Gordon Brown faces a growing revolt over embryo research as former cabinet minister Stephen Byers last night joined calls for a free vote.

The former Trade and Industry Secretary said the public would 'look on in disbelief' if politicians were whipped into supporting controversial issues such as the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos.

The cabinet is split over the bill, with three Catholic ministers - Ruth Kelly, Des Browne and Paul Murphy - and a few junior ministers all struggling to accept parts of it, to the private exasperation of some colleagues. The explosive intervention from Byers, who is not a Catholic, shows the rebellion has now spread beyond MPs who object on religious grounds, becoming a direct challenge to the Prime Minister's authority. Brown now faces a choice between surrendering to demands for a free vote, which could see the bill defeated, or risking ministerial resignations on conscience grounds.

Britain and France are to sign a deal to construct a new generation of nuclear power stations and export the technology around the world in an effort to combat climate change.

The pact is to be announced at the "Arsenal summit" next week when prime ministers Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy will meet at the Emirates stadium in north London.

Britain hopes to take advantage of French expertise to build the power stations that do not rely on fossil fuels. Nearly 79% of France's electricity comes from its highly-developed nuclear power industry. The UK's ageing nuclear plants are ready for decommissioning and supply 20% of its energy needs.

Brown hopes the partnership will create a skilled British labour force who would then work in partnership with France to sell nuclear power stations to other countries over the next 15 years.

Sat 22/03/08 - In Evere, a municipality of Brussels, some 700 activists have tried to enter NATO premises.

Campaigners of various nationalities had gathered in front of the NATO headquarters to protest against the American invasion of Iraq, this week exactly five years ago.

Some tens of protesters managed to climb over the fences at the rear of the building. But they didn't get very far and were immediately picked up.

In total, some 500 people were detained. They were released in small groups in the course of the afternoon.

Over 500 policemen had been deployed to keep order. They were assisted by the water cannon and a police helicopter.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

PARIS (AFP) -- France is tipped to promise 1,000 extra troops for international forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, as President Nicolas Sarkozy moves his country closer to its NATO allies ahead of a key summit.
[...]
France has already committed 2,200 troops to the region of which 1,500 are currently stationed in Afghanistan.

French military leaders are said to prefer a deployment in eastern Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks have tumbled, according to a US general, notably along the border with Pakistan, in recent months compared to the same period last year.

Under one scenario, French units in the Kabul area would gradually withdraw and hand over to Afghan government troops to replace US forces and spread out between the Afghan capital and the Pakistani border to the east.

French special forces are already familiar with the country's eastern regions.
[...]
Washington, which has sent 3,200 more Marines to Afghanistan, has been putting pressure on European NATO allies to send more troops and equipment to fight the Taliban, particularly in the south where the rebels are most active.

The people of Mizoram, a tiny, remote state of north-east India squeezed between Burma and Bangladesh, have known for the past 48 years that they would face famine in 2008. Confirmation came last November when the local species of bamboo that dominates the state's landscape began to burst into flower - a peculiar ecological phenomenon that happens about twice a century.

A plague of rats rapidly followed, feasting on the bamboo's protein-rich avocado-like fruit, before swarming to consume the farmers' rice paddies, grain harvests and food stockpiles. Now up to a million people are facing hunger, according to aid agencies.

Mrinal Gohain, of charity Action Aid, said: 'There were rats all over the fields. Farmers would go to harvest their crops and find that the entire field had been eaten overnight.'

Boubacar Messaoud remembered strolling from the flatlands of Mauritania toward the southern town of Rosso, a watermelon poised on his head. Beyond a riverbank, he could see a row of children in a yard. Messaoud, then 7, stopped to find out what was going on, with the pure curiosity of a child.

He found out that the children were being signed up for school. Messaoud, the son of slaves who toiled in the fields of landowners, recalled that he was still unaware of the privations separating him from others.

Among a knot of parents, Messaoud noticed the cousin of his family's owner and asked him to help him enroll, too. "I can't," the man replied. "What will your master say?"

Messaoud put down his watermelon and cried.

The ancient tradition of slavery endures in Mauritania, although it was officially abolished in the 1980s. There are roughly half a million slaves among the country's population of 3.3 million, and at least 80 percent do not have access to a formal education, Messaoud said. Many remain illiterate.

On a cloudless day near the top of the world, Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger had just finished a late-morning cup of tea and stepped out onto the streets of Tibet's capital. Buddhist monks had been marching against Chinese rule all week, but today seemed calmer.

Suddenly, Tibetan youths started hurling paving stones at police, who tried to protect themselves with their riot shields.

Over the next few hours, the odor of tear gas and fires replaced the scent of incense wafting from backpacker cafes. The intense Himalayan light was blacked out by smoke. And in the days that followed, violence would spread beyond Lhasa to ethnic Tibetan villages deep inside China and to Chinese embassies worldwide.

China has barred Western journalists from entering Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas. But interviews with foreign witnesses and Chinese residents, as well as blog postings by Tibetans too frightened to be interviewed, show that during three crucial hours on March 14, woefully unprepared police fled, allowing rioters to burn and smash much of Lhasa's commercial center.

Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.

Pakistan's newly elected government will seek to negotiate with Islamic militants and demilitarise the campaign against them to end the violence racking the country, leaders of the major coalition parties who will take power next week have said.

The explicit declaration of a desire to talk to extremists and to reduce the role of the army marks a major change for the strategically crucial country and will confirm fears among American policymakers that the heavy defeat of President Pervez Musharraf at recent elections will lead to Pakistan scaling back its support for the US-led 'war on terror' in the region. Pakistan's rugged western frontier is seen as a haven not just for Pakistani militants but also for al-Qaeda and the Taliban and has been the site of fierce combat for several years.

More than a decade of tension between Taiwan and mainland China looked set to ease yesterday with the victory of Nationalist party candidate Ma Ying-jeou in the island's presidential election. Despite a last-minute attempt by Frank Hsieh of the Democratic People's Party, to exploit fears over China's crackdown on Tibetan unrest, voters put priority on improved business ties with the mainland, which they hope will galvanise an economy that has lagged behind many of its Asian neighbours.

Ma has promised to boost investment and trade ties, establish regular scheduled flights across the Taiwan strait and to negotiate a peace treaty between the two sides. With more than 99 per cent of the vote counted, Ma, a former mayor of Taipei, secured 58 per cent, while Hsieh lagged far behind with 42 per cent. Turnout was about 76 per cent.

http://tinyurl.com/2jyyyn

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.
....
The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the French threat to veto the resolution.

The ´No más Chavez´ group has 62,748 followers as of today, March 22, 2008.  They are people from the world-over that support the act on April 11.  For this purpose they are using all the network possibilities and organization of the Facebook social net to create a global protest against the Venezuelan president (as was warned by JL Orihuela through Twitter.)

Who does this benefit?  US connected, warmongering  elites.
Who is behind Facebook?
Does this sound like very special ops to cover up current, northern, financial and political disasters?
Or just to destabilize and amplify the ´settled´ dispute with US-Colombia, for invading Ecuador?

El grupo `No más Chávez!!!' tiene a día de hoy (22 de marzo de 2008 a las 11:32 GMT+1) 62.748 seguidores. Se trata de personas de todo el mundo que apoyan el Día Mundial `No más Chávez', que tendrá lugar el próximo día 11 de abril. Para ello, están utilizando todas las posibilidades de relación y organización de la red social Facebook para montar una protesta global contra el presidente venezolano, tal y como avisaba José Luis Orihuela a través de Twitter.)

The Antarctic, one of the planet's last unspoilt ecosystems, is under threat from mankind's insatiable appetite for harvesting the seas.

The population of krill, a tiny crustacean, is in danger from the growing demand for health supplements and food for fish farms. Global warming has already been blamed for a dramatic fall in numbers because the ice that is home to the algae and plankton they feed on is melting. Now 'suction' harvesting which gathers up vast quantities has been introduced to meet the increased demand. It threatens not just krill, but the entire ecosystem that depends on them, say environmental campaigners. Krill are also believed to be important in removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by eating carbon-rich food near the surface and excreting it when they sink to lower, colder water to escape predators...

Scientists believe krill have declined by 80 per cent since the 1970s, and the most likely cause is global warming. There is uncertainty, though, about the remaining population: the BAS estimates 100 million tonnes; krill harvesting companies claim about 400-500 million tonnes. Under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the annual allowed krill catch in the Southern Ocean is 4 million tonnes. But until now there has been 'huge under-fishing', usually less than 20 per cent of that quota, said Tarling.

The pirate radio stations of the 1960s are part of British pop folklore, but America had its equivalents broadcasting from the border with Mexico. And its most celebrated star DJ was the near-mythical Wolfman Jack.

Every DJ has their "radio persona" - a larger than life personality created to reach across the ether and plant itself in the imagination of the listening faithful.

The most outrageous - from America's Howard Stern to Britain's Chris Moyles - have come to be known as shock jocks.

The daddy of them all is Wolfman Jack, the most outlandish, most thrilling and most elliptical disc jockey of the American 1960s.

Immortalised in George Lucas' breakthrough movie American Graffiti, the Wolfman derived from an era when radio's disembodied voice could be almost mesmeric.

Cuban-born jazz musician Israel "Cachao" Lopez, credited with inventing the mambo, has died in Miami at the age of 89.

The bassist and composer left Cuba for the US in the early 1960s and continued to perform until his final months.

The mambo emerged from his improvisational work with his late brother, multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez, in the late 1930s.

The only thing that's going to keep us from a depression in the short term is the immediate reestablishment of transparency in the banking and credit sectors. This will cause several major banking failures immediately, but those firms are already insolvent.

The inability to recognize which firms are currently insolvent is what's causing the credit mess at the corporate level.

Interesting point, from commenter Jim Driscoll on Robert Reich's blog- the uncertainty comes not so much from distrust of one's fellow banks in general, as from the inability to tell who's toast.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/03/21/wsj/index.html

for those who don´t get enough on ET.


Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.