The Swedish government plans to allow new nuclear reactors to be built, according to reports - overturning a ban introduced three decades ago.

The ban followed a 1980 referendum, in which the public voted to phase out nuclear power gradually.

But only two reactors have been closed since then, while 10 are still working.

The centre-right government was quoted by Reuters as saying it should be allowed to replace old reactors. The plans would need parliament's approval.

Analysts say public support for nuclear energy has grown amid concerns over climate change.

The Council of Europe is urging the Czech Republic to suspend its program of surgically castrating convicted sex offenders after visiting hospitals and prisons in the former Soviet Bloc nation. 

The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee on Thursday demanded an immediate cessation to the practice of surgically castrating convicted sex offenders in the Czech Republic.

According to news agency AFP, in a report published following visits to two Czech psychiatric hospitals and two Czech prisons, the committee said the practice "amounts to degrading treatment."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his advisers are in the final phase of preparing France's return to NATO's military structures, after Paris obtained US-backing for two senior command positions.

US national security adviser James Jones has agreed in principle with Jean-David Levitte, a diplomatic adviser to President Sarkozy, that French officers could take over the reins of the Allied Command Transformation unit based in Norfolk, Virginia (US), according to a report in French daily Le Monde's Thursday edition (5 February),

France has been out of NATO's military structures for more than 40 years

The Norfolk unit is in charge of overseeing transformations within the alliance such as its doctrine, organisation and the use of forces.

The second senior post given to the French would be a regional NATO command based in Lisbon - the headquarters of the Rapid Reaction Force and of a centre for satellite-photo analysis.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission and the upcoming Swedish EU presidency are planning to generate fresh political momentum for cleaning up the Baltic Sea and connecting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to EU energy grids.

The "Baltic Sea Strategy" - the EU's first regional-level policy - is to create a new club for the eight Baltic coastal countries which may in future meet regularly at foreign minister level to push forward local-interest projects.

A seagull on Sweden's Baltic Sea coast

The club will not have its own budget or secretariat but is likely to be supported by a new cell in the commission's regions department, which is responsible for spending the lion's share of EU annual funds.

The move "seeks to fulfill the potential of the 2004 enlargement" in the words of the commission's draft policy blueprint, which suggests that existing regional organs like the Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) have seen little action in past years.

or 15 years, Ireland's economy boomed, but today it is the country most severely hit by recession in the Eurozone. Every five minutes, a job is lost. When the property bubble burst, Irish banks had to pay the price. In Limerick, computer giant Dell is shedding 1900 jobs, closing its plant and moving to Poland.

Ireland's deputy prime minister presents students with business awards, but with unemployment at 8%, students are worried about their future.The government is about to take some unpopular decisions - Irish tax payers will soon be handed a large bill. The French took to the streets for far less; how the Irish respond remains to be seen.

Earlier decision by outgoing Icelandic government to increase whaling quota for the next five years to be reconsidered, new government says

celand's new government may revoke a controversial decision taken last week to increase the country's whaling quota more than sixfold.

Finance minister, Steingrimur Sigfusson, who is also the fisheries minister, told a news conference yesterday: "We agreed in a government meeting this morning to send a formal warning out to those with vested interests in whaling, saying that the recent decision of the ex-minister of fisheries about increasing the whaling quota for the next five years is now being reconsidered."

He added: "We intend to make a policy statement about this issue in a few days."

Iceland's previous prime minister, Geir Haarde, stepped down on 26 January after civil unrest following the collapse of the country's currency and banking system.

PARIS: Ask a random sample of Britons, Danes, Latvians and Italians who the president of the United States is, and you'll hear an Obama chorus.

Ask them who the president of the European Union is, and you will probably draw a blank. Told it is Vaclav Klaus, they would most likely say: Who?

The Europeans have only themselves to blame for such ignorance, given a system that allows the EU presidency to change hands every six months.

Now, at a time when the region is reeling from back-to-back crises, topped by the worst economic downtown in decades, it is the turn of the Czech Republic, a country of 10 million with a record as a reluctant EU member, let alone leader.

