EXCLUSIVE: White House to Cut Energy Assistance for the Poor

Budget proposal would cut billions from aid program.

In a letter to Obama, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., wrote, "We simply cannot afford to cut LIHEAP funding during one of the most brutal winters in history. Families across Massachusetts, and the country, depend on these monies to heat their homes and survive the season."
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not touch the program's emergency reserve fund, about $590 million, which can be used during particularly harsh cold snaps or extended heat spells, three officials told National Journal.
In 2010, Obama signed into law an omnibus budget resolution that released a total of about $5 billion in LIHEAP grants for 2011. Pointing to the increasing number of Americans who made use of the grants last year, advocates say that LIHEAP is already underfunded. The American Gas Association predicts that 3 million Americans eligible for the program won't be able to receive it unless LIHEAP funding stays at its current level.
How many people, if any, might actually lose the assistance is difficult to determine.

Indonesian cleric's trial adjourned

Abu Bakar Bashir faces fresh charges including helping establish terror training camp and funding terror organisations.

Indonesia has won praise for largely defeating terror groups, but analysts and rights groups say a recent increase in acts of religious intolerance shows extremism still has a hold on the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Despite no significant terror attacks in Indonesia for nearly two years, security in the capital is pervasive, with checkpoints placed at the entrance of all major shopping malls, hotels, embassies and government buildings.
The 72-year-old Bashir, is officially the caretaker of an Islamic boarding school on Java island but has long been considered the spiritual leader of the shadowy Jemmah Islamiah movement, which seeks to establish a Muslim caliphate across Southeast Asia.
He was found not guilty of terror offences in two previous trials that attempted to link him to the Bali bombings. This time, he faces charges related to mobilising others to commit acts of terror.

Many die in Pakistan suicide blast

At least 30 soldiers killed after bomber dressed as a schoolboy struck an army recruitment centre in the northwest.

US escalates pressure on Egypt

Egyptian foreign minister says Washington seemed to be trying to impose its will on Cairo.

The embattled government of Egypt had not met even a minimum threshold of reforms demanded by the people of the country, the White House said on Wednesday, warning that massive protests will likely continue until real reforms are instituted.
In a sharp escalation of rhetoric with one of its most important allies in the Middle East, Robert Gibbs, president Barack Obama's spokesman, suggested that some Egyptian leaders thought they could wait out the protesters by offering up some concessions and assuming "life will return to normal."
"I think that's largely been answered by a greater number of people, representing a greater cross-section of Egyptian society, who have come out seeking their grievances to be addressed," Gibbs told reporters.
"And I think those are not likely to dissipate until the government takes some genuine steps."
Pro-democracy protests in Egypt have entered their third week.

Workers continue Egypt strikes

Why Egypt's progressives win

Syria: 'A kingdom of silence'

Egyptian army 'torturing' prisoners

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream

US escalates pressure on Egypt

Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

The shaping of a New World Order

Egypt: Why is Israel so Blind?

How did Egypt become so corrupt?

28 hours in the dark heart of Egypt's torture machine

A blindfolded Robert Tait could only listen as fellow captives were electrocuted and beaten by Mubarak's security services

My experience, while highly personal, wasn't really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians.

The poverty of dictatorship

Egypt and Tunisia performed well in social and economic benchmarks - but that's not enough to keep autocrats in power.

Why Egypt's progressives win

Suleiman considers the business fraternity friendly, but it is the nation's women and youth who are driving the unrest.

Syria: 'A kingdom of silence'

Analysts say a popular president, dreaded security forces and religious diversity make a Syrian revolution unlikely.

