Germany and Serbia Hope for Swift Deal on EU Trade Pact | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 11.01.2008

The foreign ministers of Germany and Serbia said that they were hoping that the Balkan nation would soon be able to sign up to a key aid and trade pact with the European Union.

Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremic said that his country had already fulfilled the EU's conditions for the agreement, which is seen as the first formal step on the road to EU membership.

 

"We very much hope this is going to become the reality come January 28, and if not January 28 at the next earliest opportunity," said Jeremic on Thursday, Jan. 10.

 

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also agreed that the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on that date was the ideal time for signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA). 

Public broadcasters under the EU competition microscope - EUobserver.com

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has public television and radio stations within its targets once again, this time with the launch of a public consultation on the future of state broadcasters.

The commission announced the consultation process on Thursday (10 January). It marks the start of a comprehensive review of the state of the sector since the adoption of its 2001 broadcasting communication.

The commission said in a statement that it hopes the review will build on the fundamental principles of the financing of public service broadcasting as laid down in European Community law, but also be able to clearly define what a public service mission is and limit state aid to "what is necessary for the fulfilment of this mission."

Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said: "There are many ways the present broadcasting communication can usefully be improved to increase transparency and legal certainty."

Croatia risks delay in EU membership, MEP warns - EUobserver.com

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Croatia needs to speed up the pace of its reforms or it risks becoming a full EU member only after 2011, the MEP in charge of the dossier has warned.

In his last report, Austrian Socialist MEP Hannes Swoboda set 2009 as a target date for finalising EU negotiations with Zagreb and 2011 as the year when Croatia could become a full EU member.

But while "six months ago, this was very likely to happen," today, the probability of Croatia respecting this time-frame is only "20 to 30 percent", Mr Swoboda told EUobserver.

The country still has a chance of finalising its accession negotiations early next year. Then around one and a half years would be needed for ratification of the accession document by member states for it to join the bloc in 2011.

77 professors at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, have signed a document protesting against the presence of Pope Benedict XVI at the inauguration of the academic year next Thursday. The protest is motivated by the Pope's obscurantist and reactionary positions concerning science and his continuous meddling in Italian society and politics. Student activists intend to rally against his presence.

Pope Benedict once declared that the trial against Galileo was reasonable and just, contradicting the later position of John Paul II who apologized for the trial. The present papal administration has undertaken a campaign against what it calls ideological science, such as "evolutionism". Science that does not have as its core axiom a curious concept known as True Reason is to be condemned as ideological and false. True Reason is apparently based on revelation of which the Church is the sole custodian. Science that denies Intelligent Design is false science.

Trashy Trade: Naples Makes a Dirty Deal with Germany - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Italy's trash problem isn't new -- which is why the country began exporting thousands of tons of garbage every day. Much of it ends up in Germany.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has an awkward problem. In Naples, the trash is piling up -- and all of Europe is pressuring him to find a solution. The trash is no longer just blocking the streets of the southern Italian city, but it is also being exported to other countries on a massive scale, mainly to Germany.

PHOTO GALLERY: THE GARBAGE BATTLE OF NAPLES

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Prodi's frustration is palpable. He says he wants to end "once and for all" a situation that for the last 14 years has returned again and again. Above all he would like Italy to be completely "self-sufficient in terms of garbage disposal." In other words, Italy must find an internal solution to its trash problem -- without help from abroad.

But he has said that before. Almost a year ago, Prodi said there needed to be an end to the "trains of shame." The reference was to the trains that have been heading north to German incinerators for the last seven years -- each one made up of 22 cars loaded down with 500 to 600 tons of household waste.

Serbia bans US and British election monitors - Independent Online Edition > Europe

Serbia's electoral commission has barred US and British observers from monitoring its presidential elections in protest over the countries' support for Kosovan independence.

A member of the commission from the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Slavoljub Milenkovic, said yesterday that the US and Britain would be prevented from sending monitors for the 20 January elections "because their countries want to destroy us and grab Kosovo away from Serbia".

