News Inventory

Last week Britain committed itself to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent. This week Gordon Brown will claim the UK is now a world leader in wind power. An Observer investigation reveals his hopes could be blown wildly off course. No country has tried to switch so fast to renewable energy - but rising costs and technical problems mean that, without urgent action and cash, the targets cannot be met. John Vidal reports A major threat to Britain's ambitions for renewable energy ... Read More

Right now the U.S. has a very real opportunity to transform our economy from one running on fossil fuels to one largely based on clean energy. We are developing the technologies and know-how to accomplish this. We can build whole new industries and create millions of new jobs. We can reduce energy costs, both at the gas pump and at home. We can improve our national security. And we can put a big dent in climate change. With strong leadership we could ... Read More

Does John McCain have a "hidden agenda" to "kill the UN?" That's what the man who devised McCain's big set-piece foreign policy proposal says -- and he's delighted it is sailing silently through the presidential election campaign towards success. This story begins with a Republican presidential candidate who, despite the hype, doesn't seem to know much about foreign affairs. McCain recently talked at length about problems on the "Iraq/Pakistan border." The countries are a thousand miles apart. Asked how to deal with Darfur, ... Read More

A new camera standard promises to cram the quality of a digital SLR camera into a smaller, more portable package -- and may even bring back the golden age of candid street photography. Hey, a guy can dream. Olympus and Panasonic, two upstart manufacturers with a tiny slice of the camera market but a couple of really high-quality products under their belts, today announced the Micro Four Thirds System, a set of standards for compact, interoperable lenses and camera bodies. Neither company has announced ... Read More