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Jupiter, Saturn and Venus have lined up in the evening sky and will continue to be prominent features throughout most of December, but this week, the trio will get a visitor. The easy-to-find planets, paired with the approaching peak of the Geminid meteor shower, make December a great month for evening stargazing. The only caveat is that the weather can be fickle during the long December nights, often offering frosty conditions on nights that are not cloudy. The moon started off the week next to Venus, and as the week progresses, it will continue to move up the chain, passing...

Former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan says he’d be “the climate mayor,” but his multimillionaire dad, who’s funding his long-shot City Hall bid, is the opposite of an environmental steward. Michael Donovan — who has given $6.8 million through a super PAC, making him the single largest donor in the entire mayoral race — owns three homes, a gas-guzzling private jet, and once destroyed wetlands in front of his $18 million Bridgehampton estate. “If candidates are taking money from polluters, they are making a big mistake because people suffer,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, head of the New York umbrella environmental group...

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

WASHINGTON - New Democratic lawmakers aren't the only ones measuring for drapes and unsealing boxes. In a job swapping cycle unseen for some time, Democratic congressional aides and former members are leaping to lucrative lobbying posts, Democratic lobbyists are grabbing for influential jobs in Congress and advocacy groups are waging bidding wars for the best talent around. Call it a six-year itch. Washington's $2.3 billion lobbying industry is undergoing one of its periodic adjustments to shifts in government power — the first since the White House changed hands in 2001. Accustomed to dealing with Republicans and at times discouraged by...

HILLSBOROUGH, Northern Ireland, April 8 —  U.S. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday voiced confidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was losing control and endorsed a “vital role” for the United Nations in postwar Iraq. But the two leaders fell short on postwar specifics that would appease countries suspicious of U.S. intentions. WASHINGTON AND London hope their agreed vision of the postwar stages in Iraq will placate antiwar nations such as France, Germany and Russia, and allay widespread international suspicion of U.S. motives in Iraq. “We are of course agreed, as we say in our joint...