The US and most EU nations back independence for Kosovo, which is populated by some two million ethnic Albanians. It has been run by the UN since 1999, when a Nato bombing campaign forced Belgrade to end its crackdown on an armed insurgency of Kosovan Albanians.

After more than two years of internationally sponsored negotiations, Serbia, backed by Russia, still fiercely opposes the imminent independence of Kosovo and has refused any solution other than broad autonomy. Belgrade did not react yesterday to a report in The New York Times that claimed the US and Germany have agreed to recognise the independence of Kosovo, and will push the rest of the EU to follow suit after the outcome of the Serbian presidential elections, the second round of which is to be held on 3 February.

Cloned animals are safe for consumption, European food agency says - International Herald Tribune

Meat and milk from cloned animals pose no special health risks, a draft report by the European Food Safety Agency issued on Friday concluded, a first step toward the eventual sale of such products within the European Union.

"It is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of food safety between food products originating from clones and their progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals," the report says.

The report acknowledged that cloned animals were prone to more diseases than conventionally bred animals, but said that humans would not suffer because unhealthy clones would be excluded from the food supply chain as is the case with conventionally bred animals.

The decision prompted an immediate outcry from environmental groups, who are already at odds with the agency over its conclusion that there is "no evidence" that genetically modified crops pose a health or environmental risk.

Europe struggles to avoid effects of a U.S. downturn - International Herald Tribune

FRANKFURT: Can Europe's economy stay on track even if the United States goes off the rails?

This old question is being asked with new urgency across the Continent, after a startling divergence this week in how the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are reading the economic tea leaves.

The answer, according to a growing number of economists, is that Europe is not as insulated from America's woes as many Europeans would like to believe. They question why, at such a fragile moment, the European Central Bank is warning that it might raise interest rates.

The Federal Reserve signaled it would cut rates further to try to ward off a recession.

"The ECB sees the glass as half full; the Fed sees it as half empty," said Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist at Deutsche Bank. "It's not a difference in the data; it's a difference in the analysis."

BBC NEWS | Europe | New words for old Spanish anthem

For more than 30 years, Spain's victorious athletes have had to resort to humming their national anthem.

The lyrics for the "Royal March" which were written in General Franco's era were dropped in 1975 because of their associations with his dictatorship.

But now the Spanish Olympic Committee has announced the results of a competition to find new words.

The anthem was to be revealed by the tenor, Placido Domingo, but the lyrics were leaked to a newspaper on Friday

BBC saying Treasury has recruited a chief executive for Northern Rock in case it's Nationalised. More soon.

Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.

USA

• Salon - "Today, America's Guantánamo era enters its seventh shameful year. If we are ever to regain our standing as a nation committed to the rule of law and fundamental human rights, we must close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay now... Guantánamo has demolished America's moral standing because the government chose to abandon our time-tested criminal justice system."

• AP - "Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years under ambitious post-9/11 security rules to be unveiled Friday by federal officials. The Homeland Security Department has spent years crafting the final regulations for the REAL ID Act, a law designed to make it harder... to get government-issued identification."

• Telegraph - "The price of gold topped $900 an ounce for the first time ever as traders betted the US Federal Reserve would slash interest rates, weakening the dollar and boosting the investment appeal of the precious metal."

• Swamp - "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are asking... Bush for a bipartisan meeting on a stimulus package to bolster the economy after he returns from the Middle East next week - and before anyone starts announcing proposals unilaterally." They wrote:

  We want to work with you and the Republican leadership of the Congress to immediately develop a legislative plan based upon these principles so it can be passed and implemented into law without delay.

• AP - "The city of Cleveland, an epicenter of the nation's home foreclosure crisis, has sued 21 banks and claimed their subprime lending practices created a public nuisance that hurt property values and city tax collections... Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson... compared the impact of the mortgage practices to the harm caused by drug dealing and said the motive was the same: profits."

• LA Times - "Lawyers for the former Army physician who was called 'a person of interest' in the deadly anthrax mailings in the fall of 2001 today named three federal officials who they said illegally leaked confidential investigative information against their client. Steven J. Hatfill, who has not been charged with a crime and maintains his innocence, is suing the FBI, the Justice Department and a handful of current or former law-enforcement officials."

