A street vendor in Ghana's capital sells small American flags with an image of President Obama on them, in front of a billboard that proclaims "Akwaaba" -- or "Welcome" -- next to a smiling image of the U.S. leader. When Obama arrives in Accra on Friday night, he will be the third sitting American president to visit the West African nation of Ghana. But unlike Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama is only visiting Ghana and no other ...

If Nancy Pelosi gets her way by the end of the week, the U.S. House of Representatives will have passed landmark global warming legislation. But you might not know it from the near unanimously bad reviews so many different interested parties are giving it. Groups as disparate as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Farm Bureau, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers have expressed either strong concerns or outright opposition ...

The bad news for India is scrawled across the scorching sky. Not a speck of monsoon clouds has been spotted over much of north and northwestern India for weeks, and the meteorological office has confirmed fears that the country will get late and below-normal rains this year. In a nation where 60% of farmland depends on rains, and where farms provide livelihood to more than 60% of the population, the news has triggered widespread panic. Top bureaucrats have been ...

Scientists in the United States are developing a "synthetic tree" capable of collecting carbon around 1,000 times faster than the real thing. As the wind blows though plastic "leaves," the carbon is trapped in a chamber, compressed and stored as liquid carbon dioxide. The technology is similar to that used to capture carbon from flue stacks at coal-fired power plants, but the difference is that the "synthetic tree" can catch carbon anytime, anywhere. "Half of your emissions come from small, ...

Former President Bill Clinton urged people to accept themselves and others in a world system that is "unstable, unequal and unsustainable." Clinton gave the keynote address Saturday to members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington. The organization gave the 42nd U.S. president its global leadership award. The world is an "interdependent" system where an event in one country, such as an economic collapse, can affect the entire globe, Clinton said. The former president said recent events such as the ...

Sometimes location is everything. Other times, it's just a convenient place to spend the night. On both sides of the Atlantic, much has been made of Barack Obama's decision to spend Thursday night in Dresden, the German city known primarily as the site of a horrific bombing campaign by U.S. and British forces just months before the end of World War II. The bombing, which lasted 63 minutes, started fires that ultimately claimed the lives of between ...

Comic and best-selling author Joy Behar appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live" Wednesday. "The View" co-host discussed a variety of topics, including the Miss California USA pageant, her feud with Donald Trump and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's political future. The following is an edited version of the interview. Larry King: It looks like Donald Trump has made up with Barbara (Walters). How are you and Donald now Joy Behar: You would not believe how friendly he was to ...

Here's yet another reason to stay in shape: Thinner people contribute less to global warming, according to a new study. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published a study showing that, because of food production and transportation factors, a population of heavier people contributes more harmful gases to the planet than a population of thin people. Given that it takes more energy to move heavier people, transportation of heavier people requires more fuel, which creates ...

The benefits to humans of omega 3 fatty acids in fish oils are well documented, but a new study has found that fish oils can have a wider benefit to the environment -- by reducing the amount of methane produced by cows. The report produced by University College Dublin found that by including two percent fish oil in the diet of cattle they achieved a reduction in the amount of methane released by the animals. Lowering methane emissions ...

Hours before President Obama was to hold a prime time news conference -- in part to boost his $3.6 trillion budget plan -- a key Democratic senator Tuesday unveiled a scaled-down budget proposal. Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said the Senate Budget Committee, which he chairs, will vote on his version Wednesday. "We've made hundreds of billions of dollars of changes to make this work to get down to the deficit goal and at the same time maintain the ...