Slovenia, currently at the helm of the European Union, is set to push for signature of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) - the first step to EU membership - with Belgrade in January.

"I am one of those who believe the SAA should be signed as soon as possible, possibly by the end of this month", Slovenia's foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel said on Tuesday (8 January).

Mr Rupel also announced the EU bloc would set up a special "task force" aimed at helping Serbia to speed up its progress towards the agreement, including the country's "even greater cooperation" with the International Crime Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

A symbolic initialling of the pact took place in November.

But Slovenia's chief diplomat acknowledged that enthusiasm for the final rubber-stamping varies among EU governments. "Some of our colleagues have to be persuaded this is a good idea", he said.

The European Commission keeps trimming its forecasts for the EU economy's growth this year. In early November the EC forecast it would expand by 2.4% in 2008, slowing from last year's 2.9%, but with inflation and oil prices high the EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia is now talking about growth of around 2%.

In an interview with EuroNews Almunia said: "Back in the summer, for a while, we thought that in 2008 the economies of Europe and the euro zone were going to continue to grow, but the growth would not be as strong as in 2007. Now, with the problems overseas, the sub-prime crisis in the United States and the effects that's had on the financial markets which has made it harder to get credit, that creates more difficult conditions for the euro zone than we had a few months ago."

The Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country has just taken over the rotating presidency of the EU, also believes this year will be harder for the European Union economy due to financial market stress and surging oil and food prices.

At a news conference to outline Slovenia's priorities during its six month presidency he said: "The problems of the financial markets will be discussed at a mid-March summit." The gathering will consider what is needed to prevent such situations being repeated in the future.

A government-backed street march in Senegal's capital has demonstrated the strength of feeling among ordinary Africans against new trade deals with Europe.

Dakar is among the most hostile to new economic partnership agreements - or 'EPAs'.

Senegalese Parliament member Khadiem Tabet said: "President Wade asked us to signal our refusal to sign the EPA - because it is not in our favour. That is why we have organised such a historic demonstration, to symbolise our disagreement."

After years of negotiations, the European Union had hoped to sign EPAs with mainly poor former colonies before preferential trade terms expired on December 31.

Most failed to reach a full deal -- in spite of the World Trade Organisation's ruling that the old arrangements were illegal.

Trade ministers from the Africa Union will meet before the end of February to hammer out a common position for the world's poorest continent.

In a move that could profoundly reshape the media landscape in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday proposed banning commercials from public television and making up for some of the lost revenue with a first-of-its-kind tax on the Internet and mobile phones.

A government tax on Internet connections would be virtually without precedent and could be politically controversial, given that public policy experts say that Internet access drives a country's economic growth and productivity.

But France, like other countries around the world, is struggling to find ways to keep cultural industries, like video and music, afloat at a time when their traditional audiences are waning.

President Nicolas Sarkozy as good as confirmed yesterday that he plans to marry his girlfriend, the Franco-Italian former model Carla Bruni, in the near future. Pressed for a date for the wedding, he said: "The chances are that you will hear about it when it has already happened."

In his first extensive press conference since he took office last June, M. Sarkozy teased journalists for accusing him of flaunting his private life while covering every detail of his two-month-old love affair with Mme Bruni, 40.

He said that he wanted to break with the "hypocrisy and lies" which had been the "deplorable tradition" of French politics in the past. The same newspapers which accused him of "exploiting" his private life had knowingly "covered with a lead screen" the fact that the late President François Mitterrand had two separate families, he said.

In a two-hour press conference at the Elysée Palace, including a one hour opening statement, President Sarkozy had been expected to announce detailed plans for 2008. He had been expected, in particular, to explain what he meant by his promise of a "new politics of civilisation" and a "new renaissance" in his message to the French people on New Year's Eve.

EU unemployment continues to be relatively low, new figures have revealed, but confidence in the economy appears to be weakening, with the EU presidency warning that there are "downside risks" to growth.

Figures released by EU statistical office Eurostat on Monday (7 January) show that the jobless rate in both the EU as a whole and the eurozone area is substantially lower than it was a year ago.

Unemployment in the EU-27 stood at 6.9 percent in November, which is the same as in October, but lower than in November 2006 (7.7%).

The euro area countries did less well than the EU-27 as a whole, with unemployment in the common currency area recorded at 7.2 percent - again the same figure as in October, but lower than in November 2006 (7.9%).