The Czechs' leadership - or lack of it - should clinch the argument for a permanent EU presidency that could give the continent the kind of clout it deserves and needs.

The brother of Pope Benedict XVI ridiculed the German chancellor as "irrational" after she criticised the Vatican for welcoming a Holocaust denier back into the church.

Georg Ratzinger, a Roman Catholic priest, said his brother's critics were "ill-informed" for suggesting that the pontiff was wrong to rehabilitate the British Bishop Richard Williamson, who has claimed that the Nazis did not use gas chambers and that they killed at most 300,000 Jews, rather than the six million accepted by most historians.

"He doesn't need me to defend him. But it does annoy me how stupid and ill-informed several people are that are attacking him," Mr Ratzinger, 85, said in an interview to appear in Thursday's edition of the Leipziger Volkszeitung.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's attack on her compatriot Pope Benedict for welcoming back into the Catholic Church the Holocaust-denying bishop won widespread praise in Germany on Wednesday.

Speaking Tuesday, Mrs Merkel said the pope's move could not be allowed to pass "without consequences" and called on the Vatican to "clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial" that the Nazis killed six million Jews.

The European Commission has unveiled measures aimed at protecting sharks, many of which are in sharp decline.

The proposals would close loopholes in current shark finning regulations, cut catches of endangered species and set quotas according to scientific advice.

About half of ocean-going shark species are threatened with extinction.

Conservation groups have given a mixed reaction to the commission's proposals, which now go to the European Parliament and Council of Ministers for approval.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - One year after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, MEPs on Thursday (5 February) called on all EU countries to recognise Europe's newest state.

The European Parliament "encourages those EU Member States which have not already done so to recognise the independence of Kosovo," reads the resolution adopted by MEPs in Strasbourg today.

Fifty-four states worldwide have recognised Kosovo as an independent state, including the US and most of the EU

The document was approved by a large majority - 424 MEPs voted in favour, 133 - against, while 24 abstained.

Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia on 17 February last year and it has so far been recognised by 54 states worldwide, including the US and most EU countries.

To date, five EU member states - Romania, Slovakia, Greece, Cyprus and Spain - have not recognised its independence.

Dear Sir

I suggest a simple solution to the problem of corporate tax avoidance.

Apply a Limited Liability Levy on the gross revenues of all legal entities- such as Joint Stock  Limited Liability Companies - where investors benefit from the privilege of "free" limited liability.

Then abolish Corporation Tax; taxes on the related investment income of individuals; possibly even VAT; and collect the Levy through the payment clearing system. The fact that this would lead to widespread unemployment among accounting, tax and legal specialists is, I guess, part of the price we would have to pay for a fairer system, but I am sure they would be prepared to make the sacrifice for the greater good.

Yours  etc

(reported in the print edition of la Repubblica on February 5th- no online source found as of now)

Assoluzione piena per Alexander Stille nel processo di primo grado che vedeva il docente di giornalismo alla Columbia University, e la Garzanti Libri, accusati di diffamazione da Fedele Confalonieri. Quest´ultimo aveva avviato la causa in relazione a quanto scritto da Stille nel suo "Citizen Berlusconi. Vita e imprese". Il giudice Aurelio Barazzetta ha assolto Stille, difeso da Laura Cavallari e Caterina Malavenda, perché "il fatto non costituisce reato".

Full absolution for Alexander Stille in the lower court trial which had the Columbia University professor of journalism and Garzanti Editions accused of defamation by Fedele Confalonieri. The latter had sued Stille over what he had written in his book "The Sack of Rome." Judge Aurelio Barazzetta ruled that Stille- defended by Laura Cavallari and Caterina Malavenda- was not guilty because "the fact does not constitute a crime."

The case reflects a recurrent aspect of recent political power and it's low-threshold intolerance towards criticism, all the more so if hard facts are reported by a prominent journalist. Richard Perle sued Seymour Hersh in England, Haider regularly took critics to court. Berlusconi and his cohorts routinely take reporters to task through the courts or through daily rants and insults against generic conspiracies of evildoers.

