By Chris Ames

It’s looking increasingly likely that pollution will be the choke point for plans to expand Heathrow airport, at least in the short term. The head of the Environment Agency and the European environment commissioner have repeatedly voiced concerns about the impact on “air quality” of more flights and more traffic. The government’s predictions on the issue are so transparently rigged that their chances of surviving a legal challenge are about as substantial as the non-existent green jumbo on which they depend.

As former environment minister Michael Meacher pointed out yesterday, “there is one environmental constraint which will apply very quickly, which is mandatory under EU law, and which cannot be circumvented. That is the EU targets on nitrogen oxide which come into force in 2010, just over a year away.”

By Chris Ames

Is the government executing a climbdown on eco-towns? Today, as attention focuses on the US, the government has finally published some very overdue policies on Gordon Brown's sinking flagship. From the way it's being spun, it looks as if the big idea is being seriously scaled down.

New housing minister Margaret Beckett is now hinting – as press reports have repeatedly suggested – that only one or two of the proposed eco-towns might get her approval when she makes a final decision next year. She explains that "the eco-town standards are tough" but that seems more spin than substance.

By Peter Tatchell

As early voting in the US presidential elections gets underway, ES&S iVotronics touch-screen electronic voting machines have been observed in four separate states flipping the votes – mostly from Barack Obama to John McCain but sometimes to third party candidates too. This has already occurred during early voting in the states of West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Texas.

A county clerk in West Virginia invited a video crew to watch his demonstration of the reliability of the disputed voting machines but instead he saw the machine flipping the votes, as critics claimed. He put this down to the faulty calibration of the voting machine. However, even after he recalibrated the machine it continued to flip votes. Watch the video here:

By Peter Tatchell

Around 13 million US voters have been purged from the electoral rolls since 2004. That's 10 per cent of the 120 million votes cast in 2004 and twice as many voters as have been added through recent massive voter registration drives.

The proportion of electors dropped from the voters' lists is staggering: 17 per cent in Colorado, 15 per cent in Washington State, 14 per cent in New York, 13 per cent in Nevada and 10 per cent   in Missouri.

This means that millions of Americans will not be allowed to vote on 4 November. It could cost Barack Obama the White House, even if he is ahead in the opinion polls on 4 November.

By Andrew Neilson

So Jack Straw thinks it is the language that penal reformers use which is the problem.  Having sat at the RSA and heard him deliver his chiding speech to a room full of, er, penal reformers, I have a few points to make back.

Firstly, Jack tells us that when penal reformers use phrases such as the "crimogenic needs of offenders" it drives him "nutty".  Actually, I’ve never heard penal reform groups use that phrase – but I have heard it many times used in government-sponsored research published by the Home Office.  I’m not convinced that the jargon around criminal justice is our fault at all.

His second charge, that penal reformers fail to address the needs of victims, is more serious. 

By Peter Tatchell

Will next week's US presidential vote be free and fair? Based on the conduct of the last election, possibly not. The 2004 election was marred by vote-fixing that would disgrace a banana republic. Four years later, few new safeguards have been implemented to prevent a re-run of the voter exclusion and ballot tampering of 2004.

This is the conclusion of Robert F Kennedy Jr, civil rights lawyer and nephew of JFK. In one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism in recent years, published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, he revealed how voting irregularities in 2004 were enough to steal the presidency for the Republicans. You can read his meticulous 14,000-word expose here. It is essential reading for everyone who cares about the fate of US democracy.

Kennedy found that in 2004 nearly half the six million American voters living abroad never received their ballots or received them too late to vote.

By Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK Director

Last month when I posted on Open House about the case of the death row prisoner Troy Davis facing execution in the United States within days despite serious doubts about the safety of conviction, I took a deep breath and hoped for sense to prevail.

Surely the state of Georgia or the national US authorities would intervene to prevent the execution of a man who might very well be innocent?

By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent

Something close to an amnesty for those who killed during Northern Ireland's troubles is to be recommended by a committee set up to consider how best to deal with the legacy of the past.

The proposal is that those involved could provide information in secret on the understanding that it would not be used to prosecute them. The idea is among those being worked on by a group headed by former Church of Ireland archbishop Lord Eames and Denis Bradley, a former Roman Catholic priest.

By Ed Gallois

As you might expect from an ex-Python, John Cleese has come up with the best take on Sarah Palin so far.

And if you think he's being a bit harsh, this should change your mind.

By Chandrashekhar Krishnan

Today, the OECD Working Group on Bribery published a special review of the UK’s record in fighting foreign bribery. It is disturbing reading for the British government, for citizens who are concerned about how British companies operate abroad – and for companies themselves.

The Working Group stated that it was ‘disappointed and seriously concerned’ about the UK’s record in tackling foreign bribery, in a highly condemnatory 79-page report. The Report makes it clear that the UK continues to be seriously delinquent in enforcing the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention which the UK signed in December 1997.   It also warns that UK’s poor reputation may now start to damage British business, as commercial partners and Multilateral Development Banks would require increased due diligence from UK companies.