Dominique Strauss-Kahn is to be questioned next week by police investigating an alleged prostitution ring in northern France, officials say.

Mr Strauss-Kahn has been summoned for questioning on Tuesday and can be held for up to 48 hours without charge.

He resigned from the International Monetary Fund last May when charged with raping a New York hotel maid.

Although the case was later dropped, it ended his ambitions to run for the French presidency.

(Reuters) - Greece's cabinet approved Saturday a final set of austerity measures sought by the EU and IMF as a condition for a 130 billion euro ($171 billion) rescue package, raising the chances of a deal next week to avert a chaotic default on its debt.

The approval was largely a formality after Athens last week unveiled details of the extra budget and public sector wage cuts worth 325 million euros to euro zone partners.

Lingering doubts over whether Greece can bring its mountain of debt down to more manageable levels in coming years could still hold up the rescue package. Some officials in the 17-nation currency union warn chances of a deal at a euro zone meeting Monday are little higher than 50-50.

Germany's political parties said on Saturday they expected to find a candidate for President within the next few days, following Christian Wulff's resignation on Friday. Former East German pastor Joachim Gauck is said to be a favourite.

Loyal first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy paid glowing tributes to her husband on Thursday as she pledged her "100 percent" support for him.

The musician, actress and former model told daily newspaper 20 Minutes that she would be at her husband's side "when he needs me."

Bruni-Sarkozy, who has previously supported left wing candidates, left no doubt that she believed her right-wing husband was the right man to be president for the next five years.

"He is very good and has experience and courage," she said. "When I see what is happening in Greece I'm afraid but I'm less afraid when I know that he is the president."

"People don't realize how wealthy people self-tax," Friess told me when I asked whether, given the country's economic troubles, it was fair to ask the rich to pay a bigger share. "You know, there's a fellow who was the CEO of Target. In Phoenix, he's created a museum of music. He put in around $200 million of his own money. I have another friend who gave $400 million to a health facility in Nebraska or South Dakota, or someplace like that. You look at Bill Gates, just gave $750 million, I think, to fight AIDS."

Friess's point is that the common good is better served when the wealthy "self-tax" by supporting charities of their own selection, rather than paying taxes to finance government spending.

"I think we should get rid of taxes as much as we can," Friess told me. "Because you get to decide how you spend your money, rather than the government. I mean, if you have a certain cause, an art museum or a symphony, and you want to support it, it would be nice if you had the choice to support it. Where we're headed, you'll be taxed, your money taken away, and the government will support it.

"It's a question: Do you believe that the government should be taking your money and spending it for you, or do you want to spend it for you?" Friess explained.

(Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange (LME) has received a good number of first-round bids for the 130-year-old bourse, the world's largest metals market place, an LME spokesman said on Friday.

Separate sources familiar with the situation said the list includes NYSE/Euronext. Around half of the 15 or so parties that had shown interest in the LME had made initial offers.

"Everything is on track with a good number of bids for the board to consider next week," an LME spokesman said.

The LME board meets on February 23.

Italian anti-mafia prosecutors Friday ordered the seizure in Switzerland of fake US Treasury bonds with a face value of $6.0 trillion -- or over a third of US national debt.

The bonds were found hidden in false compartments in three safety deposit boxes transferred in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich and eight arrests have also been made in Italy as part of the investigation, prosecutors said.

Investigators said that members of a criminal network had tried to use the bonds in emerging markets or give them to banks in exchange for money.

The bonds were dated 1934 and one of the deposit boxes also contained a forgery of the Treaty of Versailles, which investigators said could have been used to justify the sums involved as payments between states following World War I.

Watching Europe sink into recession - and Greece plunge into the abyss - I found myself wondering what it would take to convince the chattering classes that austerity in the face of an already depressed economy is a terrible idea.

...

OK, I'm aware of all internet traditions the problems here. To some extent we may be looking at reverse causation, with troubled economies forced into harsh austerity while those doing well (e.g., Poland) can keep expanding spending. Also, austerity programs generally involve sharp cuts in transfer payments and tax hikes as well as declines in real purchases, so you don't want to interpret the slope of a line through the scatter - around 3 - as a measure of the multiplier.