While one may welcome a sentence that almost always reaffirms the rights of a free press, it is deplorable that Italian politicians continue to resort to legal harassment as an arm in the agora. At the same time its comforting to take note of the emotional and civic maturity of the ruling class, certainly not so much over a matter of a misplaced superiority but simply because of the lengths certain individuals will go to cram their overblown self-image down the collective throat. The bottom line is that a bullshit artist remains what he is regardless the format and the billions.

The NYT reported at length on the case last December. An illuminating interview with Alexander Stille may be seen on youtube:

Meanwhile in Germany, a similar energy study leads to strong support for renewables, as long as all the usual suspects have higher places in line.

Skennah Kowa

Chancellor Merkel will meet the heads of the world's five leading financial organization in Berlin. It is part of Germany's effort to drum up support for a new global regulatory system for financial markets. 

Merkel is expected to build on long-running calls to inject transparency in global markets to avert a repeat of the wrenching economic crisis currently engulfing the world as she meets the chiefs of the world's top financial institutions at a meeting in Berlin.

The chancellor will host Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, World Bank president Robert Zoellick and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Also expected to attend are Angel Gurria, secretary general of the International Labour Organization and Juan Somavia, director general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Merkel's discussions in Berlin form part of the buildup to a summit of Group of 20 leading industrialized nations and emerging economies set to take place in London on April 2.

Germany's Deutsche Bank has posted an historic annual loss, including a record loss in the fourth quarter of 2008. CEO Josef Ackermann attributes the setback to "weaknesses" in the institution's business model.  

Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest, said it suffered a net loss of 3.9 billion euros ($5 billion) in 2008, confirming reports from mid-January. But despite the loss, the bank said it would pay out a dividend of 50 euro cents per share.

 

A net loss of 4.8 billion euros was accrued in the fourth quarter alone, compared with a net profit of 1 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2007.

 

"Operating conditions in the quarter were completely unprecedented, and exposed some weaknesses in our business model," Ackermann said in a statement.

 

The United States is experiencing its worst crisis in decades. Obama is trying to fight it by preparing one gigantic economic stimulus program after the other. But the hangover is inevitable, and if the desired economic miracle doesn't materialize, it will be a massive one.

The most attractive thing about globalization is that it has enabled us to develop international tastes in our shopping. Our wine comes from France, our flat-screen televisions from Korea and our elegant shoes from Italy.

But you can also find good ideas for governing by shopping for them around the world. The catalogue of ideas is packed. Indeed, many countries have answers to the question on everyone's mind these days: "How do I rescue my economy?"

Harvard econ Prof. Elizabeth Warren, testifying before a Senate Banking committee hearing underway now to judge the performance of the $700 billion bailout, said that the Treasury overpaid by $78 billion in its first round of investments into troubled banks.

Warren said that Treasury spent $254 billion to purchase assets whose actual value was only $176 billion, "a shortfall of about $78 billion," she said.

Warren said Treasury failed to "price for risk," and used a metaphor to explain: It's as if Treasury was looking at 10 paintings and promised to pay $1 million for each, even though "one is a Picasso, one is a Rembrandt" and the other eight are not.

"There may be good policy reasons for overpaying," Warren said, "but without clearly delineated reasons, we can't know that."

A list of the many thousands of people who invested with Bernard Madoff has been released, including several prominent British society figures and a number of well-known Americans from the world of politics, sport and Hollywood.

The 162-page roll call of potential victims of Madoff's alleged $50bn (£34.3bn) fraud was published late last night. Among the 13,567 individuals, trusts and private bank accounts is the name John G Malkovich, although there is no confirmation that this is indeed the famous actor.

The highest-profile British name is Lady Victoria de Rothschild. De Rothschild, formerly married to Sir Evelyn, was herself embroiled last year in a Tory donor row. Also on the list of high-society financiers, actors and sports stars is Lady Evelyn Jacobs, wife of the Liberal Democrat-supporting life peer who had an estimated fortune of £128m last year.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European wind energy projects are finding it hard to get finance as the economic crisis begins to pinch, with smaller manufacturers announcing hundreds of lay-offs despite the robust performance of the sector heading into the downturn.

