Sixty percent of Americans believe that the next generation will be worse off than their own.

A majority of Americans have no confidence in the government's ability to solve the nation's problems.

Greenspan predicts recession in US  

As the credit crisis continues to bite around the world, two eminent economists have predicted the United States will most likely fall into a recession next year. 

During the full two week period of the Bali Climate Conference, Mister Bush and his people did their best to undermine any and every attempt made at achieving a consensus on how best to combat and reduce the impacts of global warming.

There are several vital points raised by the new revelations in The New York Times that "the N.S.A.'s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before" and includes both pre-9/11 efforts to tap without warrants into the nation's domestic communications network as well as the collection of vast telephone records of American citizens in the name of the War on Drugs.

Zeffirelli offers Pope a makeover

Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film, stage and opera director, has said Pope Benedict XVI needs a makeover of his 'cold' image and 'showy' clothes. 

Zeffirelli told La Stampa newspaper that the Pope communicated in a cold way that was little suited to what was happening around him. 

The Attorney General,                                    

The Hon Robert McClelland MP,                               

Parliament House,

Peter Costello is maintaining the rage against John Howard and his Liberal Party colleagues by blaming the election loss on their reluctance to make him the leader. 

In a sign his bitterness has not abated in the three weeks since the election, Mr Costello used yesterday's declaration of the polls in his Melbourne seat of Higgins to say a lack of "renewal" had cost the Coalition the election. 

I did like it [soldiering] in the old days, back when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns.

Even spears made us think twice....  

The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dried grass.... 

Finally, Howard admits McKew has it

“The 33-year parliamentary career of John Howard ended today when he finally conceded defeat in Bennelong and congratulated the woman who beat him, Labor's Maxine McKew .... 

The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department.  

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history. 

Conrad Black, the disgraced media mogul, was yesterday sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail by a judge in the United States for his role in a £3 million fraud.  

Lord Black of Crossharbour swindled shareholders out of more than $6 million (£2.96 million) in a fraud conspiracy with three colleagues.  

As Glenn Greenwald explains, the Democrats have also been engaging in quite the charade with their supposed outrage about the Bush administration's torture policy, given that they have retained in the leadership roles tasked with investigating Bush's intelligence abuses the very people who signed off on those abuses. 

Gulf Arab countries challenged Defense Secretary Robert Gates on American policies toward Iran and Israel Saturday, after he urged them to force Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.  

Several delegates at the regional security conference in Bahrain said U.S. was hypocritical for supporting Israeli nuclear weapons, and questioned Washington's refusal to meet with Iran to discuss the Islamic state's nuclear activities.  

Garrett, Kerry discuss US stance on climate change ….. 

Environment Minister Peter Garrett has met US Democrats Senator John Kerry in Bali to discuss the United States' position on climate change.