Online activists have been urging Syrians to take to the streets but the calls for a "Syrian revolution" last weekend only resulted in some unconfirmed reports of small demonstrations in the mainly Kurdish northeast.
"First of all, I'd argue that people in Syria are a lot more afraid of the government and the security forces than they were in Egypt," Nadim Houry, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Lebanon, says.
"The groups who have mobilised in the past in Syria for any kind of popular protest have paid a very heavy price - Kurds back in 2004 when they had their uprising in Qamishli and Islamists in the early 1980s, notably in Hama."
The so-called Hama massacre, in which the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in 1982 in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, is believed to have killed about 20,000 people.
"I think that in the Syrian psyche, the repression of the regime is taken as a given, that if something [protests] would happen the military and the security forces would both line up together. I think that creates a higher threshold of fear."
Demonstrations are unlawful under the country's emergency law, and political activists are regularly detained. There are an estimated 4,500 "prisoners of opinion" in Syrian jails, according to the Haitham Maleh Foundation, a Brussels-based Syrian rights organisation.

Philadelphia Live Stream 12 by Emergency Stream

Bush's EPA Told Him CO2 Should be Regulated, Was Overruled by Cheney

Steven Johnson, the EPA Administrator in the Bush administration, sent a letter to the president's office in 2008 insisting that carbon emissions be listed as a harmful pollutant, and regulated accordingly. Guess who didn't like that idea?

To be fair, it wasn't just Dick Cheney. It was Exxon, the DOT, and other parties who fought the idea as well.

The Supreme Court's Massachusetts v EPA decision still requires a response. That case combined with the latest science of climate change requires the Agency to propose a positive endangerment finding.... the state of the latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research.

Within the next several months, EPA must face regulating greenhouse gases from power plants, some industrial sources, petroleum refineries and cement kilns.

These are the words of George W. Bush's appointed EPA Administrator, and they were written nearly three years ago. Johnson also outlined a plan for how the president could tackle curbing emissions.

EU report warns of oilsands emissions

A new study says oilsands producers have managed to reduce emissions intensity per barrel although overall emissions jumped 45 per cent over the past five years.

Greg Stringham, vice-president of oilsands and markets for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary, said Brandt favours a previous study that calculated a relatively high average emission number for oilsands.
"But the real issue that jumped out at me is that he chooses to compare oilsands to the current average mix of light oils going into Europe and then concludes that oilsands have a higher carbon footprint," he said.
"If you're looking at any heavy oil, whether coming from Venezuela or Mexico or even the Nigerian light he identifies in his study, and compared it with the mix, you'd end up with the same conclusion."
The EU's 2009 fuel-quality directive requires oil companies operating in the EU to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent by 2020, compared to 2010 levels. To implement this law, the Commission is in the process of assigning carbon-footprint values to fuel from different sources.
Canada has repeatedly said that draft EU standards to promote greener fuels will harm the market for its oilsands.
The EU and Canada are in the middle of free trade talks and Canada has warned any attempt at green regulation of oilsands could create "barriers to trade."

Enforcing Clean Air Act Rules Will Create 1.5 Million Jobs, Study Says

The report, produced by researchers at University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute, said investments to comply with the Clean Air Act have been good for the economy. It quoted the Office of Management and Budget, which said in 2003 that every dollar spent on compliance with the act since 1970 has led to $4 to $8 in economic benefits.

Clues About Pollution Hidden in Pages of Old Books

Testing the paper of aging volumes can paint a more accurate picture of the world's CO2 levels over the past few centuries than current methods, like ice and tree core samples.

Tarnished Earth
Tarnished Earth is a part of the Toxic Fuels campaign, which aims to stop the expansion of unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands. Tar sands alone would take us to the brink of runaway change and risk a local ecological disaster.

Yu Hua: China in 10 Words

Like thick weeds, thirty years of societal quandary and dilemma have been concealed by the optimism of high-speed economic development. My work at this time is going in exactly the opposite direction. Starting with today’s apparently glorious results, I will go in search of that which might make some feel uneasy.
This time I hope I’m able to abbreviate contemporary China’s endless chatter into 10 simple words. I hope this narration, which will surpass time and space, can blend rational analysis, emotional experience and intimate stories into one. I hope my diligent work can, from within contemporary China’s earthshaking changes and tumultuous and complex society, open a clear and genuine road of narration.

