French President Nicolas Sarkozy has unveiled a 26bn-euro ($33bn; £23bn) stimulus plan to help France fend off financial crisis.

The measures include a 1bn-euro loan for carmakers and 5bn euros of new public sector investments.

The plan amounts to 1.3% of France's gross domestic product and should boost its economic growth by 0.6% in 2009.

It will also increase the budget deficit to 3.9% of GDP from the previously forecast 3.1%.

This is above the 3% ceiling demanded by the European Commission, but the rules have been eased to help members of the European Union tackle the crisis.

About 20bn euros will be added to the public debt.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Wednesday (3 December) announced that low-income Europeans are set to win new financing for solar panels attached to their homes, better insulation in their walls and fit their windows with double-glazing, but ultimately no new funds have been attached to the proposal.

 As part of its proposed stimulus package to boost the union's wilting economy, the EU executive said it would co-finance national and local schemes investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy measures in poor households.

But despite the fanfare, there will be no new EU spending. The move is simply a rule change that potentially unblocks obstacles to existing funds being spent on such refurbishments.

"There is no additional EU spending," regional policy spokesperson Dennis Abbott told EUobserver.

The fingerprints and DNA samples of more than 857,000 innocent citizens who have been arrested or charged but never convicted of a criminal offence now face deletion from the national DNA database after a landmark ruling by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

In one of their most strongly worded judgments in recent years, the unanimous ruling from the 17 judges, including a British judge, Nicolas Bratza, condemned the "blanket and indiscriminate" nature of the powers given to the police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to retain the DNA samples and fingerprints of suspects who have been released or cleared.

The judges were highly critical of the fact that the DNA samples could be retained without time limit and regardless of the seriousness of the offence, or the age of the suspect.

The court said there was a particular risk that innocent people would be stigmatised because they were being treated in the same way as convicted criminals. The judges added that the fact DNA profiles could be used to identify family relationships between individuals, meant its indefinite retention also amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private lives under the human rights convention.

The case provoked an expression of disappointment from the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the promise that a working party, including senior police officials, will report back to Strasbourg by next March on how the government will comply with the judgement.

Relatives of Jean Charles de Menezes stood before his inquest jury in protest yesterday wearing T-shirts saying: "Unlawful killing, your legal right to decide."

On the day the jury were sent out to consider their verdict after 35 days of evidence about the fatal shooting of De Menezes by police, the dead man's cousins withdrew from the hearing.

Earlier this week the coroner, Sir Michael Wright, told the jury he was not going to allow them to consider unlawful killing as one of their verdict options. He said unlawful killing was tantamount to accusing an individual or individuals of murder or manslaughter and was not a verdict that would be available to them.

He also said it was not available should they consider that the death occurred as a result of a series of decisions and mistaken beliefs on the part of the Metropolitan police as an organisation. He left the jury with two verdicts to consider: lawful killing and an open verdict.

Wright told the jurors just as they sat down yesterday that lawyers for the De Menezes family would no longer be present at the hearing. "You will notice Mr Mansfield and Miss Hill and their instructing solicitors are no longer in their places," Wright said.

"The evidence and legal submissions are now all over and we have all had their assistance throughout these very important stages. But I understand that from this point they will no longer be here. There's absolutely no difficulty about that. No disrespect is meant by it to anyone."

Seconds later Vivian Menezes Figueiredo, Alessandro Pereira, Patricia da Silva Armani and Erionaldo da Silva stood up and removed their coats to unveil their T-shirts. They walked slowly and in silence from their seats at the back of the courtroom towards the jury. Standing in line, they waited 30 seconds in full view of the jury before filing out of the court.

The German military commissioned its first spy-in-the-sky satellite system on Thursday, Dec. 4 enabling it to peek through clouds or the darkness of night at any spot on the planet.

The synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) system uses five satellites that bounce radar pulses off the earth. Sophisticated computers convert the returning signals into a picture of the ground that can resolve features just 50 centimeters in width.

Germany is to share the data with France, which operates Helios II military satellites that photograph the ground in the daytime.