• AP - "Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time. A Justice Department audit... blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations... In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation 'was halted due to untimely payment,' the audit found."

• Star Tribune - "A commission of retired judges should take over the way districts are selected for state and federal elected offices to help fix a system now broken by self-interest and self-survival, a group of Minnesota political heavyweights said in a legislative hearing today. The group that included former Vice President Walter Mondale and [Republican] governors Arne Carlson and Al Quie said the current system of 're-districting' legislative districts is inherently rife with conflicts of interest, leaving voters distrustful of the process."

• The Hill - "The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear a challenge to the so-called 'Millionaire's Amendment.' The provision allows candidates to accept much larger contributions from donors than standard limits allow when facing wealthy opponents who self-finance their own campaigns."

• Newsday - "About a dozen members of Rudy Giuliani's senior staff are passing up their January paychecks to conserve cash -- a sign of money worries inside the campaign as Giuliani heads into costly make-or-break primaries ahead."

• LA Times - "Rep. John T. Doolittle..., who has been under scrutiny for his ties to a corrupt lobbyist, announced Thursday that he would not seek reelection in November."

• NYT - "Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages. The proposed rules are contained in a document circulated by the California Energy Commission".

• AP - "Citing a warming climate and sprawling development, officials with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race said... they were implementing permanent logistical changes that in recent years have become the norm for the March event.... The actual competitive start of the 1,100-mile race the following day will move 30 miles north".

• Reuters - "The United Nations' weather agency will ask NASA and other space agencies next week to make their next generation of satellites available to monitor climate change, a senior official at the U.N. body said on Friday. The aim is to ensure that satellites launched over the next 20 years constantly record parameters such as sea levels and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said."

• Denver Post - A panel of Democrats are attending this year's National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show in Denver. "The judges are only interested in the most beautiful and photogenic ass of the bunch as party mascot for the 2008 Democratic Convention... While donkeys have always had a place at the stock show in racing and show competition, this is the first year there has ever been a competition to find a Democratic mascot".

Europe

• CS Monitor - "Nicolas Sarkozy, the perpetual-motion French president, has dipped significantly in the polls - to 48-percent approval - in the midst of an unusual, highly publicized new romance with... Carla Bruni... [Sarkozy's] also finding some tougher new questions about his performance, possible constraints on his promise to reform, and criticism about his jet-set image at a time when many French still feel that their economy is listing."

• Reuters - "Portuguese air traffic authorities... intercepted a message describing a militant threat against the Eiffel Tower and have passed it to French authorities".

• WaPo - "President Vladimir Putin... appointed [Dmitry Rogozin,] a prominent nationalist and political gadfly as Russia's new permanent representative to NATO, a decision that signals the Kremlin's determination to confront the military alliance across a host of divisive issues... including the alliance's eastward expansion and American plans to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe."

• NYT - "The governments of Poland and the Czech Republic agreed Thursday to coordinate their negotiations with the United States over its request to place elements of an antiballistic missile shield in those countries. The change of strategy was aimed at giving the two countries more bargaining power in talks next week in Washington and at easing tensions with Russia, Polish officials said."

• NYT - "The United States and Germany have agreed to recognize Kosovo after it declares independence and to urge the rest of Europe to follow suit, say senior European Union diplomats close to negotiations over Kosovo's future... European officials said the United States was aggressively pressing the European Union to ensure that the recognition of Kosovo was not delayed by even a week."

• Guardian - "The [British] government gave the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations yesterday but stepped into a fierce row over financial sweeteners to private sector operators. John Hutton, the business secretary, insisted there were no subsidies but the small print of the white paper showed concessions had been given away. Private companies who wanted to build new stations would have to pay for the entire cost while 'meeting the full costs of decommissioning and their full share of waste management costs', argued Hutton who said atomic power was needed to reduce carbon and the growing reliance on energy imports."

