If ever you needed an illustration of bad karma.... Scottish ministers could release the former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing because he is suffering from advanced stage cancer. The Scottish National Party Administration at the Edinburgh parliament confirmed yesterday that it would consider a request for early release on the grounds of his deteriorating health. Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi (pictured above) has been diagnosed with prostate cancer following hospital tests last month, his lawyer revealed yesterday. The disease has spread to other parts of his body.
----------------- Oil prices fell below $70 a barrel Wednesday as investors shrugged off a looming OPEC production cut after company forecasts suggested the U.S. may be headed for a severe economic slowdown that would crimp demand for crude. Light, sweet crude for December delivery dropped $2.63 to $69.55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by noon in Europe. COMMENTARY By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: The 2 is back. Last week, U.S. retail gasoline prices fell below $3 a gallon to an average of $2.91 the lowest level in almost a year. Why does this news leave me with mixed feelings? Because in the middle of this wrenching economic crisis, with unemployment rising and 401(k)s shrinking, it would be a real source of relief for many Americans to get a break at the pump. Todays declining gasoline prices act like a tax cut for consumers and can save $15 to $20 a tank-full for an S.U.V.-driving family, compared with when gasoline was $4.11 a gallon in July. Yet, it is impossible for me to ignore the fact that when gasoline hit $4.11 a gallon we changed a lot. Americans drove less, polluted less, exercised more, rode more public transportation and, most importantly, overwhelmed Detroit with demands for smaller, more fuel-efficient, hybrid and electric cars. The clean energy and efficiency industries saw record growth one of our few remaining engines of real quality job creation. But with little credit available today for new energy start-ups, and lower oil prices making it harder for existing renewables like wind and solar to scale, and a weak economy making it nearly impossible for Congress to pass a carbon tax or gasoline tax that would make clean energy more competitive, what will become of our budding clean-tech revolution? ------------------ COMMENTARY By MARGARET ATWOOD: This week, credit has begun to loosen, stock markets have been encouraged enough to reclaim lost ground (at least for now) and there is a collective sigh of hope that lenders will begin to trust in the financial system again. But were deluding ourselves if we assume that we can recover from the crisis of 2008 so quickly and easily simply by watching the Dow creep upward. The wounds go deeper than that. To heal them, we must repair the broken moral balance that let this chaos loose. Debt who owes what to whom, or to what, and how that debt gets paid is a subject much larger than money. It has to do with our basic sense of fairness, a sense that is embedded in all of our exchanges with our fellow human beings. But at some point we stopped seeing debt as a simple personal relationship. The human factor became diminished. Maybe it had something to do with the sheer volume of transactions that computers have enabled. But what we seem to have forgotten is that the debtor is only one twin in a joined-at-the-hip pair, the other twin being the creditor. The whole edifice rests on a few fundamental principles that are inherent in us. ------------------- A herd of cows (pictured above) belches out more climate-changing gas than a family car, a university researcher said yesterday. Dr Andy Thorpe, an economist at the University of Portsmouth, UK, explained that 200 cows burp the annual equivalent amount of methane to the energy produced by a family car being driven 111,850 miles. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WebTV Dawgs/Dittos" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/WebTV-Pals -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