PARIS: The British government is expected to introduce plans this week for a series of new nuclear reactors - a move that energy experts say could light a beacon for the beleaguered nuclear industry in other parts of Europe, where opposition to the technology remains strong.

Plans by the left-leaning government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown to replace aging nuclear plants would demonstrate a new era of pragmatism at a time when concerns about promoting low-carbon technologies and energy security have become paramount, said Luis Echávarri, director general of the Nuclear Energy Agency, an organization based in Paris that advises industrialized countries on nuclear power.

"I think that this U.K. message will be very influential in Germany," said Echávarri, citing one of several European countries where nuclear power has been or is being phased out.

"Gordon Brown comes from the Labour Party, and he's very committed to climate change," Echávarri said. "So this is a very clear indication that you have to be pragmatic and not fall into the trap of saying, 'We are on the left, and nuclear is bad.' "

He added, "Nuclear can be one of the right ways to fight against climate change, and so that message is no longer valid."

Only last September, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, announced that Spain had joined the "Champions' League" of world economies. Europe's fifth largest economy was growing so robustly, and creating so many jobs, it would soon be richer than Germany in per capita terms, Mr Zapatero predicted.

That euphoria was short-lived. December saw a spike in inflation, a rise in unemployment and a slowdown in the economy, as the international credit squeeze gripped Spain. The government recently lowered its estimate for economic growth in 2008 from 3.3 per cent to 3.1 per cent, a figure many economists consider is still too optimistic. Inflation last month of 4.3 per cent was at the highest level in more than a decade.

Worse, house prices in many parts of the country have started falling, further undermining confidence in the economy. Some over-indebted families now owe more to their banks than their houses are worth.

International financial gridlock has brought Spain's credit-fuelled surge to a rude halt. Families and businesses are feeling the pain. Suddenly, Mr Zapatero's Socialist party is less confident about winning a general election called for March 9.

Eurozone consumer spending has shown fresh signs of weakness with retail sales falling unexpectedly sharply for a second month running - even as German manufacturing orders powered ahead.

Retail sales in the 15-country region fell by 0.5 per cent in November, after a 0.7 per cent fall in October, according to figures from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. The fall was almost certainty a reaction to soaring energy and food costs.

Private consumption was so far holding up better in the US, argued Holger Schmieding, economist at Bank of America. For the eurozone, higher oil and food prices were proving "a much bigger problem" than the strong euro, the fall out from the global credit squeeze or worries about the US economy, he said.

Inflaming an already highly charged regional election contest, Germany's Jewish community spoke out Tuesday against a populist and anti-foreigner campaign promoted by Roland Koch, a leading conservative in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party who is seeking re-election this month in the state of Hesse.

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Koch was using the same slogans as the extreme-right National Party of Germany in targeting juvenile offenders of immigrant backgrounds in his election campaign.

In terms of the standard of the election campaign, Kramer said there was no difference "with the NPD," referring to the xenophobic National Party of Germany.

That party singles out foreigners in its election campaigns, blaming them for taking jobs away from Germans, and for crime and vandalism.

"It is irresponsible when a politician plays with fire," Kramer said, adding that the extreme-right parties would take up Koch's slogans.

Plans to tighten up the rationing of greenhouse gas emissions will contribute to the loss of some heavy industries from the European Union, according to official documents.

Europe's aluminium producers are among those unlikely to be able to absorb increased costs resulting from proposals contained in a draft European Commission directive to widen the scope of the bloc's emissions trading scheme (ETS) and reduce the permits it allocates, officials acknowledge.

Steel, cement and chemical makers would need to raise prices by between 5 per cent and 48 per cent to cover costs, according to internal papers obtained by the Financial Times and Financial Times Deutschland.

Changes to the ETS follow a proposal to reduce sulphur, nitrogen and dust emissions from heavy industry, which business leaders this week warned could lead to plant closures.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has said his country will stop broadcasting its English- language 24-hour news channel, France 24.

The French premier has called for a French-only network to replace it.

"With taxpayers' money, I am not prepared to broadcast a channel that does not speak French," he said.

Launched in December 2006 by Mr Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, France 24 now broadcasts around the world in French, English and Arabic.

MADRID -- Private clinics in Spain, which perform most of the country's abortions, began a five-day strike on Tuesday to protest what they said was persecution by anti-abortion campaigners and government inspectors, who have swept clinics in recent weeks to crack down on illegal terminations.

