Did you forget to stay up late waiting for results from the U.N. climate talks in Doha? Well, you'll be happy to know global warming is solved thanks to a bold consensus decision to take aggressive international action on carbon emissions and sustainability. No, wait, that is not what happened. Here's a typically sunny reaction: "It’s very, very depressing. There is nothing [in the text] at all on finance, nothing about emissions reduction, it's all about workshops and talk shops. There is no commitment by [by rich countries] on anything."

Then again, "low expectations" were the only expectation at all. Sorry, polar bears and etc.

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The story that best describes Haiti's last year is not from a slum, nor from a cholera clinic. It's not to be found in the rubble—but in a courtroom in Texas.

In November, 2010, Lewis Lucke, a former U.S. ambassador to Swaziland and former USAID official in Haiti, filed suit against Haiti Recovery Group Ltd. for some $500,000 in unpaid fees for the tens of millions of dollars in contracts Lucke secured for the group in the days after the earthquake. After leaving his USAID position, Lucke immediately signed a $30,000 a month "consulting" contract with the Haiti Recovery Group, a conglomerate formed by several American contractors with [...]