The 350-million-euro ($445-million) German system, code- named SAR-Lupe, became operational in the summer and was officially handed over to the military Thursday by the builders, OHB System. The ground station is in the town of Grafschaft.

Defense officials said Germany will be able to take radar pictures of any place at about 10 hours' notice, the time it takes for a satellite to arrive overhead and for the picture to be compiled.

Angela Merkel defended Germany's strategy for economic rescue, and predicted a tough EU climate change meeting later in December.

Germany expects tough negotiations when EU leaders meet on December 11 and 12 to decide on measures to combat the global financial crisis, as well as a climate-change package, Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Addressing the lower house of parliament, Merkel said the proposals by the EU Commission for a 200 billion euro ($252 billion) stimulus package were a step "in the right direction."

She dismissed claims that Europe's largest economy was not doing enough to deal with the crisis, saying Germany would not be drawn into "a competition for subsidies and the spending of billions" in state aid.>

Berlin's contribution to the EU scheme is a 32 billion euro stimulus package over the next two years which is expected to result in a 50 billion euro boost to consumption and investment, she said.

The Royal Navy will have to wait up to two years longer for its £4bn aircraft carriers under cost-cutting plans being finalised by John Hutton, defence secretary.

The decision to push back one of the government's sacrosanct defence equipment programmes represents a sharp reversal. Ministers have always insisted the two ships would be in service by 2014 and 2016.

According to industry insiders, the Ministry of Defence is considering two options: delaying the in-service date of the first carrier by 12 months or delaying the second ship by up to two years.

Mr Hutton's willingness to delay such an important programme underlines the severity of the cash crisis facing the MoD. He has expressed determination to make the department "live within its means" while prioritising support for frontline troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is expected to stress that investment will not stop and there will be no impact on jobs. The delay, intended to spread costs, will also help synchronise the project with the expected delivery in 2017 of the F-35 Lightning II or Joint Strike Fighter, the aircraft being built to fly from the ships.

• Forget about moving traffic from cars to trains. In particular, forget every silly notion of cargo transport on rails. Do not mention it.

• Remember to kick important investments in public transit systems around Copenhagen farther down the road, like the necessary rail ring. Talk much, do little.

• Remember also to spin thoroughly to the friendly press (read: Berlingske [Berlingske Tidende, bought-and-paid-for advertisement for the Conservatives pretending to be a newspaper - Jake]), by leaking parts of the plans before they've been approved by the coalition, so the press can help make the government appear to have a vision. And so we can beat the last contrarians on Christiansborg [in Parliament - Jake] in line.

And this is from a paper I stopped reading because half the time they sound like they represent the industry despite the fact that they're published by a labour union...

- Jake

640 kiloton should be enough for anybody

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil fell more than 6 percent on Thursday to its lowest level in nearly four years in response to further bleak economic data that could spell a deeper decline in global energy demand.

The number of U.S. workers on jobless rolls hit a 26-year high last month, the government said, while another report showed U.S. factory orders fell sharply for the third month in a row.

U.S. light crude dropped $2.86 to $43.93 a barrel by 1:13 p.m. EST after slipping as low as $43.77 -- the lowest since January 2005. London Brent crude fell $2.87 to $42.57.

Oil prices have dropped more than $100 a barrel from record highs over $147 in July, as the global credit crunch has eaten into demand in large consumer nations.

"Relentless negativity is pressuring the oil complex," said Mike Fitzpatrick, vice president at MF Global.

LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds are suffering "tremendous" reputational damage because promises to make money whichever way markets move have not been fulfilled, although in the long run the industry will benefit from the shake-out, Veritas Asset Management manager Ezra Sun said.

Hedge fund "cowboys" boosting returns with lots of borrowing rather than smart strategies were the main culprits for the reputational damage, with investors blaming them for charging high fees and blocking them from withdrawing their money, he said.

"The market in the past few years has been rewarding people who've been running basically leveraged long-only funds," Sun told Reuters in an interview.

"They are now being shown to be basically cowboys, and a lot of them fell off their horses," he said.