The strike, which involves about 40 clinics, revives a debate about Spain's abortion rules at an awkward moment for the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which is trying to avoid inflammatory issues before elections in March.

The strike could affect as many as 2,000 women, according to Francisca García Gallego, a regional director of the Association of Accredited Abortion Clinics, which organized it. She said striking clinics, which account for a majority of abortions in the country, would accept only emergency cases. The number of abortions in Spain has doubled in the past decade, to about 100,000 a year.

Spain decriminalized abortion in 1985, and under current law women can have an abortion during the first 22 weeks of pregnancy if there is a risk of fetal malformation and the first 12 weeks in cases of rape. However, they are allowed to abort at any point if they can demonstrate that their mental or physical health is at risk.

Ms. García said the central government had done nothing to protect abortion clinics or patients from a wave of aggressive protests by anti-abortion campaigners and raids by the local authorities that resulted in a dozen arrests in December. In recent weeks, clinics had been vandalized and doctors and nurses insulted and, in one or two cases, hit by protesters, she said.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, last night blamed pushy patients for the spread of hospital superbugs across the NHS in England.

He said too many people were putting pressure on GPs to prescribe antibiotics for the treatment of coughs, colds and sore throats - in spite of medical evidence that the drug would not cure the complaint or relieve the symptoms.

Excessive use of antibiotics caused bacteria to develop resistant strains. This was the biggest single cause of the spread of hospital-acquired infections, Johnson said. He said he was planning a public information campaign next month with posters and leaflets in GP surgeries. There would be no attempt to impose quotas on doctors' use of antibiotics, but GPs prescribing above average amounts could expect to be visited by antimicrobial pharmacists, who would give advice on prescription policy.

More than 40,000 Northern Ireland children are living in severe poverty, according to a new report.

The Committee for the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister said it was part of an overall figure of 100,000 living in poverty.

The interim report includes written submissions from more than 40 key stakeholders.

Committee chair Danny Kennedy said the degree of poverty was unacceptable in the 21st century.

The philosopher Alain Badiou has labelled Sarkozy's politics transcendental petainism. This is not to say Sarkozy is a fascist. The comparison helps underline that, like the chief of the Vichy regime, Sarkoxy talks of regeneration and rupture, wheras he is the architect of France's capitulation.

In Petain's case it was caputulation to the Germans, for Sarkozy it is capitulation to global capitalism and US hegemony. Like Petain, Sarkozy talks obsessively of moral crisis and decline - notions conveniently chosen to justify the inevitability of (neoliberal) reforms. Petain thought france should emulate Germany, S. wants to emulate the US and UK economic models

A civil servant at the Foreign Office has been cleared of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Derek Pasquill, 48, from west London, was accused of leaking several confidential documents to the New Statesman and the Observer.

Prosecutors at the Old Bailey dropped the six charges against him.

The documents were said to make reference to secret CIA rendition flights and the UK's contact with Muslim groups.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York rode a wave of female support to victory over Senator Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night. In the Republican primary, meanwhile, Senator John McCain of Arizona revived his presidential bid with a Lazarus-like win.

Both candidates called their victories comebacks, because both followed their defeats in the Iowa caucuses, where Mrs. Clinton placed third and Mr. McCain fourth.

Mr. McCain's victory was the fruit of a meticulous and dogged turnaround effort; his second bid for the White House was in tatters last summer because of weak fund-raising and a blurred political message, leading him to fire senior advisers and refocus his energy on New Hampshire.

Mrs. Clinton's victory came after her advisers had lowered expectations with talk of missteps in strategy and concern about Mr. Obama's momentum coming out of the Iowa caucuses.

Declining wages and the unchecked outsourcing of jobs are cause for concern in the United States. The doctrine of free trade, the core of US economic policy, is faltering. Has the age of protectionism begun?

 President Bush meets with workers in Las Vegas: America has lost 3 million blue-collar jobs since the turn of the millennium. A Toshiba employee from Tennessee doesn't have to travel far to see what happened to his former job. All it takes is a short flight to El Paso, Texas, and a ride in a taxi toward the US-Mexican border.

