Russ McBee

Following a speech in Missouri yesterday, President Bush engaged in an exceedingly rare question-and-answer session with employees of the company where he was speaking. Among other topics, he repeated his threadbare spin of ethanol as a viable fuel source: ''As you know, I'm a ethanol person,'' he said, explaining his belief that it can help ...

I'm not one to automatically trust the word of any OPEC minister, but this quote from Chakib Khelil, Algeria's energy minister, bears some consideration: Opec's president on Monday warned oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help. [...] Mr Khelil blamed record oil prices on the weak dollar and ...

Barack Obama said this yesterday: ''In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. ... The jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration ...

When China was awarded the 2008 Olympics seven years ago, the executive director of the International Olympic Committee made the announcement with breathtaking naiveté: Beijing was the front-runner throughout the race, even with criticism about its human rights record. IOC members clearly believed the Olympics will open China to the world, ...

President Bush signed the Colombia Free Trade Agreement yesterday and sent it to Congress for consideration, over the objections of practically anyone with a conscience: President Bush’s decision to send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress over the strong objections of the leadership of both the House and the Senate ''shows ...

Global Issues has published a run-down of recent statistics on global poverty. Among the startling findings: Half the world -- nearly three billion people -- live on less than two dollars a day. [...] According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they ''die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far ...

The Bali conference on climate change has begun; its goal is to establish a framework for negotiating a treaty which will pick up the slack when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. The US delegation and the White House have been making public pronouncements lately which seem to support the Bali initiative: [The leader of the US delegation in ...

China's state-owned oil company, PetroChina, held its IPO today on the Shanghai stock market. The debut raised $9 billion in one day; since this offering was only a tiny fraction of PetroChina's total stock, the company ended the trading day with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. That's $1,000,000,000,000. This represents ...

This article provides an in-depth survey of the current state of international arms trading. A couple of choice quotes: Vast government subsidies are sought after in the pursuit of arms trading. US and European corporations receive enormous tax breaks and even lend money to other countries to purchase weapons from them. Therefore tax payers ...

This is outrageous: Child workers [in India], some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant. [...] The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of ...