Many hedge funds were charging high fees but not hedging out risk said Sun, who runs the $132 million Real Return Asian hedge fund and the $543 million Veritas Asian long-only fund and who was previously at Newton Investment Management.

The $1.7 trillion hedge fund industry's biggest ever crisis has seen funds lose 15.54 percent in the first ten months of the year, with long/short equity funds down 19.46 percent.

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Sales at U.S. retailers tumbled in November, the worst monthly decline in almost four decades, after the Wall Street meltdown caused consumers to postpone shopping until the holiday-sales kickoff on Black Friday.

J.C. Penney Co., Nordstrom Inc. and Gap Inc. all reported sales drops of 10 percent or more at stores open at least a year. The decreases were less than some analysts estimated after 50 percent-off discounts lured customers grappling with the U.S. recession. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. posted a 3.4 percent gain, beating its forecast.

Declines in consumer spending in October persisted into the first part of November before rebounding after the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Retailers may need to keep promoting half-off markdowns over the next three weeks to attract customers, even though such sales erode margins during a period when they make a third or more of their annual profit.

"The promotions are pretty much across the board in retail, and some are the biggest you've seen in years," said David Abella, a portfolio manager at Rochdale Investment Management LLC in New York, with $2 billion in assets including Wal-Mart shares. "They will need to keep that up through December to draw traffic and sales."

Even with the Black Friday discounts, November same-store sales fell 2.7 percent, the International Council of Shopping Centers said, based on a survey of 37 chains. That's the biggest drop since the ICSC began tracking data in 1969. Excluding Wal-Mart, sales plunged 7.7 percent.

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. lawmakers were told General Motors Corp., the country's largest automaker, may fail this month if they don't give the cash infusion the company seeks.

"I believe we could lose General Motors by the end of this month," Ronald Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers union, told a Senate panel today in Washington.

The Big Three automakers renewed their plea for an emergency federal bailout as a deadlocked Congress showed no progress in deciding how to aid them. GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said his company needs an "immediate" $4 billion, and $4 billion more next month.

"We're here today because we made mistakes," Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee. "Forces beyond our control have pushed us to the brink."

Wagoner, Chrysler LLC Chief Executive Robert Nardelli and Ford Motor Co.'s Alan Mulally together are asking for as much as $34 billion in federal aid. "I am sorry to be asking for this support," Wagoner told reporters before the hearing began.

The stark reduction, which was greater than most analysts had predicted, shows the the ECB is serious about fighting the financial crisis, which has plunged Europe into a recession. Lower interest rates tend to stimulate the economy by loosening credit markets and making borrowing cheaper. Ever since the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, credit markets have been extremely reluctant to take on any additional risk, making it virtually impossible for many companies to secure loans.

Although most economists had predicted only a half-point cut from the ECB, not all were surprised that the central bankers decided to take such drastic action. "Given how weak the economic data has been, the rate cuts are not so surprising," said Rainer Sartoris, an economist at HSBC Trinkaus, in an interview with Reuters. "They needed to have rates come down more quickly than before."

Central banks in the UK and in Sweden announced even greater rate cuts, stealing some of the ECB's thunder. Rainer Guntermann, an economist at Dresdner Kleinwort told Reuters that the ECB's cut, although the greatest in its history, is less impressive when compared to the action taken in Stockholm and London. "They clearly have an even more dramatic assessment of global conditions," he said.

British central bankers cut their rate by a full percentage point to just two percent, leaving rates at their lowest levels since 1939.

TOKYO - China, faced with factory closures and slowing export growth as the global economy slows, is apparently prepared to weaken the value of its currency against the US dollar in defiance of a key policy goal of the United States, even as US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson visits Beijing this week.

A weaker yuan, which would signal an about-turn by Beijing after three years of appreciation, will help to hold down prices of China's exports, raising the likelihood of further increases in its already contentiously high trade surplus with the US. At the same time, a lower yuan will make imports to China from the US more expensive at a time when American workers are fast losing jobs as factories there close on falling demand at home and abroad.