The border crossing, in its coarseness, is reminiscent of the East German side of the former border between the two Germanys, except that the face on wall posters is that of George W. Bush and not of the former East German leader Erich Honecker. It isn't exactly a welcoming sort of place, this border crossing with its posters cataloging the potentially dire consequences of breaking the rules -- including the illegal purchase of parrots ("You're buying yourself bird flu") and human trafficking ("Death is only one of the ways of losing your life").

Ciudad Juárez, a city with an estimated population of 1.3 million people on the Mexican side of the border, is in some ways little more than an endless array of industrial parks interspersed with fast-food restaurants, junk dealers and palm trees practically groaning under the weight of power lines and satellite dishes.

The US has entered its first full-blown economic recession in 16 years, according to investment bank Merrill Lynch.

Merrill, itself one of Wall Street's biggest casualties of the sub-prime crisis, is the first major bank to declare that a recession in the world's biggest economy is now underway.

David Rosenberg, the bank's chief North American economist, argues that a weakening employment picture and declining retail sales signal the economy has tipped into its first month of recession.

Mr Rosenberg, who is well-respected on Wall Street, argues: "According to our analysis, this [recession] isn't even a forecast any more but is a present day reality."

His comments are the strongest sign yet that the gloom on Wall Street over the US economy is deepening as the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the credit rout show little sign of easing.

It's from a piece of the sub-prime problem and in The Telegraph, so take if for what it's worth.

With extraordinary secrecy and even a disinformation campaign aimed at their Iraqi Army comrades, American troops launched a major offensive Tuesday to drive extremist Sunni insurgents from their stronghold in Diyala Province. But many insurgents still managed to flee ahead of time, showing just how difficult it is for the Americans to trap militants who keep eluding them.

Because at least half the insurgents escaped before a previous offensive last June, American planners deliberately kept most Iraqi units in the dark before this one was started, a tactic that suggests they cannot fully trust the allies who are supposed to pick up more of the fighting as American troops scale back their presence later this year.

The militants who escaped this time may have been tipped by leaks or the visible movements of troops and machinery that precede any operation. How they managed to get out ahead of the Americans remained unclear Tuesday night.

The extent of damage in credit markets from recent turmoil was starkly underlined on Tuesday when the credit rating of one of the largest independent structured investment vehicles was slashed by 13 notches.

The downgrade of the $6bn Victoria SIV by Standard & Poor's takes its rating deep into "junk" territory, to B minus. Just three months ago it was rated triple-A.

Analysts on Tuesday warned that Victoria's fate was being echoed across the SIV sector as this corner of finance suffers a near-unprecedented wave of downgrades. SIVs issue cheap, short-term debt to fund investments in longer-term and higher-yielding securities.

The wave of downgrades is now threatening to create painful shocks for investors, not least because many of the supposedly ultra-safe securities were sold to risk-averse institutions such as pension funds. "The Victoria news is another nail in the coffin for SIVs," said Christian Stracke, analyst at independent research firm CreditSights. "Nearly all of those SIV programmes that don't have bank sponsors have been in serious trouble for a while."

The United Nations is to push for economic and social rights, including the human rights responsibilities of companies, to be given greater attention in the run-up to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Louise Arbour, UN high commissioner for human rights, says in an interview with the Financial Times the attacks on the US on September 11 2001 have left the debate on economic and social rights on hold as the human rights community fought to defend civil liberties from erosion by counter-terrorism measures.

The year-long campaign leading up to December's anniversary of the Universal Declaration represents a fresh opportunity to emphasise the "indivisibility" and "universality" of the human rights affirmed in the declaration, she says. The declaration makes no distinction between civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights.

"If you look at the Universal Declaration ... all the rights are there. This was Roosevelt's `Freedom from fear and freedom from want'." But western governments have largely championed civil and political rights while leaving econ­omic and social rights to the market, she says.

"The assumption was that prosperity will look after the right to health and education, which I think is a completely misguided view of what human rights are about.

"There's no reason to assume that prosperity will transform itself naturally into any form of social justice," she says, including help for the most vulnerable.

The overemphasis of civil and political rights has laid the west open to charges of hypocrisy by many developing nations, which say economic and social rights are more important to them.

While this argument is "a bit disingenuous", she says, "the fact that not a single western country has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers is very telling".

A tornado was reported blowing across eastern Arkansas Tuesday, a day after a freak cluster of January twisters sprung up in the unseasonably warm Midwest and demolished houses, knocked a railroad locomotive off its tracks and shuttered a courthouse. The twister swept through Pope County, the National Weather Service said. One person was killed...

