VOLLEYBALL: Men's team is on fire as it wins two more against Stanford and Pacific last week at home.

Last week President Barack Obama directed regulators to move forward on approving applications made by California and 13 other states to set strict auto emission and fuel standards.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently released a sobering new study that found climate change and human damage to the global environment to be essentially irreversible.

A day in Israel starts just like any day in America: The sun rises, you eat breakfast, say "good morning" to your family and sit down at the table. However, the only real difference is the occasional missile that might strike your house, or your neighbor's house, at any given minute. But here, trivial things like rocket launchings do not affect us. CNN does not cover it; media reports include the new president's first dance and a man talking to a squirrel, but not the constant rocket attacks barraging Israel.

President Barack Obama gave his first interview since he's taken office to Al-Arabiya, a Saudi news network on Jan. 26. There is no doubt that the move was both impressive and constructive. The old face of imperialism, which characterized the Bush administration, has left some hope for change in our relations with the Arab world. President Obama has kept some notable promises since he has taken oath, namely closing down the infamous Guantanamo Bay and meeting with the war cabinet to discuss the withdrawal of troops in Iraq by May 2010. He has made it clear that he'll hold the age-old mantra of "Peace in the Middle East" to his name.

Almuni Warns that UC Board of Regents Proposal Harms Us All; Green That's Too Extreme: Failing to Understand Your Audience; Relationship Educator Finds Divorce Article Touching

Illinois impeaches Blago; Neo-Nazis clean up highway in Kansas; Navy trains Flipper to hunt scuba-diving terrorists; all House Republicans vote against stimulus package (which passes anyways).

Broke bankers; "refugee run" at Davos; black the new black, survey says; Blagojevich grasps at straws.

The debate on abortion can never yield a winner. Giving people the right to have an abortion never feels like a victory since it allows for the snuffing out of potential lives. Taking away the right to abortion is even less appealing because we attack rights pertaining to reproduction, a gift bestowed by evolution. Taking away the right to abortion also forces children into already overcrowded families and into the arms of parents who may do considerably more harm than good. Our new president is taking the best possible steps in terms of both his policies and the manner in which he is treating the issue.

Recession? Turndown? Complete collapse? What should we call the current state of our economy? If it's not a depression, it sure is depressing. Chalmers Johnson, founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute and a former CIA analyst, has been saying for years that the United States has little to no national industry. The only thing that the U.S. currently has to offer the world, he claims, is war and the machines to make it. By that rubric, our current economic depression might not be as bad as we think. Since the bottom dropped out of the U.S. economy in October, every branch of the U.S. armed services has reported windfall recruitment surges. The economy is getting so bad, it seems, that the hells of Iraq and Afghanistan seem better than the purgatory of unemployment. It is boom times indeed for the wagers of war.

Your take on labor justice is likely all about where you started from. My perspective starts with the old slogan, "An injury to one is an injury to all." There is probably no need to explain that expression of solidarity, but the question of unity and sharing is about with whom you practice it and how generous you want to be.

Obama set the tone for his new administration with a win-win affront on the First Amendment. The sheepish Republicans in Congress nearly bought into his attempt to marginalize Rush Limbaugh, but even though they didn't (and that's still in question), Obama has rallied the good will of his robotic constituents and thus come away unscathed.

Since when have we become a country that condones the endangerment and maltreatment of our nation's future? We must protect those who are unable to protect themselves, even if that means challenging and relinquishing some of our very own unalienable rights. The freedom of religious belief, guaranteed by our Constitution, cannot justify behavior that endangers an innocent child's life; yet, far too many cases in recent years have resulted in the unnecessary loss of life because parents have refrained from seeking medical treatment for their children due to religious beliefs that posit prayer is the only suitable method of care.

ASUCI hosted the second tailgate party of the season on Saturday before the UCI men's basketball team took on Long Beach State. There were many free giveaways and plenty of spirit.