No image available
/ 6 February 2006
It was almost certainly the first State of the Union address in United States history to mention switchgrass. It grows in marshes and may, according to President George W Bush, be part of the solution to the US’s oil addiction. In six years, said Bush, the ethanol derived from such vegetable matter would be a viable, affordable fuel for the US’s cars.
No image available
/ 3 February 2006
It doesn’t exactly have blockbuster written all over it, but a documentary about former United States vice-president, Al Gore, received standing ovations at the Sundance film festival in Utah last week. Julian Borger reports.
No image available
/ 31 January 2006
This week, United States President George W Bush committed the US to the defence of Israel against threats from Iran, saying he would not allow the world to be "blackmailed" by an Iranian nuclear weapon. The president’s warning, issued in an exchange with students in Kansas, came at a tense time in relations with Iran.
No image available
/ 9 December 2005
The robust defence of ”rendition” (flying terror suspects abroad for interrogation) offered recently by the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, marks the export to a European audience of a position on torture that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the George W Bush administration.
No image available
/ 6 December 2005
The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, published by the White House national security council, is more a statement of United States war aims than a detailed blueprint. The central objective is defined in terms of the nature of the country US troops will leave behind when they eventually depart.
No image available
/ 1 November 2005
Religion and science clashed in a drab Pennsylvania courtroom over a test case that could decide how evolution is taught in United States schools. The civil trial, triggered last year by a classroom battle, marks the beginning of the first major legal assault on evolution science in 18 years.
No image available
/ 23 September 2005
President George W Bush’s multibillion-dollar reconstruction plans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are being used as ”a vast laboratory” for conservative social polices, administration critics claim. The White House strategy involves the suspension of a series of regulations guaranteeing the going local wage and affirmative action for minorities.
No image available
/ 2 September 2005
Chaos spread across New Orleans along with the brown, toxic floodwater in the early hours of Wednesday, and the thousands of stragglers still trapped awoke to find themselves in a city with few laws, little mercy and no clear way out. The police seemed to have all but evaporated in the course of a night of looting and gunfire, in which at least one police officer was badly injured.
Only four days before President George W Bush chose him as his nominee for the Supreme Court, John Roberts ruled to give the administration a free hand in holding military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, critics claimed this week. Bush sent his candidate to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet senators who will ultimately decide Judge Roberts’s confirmation.
Karl Rove watched the early returns trickle in on a big screen at the British embassy on Thursday night, and then when the shape of result began to emerge, he donned a red rosette and walked away. It was a suitably ambivalent gesture for United States President George Bush’s ever-present political mastermind.