Free Republic

PARIS (AFP) – A planned fund to channel hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries exposed to climate change has overcome an early obstacle, the UN said on Friday. Members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have agreed on the make-up of a 40-seat transitional committee to design the Green Climate Fund (GCF), an issue that had been debated for weeks, the UNFCCC said. Established at the UNFCCC's conference in Cancun last December, the GCF aims at administering aid, potentially worth 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, to developing countries at risk from rising seas, worsening...

WASHINGTON – Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare. The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally. The spectator galleries...

BOSTON — A federal agency said Friday that the nation’s first offshore wind farm, proposed for the waters off Cape Cod, posed no serious environmental threat, bringing it a major step closer to fruition. Homeowners and boaters on the cape, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, have fought the project for eight years, saying it would hurt wildlife, fishing and tourism and spoil the beauty of Nantucket Sound. Opponents have sued to stop the project, known as Cape Wind, and more challenges are certain, keeping the path to construction bumpy despite what supporters on Friday called a crucial...

Fresh off a successful November election in which voters largely rubber-stamped his initiative agenda, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could be forgiven for thinking governing via the ballot this year would be less difficult than fighting it out with a stubborn state Legislature. But as crunch time nears for qualifying measures for a special election ballot this year, the governor is finding that taking his policy agenda "to the people" is easier said than done. In recent weeks, each of the four "reforms" the governor has said he wanted to enact this year has run into difficulties: * Merit pay for teachers...

WASHINGTON — On the top floor of a federal courthouse here, roughly two miles from the hotel where he shot President Reagan 22 years ago, John W. Hinckley Jr. is asking for a modicum of freedom. If the strides the 48-year-old would-be assassin has made in two decades of psychiatric treatment were the sole standard, he might get his wish for 10 visits with his aging parents — in the loving embrace of family, away from the penetrating eyes of hospital staff. But judgment of his mental health is not the only hurdle Hinckley must clear as U.S. District Judge...