• AP - George W. Bush "headed toward a constitutional confrontation with Congress over his effort to reject a sweeping defense bill. Bush announced he would scuttle the bill with a 'pocket veto'... But that can happen only when Congress is not in session... And the Senate maintains it is in session... The White House's view is that Congress has adjourned."

• AP - "Sales of new homes plunged last month to their lowest level in more than 12 years, a grim testament to the problems plaguing the housing sector. The Commerce Department reported Friday that new-home sales tumbled by 9 percent in November from October... the worst showing since April 1995... The sales pace for November was much weaker than economists were expecting."

• LA Times - "David Letterman's production company has struck an independent deal with the Writers Guild of America that will allow 'Late Show With David Letterman' ... to return to the air Wednesday with its writing staff... The terms of the agreement were not immediately known."

• LA Times - Maxwell Doty's efforts in the 1970s to find "the heartiest, fastest-growing algae to help Third World nations develop a seaweed crop for carrageenan" was successful, but his "open-cage experiments inoculated Hawaiian coastal waters with half a dozen types of foreign algae. These aggressive invaders have smothered at least half the reefs in Kaneohe Bay on Oahu's west coast and have begun to spread to waters beyond."

• Guardian - "Thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists called 'a revolution' in generating electricity. The solar panels produced by a Silicon Valley start-up company, Nanosolar, are radically different from the kind that European consumers are increasingly buying to generate power from their own roofs. Printed like a newspaper directly on to aluminium foil, they are flexible, light and, if you believe the company, expected to make it as cheap to produce electricity from sunlight as from coal."

• BBC News - "Six French aid workers [from the French charity Zoe's Ark] who were jailed in Chad on child trafficking charges have returned to France. The six were sentenced to eight years' hard labour in Chad on Wednesday for attempting to kidnap 103 children... France struck a deal with Chad, requesting that the six serve their sentences in their home country."

• Xinhua - "Poland is to hold talks with Russia over the latter's opposition to a U.S. missile shield planned for Central Europe, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Friday. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislyak will come to Poland in January to present Russia's arguments against the installation of anti-missile shield in Poland".

• Guardian - "The operations room of the Esrange space centre near Kiruna in the far north of Sweden is one of a handful of places in the world that perform space launches... In three years, ... Esrange will act as mission control for the European outpost of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic... Passengers paying $200,000 (about £100,000) a ticket for the two-hour flight will be able to fly into the aurora borealis - the northern lights - something that no human has done before."

• Turkish Daily News - "Whether in Berlin, Köln or elsewhere, queues of people waiting on the streets to choose their Dönersandwich are common these days... The döner... is by far the nation's favorite fast food dish and has developed into an economic miracle... The German version was created by Mehmet Aygün in Berlin's Kreuzberg... [when he] opened his first kebab shop in 1971 and was convinced that the traditional Turkish döner kebab had to be adapted to German tastes: 'Germans want meat with sauce'".

• BBC News - "The centenary of the birth of James Bond creator Ian Fleming is to be marked next month with six extra-long UK stamps, Royal Mail has said. Each stamp has been lengthened to show a number of different Bond novel covers, with first-class stamps featuring Casino Royale and Dr No. The 54p stamps reveal the covers of Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. And the final 78p pairing, also launched on 8 January, has For Your Eyes Only and From Russia With Love."

• Independent - "Maritime historical experts say that, scattered around the Spanish coastline, lies more gold and silver than in the vaults of the Bank of Spain. There are said to be the 700 shipwrecks, from Roman barges, to Spanish Golden Age galleons and British aircraft carriers... The Spanish Ministry of Culture has commissioned the marine archaeologists Nerea Arqueologia Subacuatica (NAS) to draw up a treasure map, listing all the sunken galleons around the world to stop others 'stealing their heritage'." Of course, much of that gold is the stolen heritage of the Incas, Aztecs, and other America peoples.

• Reuters - "France stands ready to help Egypt develop civilian nuclear technology, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told an Egyptian newspaper ahead of meetings in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak... In recent months, France has agreed nuclear cooperation deals with Morocco, Algeria and Libya and in July Sarkozy said the West should trust Arab states to develop such technology for peaceful purposes or risk a war of civilisations."

