(Reuters) - Italian judges on Saturday ended former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's trial on charges of bribing British lawyer David Mills, saying the statute of limitations had run out and a verdict could not be reached.

The case surrounding Mills was one of the most prominent of the scandals involving Berlusconi, Italy's richest media entrepreneur as well as its dominant political figure of the past two decades.

Berlusconi, who denied paying Mills to provide untruthful court testimony, was not in the Milan court to hear Judge Francesca Vitale read a brief statement declaring that the trial, which began in 2007, was now closed.

Prosecutors had been seeking a five-year prison sentence but the decision effectively lifts the threat of any sanction against the 75-year-old media tycoon, who controls Italy's biggest private television broadcaster.

MÁLAGA, Spain, Feb 24, 2012 (IPS) - Demonstrators in nearly two dozen cities in Spain raised their voices Friday to protest against the use of public funds to bail out banks while the budgets for basic services like education and health are being slashed.

In the southern city of Málaga, dozens of people chanting "We aren't paying for this crisis" and "The bank always wins, and I don't like that" marched through streets downtown in a festive mood and entered a bank to try to cash symbolic checks, saying they were facing "a shortage of funds after the government's cutbacks," which especially hurt middle and lower-income sectors.

The simultaneous nationwide protests against the bank bailout were organised over the on-line social networks by Democracia Real Ya (DRY) - Real Democracy Now - a platform that sparked the May 15 movement (15-M).

The demonstration "aims to highlight, by peaceful action in many banks around our country, the enormous responsibility of financial bodies for the difficult situation we are in," Fabio Gándara, a DRY spokesman in Madrid, told IPS.

"We criticise the use of public money to rescue mostly private banks," Santiago R., a DRY spokesman in Málaga who preferred not to give his last name, told IPS.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has described the commission's proposals to halt grants to Hungary as "irrational and unfair", reports the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier in the week, the commission suggested a suspension of €495m in development grants to Hungary in 2013, unless the country takes measures to keep its deficits in check.

According to the paper, Orbán criticised the commission for what he deemed to be double standards. He said, "Why is it us, the ones who are performing well, who should face the threat of being cut off from funding while they're just pouring money elsewhere with constantly fading hopes of success?"

Serbia and Kosovo have agreed how Kosovo can present itself in diplomatic meetings of the western Balkan states, paving the way for the European Union to grant Serbia the status of a candidate for membership next week.

The two sides also agreed how to manage their border, which Serbia views as purely administrative because it does not recognise Kosovo's independence.

The agreement was reached today (24 February) after two-and-a-half days of talks in Brussels mediated by Robert Cooper, chief diplomatic adviser to Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief.

The compromise foresees that Kosovo's nameplate in diplomatic gatherings will contain a footnote making reference to Resolution 1244 of the United Nations Security Council of 1999 (as demanded by Serbia) and to a ruling by the International Court of Justice from 2010 (a Kosovar demand).

The footnote to the name 'Kosovo' will read: "This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSC 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence."

Burger King has announced it has pulled out of the government's controversial work experience scheme.

The fast food giant said it had decided to cease its involvement in the Get Britain Working programme because of recent concerns expressed by the public.

The scheme has attracted growing criticism in recent weeks with opponents describing it as a form of slave labour because young people worked for nothing, while keeping their benefits.

Burger King said it had registered for the programme six weeks ago intending to take on young people for work experience at its Slough headquarters, but had not recruited anyone.

The German government is prepared to send 160 financial experts to Greece to help the country overhaul its tax collection, the business weekly WirtschaftsWoche reported Saturday.

Hans Bernhard Beus, deputy finance minister, told the magazine that the tax officials are ready to jump in to help the ailing country. They would need to at least speak English, but about a dozen of the volunteers speak Greek, he said.

... Walter-Borjans warned that the Greeks would likely have even more reservations about the Germans offering advice than the East Germans did about their western counterparts coming in after reunification. That could also be he said, because of "inappropriate signals" coming from Germany regarding the implementation of Greek austerity measures.

(Reuters) - Germany may not be ready to back an increase in Europe's bailout fund at a summit next week, delaying efforts to meet international demands for Europe to strengthen its defences against the region's sovereign debt crisis.