The tornadoes came as record high winter temperatures were reported across wide areas of the country. Tornadoes were reported or suspected Monday in southwest Missouri, southeastern Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. Two people were killed in Missouri.

But then there has been no evidence of a changing climate in the United States whatsoever.

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders met here Tuesday and authorized the start of negotiations on the core issues of their conflict, officials on both sides said.

The announcement came a day before President George W. Bush was to arrive in Jerusalem, with Israel and the Palestinians determined to show some progress since the U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November.

Earlier in the day, Israeli Army and police officials said, two Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, causing slight damage to property but no casualties.

The prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met for two hours, first together with their top negotiators and staff, then alone.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert, said of the meeting: "Both leaders agreed to authorize their negotiating teams," headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel and a former Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, "to conduct direct and ongoing negotiations on all the core issues" for a final status agreement.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator who attended the meeting, said afterward that Bush "urged that the year of 2008 be made the year to reach peace. The intention is to see to it that we give peace a chance."

Suspected Tamil rebels killed a Sri Lankan minister on Tuesday, the second parliamentarian killed on the island in a week.

The attack on D. M. Dassanayake, nation building minister, whose car was hit by a roadside bomb near the capital Colombo, comes as the war between the government and ethnic Tamil Tigers is escalating with the cancellation of a ceasefire agreement last week.

"This sad event is a further reminder of the need to redouble our efforts to rid our country of terrorism and the use of violence to achieve political ends," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a statement.

Dassanayake's death marks the opening shot in what is expected to be one of the most deadly phases in Sri Lanka's more than two-decade-old war.

Last week, the government unilaterally called off a 2002 ceasefire agreement with the island's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, saying repeated Tiger attacks and bombings had rendered the agreement virtually meaningless.

Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf will not say whether he is planning a bid for the 2009 presidential elections in Iran. But as the ambitious mayor of Tehran - the role used by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad as a springboard to the presidency - his every move is closely watched by the capital's political circles.

A candidate whose more modernist leanings won him attention in the last presidential poll - but not enough appeal to propel him to the second round - Mr Qalibaf is seen as one of the few potentially strong challengers to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad.

Though the 46-year-old former police chief is often categorised as a fundamentalist, just like the president, his political and social views have not yet been put to the test.

Many analysts consider him as the symbol of a trend in Iran that is neither reformist nor strictly conservative, and some western diplomats believe he could emerge as the most appealing to voters disillusioned by the main political camps.

Hopes of a negotiated settlement to Kenya's political crisis were dealt a severe blow on Tuesday when Mwai Kibaki, the president, snubbed the opposition by announcing some members of a new cabinet.

Would-be mediators had urged the president not to form a cabinet as various forms of coalition government were being mooted as a way of solving the crisis sparked by Mr Kibaki's disputed election victory.

One western diplomat said the cabinet announcement was "a kick in the face" to Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, who had called off a rally planned for Nairobi on Tuesday in order to prepare the ground for mediation.

It is the biggest setback to reconciliation in the past few days, a period when the leading US diplomat for Africa has been in Nairobi and several signs of progress have emerged only to be knocked down later.

"The whole thing is a gimmick, the cabinet is a joke," Anyang Nyongo, secretary-general of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, told AFP. "We do not recognise the president and therefore we won't recognise his cabinet."

The move was also a snub to Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who during her visit had urged Mr Kibaki not to form a new government as long as the crisis remained unresolved.

Emerging markets will act as shock absorbers for the global economy, cushioning the impact of the US downturn and ensuring the world continues to grow at a decent rate this year, the World Bank says in a report published on Tuesday.

The Global Economic Prospects study forecasts that growth in developing countries will slow only a fraction this year, to 7.1 per cent from 7.4 per cent, and their strong performance will underpin global growth of 3.3 per cent in dollar terms.

However, it warns that within the developing world the urban poor and farmers who rely on livestock rather than crops are being squeezed by higher energy and food grain prices.

The bank says emerging markets are not "de-linking" from the advanced world, since their exports are likely to grow even in the face of the US downturn. But it says they are increasingly generating domestic demand growth to support their continued expansion.

The bank says the domestic demand growth in the emerging world will provide opportunities for developed countries - including most notably the US - to increase their exports this year, ­compensating for weaker demand at home. It says that in 2007 developing countries accounted for more than half the increase in world imports.