• NYT - "South African anticorruption strike force revived and expanded criminal charges on Friday against Jacob G. Zuma, the new leader of South Africa's dominant political party and the front-runner to become the nation's next president. The charges... threaten to catapult the country into a political and legal crisis that could last well through 2009, when the next national elections are scheduled to be held."

• AFP - "Opposition leader Raila Odinga enjoyed a clear lead Friday over incumbent Mwai Kibaki according to partial, unofficial tallies as Kenya awaited the result of its tightest ever presidential elections. Official final results could be delayed until Saturday".

• BBC News - "Ethiopian troops have withdrawn from a key town in central Somalia. Islamist insurgents say they now control Guriel, where Ethiopia had a big military base to secure the road linking the two countries... It is not clear why the Ethiopian troops withdrew without any fighting."

• Reuters - "An apparent move to sideline Nuhu Ribadu, the head of a Nigerian anti-corruption unit which is prosecuting seven former state governors, caused dismay among graft fighters on Friday. The national chief of police, Mike Okiro, announced on Thursday that Ribadu, a ranking police officer, was being ordered to attend a one-year policy and strategic studies course at a remote institute in central Nigeria."

• BBC News - "At least 14 people have been killed in a car bombing at a busy market in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police and hospital officials have said. At least 64 people were wounded in the explosion, which happened at about 1300 (1000 GMT) in a square crowded with shoppers after Friday prayers. A police spokesman said the dead were all civilians, including at least one woman and a child."

• McClatchy - "Two statistics sum up the last year in Iraq: 2007 will end as the deadliest for American troops since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with more than 900 dead. At the same time, December -- with just 16 hostile-fire deaths as of Friday -- very likely will be the month with the second fewest American deaths of the war so far... The decline in violence was across the board. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in Baghdad from bombings and explosions in December was half the number that were killed last January; the number of bodies found in the capital's streets was down by nearly 75 percent compared with the beginning of 2007."

• NYT - "Thousands of foreign workers have come to the Kurdish districts in the last three years, a huge turnaround for a place that had hardly any before, making it one of the fastest growing Middle Eastern destinations for the world's impoverished. They come from Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Somalia, supporting an economic boom here that is transforming Kurdish society. But nearly all foreign workers interviewed over a two-week period here said they had been deceived by unscrupulous agents who arrange the journeys. Unable to communicate, some arrive not knowing what country they are in. Once here, their passports are seized by their employment agencies, and they are unable to go home."

• AFP - "Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri has postponed a parliament session to vote for a new president to January 12, his office announced Friday. MPs had been due to convene on Saturday to elect a successor to pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud, who stepped down at the end of his term on November 23... Berri's announcement late Friday marks the 11th time the vote has been postponed".

• WaPo - "For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy -- and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan's most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington's key ally in the battle against terrorism." The AP reports, Rice offers brief condolences for Bhutto.

• McClatchy - "Violence and recriminations grew Friday over the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, as Pakistan's government changed its account of how she died while her supporters charged that the government withheld personal protection she'd requested. As deadly protests continued to rage on Pakistan's streets, the country's Interior Ministry said that Bhutto -- buried Friday without an autopsy -- had died after she was thrown against the lever of her car's sunroof, fracturing her skull."

• LA Times - "As slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her ancestral village today, the government of President Pervez Musharraf laid blame for her murder on [Baitullah Mahsud,] a pro-Taliban commander, but provided no evidence of to back up its claim."

• Independent - "Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi - attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives - and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were 'extremists' and 'terrorists'... Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a 'murderer' were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her."

• NYT - "A senior American official in Washington said there was some debate within the Bush administration over whether to press President Pervez Musharraf to open the investigation to law enforcement officials from outside Pakistan, including the F.B.I... Mr. Musharraf and his supporters in the Bush administration, meanwhile, were coming under increasing pressure, inside and outside Pakistan, to open up the inquiry. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said Friday that the United States should call for an independent investigation."

