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...from a significant but little-known source that is not covered by any national or international regulations: global marine shipping. The massive container ships that ply the ocean lanes are the backbone of globalization, but they are also carbon hogs. Each year, about 100,000 ships contribute some 1.3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, about 3% of global carbon emissions. In addition, ships spew out huge amounts of traditional air pollutants, like nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), and emit black carbon soot, a leading contributor to melting Arctic ice. "It's an overlooked and important problem...
...have it now. Yes, this means a lot of new customers for the insurance companies - but the insurers will face strict new regulations, and many of their new customers will be people they refused to cover in the past. Ultimately, it means an annual income redistribution of $200 billion to help the working poor pay for insurance, which is why Republicans oppose the bill. But Jacob Hacker, the leading promoter of the public option, favors it. Every Democratic Senator, including those like Ohio's Sherrod Brown who have impeccable liberal records, favors...
...Senate campaign back on the rails. Ever since a conservative tent revival began sweeping America last summer, sparked by angry misgivings about health care reform and other harbingers of big government, Republican purists have targeted Crist's moderate, bipartisan style. Seizing on his embrace of President Obama's $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, they've treated him as a whipping boy for everything that's wrong with the battered GOP as well as Florida's recession-ravaged economy, whose unemployment rate of 11.5% is the state's worst since 1975. Along the way they've anointed Rubio, a 38-year...
...plight of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians who were already reeling from a 2½-year economic siege imposed by Israel with help from Egypt and the U.S. even before Israel's air-and-ground assault had begun, international donors earlier this year pledged more than $4.5 billion to repair war damages. But that aid has failed to reach Gaza, according to Palestinians and relief agencies who accuse Israel of imposing Kafkaesque rules that bar from entry vital reconstruction materials and items as innocuous as glass, most schoolbooks, honey and family-size tubs of margarine...
...Says Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA): "Because the Israelis are not allowing in any reconstruction material, that $4.5 billion is just a paper figure." With more than 80% of Gazans now surviving on humanitarian handouts from UNRWA, Gunness adds, "Palestinians are becoming more desperate and more extreme." (See pictures of Israeli soldiers sweeping into Gaza...