Many finance leaders of G20 countries, meeting in Mexico City this weekend, have demanded that Europe strengthen its firewall as a condition for providing more resources to the International Monetary Fund.

The two actions would provide greater assurance to markets that the euro zone debt crisis will not spread.

The G20 joined forces in 2008 to fight back against financial crisis which blew up in the United States and caused the worst recession since the 1930s. In the last two years, the chaos has spread to Europe where highly indebted countries have been locked out of debt markets and forced to seek bailouts.

Euro zone officials said they do not expect a decision at a European leaders summit on March 1-2 on combining the resources of two European rescue funds.

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 24, 2012 (IPS) - Increasingly frequent and tragic railway accidents in Argentina, like this week's crash, show that the rail system, run by private companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the state, constantly ignores warnings from inspectors and fines, observers say.

"Another catastrophe could happen at any time," former socialist lawmaker Héctor Polino, founder of Consumidores Libres (Free Consumers), a citizens group that has filed numerous complaints against the companies running the railways, told IPS.

The debate on the state of Argentina's privatised and heavily subsidised rail network has flared up again in the wake of the Wednesday Feb. 22 crash, when a packed commuter train slammed into a retaining wall at a railway terminus in Buenos Aires.

The train entered the station at a speed of more than 20 km per hour and did not stop, for reasons that have yet to be determined, killing 50 people and injuring more than 700 others.

Some passengers said there were signs of problems with the train just before the accident.

The crash was the second in the Argentine capital in less than six months.

In my previous post I described Europe's latest Agreement on how to deal with the Greek debt problem, and the looming Euro Crisis, as a form of Crisis Appeasement. A New Munich that will haunt us Europeans for a long while. Today I cannot resist the temptation to couch my views on Greece's Bailout Mk2 using the very words with which Winston Churchill `welcomed' the Munich deal in the House of Commons:

I do not grudge our loyal, brave people, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week - I do not grudge them the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard default [ordeal] would no longer be required of them at the moment; but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:

"Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and intellectual [martial] vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

NATO has announced that all foreign adivsers will be pulled out of their posts in Kabul.

The announcement came hours after the shooting on Saturday of two International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) military advisers in the Ministry of Interior in Kabul city.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting live from the Afghan capital, said the withdrawal of hundreds of military and civilian advisers is a sign that NATO feels "no place is secure for any of their advisers" in Afghanistan.

In a statement, General John R Allen, ISAF commander, said that "for obvious force protection reasons, I have also taken immediate measures to recall all other ISAF personnel working in ministries in and around Kabul".

Speaking to Al Jazeera TV,  ISAF spokesperson, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson said the adviser pull out was a logical and necessary step to "account for all our personnel ... and bring them into their safe housing areas" in and around the Afghan capital.

Afghan access

The two American service members were inside a room in the ministry's command and control complex used only by foreign advisers. The only Afghans with access to that area are translators, Afghan officials said.

The Syrian military has extended its bombardment of the opposition-held Bab Amr district of Homs into a fourth week as the Red Cross tried to evacuate more distressed civilians from the city. 

Dozens of people were killed in Homs and elsewhere in Syria on Saturday, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees activist network.

Deploring the outcome of an international "Friends of Syria" conference held on Friday in Tunisia, opposition activists said the world had abandoned them to be killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

"They [world leaders] are still giving opportunities to this man who is killing us and has already killed thousands of people," Nadir Husseini, an activist in Bab Amr, said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had resumed negotiations with the Syrian authorities and the opposition to enable more civilians to be brought to safety.

Husseini said people in Bab Amr were suspicious of the ICRC's local partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and did not want to work with a group "under the control of the regime".

(Reuters) - A suicide bombing claimed by al Qaeda killed at least 26 people outside a presidential palace in southern Yemen on Saturday, hours after the newly-elected president was sworn in and said the battle against the Islamists was a "national duty."

A car was driven at the gates of the building in the port city of Mukalla, Yemen's fourth-largest city, far from the capital Sanaa where Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was sworn in.

