Bush prepares speech on climate change
The News Review:
- Bush prepares speech on climate change
- World’s best coffee brands take coffee illegally grown in tiger…
- ‘Friendly’ town turns its back on refugees
- Seven Tough Choices We Will Not Make
- Muslims laud ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’
- Bowled over
Bush prepares speech on climate change
NEWS.com.au – Jan 17, 2007
Bush’s annual speech to Congress next week is likely to call for a huge increase in ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy while stopping short of mandatory emissions caps. Mr Bush’s annual State of the Union address is expected to touch on key energy policy points, after he made the surprise pronouncement during last year’s address that the US was addicted to Middle East crude oil supplies. A rising focus on "energy security" by both the Bush administration and Congress has added momentum to efforts to employ home-grown fuel sources like ethanol to reduce US dependency on oil imports. Following that theme, Mr Bush is likely to call for more US use of home-grown ethanol, sources familiar with White House plans said today on condition of anonymity. Iowa – which grows more corn than other US state – is also a key stop for candidates in the upcoming 2008 presidential elections. One source briefed by White House officials said Mr Bush’s speech on January 23 could call for more than 227 billion litres a year of ethanol to be mixed into petrol supplies by 2030. That would be a huge increase from the 28.
World’s best coffee brands take coffee illegally grown in tiger…
Free with registration – Kyodo News International – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jan 17, 2007
17–JAKARTA — International companies producing the world’s best coffee brands, including Japan’s Marubeni Corp. , have used coffee grown illegally in Indonesia in the habitat of Sumatran tigers, elephants and rhinos, which are on the brink of extinction, the World Wildlife Fund said Wednesday. In an investigative report, the WWF revealed that the illegally grown coffee has been mixed by local traders with legal coffee beans and later exported from the country to companies such.
‘Friendly’ town turns its back on refugees
Telegraph.co.uk – Jan 17, 2007
Lying 380 miles north of multicultural Sydney, Tamworth is a bastion of white, rural Australia where American-style cowboy culture has been embraced and given a distinctive Aussie twist. A men’s outfitters on the main street sells saddles, whips and line-dancing boots and a “Guns ‘n’ Ammo” shop offers the latest Remington and Winchester rifles. Across the road, the tourist information centre is built in the shape of a guitar and a museum documents the life and times of such home-grown country singers as Smoky Dawson, Slim Dusty and Tex Morton, “The Yodelling Boundary Rider”. In a packed local pub, a singer in cowboy boots belts out a ballad with the refrain: “So don’t change Australia, Australia is what we are, From the kangaroo to the platypus, and the pink-crested galah. ” “I’m aghast to think that after 35 years of establishing Tamworth’s reputation as the country music capital of Australia, it’s been tarnished by a few off the cuff remarks,” said Max Ellis, 70, the museum curator. “It’s a distortion of what we are really like. Country music is about friendship and welcoming people.
Seven Tough Choices We Will Not Make
Washington Post – Jan 17, 2007
Its a stop-gap band-aid, not to mention a giveaway to oil companies. We need alternatives to oil, not more production and more lining of oil companies pockets. Its a stop-gap band-aid, not to mention a giveaway to oil companies. We need alternatives to oil, not more production and more lining of oil companies pockets.
Muslims laud ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’
Christian Science Monitor – Jan 17, 2007
pilot episode garnered nearly 2. 1 million viewers last week, big ratings for Canada. The top-ranked home-grown sitcom, “Corner Gas” – which coincidentally is also set in a small prairie town – regularly draws 1. The first episode introduced viewers to the close-knit Muslim community, in the fictional small town of Mercy, and to the local non-Muslims who regard their neighbors with a mixture of trepidation and tolerance. In the second episode, the new imam, a handsome young man newly arrived from Toronto, sparks a battle of the sexes when he decides to erect a barrier between men and women in the mosque. “I hope it will open up a door to another community, so people can realize this community has the same foibles and quirks as any community does,” Nawaz says, acknowledging that her show is, perhaps, not just another sitcom.
Bowled over
Telegraph.co.uk – Jan 17, 2007
I return with one of the orangey-yellow pods I have seen growing up the sides of a tree I do not recognize. Leander splits it open to reveal cocoa beans. Later, he takes me to meet his neighbour, Miss Charles (the Miss is a term of respect – she’s actually a married grandmother of six), who is drying about a hundredweight of home-grown cocoa beans on her veranda. A lively 75-year-old former nurse at London’s Royal Free Hospital, Marie Charles is an example of yet another contemporary Caribbean phenomenon: a beneficiary of Britain’s property boom. “We had two houses in Hackney,” she says, “so we left one for the kids, sold the other and came home. It was time for some hot sunshine. ” The advantage of the Fredericks’s place in the south-west of the island is that right on its doorstep are the magnificent Pitons (both climbable), other mountain and rainforest trails and the “drive-in volcano” of Sulphur Springs, with its therapeutic bathing… ” The advantage of the Fredericks’s place in the south-west of the island is that right on its doorstep are the magnificent Pitons (both climbable), other mountain and rainforest trails and the “drive-in volcano” of Sulphur Springs, with its therapeutic bathing. The drawback is that it’s an hour and half’s drive from the Beausejour cricket ground where England’s group matches and one of the semi-finals are being held. Better located for the cricket is the Gros Islet home of Mary Bissette, a 57-year-old office manager for the St Lucia Cold Storage Company. The split-level accommodation – Mary has a four-bedroom apartment on the ground floor, I’m to have the three-bedroom apartment on the lower ground – might be in a less picturesque setting, but it’s only a few minutes by car or half an hour’s walk from Beausejour. Like all the participants in the Homestay programme, the house has been checked out by tourist board officials. “Obviously they’re concerned that a place is clean and comfortable,” she says. “It must have running water, electricity, proper lavatories and bathrooms, and either fans or air-con.