched since 1979. It's a fact climate change deniers are fond of repeating. If the planet is warming, shouldn't sea ice be melting away rather than growing? It's true that the phenomenon is a confusing one — but it's no proof that climate change isn't happening. In fact, scientists believe that climate change is actually responsible for the strange events down in the Antarctic. The first thing to note is that sea ice and...

The term Social Cost of Carbon is a figure that puts a dollar value on the climate damages per ton of CO2 released, and is used by, among others, policymakers to help determine the costs and benefits of climate policies. In the latest issue of the journal Science, a group of economists and lawyers urge several improvements to the government’s figure that would impose a regular, transparent and peer-reviewed process to ensure it is reliable and well-supported. “By providing an estimate of the damages from an extra ton of CO2 emissions, the Social Cost of Carbon tells us how much...

You might take solace in the fact that when you die, your days of polluting the planet are over. But the truth is that the method you choose to dispose of your mortal remains has more of a deleterious impact on the environment than you might think. Conventional burials contribute to climate change in a number of ways. Although embalming slows the decomposition process, it does not stop it completely. Cremation is relatively benign compared to conventional burial, thanks in part to the required filtering of emissions done by crematories in the United States. Still, the average cremation uses 28...

In remarks that underscored an emerging concern about the direction of the economy, President Obama told business leaders Wednesday that, despite record corporate profits, stagnant wage growth is creating anxiety among workers. Obama [said] that the shrinking of wages and income as a share of overall GDP had caused an “undertow” of pessimism, despite the improving economy, and said giving workers a raise would benefit corporations, too. “When wages are good, and consumers feel like they’ve got money in their pockets, that ends up being good for business not bad for business,” he said. Obama appeared relaxed and at ease,...

This year is in the running to be the hottest globally and for the UK since records began, early estimates show. In the first 10 months of 2014, global average air temperature was about 0.57 Celsius above the long-term average. And the first eleven months in the UK have produced an average temperature 1.6C above the long-term. A separate study by the UK Met Office says the observed temperatures would be highly unlikely without the influence of greenhouse gases produced by humans. The global figures come in estimates from the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). If this year's current global...

... To grasp climate change, you have to think in terms of species and their future. To know how things have already changed, you have to remember how they used to be, and so you may not notice birds disappearing from the skies, or hotter weather or more extreme storms and forest fires. You need to look past the sparrow and see the whole system that allows — or allowed — the birds to flourish. The swallows, the chinook salmon, desert tortoises, manatees, moose and us. Addressing climate means fixing the way we produce energy. But maybe it also means...

Kelly File Special: Who's Teaching Our Kids? - Liberal Bias In The Classroom

We have much to be thankful for today. We have come back off the mat after being slammed to the canvas by the 2012 election; but after regrouping and going back to work we have won a stunning victory of a size no one saw coming. Counting our blessings is still easier here in America than in any other country. Even the poorest Americans eat meals many around the world only dream about. This is why people will do anything to get to our shores. We have a Bill of Rights and a full Constitution to protect us thanks to...

Schemes to tackle climate change could prove disastrous for billions of people, but might be required for the good of the planet, scientists say. That is the conclusion of a new set of studies into what's become known as geo-engineering. This is the so far unproven science of intervening in the climate to bring down temperatures. These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide. Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial "trees" to absorb CO2. Despite the risk...