Dozens were injured. The governor of Hadramout province Khalid Saeed al-Dayni said 20 of the dead were soldiers and an investigation was under way to identify the suicide bomber.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility and said the attack had been carried out by a "Yemeni jihadi," according to text messages sent to Reuters and other media outlets.

WASHINGTON, Feb 23, 2012 (IPS) - The failure of a mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to get Iranian permission to visit a military testing site mentioned in its latest report has been interpreted in media coverage as a stall to avoid the discovery of confirming evidence of past work on nuclear weapons.

But the history of Iranian cooperation with the IAEA on carrying out inspections at the Parchin military testing centre, as well as a previous IAEA-Iran work programme agreement, suggests that Iran is keeping permission for such a visit as bargaining leverage to negotiate a better deal with the agency.

The IAEA statement Wednesday emphasised the fact that the mission to Tehran had been denied permission to visit the site at Parchin. That prompted Associated Press correspondent in Vienna George Jahn to call Iran's refusal to agree to an IAEA visit to Parchin "stonewalling" and evidence of "hard line resistance" to international pressure on its nuclear programme.

Pakistan has begun to demolish the compound where US forces killed Osama Bin Laden, in the city of Abbottabad, residents and police say.

The al-Qaeda leader was shot dead at the compound in the north-western city near the capital Islamabad in May 2011.

Security forces brought in bulldozers and began destroying the tall outer walls of the compound after sunset, reports say.

They set up floodlights to carry out the work.

Residents have told the BBC that an unannounced curfew has been placed on people in the area, and they have been asked not to leave their homes, reports the BBC's Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

The Pan-American Post: A Florida immigration judge has ruled that there are sufficient grounds to begin deportation proceedings against General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, a former defense of El Salvador during the country's bloody civil war. Although the ruling was not published, lawyers familiar with the case told the New York Times that Vides took part in the abduction, rape and murder of four American churchwomen when he was leader of the National Guard in 1980.

(Reuters) - Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille resigned on Friday after just four months in office, plunging the country into political paralysis in the midst of rebuilding efforts two years after a devastating earthquake. (...) Conille's decision to step down came amid political infighting between the two leaders over earthquake reconstruction contracts, as well as a parliamentary investigation into dual citizenship of government ministers, which is illegal under Haitian law.

The Cuban Triangle: Ernesto Hernandez Busto at Penultimos Dias takes a long look at one of the most interesting nuggets in the Associated Press story about USAID contractor Alan Gross' modus operandi in Cuba: the fact that he reportedly used a special SIM card available only to government agencies to make his satellite Internet installations less susceptible to detection by Cuban authorities.

Colombia Reports: Illegal armed groups that emerged from the paramilitary AUC and the now-defunct Norte del Valle cartel have increased their presence in Colombian municipalities by 12%, according to a report by a research group.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez bid an emotional farewell laced with references to Jesus Christ and independence hero Simon Bolivar as he departed Venezuela on Friday for Cuba for urgent surgery to remove a tumor he says is probably malignant.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentina's deadliest train accident in decades was foreseeable and preventable, the nation's auditor general complained Thursday, saying years of failed safety tests and other problems had given the government more than enough reason to cancel the train operator's concession.

(Reuters) - On a hillside in northern Japan, wind turbines slice through the cold air, mocking efforts at a nearby industrial complex to shore up the future of the demoralized nuclear power industry.

The wind-power farm at Rokkasho has sprung up close to Japan's first nuclear reprocessing plant, a Lego-like complex of windowless buildings and steel towers, which was supposed to have started up 15 years ago but is only now nearing completion.

Dogged by persistent technical problems, it is designed to recycle spent nuclear fuel and partly address a glaring weakness in Japan's bid to restore confidence in the industry, shredded last year when a quake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi power station to the south, triggering radioactive leaks and mass evacuations.

But the Rokkasho project is too little, too late, according to critics who say Japan is running so short of nuclear-waste storage that the entire industry risks shutdown within the next two decades unless a solution is found.

PORTO VELHO, Brazil, Feb 24, 2012 (IPS) - "Perhaps it's the curse of Rondônia," joked Ari Ott, referring to teething troubles with the first turbine of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric plant which was intended to kick off a new cycle of huge power projects in Brazil's Amazon jungle region.