There is no way that Freescale and NXP can repay the debt which has been loaded on to them by their private equity owners, according to Jerome Ramel, of Exane BNP Paribas, talking this morning to the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2008 in Paris. "There is no way they can repay the debt they have", said Ramel.

The debt imposed on Freescale and NXP by their private equity owners, Blackstone and KKR, could not be repaid even if they are broken up and sold off piece-meal, said Ramel, so the only way forward for them is consolidation. "Refinancing will kill some businesses," Ramel told the Forum.

Asked by Electronics Weekly how Freescale and NXP would cope with the re-financings they will be obliged to undergo starting in 2011, Ramel replied: "Freescale was bought at 4 times sales, NXP at 1.6 times sales. The valuations were too high. The private equity companies thought there was something wrong about an industry which operated without any debt."

Upon her arrival in New Delhi this week, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expected the Pakistani regime to "cooperate fully and transparently" with India to try and bring the perpetrators of last week's terrorist outrage in Mumbai to justice. Ms. Rice's position -- though seemingly sensible -- is actually off the mark. The regime of President Asif Ali Zardari has no incentive whatsoever to cooperate with India to ensure that the terrorists who were responsible for the Mumbai attacks are actually apprehended.

Pakistan has pursued a successful strategy of asymmetric warfare through jihadists since the outbreak of an ethno-religious insurgency in Kashmir in 1989. Part of Islamabad's strategy is to appear cooperative. After members of two jihadi groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, attacked the Indian parliament on Dec. 13, 2001, for instance, then-President Pervez Musharraf nominally banned both entities. He placed their leaders under house arrest and had many of the terror groups' members arrested. On Jan. 12, 2002, he declared he would not allow Pakistani territory to be used for acts of terror.

Thanks to persistent American prodding, the two sides embarked on a peace process in 2004. The two sides agreed on a cease-fire along the Line of Control, the de facto international border in Kashmir, expanded people-to-people contacts and loosened travel restrictions.

Yet even in those times of apparent peace, Pakistan did not wholly abandon the jihadi option.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has won a bid to suspend parliament, blocking an opposition attempt to topple his new government.

The governor general agreed to Mr Harper's request, unprecedented in the country, after talks.

If the request had been rejected, he would have had to step down or face a confidence vote he was sure to lose.

Opposition parties had called the vote for Monday, accusing the government of failing to shore up the economy.

Governor General Michaelle Jean agreed to prorogue - or suspend - parliament until 27 January when the government is set to present its budget.

Ms Jean - the representative of head of state Queen Elizabeth - has the right to make a final decision on such matters.

Power-sharing in Zimbabwe is dead and it is time for African governments to oust President Robert Mugabe, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said.

His comments are some of the strongest by an African leader against Mr Mugabe, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Nairobi.

"It's time for African governments... to push him out of power," Mr Odinga said after talks with Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Six gunmen are reported to have been shot by Indian security forces at Delhi's main international airport, according to airport officials.

Security had been strengthened at several Indian airports after warnings had been received of possible attacks.

When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation, Small asserts.

So brain circuits involved in face-to-face contact can become weaker, he suggests. That may lead to social awkwardness, an inability to interpret nonverbal messages, isolation and less interest in traditional classroom learning.

Small says the effect is strongest in so-called digital natives -- people in their teens and 20s who have been "digitally hard-wired since toddlerhood."

Some research suggests the brain actually benefits from Internet use.

A large study led by Mizuko Ito of the University of California, Irvine, recently concluded that by hanging out online with friends -- sending instant messages, for example -- teens learn valuable skills they'll need to use at work and socially in the digital age. That includes lessons about issues like online privacy and what's appropriate to post and communicate on the internet, Ito said.

TIJUANA, Mexico -- The sedated patient, his bullet wounds still fresh from a shootout the night before, was lying on a gurney in the intensive care unit of a prestigious private hospital here late last month with intravenous fluids dripping into his arm. Suddenly, steel-faced gunmen barged in and filled him with even more bullets. This time, he was dead for sure.