• Independent - In Britain, "improvements to long distance rail travel combined with delays at airports have dramatically slowed the growth in air passenger numbers". Domestic airtravel dropped 1.4 percent and "international holiday flights" grew at just 0.2 percent. "The opening of a high-speed rail link between London St Pancras and Paris has helped cement the Eurostar as the preferred route to the continent. This will open up other major European cities, such as Amsterdam, and is expected to further drive the growth of international rail travel."

• Telegraph - "A teenage boy who hacked into a Polish tram system used it like "a giant train set", causing chaos and derailing four vehicles. The 14-year-old, described by his teachers as a model pupil and an electronics 'genius', adapted a television remote control so it could change track points in the city of Lodz... A police statement said he had trespassed at tram depots in the city to gather information and the equipment needed to build the infra-red device."

• Spiegel - "The verdict against [Marinus van der Lubbe] the Dutch bricklayer executed for setting the 1933 Reichstag fire that led to Adolf Hitler's stranglehold on power in Germany was tossed out on Thursday. But who started the fire remains a mystery."

• AP - "With a little help from his friends, ex-Beatle Ringo Starr returned home Friday to kickstart Liverpool's year in the spotlight as a European Capital of Culture."

• Earthtimes - "A German expert has confirmed the real identity of Mona Lisa after centuries of speculation about the woman in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait. It is Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, said Viet Probst, director of the Heidelberg University Library."

• Spiegel - "During the stormiest weather, when the sea thrashes the steep coastline of southern England, demolishing entire limestone cliffs, Chris Moore likes to go hunting for big game -- big, long-dead game... Charmouth, the village where Moore lives, is home to one of the world's richest deposits of fossils. It is also one of the cradles of geology and paleontology. It was here that Moore's predecessors, especially a poverty-stricken woman named Mary Anning, hit upon finds close to 200 years ago that revolutionized man's knowledge of the history of life".

Africa

• McClatchy - "Declaring that talks with the government have collapsed, Kenya's main opposition party called Friday for three straight days of nationwide demonstrations next week, raising fears of more violence in the wake of a disputed election. Opposition leader Raila Odinga's party urged supporters to rally in 28 cities across Kenya starting Wednesday."

• BBC News - "More storms are forecast in areas around the Zambezi valley, where tens of thousands of people have been displaced by flooding. Across the region the heaviest rains for almost a decade are forcing people to flee their homes, even as they try to recover from last year's floods. The authorities in Mozambique are preparing to help up to 200,000 people. "

• BBC News - "South Africa's police chief Jackie Selebi is to be charged with corruption and 'defeating the ends of justice', state prosecutors say. A court on Friday rejected an urgent application by Mr Selebi, who is also the president of Interpol, to try to stop the prosecution. He is alleged to have received at least $170,000 (£90,000) from a convicted criminal over a five-year period."

• allAfrica - "A quiet revolution is pulsing through the huge residential areas spread out on the edges of Cape Town... Fortoday's weapon-chest is becoming increasingly filled with vegetables: cabbages, carrots, beetroot, spinach leaves and heads of broccoli. One hundred percent organically grown... They are being grown out in the open, in community food gardens created on previously unused patches of land all over the townships - Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Crossroads - with more springing up every year. Almost all of them are owned and run by township-based women; pensioners in many cases."

Middle East

• WaPo - "The Pentagon said yesterday that the apparent radio threat to bomb U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf last weekend may not have come from the five Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats that approached them -- and may not even have been intended against U.S. targets... Pentagon officials insist that they never claimed Iran made the threat."

• Navy Times - "The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the 'Filipino Monkey.'"

• DW-World - "Iranian officials rang in a new phase of cooperation after talks on Friday with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency. The latter said that Tehran had to move swiftly to show its good will. Iran on Friday, Jan. 11, termed talks with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei as positive and declared the country's readiness to fully cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog."

• McClatchy - "The fire-fighting system in the massive new $740 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is defective, according to documents obtained by McClatchy and U.S. officials, who allege that their concerns were ignored or overruled in a rush to declare the complex completed."

• AFP - "Light snow fell in Baghdad early on Friday in what weather officials said was the first time in about a 100 years... The snow in Baghdad, which melted as it hit the ground, began falling before dawn and continued until after 9 am, residents said."