"There was such high demand six months ago, you had to stand in line to purchase windmill parts, but now the order books seem to have lightened somewhat," a senior EU financing official told EUobserver.

Some smaller wind projects are having trouble finding financing

Two days ago, Siemens Wind Power laid off some 400 production workers in Denmark, following similar recent cutbacks at LM Glasfiber - also based in Denmark - and the largest producer of wind turbines in the world.

Experts, such as Christian Kjaer of the head of the European Wind Energy Association say actual orders for turbines in Europe have not dried up. But expectations of explosive growth in the sector are being re-adjusted.

"The lay-offs are not because of a drop in demand - yet," the EU official explained. "Hiring had been based on the expectation that such growth would continue, and now there are doubts that it will."

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

US officials are examining ways gradually to convert government stakes in banks into ordinary shares as banks accumulate losses, according to people close to the discussions.

The point would be to provide a drip-feed of additional common equity as needed to cover losses - without the government owning a larger stake in the banks than is necessary.

One idea that has been considered by policymakers is for the government to change its existing holdings in the banks, which have taken the form of preferred shares - non-voting stock that carries a fixed dividend - into convertible preferred shares that could be converted into common stock.

Under this proposal, the shares would automatically convert into common equity if there were a decline in a bank's health - as measured by its so-called tangible equity ratio, for example. The government may also make future capital injections in the form of such convertible preferred shares.

Infrastructure investment will have far more impact than tax cuts for governments trying to boost economic growth in the face of the global recession, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF, which has urged faster and bigger restructuring plans for the financial system, also broke a taboo by calling for limited and temporary nationalisation of troubled financial institutions when shareholder equity had been wiped out by collapsed asset prices.

U.S. taxpayers are being shortchanged by about $78 billion through the Treasury Department's bank bailout, the panel overseeing the program said.

The Treasury, when it was headed by Secretary Henry Paulson, received bank assets worth about $176 billion in exchange for capital purchases of $254 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report today.

"The loss estimate is conservative," said Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. "It could turn out that those assets in the end are worthless. These are massive handouts to favored institutions to try to make up with taxpayer money the mistakes they made with investor money."

The country moved into its second year of uninterrupted job losses last month, with companies shedding another 598,000 jobs and the unemployment rate moving up to 7.6 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday.
...
For the last several months, analysts said, the United States has increasingly been trapped in a vicious circle of slumping consumer demand, falling business investment, mounting losses in the banking system, and rising unemployment, which was 7.2 percent in December.
...
On Thursday, the nation's retailers reported that sales fell 1.6 percent in January, the fourth consecutive month of steep sales declines.
...
For comparison, the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent in January 2008. But some analysts contend that the current unemployment rate understates the labor market's problems because the percentage of adults participating in the labor force has slumped in recent years, and those people are not listed as "unemployed."

Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, estimated that if the labor force participation rate today was as high as it was when President Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 9.4 percent.

The Kyrgyz parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a U.S. air base that is a key regional hub for US-led forces in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan's president said Tuesday the base would be closed after the country secures Russian financial aid.

Reuters - Kyrgyzstan's parliament will vote next week on whether to shut a U.S. air base which is an important staging post for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, Kyrgyz officials said on Thursday.
 

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on Tuesday Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic and a traditional Russian ally, would close the Manas base after he secured Russian financial aid at talks in Moscow.  

The government needs parliamentary approval to proceed with the closure but this is seen as a formality as the chamber is controlled by a pro-presidential party. A simple majority of votes is needed.  

"We have included this issue in our February agenda," said Avtandil Arabayev, deputy head of the ruling Ak-Zhol party.

The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water.

Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters described the drought as a phenomenon "rarely seen in history" as the Government declared a state of emergency.

President Hu Jintao said that all efforts must be made to save the summer grain harvest.