Hit men pursuing rivals into intensive care units and emergency rooms. Shootouts in lobbies and corridors. Doctors kidnapped and held for ransom, or threatened with death if a wounded gunman dies under their care. With alarming speed, Mexico's violent drug war is finding its way into the seeming sanctuary of the nation's hospitals, shaking the health care system and leaving workers fearing for their lives while trying to save the lives of others.

[...]

An explosion of violence connected with Mexico's powerful drug cartels has left more than 5,000 people dead so far this year, nearly twice the figure from the year before, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican newspapers. The border region of the United States and Mexico, critical to the cartels' trafficking operation, has been the most violent turf of all, with 60 percent of all killings in the country last month occurring in the states of Chihuahua and Baja California, the government says. And it has raised fears that violence could spill across the border, because dozens of victims of drug violence have been treated at an El Paso hospital in the last year.

The federal government argues that the rising death toll reflects President Felipe Calderón's aggressive stance toward the cartels, which has forced traffickers into a bitter war over the dwindling turf that remains.

In fact, most of the deaths do appear to be the result of infighting among traffickers. But plenty of innocent people are dying too, and the spate of horrifying killings -- bodies are routinely decapitated or otherwise mutilated and left in public places with handwritten notes propped up nearby -- has left people from all walks of life worried that they might be next.

In another regulatory action in the waning days of the Bush administration, the Interior Department on Thursday unveiled a new rule that challenges Congress's authority to prevent mining planned on public lands.

Congress has emergency power to stop mineral development, and has used it six times in the last 32 years. The most recent was in June, when it put a three-year moratorium on uranium mining on one million acres near the Grand Canyon. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has ignored that Congressional directive, saying it was procedurally flawed.

The new rule issued by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management comes as environmental groups are suing the bureau in federal court for failing to obey Congress's directive, which under a 1976 law can be invoked when "an emergency situation exists and extraordinary measures must be taken to preserve values that would otherwise be lost."

The revision of the rule eliminates all references to Congressional authority. The revision moved through the often-cumbersome rule-making process with lightning speed; it was proposed in October, and the public was given just 15 days to comment.

The rule seems intended to speed a judicial confrontation on the constitutionality of the 1976 law, and to underscore the Interior Department's determination to leave public land near Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona open for mineral development.

Words honestly fail me.

"Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease." - Kurt Vonnegut

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The pied piper was a gangly, long-haired entrepreneur whose remarkable success story seemed to augur well for those who invested in his get-rich scheme. David Murcia, 28, had gone from being a traveling salesman making $130 a month to living in a luxury high-rise, driving a Ferrari and forging ties with government officials.

Investigators now say Murcia ran a secretive, hydra-headed enterprise -- part pyramid scheme, part money-laundering business -- that provided investors with returns of up to 300 percent in just a few months. His company, DMG Group Holdings, along with 250 other pyramid schemes nationwide, attracted hundreds of thousands of working-class people starry-eyed with promises of an easy payday.

But DMG and the others -- including the now-infamous DRFE, whose initials stood for "Fast Money, Easy Cash" -- soon collapsed, and Murcia and his associates are in jail. The attorney general's office said that perhaps as many as 4 million people in a country of 44 million lost money, an estimated $1 billion in four hard-hit southern states alone.

The ensuing scandal has riveted this country, shaken the economy and damaged the so-called Teflon president -- Álvaro Uribe -- like nothing before. A weekend poll on Uribe's governance showed that 77 percent of Colombians surveyed in the country's south believe that things are going badly, and support for his reelection bid is wavering.

Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation. 

While the new Obama administration promises aggressive, forward-thinking environmental policies, Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D'Aleo and other scientists are organizing lobbying efforts to take aim at the cap-and-trade bill that Democrats plan to unveil in January.

So far, members of Congress have not been keen to publicly back the global cooling theory. But both senators from Oklahoma, Republicans Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, have often expressed doubts about how much of a role man-made emissions play.

"We want the debate to be about science, not fear and hypocrisy. We hope next year's wave of new politics means a return to science," said Coburn aide John Hart. "It's the old kind of politics that doesn't consider any dissenting opinions."

