If you really want to go green, the conventional thinking goes, buy a hybrid. Practically speaking though, there is a faster and cheaper option: shift to a low-carbon diet. The meal plan of the average American family accounts for 2.8 tons of CO2 emitted annually, compared with 2.2 tons for driving. Worldwide agriculture contributes some 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, far more than transportation. So when it comes to cutting your carbon footprint today, the truth is that what you ...

Whatever good this week's visit by Senator John Kerry had done to soothe U.S.-Pakistan tensions was complicated by Tuesday's firefight between Pakistani troops and a NATO helicopter that had crossed into the country from Afghanistan. During his meeting with Pakistan's top civilian leaders, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and White House confidante Kerry was critical about the anti-American environment cultivated in Pakistan in the wake of the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden. After a couple days of ...

Could there at last be a flicker of good news from Japan? On Saturday, Japanese officials announced that last-ditch efforts to stabilize the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami might be achieving a modicum of success. Engineers said they had connected a power cable to the plant, possibly allowing pumps to begin flowing water into cooling pools surrounding dangerously overheating nuclear fuel rods and spent fuel containers. The ...

A surprising set of items are helping spur the growth of Dollar Tree, the super-duper discount chain where every item actually sells for a buck or less. We're talking about party supplies: everything from plates to wrapping paper to favors. During an economic crisis, aren't people supposed to be slouching on their couches, rather than honking on noisemakers? Apparently not. "This says a lot about the American consumer," says Timothy Reid, Dollar Tree's vice president of investor relations. "They ...

Asia is set to lead the world out of the global financial crisis in spite of the slow recovery in the US and Europe, according to the latest forecasts by the Asian Development Bank. In a dramatic contrast to its view in March, when it slashed 2009 growth forecasts for Asia excluding Japan from 7.2 per cent to 3.4 per cent, the ADB on Tuesday said the region would grow more strongly than expected both this year and in 2010. ...

New Haven Police Chief James Lewis on Thursday described the killing of Yale graduate student Annie Le as an instance of "workplace violence," but he did not elaborate. Raymond J. Clark III, 24, has been charged with Le's murder and bond has been set at $3 million, Lewis told reporters at a news conference. Thursday morning, police arrested the Yale lab technician in the strangulation of Le, whose body was found in the wall of an off-campus research building. ...

The Phoenix Mars Lander has entered a state of suspended operation called "safe mode" due to low power, mission managers said Thursday. And while they hope to recharge batteries and reactivate the spacecraft in the coming days, they say the rapid onset of the Martian winter means Phoenix's days are severely numbered. "This is a precarious time for Phoenix," Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a written statement. "We're in the bonus round of ...

If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China's great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people ...

With irresponsible banking practices taking the blame for bringing about the global economic crisis, there has been a surge of interest in Islamic finance. Now, a slew of academic courses are springing up to meet the demand of those wanting to break into an expanding market. According to ratings agency Moody's, the global Islamic finance sector is worth $700 billion and has the potential to be worth $4 trillion. What's more, the ethical principles underpinning Islamic finance are ...

The damage they do to society is well-known, but drug traffickers, it turns out, also aren't the most environmentally-minded campers. Law enforcement officials say that a wildfire now raging in Santa Barbara's Los Padres National park, burning more than 136 square miles, was sparked by a cooking fire started by the hirelings of a Mexican drug cartel which was growing thousands of marijuana plants in the remote canyons. Far from an isolated incident, the Los Padres fire, according ...