Fears Chinese lawyer beaten over house arrest video

Chen Guangcheng and wife Yuan Weijing were attacked for secretly recording their plight, source tells rights campaigners

Internet Freedom on Trial in Thailand: Prachatai Director in Court

Last Friday, February 4 marked the start of court proceedings against Ms. Chiranuch Premchaiporn (known as Jiew), director of the popular online newspaper Prachatai. Jiew faces criminal charges under the Computer Crimes Act (CCA), with a potential penalty of twenty years in prison. Her alleged crime? The government has accused her as operator of Prachatai’s web forum of allowing ten user-generated posts to remain online for too long, even though the offending posts were removed far before her arrest.
Even more troubling, this case is merely the first of two: Jiew was arrested again in September 2010 upon her return from an Internet freedom conference and faces additional charges with penalties of up to fifty years. She was again charged under the CCA and also under lèse majesté laws (defamation of the monarchy) for an interview she published with a Thai man who refused to stand during the Thai Royal Anthem, and for resulting user commentary deemed insulting to the King.

Earth economist: The food bubble is about to burst

We're fast draining the fresh water resources our farms rely on

What is a food bubble?

That's when food production is inflated through the unsustainable use of water and land. It's the water bubble we need to worry about now. The World Bank says that 15 per cent of Indians (175 million people) are fed by grain produced through overpumping - when water is pumped out of aquifers faster than they can be replenished. In China, the figure could be 130 million.

Has this bubble already burst anywhere?

Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by using water from a fossil aquifer, which doesn't refill. It has harvested close to 3 million tonnes a year, but in 2008 the Saudi authorities said the aquifer was largely depleted. Next year could be the last harvest. This is extreme, but about half the world's people live in countries with falling water tables. India and China will lose grain production capacity through aquifer depletion.

North Korea appeals to foreign governments for food aid

Embassies ordered to approach foreign capitals directly as international food needs assessment gets under way.

In November the WFP and FAO warned that the majority of North Korea's population faced continued hunger this year after harvests were affected by unusually bad weather.
The Foreign Office confirmed that the North Korean embassy in London had approached the government seeking food aid.

Double jeopardy: a look at the death penalty in Asia

Part I: A murder trial in Taiwan puts the spotlight on Asia's death penalty debate.

By Jonathan Adams
Published: February 10, 2011 06:14 ET in Asia

(Photo by Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images; Illustration by GlobalPost)

Editor's note: Double jeopardy is a five-part series focusing on the case of the Hsichih Three in Taiwan, which helped put the death penalty back up for debate in Asia.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Japan hangs them. China puts a bullet in their head. Taiwan makes them lie face down on a blanket, then shoots them in the back or skull.
Asia has had few qualms about capital punishment. It put more people to death in 2009 than the rest of the world combined, according to Amnesty International, with “the vast majority” of those executions in China.
But now, movements are afoot to abolish the death penalty. Taiwan and South Korea put unofficial moratoriums on executions, at least until Taiwan put to death four convicts in June last year after an outcry from crime victims’ relatives. Japan has also reduced executions.
Majorities in Asian countries support the death penalty, as is the case in the United States. But several high-profile cases have given people pause. In Japan last year, DNA evidence proved the innocence of a man who had been jailed for 17 years for murder. There are doubts, too, on the guilt of the country’s longest-serving death row inmate.

In Taiwan, the case of the "Hsichih Three" is cited by rights groups as a disturbing example of how police and the courts can get it wrong.
Once hours away from the execution chamber, the three men were found innocent last November in the grisly double murder of a couple in 1991. The only evidence against them were confessions they later recanted, saying they were obtained through torture.
"The case of the Hsichih Trio has raised public awareness of the weaknesses of the criminal justice system and begun to raise the death penalty as a question for public debate," said a report by the International Federation for Human Rights.
From April to November last year, GlobalPost followed the re-trial of the Hsichih Three, attending hearings and interviewing the key figures in the case. Their story is one of high drama. It highlights how the global debate over whether the state should have the power to take a life is playing out in Asia.

USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame

Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.

Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)

But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.