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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday urged G7 ministers meeting in Italy to consider “more ambitious options” to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. The ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven world powers are meeting in Stresa, on the shores of northern Italy’s Lake Maggiore, to prepare for a summit of G7 heads of state next month in Puglia. Yellen said the group would also discuss what Washington considers to be “overcapacity” of key green technologies from China such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Top of the agenda is a plan to finance...

WASHINGTON -- NASA doesn't have nearly enough money to meet its goal of putting astronauts back on the moon by 2020 -- and it might be the wrong place to go, anyway. That's one of the harsh messages emerging from a sweeping review of NASA's human space flight program. The Human Space Flight Plans Committee, appointed by President Barack Obama and headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine, has been trying to stitch together some kind of plausible strategy for America's manned space program. The panel has struggled to find options that stay under the current budget and include missions...

What do you do when there are no jobs to be had in your industry? For some Americans it seems the answer is to follow your ambition and simply make one for yourself, according to a recent study released by the Kauffman Foundation, the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.* In 2008, despite the economic recession that took hold in the last three months of the year, the percentage of Americans starting businesses increased slightly over 2007, moving from .30% to .32%. On the state level, Georgia, Montana and New Mexico all demonstrated comparatively high rates of entrepreneurship—each with more than...

When members of the Los Angeles City Council agreed last month to put an ambitious solar energy plan on the March 3 ballot, they talked effusively about their desire for cleaner air and "green" technology jobs -- the kind that could boost the economy during a recession. What they didn't discuss was an analysis by a city-hired consulting firm that called the solar plan "extremely risky" and considerably more expensive than was being portrayed by the Department of Water and Power. Measure B, which calls for unionized DWP workers to install solar panels on rooftops and parking lots across the...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California on Thursday took a major step forward on its global warming fight by unveiling an ambitious plan for clean cars, renewable energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries. The plan, which aims to reduce pollutants by 10 percent from current levels by 2020 while driving investment in new energy technologies that will benefit the state's economy, is the most comprehensive yet by any U.S. state. It could serve as a blueprint not only for the rest of the United States, ... "This is of tremendous importance, not only for California," Mary Nichols, chairman of...

SACRAMENTO — Karen Bass has drawn up a short agenda for her two-year reign as Assembly speaker that begins next week. There are only three items: * Balance a state budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared is "$20 billion out of whack." * Create a ballot initiative that would produce $300 million to $500 million annually for foster care programs. * Restructure California's tax system to make it conform to the modern world. Actually, she wants to create a blue-ribbon commission of "the best and the brightest" to tackle taxes. That's all. Rather ambitious for someone who has held...

BANGKOK (AFP) - Negotiators here are working on the world's most ambitious pact yet against global warming, but questions are growing about how to force governments to live up to the promises they make. Week-long talks in Bangkok are aimed at laying the groundwork for global action after the Kyoto Protocol's commitments run out in 2012 for rich nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions blamed for heating up the planet. The United States is the main holdout from the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it is too costly. But Kyoto signatories such as Canada, Japan and some southern European countries are all...

The colonisation by the middle classes of the best state schools has led to a dramatic widening of the gap in educational performance between rich and poor children in the past year, new figures indicate. [Snip] The figures underscore the massive influence of parental background on school success.

... March 2 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about Craig Robinson... head coach of Brown University basketball team, and he also happens to be Barack Obama's brother in law... Early 1990s, his sister brought Obama home for the first time, Craig Robinson states ..."We were talking about a variety of things and he said, 'I'm thinking about running for president one day,' " "I said, 'President? President of what?' " ... Robinson is talking about meeting him sometime in the early 1990's, probably during the latter half of 1991 when he returned to Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law...

Within days of taking the oath of office for the second time, the Republican governor unveiled an audacious second-term agenda that includes health insurance for all Californians, new prisons, fuel standards to curb global warming and a second massive public-works bond package on top of the $43 billion approved by voters in the November election. “Yes, it's an ambitious agenda,” Schwarzenegger said Tuesday night in his State of the State address. “But we must be ambitious to get California to the future.” The governor's characterization of his agenda might be an understatement. “We may have to find a new word...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to power a million homes and businesses with the sun moved forward Tuesday, despite concerns that ratepayers would be stuck subsidizing the ambitious expansion of solar energy. The legislation would invest $2 billion in rooftop photovoltaic systems - panels that turn sunshine into electricity. Customers with solar panels would save money by producing their own energy and could sell excess power back to the electric grid. Homeowners and businesses would get a rebate for installing the panels, with 10 percent of the subsidies set aside for low-income homes. Currently, a solar panel system...

SACRAMENTO - In public, California's 28th secretary of state is gregarious and warm-hearted -- a champion of open government, nursing-home reformer and leading critic of faulty electronic voting machines. With roots deep in San Francisco politics, Kevin Shelley can rouse crowds in waterfront union halls and Nob Hill ballrooms. It comes naturally. His father was a congressman and San Francisco mayor, making the only son a crown prince of the city's Democratic establishment. But Shelley's reign suddenly has been tainted by a growing crisis, involving possible misuse of federal election money and suspected fundraising abuses. Current and former aides say...

<p>If the recall election makes the ballot, Gray Davis expects to survive the same way he did in November's election: by making voters dislike his opponents even more than they dislike him.</p> <p>Darrell Issa, who hopes to be the main opponent, could be the perfect target.</p>