Friday March 5, 2010
Canada is trading in its paper currency for plastic. No, not credit cards, actual plastic money.
Sometime late in 2011, the Bank of Canada will replace the nation's traditional cotton-and-paper bank notes with currency made from a synthetic polymer. Canada will purchase its plastic money from a company in Australia, one of nearly two dozen countries where plastic currency is already in circulation.
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Wednesday March 3, 2010
U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday laid out the details of his new HOMESTAR program, nicknamed "Cash for Caulkers," which would provide on-the-spot government rebates to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient by installing new windows, doors, insulation and other materials from an approved list.
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Saturday February 27, 2010
A massive earthquake occurred off the coast of Chile early this morning, killing dozens of people, causing buildings, bridges and highway overpasses to collapse, knocking out telephone, electricity and water services in many cities, and raising tsunami warnings all along the Pacific Rim, as far away as New Zealand, Japan and California.
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Friday February 26, 2010
In China, the Hummer is called Han Ma, which translates as "fierce horse," but when General Motors came calling with an offer to sell its Hummer division to the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery company, Chinese officials slammed the barn door.
It seems GM's gas-guzzling military-vehicle-turned-status-symbol doesn't fit China's new focus on fuel-efficient cars and renewable energy. And those are pretty much the same factors that caused Hummer sales to tank in the United States--a drop of 67 percent in 2009--and sent GM looking for a buyer. The Hummer's 10 miles per gallon is out of sync with the new fuel economy standards passed by Congress.
China has pledged to get 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and is expected to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy within the next few years. Those are serious commitments designed to position China to dominate the emerging clean-energy economy. But while China is on the move, U.S. lawmakers are still talking.