• Times of India - "Two days before the 36th birthday of Nepal's crown prince Paras, the heir to the snake throne received the worst gift ever with Nepal's parliament on Friday finally ending months of wrangling to declare the Himalayan kingdom formally a federal, democratic republic. Prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who had been the last defender of Nepal's two-centuries old monarchy, finally gave in to the growing Maoist demand for the immediate scrapping of the throne".

• CTV - "NATO troops may soon be working double duty in the lawless border region between Pakistsan and Afghanistan. Until now, the 41,700-strong NATO force fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has relied heavily on Pakistan's help to control the flow of insurgents over the lawless border between the two countries."

• The Hindu - "Orissa Steel and Mines Minister Padmanabha Behera, who hails from the violence-hit Kandhamal district, resigned from his post, even as the situation continued to remain tense in the tribal-dominated district for the fifth day on Friday. Mr. Behera... submitted his resignation... owning moral responsibility for the incidents of communal violence in Kandhamal since December 24."

• Guardian - "China has abandoned controversial plans to build a huge dam which would have submerged one of the country's most renowned tourist areas and forced the relocation of 100,000 residents in the south-western province of Yunnan. In a rare and high-profile victory for China's environmental movement, the project at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze river was scrapped during a meeting in the provincial capital, Kunming."

• Xinhua - "China began digging a tunnel on Friday beneath the Yellow River in eastern Shandong Province as part of the massive south-to-north water diversion project. The 7,870-meter tunnel would annually divert 442 million cubic meters of water from the Yangtze River to the northern banks of the Yellow River... The tunneling was scheduled to be completed in three years with an investment of 613 million yuan (92.1 million U.S. dollars)."

• NYT - "China's currency rose steeply against the dollar this week, feeding speculation that Chinese authorities, yielding to international pressure and economic realities at home, were allowing their currency to appreciate more rapidly. The currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, rose 0.9 percent this week -- faster than over any week since China stopped pegging it to the dollar on July 21, 2005."

• BBC News - "Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has held talks in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao. Both parties indicated that ties between the two countries were improving, saying 'spring has come'. They discussed increasing co-operation on environmental issues and nuclear fission, but did not resolve a dispute over maritime gas fields."

• SMH - "A backroom deal designed to restore Japan's right to commercial whaling is behind its decision to spare humpback whales from its Antarctic hunt. Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Masahiko Koumura, has detailed a bargain with the US chairman of the International Whaling Commission to 'review' the contentious kill of humpbacks from Australian stocks. Mr Koumura said Japan agreed with a US request to postpone the catch while the deadlocked 78-nation commission keeps moving towards 'normalisation'."

• SMH - "Longwall coalmining is about to undercut a heritage-listed canal that carries a fifth of [Sydney's] water supply. Residents and environmentalists fear that subsidence caused by a new mine south-west of Sydney will destroy the gravity-fed canal and interrupt the water supply." The "system of sandstone channels, tunnels and aqueducts built in the 1880s".

• NYT - New Zealand is trying to save the kiwi bird from the brink of extinction. "Kiwi numbers have declined rapidly over the past century, as populations struggled with the twin threats of shrinking habitat and expanding legions of new predators... Hugh Robertson, who runs the Kiwi Recovery Program of New Zealand's Department of Conservation, estimates... the population now stands at 75,000."

• MercoPress - "A huge oil spill has washed to the shore north of Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentine Patagonia, threatening the rich marine life in the area according to reports from the Argentine press." The "oil slick struck the coast is called Caleta Córdoba nearby an offshore oil loading platform where tankers queue up to transport crude mostly for Buenos Aires refineries."

• WaPo - "For the past decade, a team of scientists and volunteers at the Buenos Aires Zoo has been raising condor hatchlings and releasing them throughout South America, helping restore populations of the bird in places where it had long been considered extinct."

• Bloomberg - "Brazil's real advanced the most among major currencies versus the dollar this year, buoyed by the fastest economic growth in three years and record exports of products such as orange juice, steel and commercial jet planes. The real soared 20 percent to 1.7760 per dollar, its fifth straight annual advance and its biggest since a 22 percent rally in 2003."