• CS Monitor - "While... Bush stood in Ramallah Thursday speaking of plans for a way out of the conflict that defines daily life for millions of Palestinians, many of the people he hoped to convince that a peace deal with Israel is on the horizon simply dismissed his promises as kalam fadi - empty words."

• McClatchy - "Bush arrived in oil-rich Kuwait on Friday... Bush... was expected to press Kuwait to agree to lower reparations payments from Iraq for that country's 1990 invasion and occupation, but there was no word on whether the subject had been broached. Iraq pays Kuwait 5 percent of its oil revenues; it would like that dropped to 1 or 2 percent, with the difference to be directed to its reconstruction."

• AFP - "A 12th parliamentary session to elect Lebanon's president was postponed on Friday to January 21 despite intense international efforts for rival parties to agree on an Arab League compromise."

South Asia

• McClatchy - "Two new reports on the assassination last month of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto suggest that the killing may have been an ambitious plot rather than an isolated act of violence and that the government of President Pervez Musharraf knows far more than it's admitted about the murder. A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the murder."

• AP - "President Pervez Musharraf said U.S. troops are not welcome to join the fight against al-Qaida on Pakistani soil. Musharraf warned... that Pakistan would resist any unilateral military action by the United States against militants sheltering in its lawless, tribal regions close to the Afghan border."

• AFP - "NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has rejected suggestions that not enough allies are pulling their weight in Afghanistan, as he welcomed US plans to send more troops there... The Pentagonn... is considering sending some 3,000 additional marines ahead of an expected offensive by Taliban-led insurgents in the spring."

• NYT - "This week, as Tata Motors unveiled the world's cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, and automakers from across the world came to New Delhi to peddle their wares to a bubbling Indian car market... Indians are rushing headlong to get behind the wheel, as incomes rise, car loans proliferate, and the auto industry churns out low-cost cars to nudge them off their motorcycles. They bought 1.5 million cars last year... With a population of nearly 16.5 million, New Delhi now adds 650 vehicles to its roads each day."

• BBC News - "Nepal's government has set 10 April as the date for delayed elections to decide the country's future. The cabinet announcement came after talks between the leaders of the three main parties, which include former Maoist rebels."

Asia-Pacific

• LA Times - "Despite a series of product recalls that tarnished the 'Made in China' label, China's global trade surplus jumped 47% in 2007 from the previous year to a record $262 billion, the government reported today. But exports grew at a slower pace last month, an indication of weakening demand tied to the teetering U.S. economy."

• McClatchy - "China is tallying its first 'no shows' for the Summer Olympic Games, ... the reason... [is] the heat and humidity of Hong Kong and its impact on horses. The Swiss equestrian team announced that it has withdrawn from equestrian events in Hong Kong during the games, and two bronze-medal-winning Canadian riders [said] that the heat would keep them away also."

• Xinhua - "China plans to invest 300 billion yuan (41 billion U.S. dollars) to lay 7,820 kilometers of railway in 2008, the Ministry of Railways said on Friday. 'A batch of new projects will start construction this year, and the building of the high-speed railway linking Beijing and Shanghai is the most important one,' said Railway Minister Liu Zhijun at a national work conference."

• NYT - "The Japanese government on Friday pushed through a special law authorizing its navy to resume a refueling mission in the Indian Ocean as part of the American-led military effort in Afghanistan. In an extremely rare parliamentary move, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's governing Liberal Democratic Party used its two-thirds majority in the Japanese Parliament's lower house to override a rejection of the law by the opposition-controlled upper house. The last time a government did this was in 1951."

• BBC News - "Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has had another meeting with an official from Burma's ruling junta. Witnesses said Ms Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, spent about one hour in talks at a military building in Rangoon."

• NYT - "A vast archipelago with a population of 240 million, Indonesia is the world's fourth most-populous nation, whose people are 90 percent Muslim. As the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, it is demonstrating that Islam can be compatible with democracy. Since Mr. Suharto was ousted as president in May 1998, Indonesia has had four presidents, all of whom have worked, unlike him, within the democratic system. The next election is a year away but already three of them the four have declared that they want the job again."

