Warren Buffett’s utility subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, has made a number of large investments in renewable energy over the past few years. But the famed investor doesn’t exactly make environmentalists jump for joy.

Stephen Lacey

U.S. wind energy continued to rebound in the second quarter, with 2,151 megawatts (MW) of electrical generating capacity installed in the first half of 2011, versus 1,250 MW during the same time in 2010, up 72 percent.

Noticeably absent from this week's debt ceiling deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans were the billions in taxpayer subsidies Congress continues to dole out to Big Oil, despite overwhelming support among Americans to end these handouts and in the face of staggering oil company profits released last week. When it came to taking on Big Oil, Congress and the Obama administration blinked.

--By David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund, and Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International

What a great year for Wall Street: profits up, bonuses up and, best of all, criticism down, especially from Washington. Somehow Wall Street has much of America believing its lies and rationalizations.

Billionaire Warren Buffett said that rich people should pay more in taxes and that Bush-era tax cuts for top earners should be allowed to expire at the end of December.

US President Barack Obama and billionaire financier Warren Buffett are reportedly very distant cousins going back to an indentured servant from 17th-century France.

Experts from what is billed as the world's largest family history website, Ancestry.com, say they have traced the two men's lineage to Mareen Duvall, who emigrated to Maryland from France in the 1650s.