The global cooling lobby's challenge is enormous. Next year could be the unfriendliest yet for climate skeptics. Already, House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) has lost his gavel, in part because his peers felt he was less than serious about tackling global warming.

When President-elect Barack Obama called Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at her South Florida district office Wednesday, she hung up on him.

'I thought: 'Why would Obama want to call a little slug on the planet like me?' '' Ros-Lehtinen said.

A short time later, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's designated chief of staff, called. Ros-Lehtinen hung up on him, too.

''I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punked'.''

Ros-Lehtinen was in Miami when she received Obama's first call about 1 p.m. on her cell phone from a Chicago-based number. The person on the line told Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, that the President-Elect would like to speak to her.

A man, who Ros-Lehtinen said sounded like Obama, got on the line and congratulated her on her reelection and said he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs committee.

The conversation lasted just a minute when Ros-Lehtinen cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and that he was a better impersonator than the guy on Saturday Night Live.

Then Emanuel called, and she hung up on him. It finally took Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that the president-elect indeed wanted to talk to her.

''I asked Howard to tell me a private joke we share about colleagues in the House to make sure it really was him,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``When he did, I realized it was the real deal.''

A solar-powered car has arrived at the UN climate change talks in the Polish city of Poznan after a round-the-world trip covering almost 40 countries.

At the wheel of the "solar taxi" was Swiss teacher Louis Palmer who made the 52,000km (32,000 mile) 17-month trip.

He said the feat proved solar power was a viable alternative to oil-based fuels and could help fight global warming.

But he said the prototype would need serious modification before it could be mass produced.

The small blue-and-white three-wheeler tows a trailer packed with batteries charged by the sun. It can travel for 300km on a single charge and reach speeds of 90km/h (55mph).

... 'He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.'

Rosa's remembrances of life at the court of the tyrant make gripping reading. She saw leading Nazis come and go. Himmler, the evil party secretary; Bormann, whom she described as a 'dirty pig'; and the club-footed, sexually-obsessed propaganda minister Goebbels.

Rosa went into Hitler's service at the age of 15 in 1932 when she was Rosa Krautenbacher. Her sister Anni had worked as a cook at Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat since the late 1920s.

'She said he needed a housemaid and I would fit the bill,' Rosa recalled. 'I remember so clearly the first day I spoke to him in the kitchen. I said I was Anni's sister and that made him smile, because Anni was his favourite. I only ever knew Hitler as a kindly man who was good to me.'

Here it was:

I have an idea of a new feature for ET, or rather a new accessory: we have the plug-in, but could we also have the widget ?

I'm thinking google widget, here some bit of code that would keep tabs on ET (or any SCOOP engine ?) from the google dashboard home page. And may be someone would actually like doing more good work for ET... unless I'm the only selfish google widget user around.

Personally, I could use two features in a widget, may be in two tabs:

    * watch "recent comments" page a bit like the rss reader widget, with bodies popping up when clicking on listed titles
    * check "replies (trees) to my comments", in a tree view (meaning, (new) reply titles are clustered by least-common-ancestor-owner's-comment)

First thing before looking into the details, would be to count how many ET users are also google widget users and would be interested.

Pierre

See you all on Monday!

"Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease." - Kurt Vonnegut

While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said Israel is preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.

"It is always better to coordinate," one top Defense Ministry official explained last week. "But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination."

Israeli officials have said it would be difficult, but not impossible, to launch a strike against Iran without receiving codes from the US Air Force, which controls Iraqi airspace. Israel also asked for the codes in 1991 during the First Gulf War, but the US refused.

<...>

On Monday, Teheran dismissed the possibility of an Israeli strike, saying it didn't take Israel seriously.

"We think that regional and international developments and the complicated situation faced by Israel itself will not allow it to launch military strikes against other countries," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters in Teheran, according to the Press TV Web site. "Israel makes threats to promote its psychological and media warfare," he said.

There's one at 14:00 and I'd like to be able to reference back for notes.

keep to the Fen Causeway