At the end January, SPIEGEL reported that NATO High Commander General Craddock had ordered troops to attack drug traffickers -- without checking to see if they were also insurgents. He lost the internal dispute that ensued and his time may now be short in the Western alliance.

 General Craddock ordered NATO troops in Afghanistan to shoot those involved in the drug trade. On Jan. 30, General Bantz John Craddock gave up. On that day, the NATO High Commander retracted an order calling on troops fighting in Afghanistan with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to attack drug traffickers and facilities. Many of Craddock's comrades found the order unpalatable -- it explicitly directed NATO troops to kill those involved in the drug trade even if there was no proof that they supported insurgents fighting against NATO or Afghan security forces.

General Egon Ramms, from Germany, who heads up the NATO command center responsible for Afghanistan in Brunssum, the Netherlands, expressed his displeasure with the order as did US General David McKiernan, who heads up the NATO command in Afghanistan. Both felt that the order violated ISAF rules of engagement as well as international law.

Craddock was extremely upset by the resistance from his subordinates, insiders report. They say he even considered sending a written demand to Berlin that General Ramms be relieved of duty. In the end, though, the US general bowed to the inevitable and made the change demanded by both Ramms and McKiernan. Instead of being given a free hand against drug traffickers, NATO troops will continue to be allowed to attack only those drug traffickers with provable ties to insurgents and terror groups. The change, a NATO spokesperson said on Wednesday, means that the incident is over.

A Lebanese boat said to be carrying ­humanitarian aid but which Israel claims is carrying activists, has been intercepted by the Israeli navy on its way to the Gaza Strip.

Reporters from the Arab TV stations al-Jadeed and al-Jazeera, who were on the vessel, said the Israelis fired at the ship before boarding it and beating the crew. The journalists said they were unable to show pictures of the incident as the Israeli force smashed their broadcast equipment.

The Israeli military has denied firing on the ship.

The Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, confirmed that the ship had been stopped and said that it was being towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod. "The navy boarded the vessel, stopped it and it is now bringing it to Ashdod," Barak said.

BAGHDAD: The overwhelming winner of provincial elections in Iraq was the Dawa Party of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose candidates garnered the most votes of any party in nine provinces, but they appeared to fall short of being able to operate without coalition-building.

Still, the results put Maliki's party on the road to transformation from a minor player among Shiite parties into the most powerful.

The party won a clear plurality in the large provinces of Baghdad and Basra, both places where Maliki waged military campaigns to halt the activities of mostly Shiite militias.

The parties associated with the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr also did surprisingly well, especially given that his movement only backed political parties two weeks before the elections.

Iceland's new government may revoke a controversial decision taken last week to increase the country's whaling quota more than sixfold.

Finance minister, Steingrimur Sigfusson, who is also the fisheries minister, told a news conference yesterday: "We agreed in a government meeting this morning to send a formal warning out to those with vested interests in whaling, saying that the recent decision of the ex-minister of fisheries about increasing the whaling quota for the next five years is now being reconsidered."

He added: "We intend to make a policy statement about this issue in a few days."

Former is still a man's property, judge rules in landmark case

Six cancer patients whose sperm samples were lost by the NHS have won their claim for damages in a landmark judgement which establishes the legal principle that a man's semen is his own property.

The case, which could cost the NHS hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation, is expected to lead to a review of the law relating to ownership of human body parts.

In yesterday's judgment the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, the most senior judge in England and Wales, rejected the notion that sperm held by North Bristol NHS Trust had the same legal status as a discarded toenail or hair cut at a barber's shop.

Google has announced a new feature that allows users to share their locations among a chosen network of friends.

The "opt-in" Latitude service uses data from mobile phone masts, GPS, or wi-fi hardware to update a user's location automatically.

Users can also manually set their advertised location anywhere they like, or turn the broadcast off altogether.

The service has raised a number of security concerns, as many users may not be aware that it is enabled.

Latitude is based on Google's My Location feature that has been in place since last year.

