Guardian:
"International negotiators lost one of the key elements to a successful deal on global warming today after Democratic leaders in the US Congress ruled out passing a climate change law before 2010. In the latest obstacle on the road to the UN summit in Copenhagen next month, Senate leaders ordered a five-week pause to review the costs of the legislation.
The delay, which would push a Senate vote on a climate change bill into next year, frustrates a last-minute push by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to get America to commit itself at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions before the Copenhagen meeting. World leaders – and US officials – have repeatedly said US legislation is crucial to a deal on global warming.
Merkel used a historic address to a joint session of Congress today to urge America to act on climate change, stating that success at Copenhagen rested on the willingness of all countries to accept binding reductions in carbon emissions."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/03/merkel-senate-delay-climate-debate
-->Congress and the president failing the world on climate change? The story was on the NY Times Blog, but didn't make it into print.
-------------------
"The US House of Representatives has rejected as 'irredeemably biased' the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge.
The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January.
But most of its criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians - many of them women and children - were killed."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/11/200911320434191455.html
-->This is, of course, the dirty business the US Congress covering up Israeli war crimes. Our own John Hall was one of the co-sponsors of the resolution. Shameful really. By hiding Israeli's massacre of civilian populations, the US government insures that these crimes will continue. The NY Times would rather not report on all this, continuing its policy of aiding and abetting Israeli murder in Gaza.
-------------------
Poughkeepsie Journal
"RHINEBECK - With an election looming, a talk on the electoral process appears to have turned political in a Rhinebeck High School class.
Students said Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Clinton, tried to persuade them to vote for him during a talk he gave to their economics class..."
-->We usually do national and international stories. But this local one is so bad that we are going to make an exception. This story came out days before the county election. The student names were fed to the newspaper by the Republican Party. There was no attempt to question other students, or to gather any information that would have revealed: most students thought the presentation was excellent, a number of Republican officials had done similar presentations this fall, Joel Tyner was a Rhinebeck graduate who has made over ten presentations at the school, the teacher had invited him to speak at a Participation in Government class.
This is just swift boating journalism Poughkeepsie style. In the process, both the local Republicans and the Poughkeepsie Journal have proven themselves to be much less than Dutchess County deserves. And Joel Tyner won anyway!