The enormous turbine, designed to generate 71.6 megawatts of electricity, overheated during initial tests in December and the necessary repairs delayed its coming onstream, now announced for late March, by at least three months.

Professor Ott, of the Federal University of Rondônia, said the problems "do not bode well" for the 44 turbines to be installed over a period of four years at the complex located on the Madeira river and run by the Santo Antônio Energia consortium, which is made up of Brazilian companies Odebrecht and Andrade Gutiérrez and other investors.

The use of high power "bulb" turbines is an innovation in Amazon jungle rivers that is suited to the low gradient and high flow rate of the Madeira river. Placed horizontally, unlike traditional vertical turbines, they require much less of a fall of water: in Santo Antônio, the drop will be only 13.9 metres.

Ott is not sure whether the turbines will be able to cope with the large amount of sediment carried by the river, which is still "a 'young' river, changing its shape and bed" with the seasons and carrying large numbers of trees along with its waters.

ROME, Feb 24, 2012 (IPS) - As the links between food security and climate change become increasingly inextricable, the necessity for sustainable agriculture is now a universal concern.

Smallholder farmers in the global South - who suffer most from changes in climate patterns and the degradation of natural resources, since they live and work in the most vulnerable landscapes - are in urgent need of sustainable agricultural technologies, a reality that was recognised at the annual meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which drew to a close in Rome on Thursday.

Despite ongoing economic and financial crises, developed and developing countries alike - represented by hundreds of development leaders and heads of state gathered in Rome for the 35th session of the Governing Council - committed 1.5 billion dollars to finance agriculture and rural development projects throughout the developing world.

During the two-day event, representatives from IFAD's 167 member states addressed the connection between overcoming poverty and food insecurity, and discussed how to ensure food security to a growing population while simultaneously protecting the environment.

In December 2011, member states gave a boost to sustainable agriculture with 1.5 billion dollars in new contributions to IFAD.

An EU committee of technical experts has failed to agree on a proposal that some say would label fuel from tar sands as more polluting than from other sources.

Abstentions and rejections from a number of European governments means the final decision will be taken by the environment council in June.

The commission and environmentalists said the "dirty" label is necessary to help fuel buyers choose the least carbon-intensive energy forms and help curb global warming.

But Thursday's vote at a closed-door meeting of technical experts in Brussels failed to reach a qualified majority on the issue.

Canada, home to massive crude reserves most of which are in the form of very heavy crude known as tar sands or oil sands, has challenged the draft EU law, saying it is discriminatory and could damage trade ties.

Earth's clouds got a little lower - about one percent on average - during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft.

The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters).

Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

Organic farms produce strawberries with fewer malformations and a higher proportion of fully pollinated berries relative to conventional forms, according to a report in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

The study, led by Georg Andersson of Lund University in Sweden, investigated the effect of organic farming compared to conventional.

They found that the pollination success increased greatly with organic farming, and speculate that this effect may be due to an increase in insect pollinator abundance and/or diversity.

They also determined that this effect was apparent within two to four years of the conversion, suggesting that there is not a significant lag time before pollination benefits are seen after adopting organic farming practices.

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has threatened to pull out of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) over a film rating given to the documentary Bully.

The R rating means children under the age of 17 will not be able to watch the film, about bullying in US schools, without a parent present.

In a statement, Weinstein called the rating decision "a bridge too far"

A Chinese student is hoping to become a heroine for women around the world by launching an occupy movement of her own -- in the men's toilets.

Fed up with long queues for ladies', Li Tingting made headlines when she and 20 women marched into a men's public toilet in the southern city of Guangzhou carrying colourful placards calling for equal waiting times for both sexes.

Now, she plans to take her protest to the capital Beijing, where China's leaders will gather next month for the annual meeting of the country's rubber-stamp parliament.

"We want senior officials to pay attention to this issue," she told AFP. "It is a big issue for many women. During the protest in Guangzhou, we conducted random surveys and found that the majority of people supported us."

Local media reported after the protest that provincial officials in Guangzhou had responded by agreeing to increase the number of women's toilets by 50 percent -- a pledge Li says should be taken nationwide.

Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event. At this key juncture of our planet's evolution, species had either to learn to cope with this poison that was produced by photosynthesizing cyanobacteria or they went extinct. It now seems strange to think that the gas that sustains much of modern life had such a distasteful beginning.

So how and when did the ability to produce oxygen by harnessing sunlight enter the eukaryotic domain, that includes humans, plants, and most recognizable, multicellular life forms? One of the fundamental steps in the evolution of our planet was the development of photosynthesis in eukaryotes through the process of endosymbiosis.

This crucial step forward occurred about 1.6 billion years ago when a single-celled protist captured and retained a formerly free-living cyanobacterium. This process, termed primary endosymbiosis, gave rise to the plastid, which is the specialized compartment where photosynthesis takes place in cells.

Murdoch has crossed a certain Rubicon with the frantic launch of the Sunday Sun. He's had enough and is taking control of his British mess. It is rather like his New Year's Eve conversion to Twitter. It's a personal statement: he is still here.

Shortly after the closing of the News of the World - a bitter pill that he swallowed at the urging of his children - he proposed this new Sunday edition of the Sun, only to be met by practical resistance from his New York executives. It was the wrong signal to send, at once underhanded (closing one just to open another) and antagonistic, an aggressive rather than a humble move. What's more, the Sun itself was surely going to face closer scrutiny by investigators pursuing the hacking and police bribery allegations.

"Let's just say, he's being more emotional than realistic at this point," one of his executives told me, over the summer. The internal message: let's not bet on the Sun's future.

Curiously, he used this exact outcome - the arrests of senior Sun staffers on suspicion of bribing the British police - as the crisis that justified the new Sun.

"Today marks the end of a journey that began 200 years ago. Today, La Mercedes' mission has been completed. If [the crew] were unable to reach their destination, at least the cargo will." So said Jorge Dezcallar, Spanish ambassador to the United States, in an emotional speech just minutes before two Spanish army planes headed home from Tampa, Florida with 17 tons of coins retrieved from the historical shipwreck. 

... The frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, part of the Spanish Armada, sank off the coast of Cádiz on October 5, 1804 after sailing from Montevideo in August. The ship was loaded with gold and silver, which ended up at the bottom of the sea, along with 249 seamen. Only around 50 survived. 

It's a truth of the modern digital age: If you're using a Web service for free, you're not the customer. You're probably the product.

One woman drank pesticide and died a day after an SKS loan agent told her to prostitute her daughters to pay off her debt. She had been given 150,000 rupees ($3,000) in loans but only made 600 rupees ($12) a week.

Another SKS debt collector told a delinquent borrower to drown herself in a pond if she wanted her loan waived. The next day, she did. She left behind four children.

One agent blocked a woman from bringing her young son, weak with diarrhea, to the hospital, demanding payment first. Other borrowers, who could not get any new loans until she paid, told her that if she wanted to die, they would bring her pesticide. An SKS staff member was there when she drank the poison. She survived.

Former South Africa President Nelson Mandela has undergone a "diagnostic procedure" in hospital, but his life is not in danger, officials say.

Mr Mandela was treated for a long-standing abdominal complaint and is expected to be released from hospital by Monday, a government statement said.

The anti-apartheid icon, 93, is comfortable and "fully conscious", the statement said.

His health has declined in recent years and he rarely appears in public.

This was Walpole Park in Gosport, Hampshire, on an overcast lunchtime last March when no fewer than 25 members of the emergency services, including a press officer, descended on a 3½ft-deep model boating lake minutes after Simon Burgess, 41, fell into the water when he suffered a seizure. But as an inquest heard last week, he lay floating face-down for more than half an hour while firemen, police and paramedics watched and did nothing.

The reason? Even though they could all swim, the first fire crew to arrive hadn't been `trained' to enter water higher than ankle-deep. Instead they waited for `specialists' to arrive to retrieve his body. They had decided Mr Burgess must surely be dead because he had been in the water for ten minutes. When a policeman decided to go in anyway, he was ordered not to. A paramedic was also told not to enter the water because he didn't have the right `protective' clothing and might be in breach of the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992.

The tragic incident made headlines around the world, held up as a shocking example of ludicrously risk-averse Britain. And it prompted a coroner to demand that fire, police and ambulance services improve training to prevent a repeat.