Methamphetamine-laced Ecstasy is flowing across the Canadian border into the United States, according to a warning last week from the federal government to public health and local law enforcement officials.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports that seizures of Ecstasy at the northern border increased tenfold from 2003 to 2006, with more than half of the contraband tablets containing methamphetamine, a vastly more addicting drug. This matches findings by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The development comes after an uptick in Ecstasy use after years of waning popularity for the club drug and just as the supply of methamphetamine is being strangled at the Mexican border. Some law enforcement and treatment experts hypothesize that the turbocharged combination is an effort by traffickers to reverse trends unfavorable to their business by marketing a new product at a new point of entry.

Ecstasy, which gained popularity in the 1990s rave culture, had been in steep decline since 2001, but began to creep upward in 2005 and 2006, when first-time users increased by 40 percent, a third of them under the age of 18, according to a variety of studies.

Oh, for purity laws...

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

MEXICO CITY -- Three Americans were part of a well-armed gang that waged a gun battle with soldiers and police officers in Rio Bravo on Monday, the Mexican authorities said.

The battle demonstrated not only how dangerous the northern state of Tamaulipas has become in recent months, but also how Mexican drug cartels are recruiting gunfighters from the United States, who can cross the border with little trouble.

For more than a half-hour around noon, the streets of Rio Bravo turned into a war zone after federal agents tried to stop a van carrying three men with machine guns in full view. The men fired on the officers and then fled to a nearby house to join other members of their organization.

Machine-gun fire ripped the air and rocket-propelled grenades whizzed and exploded, as soldiers and federal agents surrounded the house and the gunmen tried to repel them, witnesses told local reporters. There were unconfirmed reports of two other skirmishes in other parts of the city around the same time.

Three gunmen were reported killed; 10 on the government side were wounded. Ten men were arrested on charges of taking part in the attack on the police.

One of those arrested, Esteban Valdez de los Santos, 30, is a Texas resident and an American citizen, the Mexican authorities said. The two other Americans arrested, Ricardo Zamora López, 32, and José Raúl González Sánchez, 35, are residents of Detroit.

American gunfighters, Rio Bravo,... Did John Ford set this up?

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf will not say whether he is planning a bid for the 2009 presidential elections in Iran. But as the ambitious mayor of Tehran - the role used by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad as a springboard to the presidency - his every move is closely watched by the capital's political circles.

A candidate whose more modernist leanings won him attention in the last presidential poll - but not enough appeal to propel him to the second round - Mr Qalibaf is seen as one of the few potentially strong challengers to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad.

[...]

Diplomats describe Mr Qalibaf as an "authoritarian moderniser", while local critics call him an Islamic Reza Shah, referring to Iran's secular monarch between 1925-1941. The founder of the Pahlavi dynasty was a repressive leader who is, however, [...wait for it... here it comes:] also remembered for having forcefully pushed Iran's economic development, including the south-to-north railroad, sophisticated tunnels and bridges.

The US military has released video and audio recordings of Iranian boats that it says threatened to blow up US Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

The jerky footage, shot from one of the three US ships, shows several small boats approaching at high speed.

US President George W Bush described the stand-off as "provocative", adding that it was a "dangerous situation" that should not have happened.

Iran has dismissed the incident as a "routine" encounter.

AP is reporting the Iranian government as saying the film is Fabricated, and the Navy admits the sound and pictures are edited together and are not synchronous.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Deborah Kerr in The King and I recommended whistling a happy tune when afraid, but now fearful Americans can sing along to their favourite tracks while shooting anyone who causes them consternation with a 50,000-volt electric charge.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which is expected to receive more than 140,000 visitors this week, is no stranger to bizarre gadgets but the iTaser - as it has been dubbed - must rank as one of the oddest. It combines a Taser stun gun, used by 12,000 law enforcement and security forces, including the Metropolitan police, with an MP3 player and earphones.

As to which tracks anyone toting such a device might download on to the 1GB player that is integrated into the gun's holster, anything by Sparks or Frank Zappa must be fairly high on the list.

Arizona-based Taser International sells the handheld stun guns under the rather hyperbolic banner of "Changing the World and Protecting Lives". It maintains that the iTaser "allows for both personal protection and personal music for people on the go".

