The NYT reports on the interlocking plotlines of a U.S. Supreme Court case on whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

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Thomas Homer Dixon argues there are limits to how far human inventiveness can take us when a critical resource becomes in short supply. Take oil, for example.

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Three British Airways aircraft that fly the London-Moscow route are being tested for radiation traces. Of the two in London, traces of radiation have been detected.

Is this how the polonium that killed Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko got into Britain?

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Diane McWhorter has a provocative commentary in Slate about what it was U.S. voters were trying to say about Dubya: Do they dislike his policies or just the fact he was bad at implementing them? (h/t to Herr Speicher)

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Political scientists Dominic Tierney and Dominic Johnson argue that two supposed American failures -- the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the Somalia mission of 1992-93 -- were actually successes.

It's just no one thought of them that way.

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Whoever contaminated ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 knew what they were doing and had to be connected to get the substance in the first place.

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Many European Union countries knew the CIA was using their territory to either transfer prisoners or hold them in black prisons and either did nothing or helped, a European Parliament report has found.

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Matt Lauer of NBC said his network would start referring to what's happening in Iraq as a civil war. Revolutionary, eh? Except the NYT and Washington Post have been doing so for months without fanfare.

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From the BBC:

The rise in humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide has accelerated sharply, according to a new analysis.

The Global Carbon Project says that emissions were rising by less than 1% annually up to the year 2000, but are now rising at 2.5% per year.

It says the acceleration comes mainly from a rise in charcoal consumption and a lack of new energy efficiency gains.

<sad irony>Kudos to those entrepreneurially-minded Iraq insurgents! From oil smuggling to profitable crime to corrupt Islamic charities, the insurgents are paying their own way, a classified U.S. government report finds. They may even be profitable enough to suppor other insurgencies!</sad irony>

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The Washington Post is reporting on a classified U.S. Marine Corps report on how badly the fight is going in Sunni Muslim-dominated Anbar province, where al Qaeda in Iraq continues to grow in popularity. Essentially, the Marines say the insurgency there cannot be defeated.

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UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says Iraq is almost in a state of civil war.

Here's a Nov. 26 NYT analysis on when a country has reached a state of civil war (hint: Many experts say Iraq has crossed that threshold).

If you haven't already seen it, go to The Daily Show's website later this afternoon and watch the clip of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow trying to explain why the situation in Iraq shouldn't be considered a civil war.

Ahh, the good old days in Iraq. An IED here, a sniper there. This NYT story says some groups of Sunni Muslim insurgents are behaving more like soldiers than rag-tag, hit-and-run guerrilla fighters.

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U.S. cities are in a battle to attract young, educated workers before they turn old (read 35) and settle down. With boomers retiring, this has serious economic implications for cities.

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Americans will spend US$5 billion on their pets this Christmas. WTFF?!?!

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A bill that has infuriated Islamists in Pakistan by allowing rape cases to be prosecuted in civil courts has the support of that country's Senate.

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One-time Montreal resident Abdul Jabbar Sabit returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and was appointed attorney-general three months ago. He is kicking ass and taking names on the corruption front there.

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From washingtonpost.com:

The Marine Corps may need to grow to sustain deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan without sacrificing needed training or putting undue stress on the corps, the new Marine commandant said yesterday.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Gen. James T. Conway also warned that it could take years to adequately train and equip the Iraqi security forces -- longer, perhaps, "than the timeline that we probably feel ... our country will support."

 
"This is tough work. It doesn't happen overnight," and patience by the American people will be needed, he said. On the plus side, he said, Marines he has talked to in recent days are encouraged by the progress they are seeing among Iraqi forces.

Conway said the current pace of Marine rotations to Iraq -- seven months there and seven to nine months at home -- is limiting other types of training that units can receive and could eventually prompt Marines to leave the service.

"There is stress on the individual Marines that is increasing, and there is stress on the institution to do what we are required to do, pretty much by law, for the nation," Conway said.

The goal, he said, is for units to spend at home twice the amount of time spent on deployment -- for example, seven months deployed and 14 months at home.

From the Beeb:

India and China to double trade

Key China-Pakistan deals expected

The Beeb blurb: Lebanon is the most politically complex and religiously divided country in the Middle East, which is what makes it such a potentially explosive factor in an unstable region.

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A New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh says the CIA has found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. The White House is dismissive of the report. Sound familiar?

Here's the full New Yorker article.

Here's the BBC news story based on it.

From the Fortune blurb: Everything you buy online says a little bit about you. And if all those bits get put into one big trove of data about you and your tastes? Marketer's heaven. Fortune's Jeffrey O'Brien reports. (h/t to Herr Speicher)

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