News from The Kingdom

There goes Tony Blair, stepping down from his job as Britain’s prime minister to become the special, peace-making envoy of the so-called diplomatic Quartet – the U.S., the United Nations, Russia and the European Union – to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

There goes Blair again, signing a lucrative publishing contract for a tell-all memoir of his decade at the helm of Britain’s government – a book that may well end up telling only the same, tired tale of the ex-PM’s stubborn allegiance to George W. Bush and spinning the same old double-talk about the lies they used to justify the Iraq war. (more…)

What a turn-off: gloomy stats about mankind changing the weather, and destroying species and forests.

Environmentalists may get off on climate porn, but most people just turn away. “If it was really so bad, they’d do something,” says someone I know, without specifying who “they” are. The human tendency to convince yourself that everything is OK, because no one else is worried, is deeply ingrained. (more…)

Millions of people may face a rise of up to 26 per cent in their water bills — an average £40 a year — as a result of new spending plans drawn up by water companies.

The increases, designed to pay for £27 billion of new water and sewerage projects, would mean more misery for households already trying to cope with higher costs of gas, electricity, mortgages, food and insurance. (more…)

BBC reports that the group “Democrats for Life,” whose title gives new meaning to “oxymoronic,” decided last week not to press the Democratic Party to restore a life-tolerant “conscience clause” to its party platform. Isn’t it time the party quit this charade that it wants to make abortion “rare”? (more…)

Experiments to create Britain’s first embryos that combine human and animal material will begin within months after a government watchdog gave its approval yesterday to two research teams to carry out the controversial work.

Scientists at King’s College London, and the University of Newcastle will inject human DNA into empty eggs from cows to create embryos known as cytoplasmic hybrids, which are 99.9 per cent human in genetic terms. (more…)