She was the feminist icon who seduced her female students before passing them on to her male lover. John Lichfield reports on the magazine cover which has reignited an issue close to her heart: female equality in France Published: 09 January 2008

Bare buttocks are not something that usually disturb the French. Pink bottoms leer from almost every chemist's window in Paris.

The publication this week of a female bottom on the cover of a serious news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, has caused, nevertheless, something of a stir. The bare bottom belonged to Simone de Beauvoir, writer, philosopher and seculargoddess of feminism, who was born 100 years ago today.

One feminist organisation complained that, by illustrating the centenary of Mme de Beauvoir's birth with a nude photograph taken in 1952, the intelligent, centre-left magazine had "assaulted the dignity of women".

Sixty years after she wrote one of the most influential feminist books, Le Deuxième Sexe, Simone de Beauvoir has managed to become a "cover cutie". Are women still regarded as the "second sex" in France?

Florence Montreynaud is one of France's best known feminist authors. She has written about the unusual lifelong love affair and friendship between Beauvoir and the existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2008) -- Research on a treasure trove of amber has yielded evidence that France once was covered by a dense tropical rainforest with trees similar to those found in the modern-day Amazon. The 55-million-year-old pieces of amber was discovered in the Oise River area in northern France.

Plants & Animals

    * Trees
    * Botany
    * Nature

Earth & Climate

    * Forest
    * Rainforests
    * Geography

Reference

    * Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
    * Forest
    * Savanna
    * Growth ring

In the new study, Akino Jossang and colleagues used laboratory instruments to analyze the fossilized tree sap in an effort to link specific samples of amber to specific kinds of trees. The amber remained intact over the ages, while the trees from which it oozed disappeared. Efforts to make such connections have been difficult because amber from different sites tended to have very similar chemical compositions.

The report describes discovery of a new organic compound in amber called "quesnoin," whose precursor exists only in sap produced by a tree currently growing only in Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

A farmer says he can create enough energy to power 500 homes in his local village - by using cow dung.

Richard Tomlinson claims his 600 organic dairy cows can produce enough waste to provide renewable fuel for those living in Holt, near Wrexham.

Mr Tomlinson plans to hold a meeting with villagers to explain how the energy is created by mixing cow slurry and food waste in a generator.

Friends of the Earth Cymru supports the fuel, which is used in mainland Europe.

Mr Tomlinson has yet to apply for planning permission for the generator - called an anaerobic digester - and needs to raise £1.2m to build it, which he hopes could come from a low interest loan from the Welsh Assembly Government.

Producing biofuels from a fast-growing grass delivers vast savings of carbon dioxide emissions compared with petrol, a large-scale study has suggested.

A team of US researchers also found that switchgrass-derived ethanol produced 540% more energy than was required to manufacture the fuel.

One acre (0.4 hectares) of the grassland could, on average, deliver 320 barrels of bioethanol, they added.

Their paper appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Democrats Abroad

keep to the Fen Causeway

As the National Railway Museum in York opens a new £4m visitor centre, it claims a 14-year-old in 1825 as the world's first trainspotter.

Long before Clapham Junction, anoraks and binoculars, trainspotting was born in the North East.

For a 14-year-old boy, the sight of the world's first steam-hauled passenger train in 1825 was a revelation.

John Backhouse, a Quaker from County Durham, wrote to his sisters in London a month after seeing the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway.

His neatly-written letter includes an illustration of the train, complete with annotations to point out the locomotive steam engine at the front, the freight wagons, the passenger coach and the flags.

President Nicolas Sarkozy as good as confirmed yesterday that he plans to marry his girlfriend, the Franco-Italian former model Carla Bruni, in the near future. Pressed for a date for the wedding, he said: "The chances are that you will hear about it when it has already happened."

In his first extensive press conference since he took office last June, M. Sarkozy teased journalists for accusing him of flaunting his private life while covering every detail of his two-month-old love affair with Mme Bruni, 40.

He said that he wanted to break with the "hypocrisy and lies" which had been the "deplorable tradition" of French politics in the past. The same newspapers which accused him of "exploiting" his private life had knowingly "covered with a lead screen" the fact that the late President François Mitterrand had two separate families, he said.

In a two-hour press conference at the Elysée Palace, including a one hour opening statement, President Sarkozy had been expected to announce detailed plans for 2008. He had been expected, in particular, to explain what he meant by his promise of a "new politics of civilisation" and a "new renaissance" in his message to the French people on New Year's Eve.