Andrew Gumbel

The Bush administration has consistently thwarted efforts by the World Bank to include global warming in its calculations when considering whether to approve major investments in industry and infrastructure, according to documents made public through a watchdog yesterday.

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

Dubai's ruling family has been served with a class-action lawsuit in the United States accusing them of masterminding an international child slave trade to provide jockeys and attendants for the popular desert sport of camel-racing.

Hansen, in turn, accused his adversaries of misrepresenting his testimony - whether it is congressional staffers seeking to minimise the impact of global warming or Michael Crichton, the novelist and global warming sceptic, picking holes in his claims in his novel State of Fear.

The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to curb global warming, following an agreement between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's movie star Republican Governor, and the Democrat-dominated state legislature, to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.

President George Bush has announced that he intends to create the world's largest marine conservation area across a broad swath of the Pacific, surprising and delighting his environmentalist critics who have had little but withering criticism of the "toxic Texan" over the past five and a half years.

California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has denied clemency to the oldest prisoner on California's Death Row, saying a murderer's life should not be spared because he is old and ill.

The White House faced deepening political embarrassment - and possible new criminal indictments - over its justification of the war in Iraq yesterday following the announcement of a new grand jury to examine the outing of a politically inconvenient undercover CIA agent in the months immediately foll

Two leading human rights organisations have accused the United States of in effect throwing away the lives of more than 2,000 juvenile offenders sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole - a punishment out of step with international law but one increasingly popular with tough-

President George Bush's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank has triggered reactions ranging from polite acceptance to outright hostility among foreign governments and aid groups.

The US Marine Corps launched an investigation into possible war crimes last night after video footage taken inside a mosque in Fallujah apparently showed a Marine shooting dead an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who had been taken prisoner.

Where should the United States invade next? Iran, Syria, or Cuba? Will George Bush merely slash taxes on the rich even further in his second term, or will he have the courage to abolish income tax altogether?

With only nine days to go and the polls showing Bush and Kerry still neck and neck, the result is once again likely to turn on the minutiae of the voting system. But this time the whole country seems poised to descend into post-election chaos.

Military Keynsianism Might get Bush Re-elected, But it is Starting to Worry Economists

The intelligence process is a bit like virginity," says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. "Once you prostitute it, it's never the same. Your credibility never recovers.

A Quiet Revolution is Taking Place in US Politics. By the Time It's Over, the Integrity of Elections Will be in the Unchallenged, Unscrutinized Control of a Few Large - and Pro-Republican - Corporations. Andrew Gumbel wonders if democracy in America can survive

Plan will enrich some of Mr Bush's closest corporate campaign contributors while risking the destruction of rainforest, threatening its indigenous peoples and endangering rare species

Discovery of first case shakes the world's biggest beef producer

Last month the only television channel allowed to report from Taliban territory in Afghanistan, Qatar's al-Jazeera station, said air strikes had killed 93 civilians in the village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of Kandahar, according to Taliban sources.