• LA Times - "Doctors placed Indonesia's ailing former dictator Suharto on a ventilator to help him breathe today as they struggled to save the life of a man who led a 31-year regime accused of killing hundreds of thousands of people... He was placed on dialysis, and a team of physicians... said he needed a new pacemaker."

• SMH - "Zember was an original poster child for long-neck tourism - at 12, her neck coiled with brass rings, she sat on display at a Bangkok tourism fair - helping to create the buzz that drew gawkers from around the globe. Now, aged 23, her neck is bare, the rings stripped off in anger after provincial authorities in Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand, refused to let her migrate to New Zealand, concerned about the negative impact on tourism of an exodus of long-neck women."

• NYT - "South Korea's Constitutional Court on Thursday authorized an independent prosecutor to investigate whether President-elect Lee Myung-bak engaged in financial misdeeds years before his landslide victory in elections on Dec. 19. Although allegations about the misdeeds did little to stop Mr. Lee from winning the election, he now faces the humiliation of becoming the first president-elect to be the target of a criminal investigation."

• Reuters - "The United States urged North Korea on Friday to give a full declaration of its nuclear activities after Pyongyang missed an end-2007 deadline for presenting the inventory under a disarmament-for-aid deal. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill held talks with Russia's chief negotiator in Moscow after a tour of Asia to discuss the deal, which would award fuel oil or aid for making the declaration and dismantling its nuclear facilities."

• SMH - "Doctors are fearing a mosquito-borne virus, which can cause vomiting and extreme fatigue, could spread throughout Australia following a spate of cases reported in Victoria. The chikungunya virus, related to Ross River and dengue fevers, was first documented more than 50 years ago but swept across the Indian Ocean last year infecting more than a million people in India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar and Reunion island."

Americas

• Miami Herald - "Sometimes, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia chained Clara Rojas at night... Rojas, 44, said she was often depressed, didn't eat and needed to talk herself into bathing every day. Rojas was released Thursday from captivity after six years in the jungle at the hands of the guerrillas, known as FARC. In her first extensive interview since the release, Rojas recounted the years of despair, and how the boy she gave birth to in captivity and knew for just eight months gave her reason to live."

• NYT - Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, "a businessman with Venezuelan and American citizenship, is now at the center of a spy mystery and diplomatic imbroglio involving Argentina, Venezuela and the United States. American officials portray the episode as a rare glimpse into President Hugo Chávez's use of oil wealth to spread his influence, saying the cash was destined for the campaign of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina's new president. Venezuela and Argentina describe it as an amateurish American attempt to smear their governments... Kirchner has called the case a 'garbage operation' by Americans, while Venezuela's official news agency claimed this week that it was a plot by the Central Intelligence Agency."

• NYT - "A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America's largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world's oil cartel. The new oil, along with refining projects under way by Petrobras, the national oil company, could eventually make Brazil a larger exporter of gasoline as well, adding to supplies in the United States and other countries where it is all but impossible to build new refineries."

• BBC News - "The Brazilian government has confirmed that a man who died in hospital in the capital, Brasilia, was suffering from yellow fever. Hundreds of thousands of people have been queuing for vaccinations for the disease in parts of Brazil, after 12 suspected cases in recent weeks. Eight of those cases, three of them fatal, are still being investigated."

• Reuters - "Weary migrants on their journey north often recharge.... at a network of similar shelters run by the Roman Catholic Church -- a lifeline sanctioned by the Vatican, despite increased U.S. efforts to keep out illegal immigrants... After long treks to the border, often from as far away as Central America, men, women and children at the shelter swap their torn clothes for fresh ones, heal their injuries and telephone family members for cash for their crossing."

• CP - "Canada's spy agency is "lagging behind" other countries when it comes to telling the public about its work in the shadows, says an internal study. The analysis prepared for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service found the agency's annual public report to be dull, timid and full of recycled information - unlike documents produced by allied spy services."

• CBC News - "A study headed by a University of British Columbia researcher is giving scientists a peek at dark matter's effects on distant galaxies. Catherine Heymans, a post-doctoral fellow in the university's department of astronomy and physics, has generated the highest resolution map of dark matter ever captured."

