Campaigners pressing for tougher controls on the sale of guns in the United States notched up a big victory this week when Wal-Mart, the country’s largest seller of firearms, agreed to a 10-point plan designed to prevent weapons falling into the hands of criminals.
Manhattan is a famously elitist place when it comes to fine dining. Who you know is often the key to securing a table at one of the hot new restaurants. Imagine the horror then, when the latest hyper-chic establishment of New York’s most happening chef opted for an egalitarian alternative.
T Boone Pickens is famous for thinking big. He founded his Texan oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in 1956 with just 500 in the bank. After a string of audacious takeovers he turned it into an independent empire that challenged the big oil companies, and today he is worth -billion. Now this straight-talking Southerner is launching the biggest and most audacious project of his career.
When Jeffrey Sachs gave the first of his BBC Reith Lectures at the Royal Society in London a year ago, he was confident that there, in the bosom of the Enlightenment, with Isaac Newton’s portrait staring down at him, his message about our ability to overcome the world’s problems would go down well.
But for a trick of fate, Chris Rock might have been a truck driver. Instead the Brooklyn boy is the "funniest man alive".
One of the world’s leading climate scientists warns on Monday that the European Union and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.
A group of leading Southern Baptists has denounced the denomination’s stance on global warming as ”too timid”. Its cautious response to the environment is seen around the world as ”uncaring, reckless and ill-informed”, they say. Their statement has widened divisions about climate change within the American evangelical movement.
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/ 7 February 2008
John McCain, the irrepressible Senator from Arizona, stood on the brink of winning the Republican party’s nomination for United States president this week with almost half of the magic number of 1 191 delegates needed to win the race in the bag. McCain emerged as the clear front-runner from Super Tuesday.
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/ 10 December 2007
It was, if you stopped to think about it, a rather incredible event. A woman born in Mississippi to a poor, unmarried mother who rose to huge fame and fortune, standing on stage beside a fellow African-American who was largely unknown a year ago but is now vying to become the 44th president of the United States.
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/ 8 December 2007
A series of six black-and-white prints on display in an unassuming corner of the New York Public Library have sparked controversy on the airwaves and blogosphere quite out of keeping with the dark, marble-lined corridor in which they are hung. The prints show the mugshots of main members of the Bush administration.