But it is pretty striking, isn't it? The truth is that we've just had a powerful test of the Keynesian proposition that when monetary policy isn't available, changes in government spending move the economy in the same direction - and the results of that test say that what has lately passed for policy wisdom is instead almost criminal folly.

I have a challenge. Can anyone think of a useful insight in macroeconomic theory which isn't clearly stated in "The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money" ?

...

Uh oh. I've been planning this for days, but I now wonder about an example. I think Keynes assumed prices were flexible and that Joan Robinson and Gardiner Means* had something useful to add.

A final warning: I asked about "The General Theory ..." It is very unwise to assume that all ideas in that book were copied or effectively summarized in old introductory Macroeconomics textbooks.

Iran's nuclear ambitions could plunge the Middle East into "a new Cold War", the UK foreign secretary has warned.

William Hague told the Daily Telegraph other nations in the region would want to develop nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Without "the safety mechanisms" of the US-USSR rivalry, Mr Hague said it would be "a disaster in world affairs".

But ex-UK diplomat Sir Richard Dalton said Iran was not "rushing towards a nuclear weapon". Tehran insists its programme is for energy purposes.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18, 2012 (IPS) - After a week of tense negotiations, a United Nations preparatory committee concluded a final round of talks on Friday to define the rules of procedure for a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is expected to be finalised in July this year.

The ratification of the report by committee chair Ambassador Roberto Moritan of Argentina closed the last of four prepcoms held since 2010 to lay the groundwork for the ATT negotiations.

The report includes a "non-paper" by Moritan that will be the basis of this summer's talks.

Human rights groups expressed cautious optimism about the outcome.

"This document fits 70 percent of our recommendations," Aymeric Elluin of Amnesty International told IPS.

But the agreement on a vote by consensus, meaning that every state has veto power, may deeply compromise the adoption of a comprehensive treaty, he warned.

"There is a real risk for the final text of ATT not to be adopted in July," he added. "Negotiations on the content will be extremely difficult."

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 17, 2012 (IPS) - When the 193-member General Assembly adopted a resolution against Syria by an overwhelming majority Thursday, the U.N.'s highest policy making body was conscious of the fact that its rulings - unlike the dictates of the 15-member Security Council - are politically impotent because they have no enforcement power.

The vote was 137 in favour to 12 against (including China and Russia, the two big powers who are allies of Syrian President Basher al- Assad), with 17 abstentions.

With Russia and China using their vetoes to block punitive action against Syria in the Security Council last week, the United Nations may have hit a virtual dead end in trying to help resolve the 11- month-old crisis.

The uprising has claimed the lives of more than 5,400 people, mostly civilians and members of the security forces.

But Jose Luis Diaz, head of the Amnesty International office at the United Nations, does not think the United Nations is in a no-win situation.

For proof, you need look no further than the Pentagon's new "strategic guidance" document, issued last month in the wake of Mr. Obama's pledge to cut $485 billion from the defense budget over the coming decade. It repeats many of the core objectives of recent American national security strategy: defeat Al Qaeda, deter traditional aggressors, counter the threat from unconventional weapons.

But it also states, "In the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will emphasize nonmilitary means and military-to-military cooperation to address instability and reduce the demand for significant U.S. force commitments to stability operations." It goes on to note that "U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations."

With this paragraph military planners signaled an abrupt end to the post-9/11 era of intervention. Only a few years ago the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- wars of occupation, nation-building and counterinsurgency -- looked like the face of modern conflict. Now they don't. Americans don't believe in them and can't afford them anymore.

A drastic switch to low carbon-emitting technologies, such as wind and hydroelectric power, may not yield a reduction in global warming until the latter part of this century, new research suggests.

Furthermore, it states that technologies that offer only modest reductions in greenhouse gases, such as the use of natural gas and perhaps carbon capture and storage, cannot substantially reduce climate risk in the next 100 years.