Antarctica

• NZPA - "The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is in a high-speed pursuit of the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters today. The Esperanza had been searching for the fleet for 10 days. Greenpeace said the whalers took flight when they saw the protest vessel. The whalers are unable to hunt while on the run."

By the numbers

• Bush has 373 days left. 3,921 U.S. and 4,228 total coalition confirmed deaths in Iraq. Over $484,916,000,000 has been spent on the Iraq invasion and occupation. The U.S. federal debt is now over $9,201,129,000,000.

Building for the Poor: Bauhaus Launches Social Housing Architecture Award - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

The Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation is going back to its roots and sponsoring an architectural competition that aims to encourage young architects to build attractive homes for the poor. Its 2008 award deliberately pays tribute to the Bauhaus commitment to social housing in the 1920s.

The Bauhaus in Dessau hopes to encourage architects to think about poverty. There's always something new in the world of architecture and interior design. Two of the themes at next week's International Furniture Show in Cologne will be "Priceless" and "Neo Nature," a reflection of the current popularity of costly eco-chic in German living rooms.

The truth is that just about everything goes these days, from retro to futurist, from cool to cushy -- although "cocooning" is apparently passé. The question of how we design and shape our living spaces is taken very seriously, because it reveals a lot about both a person's taste and their status.

Marriage of twins separated at birth is annulled - Independent Online Edition > Legal

Twins adopted by separate parents soon after birth later fell in love and married, unaware they were related, it emerged yesterday.

The couple, who have been granted anonymity, had their marriage annulled at a special High Court hearing, where judges ruled that the union had never been legally valid.

The case emerged during a debate in the House of Lords yesterday when the pro-life campaigner Lord Alton of Liverpool raised the couple's plight to highlight what he said were deficiencies in the Human Embryology and Tissues Bill, currently making its way through Parliament.

The couple, who were conceived normally, were adopted by different parents and separated soon after birth. They were never told they were twins and did not discover the truth until after their wedding.

Lord Alton, who learnt of the case from a High Court judge, is concerned the Bill, which makes it easier for lesbian and gay couples to have "test-tube" babies, weakens the rights of a child to know their father.

He said: "[The brother and sister] met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage and all the issues of their separation.

Warming Climate Can Support Glacial Ice: It Did In Much Warmer Times

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2008) -- New research challenges the generally accepted belief that substantial ice sheets could not have existed on Earth during past super-warm climate events. The study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides strong evidence that a glacial ice cap, about half the size of the modern day glacial ice sheet, existed 91 million years ago during a period of intense global warming. This study offers valuable insight into current day climate conditions and the environmental mechanisms for global sea level rise.

The new study examines geochemical and sea level data retrieved from marine microfossils deposited on the ocean floor 91 million years ago during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum. This extreme warming event in Earth's history raised tropical ocean temperatures to 35-37°C (95-98.6°F), about 10°C (50°F) warmer than today, thus creating an intense greenhouse climate.

Using two independent isotopic techniques, researchers at Scripps Oceanography studied the microfossils to gather geochemical data on the growth and eventual melting of large Cretaceous ice sheets. The researchers compared stable isotopes of oxygen molecules (d18O) in bottom-dwelling and near-surface marine microfossils, known as foraminifera, to show that changes in ocean chemistry were consistent with the growth of an ice sheet. The second method in which an ocean surface temperature record was subtracted from the stable isotope record of surface ocean microfossils yielded the same conclusion.

[...]

These independent methods provided Andre Bornemann, lead author of the study, with strong evidence to conclude that an ice sheet about 50-60 percent the size of the modern Antarctic ice cap existed for about 200,000 years. Bornemann conducted this study as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Oceanography and continues this research at Universitat Leipzig in Germany.

"Until now it was generally accepted that there were no large glaciers on the poles prior to the development of the Antarctic ice sheet about 33 million years ago," said Richard Norris, professor of paleobiology at Scripps Oceanography and co-author of the study. "This study demonstrates that even the super-warm climates of the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum were not warm enough to prevent ice growth."

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