• CP - "Brazil said Friday that starting Jan. 1 it will require all diesel oil to contain two per cent biodiesel in an effort to grow the market for the renewable, clean-burning fuel... All filling stations will be required to offer diesel containing two per cent vegetable oil starting Tuesday." Increased biodiesel production "could speed rainforest deforestation as soy bean growers advance into the Amazon."

• AP - "Former President Alberto Fujimori, on trial for murder and kidnapping, told the court on Friday that he 'saved Peru' by stamping out a bloody Maoist rebel movement... Fujimori, 69, has repeatedly denied that he authorized human rights violations during his 1990 to 2000 government."

• McClatchy - "Driven by dire poverty and political instability in South America's poorest country, Bolivians now make up one of the biggest cross-border movements of people in the region. Nearly one-quarter of Bolivia's 9.8 million people live outside the country, and the money they send home makes up 9 percent of the country's economy".

• Miami Herald - "With the order to 'Start up the ships,' Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Friday kicked off 'Operation Emmanuel,' his plan to secure the release of three high profile hostages held for years by Marxist rebels in the Colombian jungle. 'We don't want to lose time,' Chávez said as the two Russian-made MI-172 helicopters, carrying Red Cross insignia and Venezuelan flags, departed for Colombia".

• BBC News - "Cuba's ailing President, Fidel Castro, has for the second time this month alluded publicly to the possibility of retiring from office. In a letter read out to Cuba's National Assembly, he said in the past he had been a person who 'clung' to power, but that life had changed his perspective."

• AP - "Mexico plans to use cards with electronic chips to better track the movements of Central Americans who regularly cross the southern border to work or visit. Starting in March, the National Immigration Institute will distribute the cards to record the arrival and departure of so-called temporary workers and visitors."

• Reuters - "Archeologists have discovered the ruins of an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid in the heart of the Mexican capital that could show the ancient city is at least a century older than previously thought. Mexican archeologists found the ruins, which are about 36 feet (11 metres) high, in the central Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political centre for the Aztec elite."

• CP - "As he was awarded his country's highest civilian honour, Canada's most celebrated hockey dad shared some memories of his famous son they call the Great One. But Walter Gretzky's first thoughts were of his own parents - who like millions of other immigrants arrived in Canada with no fanfare or stardom, but with brilliant dreams for their offspring."

• Bush has 387 days left. 3,901 U.S. and 4,208 total coalition confirmed deaths in Iraq. Over $481,003,000,000 has been spent on the Iraq invasion and occupation. The U.S. federal debt is now over $9,152,266,000,000.

You could say American expatriates were ambushed in May 2006, when the U.S. Congress passed a new tax law - retroactive to the previous January - that raised the tax bracket on anything U.S. expats earned overseas beyond a fixed amount, and put a cap on expat housing allowances.

While some Americans who work overseas and filed U.S. tax returns in 2006 have already felt the pain, it appears that 2007 will be the year of "sticker shock," according to Steven Horton, a certified public accountant practicing in Paris, whose clients include a roster of long-term expats.

Horton described a client who is an executive for a large French company and has lived in France for 20 years. As the sole working member of a family with a child and paying child support to a former spouse while earning the equivalent of $195,000, the client has never paid U.S. taxes because his French tax credits canceled out his U.S. obligations. "I had to tell him that next year, for the first time he will have to pay U.S. taxes," Horton said.

Ongoing difficulties in Iraq. A Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. And now the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. For the West, 2007 has been a year of failure and missteps.

The following sentence is the most bitter compliment imaginable: The Thursday assassination (more...) of Benazir Bhutto is a huge, shocking and possibly even historic triumph for the enemies of democracy. Even worse, the attack was the gruesome culmination of what has been a successful year for them.

 The future of democracy in Pakistan is unclear following the Thursday assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. It is also not reaching too far to say that the shots that fatally wounded Bhutto in Rawalpindi Thursday also killed off any hope that the Islamic world could find peace of its own accord in the foreseeable future.