The study, published today, Thursday 16 February, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, claims that the rapid deployment of low-greenhouse-gas-emitting technologies (LGEs) will initially increase emissions as they will require a large amount of energy to construct and install.

These cumulative emissions will remain in the atmosphere for extended periods due to the long lifetime of CO2, meaning that global mean surface temperatures will increase to a level greater than if we continued to use conventional coal-fired plants.

As people seek healthier dietary regimens they often turn to things labeled "organic." Lurking in the background, however, is an ingredient that may be a hidden source of arsenic-an element known to be both toxic and potentially carcinogenic.

Organic brown rice syrup has become a preferred alternative to using high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in food. High fructose corn syrup has been criticized as a highly processed substance that is more harmful than sugar and is a substantial contributor to epidemic obesity. Unfortunately, organic brown rice syrup is not without its faults.

Dartmouth researchers and others have previously called attention to the potential for consuming harmful levels of arsenic via rice, and organic brown rice syrup may be the latest culprit on the scene.

President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday called for more investment in agriculture, especially in rainfed and dryland farming, to achieve food security and inclusive growth.

Addressing a national workshop on policy initiatives in agriculture with particular reference to rainfed and dryland farming here, Patil said 60 percent of India's cultivated area were under rainfed and dryland farming, which provided 44 percent of country's production of foodgrains, including coarse cereals, pulses and oil seeds, and supported 40 percent of the country's 1.2 billion population.

'But it has very low investment as compared to irrigated areas. I think this needs urgent attention,' Patil said.

Despite being an economic success, prawn farms built in Brazil's mangroves have displaced natural ecosystems and the coastal communities which rely on them, says Kennedy Warne in an exclusive extract from 'Let Them Eat Shrimp'

A flat-bottomed punt with an ancient outboard motor ferries me across the Rio Jaguaribe. Golden light gleams on fishing boats catching the afternoon breeze in their sails. Laughing children dive like sprites in the river while a man fishes for crabs from a rickety pier. A straggle of mangroves lines the river's edge. Their looping, spidery prop roots make the trees look as if they have strolled out of the sea, found the place to their liking, and settled in. Who could blame them? The name of this place is Porto do Céu, the gates of paradise.

Two residents lead the way along a dirt track to show me their new neighbor, a shrimp farm.

Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilla on Thursday warned that Rio de Janeiro faced a major dengue epidemic, although he said the virus strain prevalent was not fatal.

"I believe that Rio could this year face one of the worst dengue epidemics in its history, in terms of number of cases," he said in a television interview.

Padilla said the dengue virus strain prevalent in Rio was not the most serious and was not fatal.

The official Agencia Brasil said since the start of the year, 3,499 dengue cases have been recorded in Rio, compared with 2,322 last year, but none were fatal.

The government said that nationally cases dropped 62 percent this year to 40,486.

Despite investing billions of dollars in "soft power" projects to improve its image abroad, China complains it is still getting a lot of bad press and is pointing the finger at foreign journalists.

Authorities routinely accuse China's 900 foreign reporters -- a record number, accredited to more than 400 media organisations -- of covering China in a negative way. The journalists, meanwhile, complain of regular hindrance to their work.

The issue came to the fore at a forum this week in Beijing, where media representatives from China -- which operates a vast censorship system over the press -- and France gathered to try and iron out their differing views.

"It is not that China is against critical reporting," said Wang Chen, minister in charge of the press office at the State Council, China's cabinet.

"What we don't accept are double standards based on a Cold War mentality," he told French ambassador Sylvie Bermann, who had just highlighted the importance of journalists being allowed to report stories on the ground.

For background you might want to refer to this article first.
On Tuesday past, Conservative Central Office announced that the PM was to make a high profile visit to an NHS Hospital, to a) bolster support for his NHS reform,and b) raise issue of binge drinking. But, as I outlined in my previous post, there was an incident at the hospital. I can now reveal the details of what is alleged to have happened.

OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM, Feb 18, 2012 (IPS) - Palestinians in East Jerusalem can once again go to the movies, after Al Quds Cinema reopened its doors this week after being closed for 25 years. Organisers say this signals the rebirth for Palestinian arts and culture in the city.

"We have been cut off for a while from the rest of the world, so I think that this is the perfect place for Palestinians to come," Rima Essa, the cinema coordinator tells IPS. "I'm trying to bring a lot of films from areas that we never thought of bringing films from; from Iran, Syria, Lebanon. We hope that this centre will give the Palestinians a different cultural experience."

Housed in the Yabous Cultural Centre in East Jerusalem, Al Quds Cinema celebrated its relaunch with an inaugural film festival called `Freedom Films Week'. Nearly a dozen films were shown, on issues ranging from revolutions in Tunisia to sexual harassment in Egypt and daily life for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

"You see that people are really hungry for these kinds of films. People come at the end and speak with you and a lot of people you start to see day after day," says Essa, who curated the Freedom Films Week festival.

(Reuters) - Computer programs can be taught to select between brain scans of healthy young people and scans showing adolescents who are at higher risk of developing mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, scientists said Thursday.

In a study in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE journal, British researchers said their findings suggest it may be possible to design programs to predict which at-risk adolescents will go on to have psychiatric problems, giving doctors more time to intervene before illnesses set in.

"Combining machine learning and neuroimaging, we have a technique which shows enormous potential to help us identify which adolescents are at true risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders, especially where there is limited clinical or genetic information," said Janaina Mourao-Miranda of University College London, who led the study.

Olivier Fleury, an evangelical Christian, has sparked debate in Switzerland after he objected to the level of detail provided to his 14-year-old son during a recent sex education class at a school in Vaud.

In addition to information about how to put condoms on properly, the class was also advised that the anus is the next most sensitive part of a man's body after the penis, online news website Le Matin reported.

Such information, according to Fleury, can push kids to engage in impure practices.

"If you tell them the anus is an erogenous zone, don't you think they're going to try it?" he asked. 

There is no law in Germany that says a new drug must be better than those already available - and comparison testing is not even required.

Leading doctors examined 39 clinical studies of new drugs published between 2009 and 2010 and found the tests often demonstrated no advantage over older alternatives, the medical publication Deutsche Ärzteblatt revealed on Friday.

In 2009, statutory health insurers paid out €874 million more for drugs than the previous year and pharmaceutical companies' turnover climbed dramatically.

Half of the drugs in the clinical trials examined were only tested against a placebo and "only in exceptional cases was a new medicine found to have a higher effectiveness than pre-existing ones," the report said.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, is at the centre of an escalating row over how faith schools discuss homosexuality in sex education classes.

The TUC has accused Gove of failing in his legal duties by insisting that equality laws, which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, do not extend to the school curriculum.

The TUC complains that the current situation sends mixed signals to the playground, because schools are legally obliged to condemn discrimination on sexual-orientation grounds but free to use religious materials that equality campaigners claim is homophobic.

Evidence that missing aristocrat Lord Lucan was smuggled out of the UK to a secret life abroad has come from two new witnesses.

An ex-detective said there was a credible sighting of Lucan in Africa.

And a woman who worked for Lucan's friend John Aspinall told the BBC she arranged for his children to fly to Africa where the peer could view them "from a distance".

Lucan disappeared in 1974 after the murder of his children's nanny.

Sandra Rivett was found dead at Lucan's home in Belgravia, London.

The peer's blood-soaked car was later found abandoned in Newhaven, East Sussex.

The Metropolitan Police said any "significant" new information about her death would "be fully considered".

Jean-Marie Loret, who died in 1985 aged 67, never met his father, but went on to fight Nazi forces during the Second World War.

His extraordinary story has now been backed up by a range of compelling evidence, both in France and in Germany, which is published in the latest edition of Paris's Le Point magazine.

Hitler is said to have had an affair with Mr Loret's mother, Charlotte Lobjoie, 16, as he took a break from the trenches in June 1917.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin