Political and business leaders may agree in principle that climate change is a serious threat, but there is a startling lack of consensus and a 'you-go-first' attitude on taking action, even amongst a small group of high-level decision makers disconnected from their cell phones here in the Arctic.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's much anticipated policy speech about his peace intentions was suffused with peace rhetoric, but it was starkly short on a peace vision.

When a Jamaican women’s group Sistren realised the voices of poor women were missing in a national debate on abortion rights, they boldly staged a play before parliamentarians reviewing a draft law that seeks to clarify when abortion can be deemed legal.

Spectacular views of mountains and glaciers here in the world's most northerly permanent human settlement contrasted with business and political leaders' pessimism and concern about the enormous gap between the action on climate that science deems necessary and what politics considers realistic.

Up the Pacific Coast from California to Washington, through the heartland in Texas and Illinois, and over to the Atlantic Seaboard in New Jersey and New York, local trade unions and mainly immigrant workers centres are experimenting with new modes of cooperation.

New scientific research suggests that climate change is taking place faster than foreseen in studies considered so far, according to environmental experts at a forum on climate change called by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE).

After decades at sea, organised labour has limped into port. Last fall, they helped to elect a sympathetic U.S. president and Congress. Now trade unions are gearing up to push for a major overhaul of labour law. They are also welding an alliance with immigrant and human rights groups to win comprehensive immigration reform.

It is too optimistic to say the United States is headed for a Japan-style recession, according to Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.

Just a few months after a right-wing government gained power in Israel, Iran's hardliner president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the winner in Friday's election, although his main rival has not accepted defeat and reformist supporters were skirmishing with security forces in the capital Tehran Saturday.

'What are you doing here?' The motorist in the battered white Volvo stops to ask us alongside an overflowing rubbish cart. Residents of this poor Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem have been burning garbage in a bid to clear the uncollected mounds.