The West, too, is more troubled than it has been for a long time. The dismay in the corridors of government is genuine. US President George W. Bush's statement, which lasted little more than a minute, was eloquent testimony to his speechlessness. This world power has rarely looked so powerless -- and Bush has rarely looked so helpless.

Three Lessons to Be Learned

Now, as always when something goes wrong in the world, America is falling back on the rhetoric of violence. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been saying for some time that Pakistan is the war we must win. The "war on terror" metaphor has long been one of Bush's favorites.

GENEVA - Swiss authorities have closed an investigation into the late Benazir Bhutto for alleged money laundering but a parallel probe into her husband's activities continues, her lawyer said.

The Pakistani opposition leader was assassinated Thursday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, while campaigning for upcoming elections.

A three-year investigation into allegations that Bhutto used Swiss banks to launder millions of dollars in kickbacks has been closed, lawyer Alec Reymond said yesterday. They were charges Bhutto had denied, calling the claims politically motivated.

Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi - attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives - and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.

But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.

Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy - and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr - it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.

Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight - which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.

Washington, DC -Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2007 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians."  The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

Thousands of foreign workers have come to the Kurdish districts in the last three years, a huge turnaround for a place that had hardly any before, making it one of the fastest-growing Middle Eastern destinations for the world's impoverished. They come from Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Somalia, supporting an economic boom here that is transforming Kurdish society.

But nearly all foreign workers interviewed over a two-week period here said they had been deceived by unscrupulous agents who arrange the journeys. Unable to communicate, some arrive not knowing what country they are in. Once here, their passports are seized by their employment agencies, and they are unable to go home.

[...]

For the Kurds -- guest workers themselves in Europe for generations -- the newly arrived Asians and Africans are met with ambivalence. There are too few Kurds to take all the low-paying menial jobs, and many are uncomfortable hiring local Arabs, given the longstanding animosity between the groups.

Foreign women are integral to another transformation. As in some wealthy Persian Gulf states, the traditional Kurdish lifestyle is adopting some European ways: the rich and powerful want live-in maids, nightclubs need non-Muslim women to serve alcohol and men want intimate relationships before marriage -- all roles largely forbidden for Kurdish women.

Importing such workers relies on a far-reaching network of recruiters in poor countries, and for most of the 150 Bangladeshis cleaning the streets here, the journey to Kurdistan began at 5 Bonany Road in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the headquarters of the Travel Mix agency.

"They said at the agency that I would make $300 a month and work as a waiter in a restaurant," said Tufazil Hussan. He said that he took out a $3,000 loan with monthly interest of $150 to pay the agency, but that upon his arrival his passport was taken and he was put to work sweeping the streets seven days a week for $155 a month.

BEIJING -- Every day, monitoring stations across the city measure air pollution to determine if the skies above this national capital can officially be designated blue. It is not an act of whimsy: with Beijing preparing to play host to the 2008 Olympic Games, the official Blue Sky ratings are the city's own measuring stick for how well it is cleaning up its polluted air.

Thursday did not bring good news. The gray, acrid skies rated an eye-reddening 421 on a scale of 500, with 500 being the worst. Friday rated 500. Both days far exceeded pollution levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. In Beijing, officials warned residents to stay indoors until Saturday, but residents here are accustomed to breathing foul air. One man flew a kite in Tiananmen Square.

For Beijing officials, Thursday was especially depressing because the city was hoping to celebrate an environmental victory. In recent years, Beijing has steadily increased its Blue Sky days. The city needs one more, defined as scoring below 101, to reach its goal of 245 Blue Sky days this year. These improving ratings are how Beijing hopes to reassure the world that Olympic athletes will not be gasping for breath next August.

[...]

For the world's Olympians, Beijing's air is a performance issue. The concern is that respiratory problems could impede athletic performance and prevent records from being broken. For the city's estimated 12 million residents, pollution is an inescapable health and quality-of-life issue. Skepticism about the validity of the Blue Sky ratings is common. Moreover, the concern is whether the city can clean itself up long after the Games are over.