Legumes in particular are often cited as being high in antioxidants, which have the property of being able to fight off free radical cells within the body, reducing the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. A recent study further investigated these connections, as researchers focused on the benefits of one type of legume, dry beans, in reducing the risk of mammary cancer.

To address whether dry bean consumption is associated with a reduction in mammary cancer, scientists at Colorado State University studied the anticancer activity of six market classes of bean including; small red, great northern, navy, black, dark red and white kidney bean in the diet of laboratory animals. They also evaluated whether the level of antioxidants or seed coat pigments in the bean were related to mammary cancer. The study was funded by a grant from the Beans for Health Alliance, and the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station with assistance from Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bush Brothers Inc. Results from the study were published in the January-February 2009 issue of the journal Crop Science.

Cooked dry bean powder from the six market classes and a control group without beans in the diet were fed to laboratory rats in a standard preclinical model for breast cancer. The dry bean powders were also evaluated for antioxidant capacity, phenolic and flavonoid content; all factors thought to be associated with anticancer activity. Chemical analysis of the beans revealed that total phenolic and flavonoid content varied widely among market classes and the differences were strongly associated with seed coat color; where colored beans had ten times or greater phenolic and flavonoid content compared to white beans. Antioxidant capacity of the beans also varied widely among dry bean market classes and were highly related to seed coat color, where colored beans had approximately two to three times greater antioxidant capacity than white beans.

Dry bean consumption from every market class reduced cancer incidence (number of animals with one tumor) and tumor number per animal compared to the control group. Cancer incidence was reduced from 95% in the control group to 67% in animals fed beans. The average number of malignant tumors was also reduced from 3.2 in the control group to 1.4 tumors per animal in the group fed bean.

Scores of state offices will be closed today as more than 200,000 workers take their first unpaid day off in response to California's deepening fiscal crisis.

That means Californians won't be able to take a driver's license test or conduct business at some state office buildings.

(...)The state judge who last month upheld the governor's furlough order said Thursday that his decision did not apply to about 15,600 employees of statewide elected officials, such as the attorney general, schools chief and controller. Administration officials said they may file a lawsuit in coming weeks seeking to also keep those workers home.

Workers in some other departments will take their unpaid days off on a different schedule, and the governor's office decided Thursday to keep open all one-stop career centers for the unemployed.

Among the closed offices will be all Department of Motor Vehicles outlets, Fish and Game, Food and Agriculture, Social Services and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The Department of Mental Health will be closed, but mental hospitals will remain open. Workers Compensation offices will be closed.

Scientists say the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would have such profound effects it would shift the planet's rotation, sending a bulge of water into the Northern Hemisphere.

The enormous ice sheet, which many experts believe could collapse as the climate warms, is so heavy that as it melts it "will actually cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift rather dramatically," reports a team led by geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica, at the University of Toronto. The scientists say the North and South poles would move about half a kilometre if the entire ice sheet collapses and shifts more water north.

Coastal regions from Washington to Vancouver could expect sea levels to rise at least six metres, Mitrovica and his colleagues report Friday in the journal Science. Much of Florida would be drowned as would low-lying areas in Maritime Canada, the Arctic and along the Pacific coast.

There is nowhere on the coast of Canada or the U.S. that the sea level won't rise to at least six metres, Mitrovica said in an interview.

He and his colleagues stress that the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, while a big concern, is not imminent and may not occur for centuries. "But these findings do suggest that if you are planning for sea level rise, you had better plan a little higher," says co-author Peter Clark at Oregon State University.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has been made a knight of the Legion of Honour, France's highest civilian award.

The best selling writer, whose great-grandfather was French, was given the honorary title by President Nicolas Sarkozy at a ceremony in Paris.

Speaking in fluent French, Rowling apologised to the crowd for giving Potter's evil nemesis a French name.

Voldemort means either thief or flight of death in the language, but Rowling says the bad guy is "100% English".

Barbie turns 50 this year. But in addition to the birthday bash, toymaker Mattel also found time to honor German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- by turning her into a Barbie doll.

It may be her 50th birthday this year, but Barbie certainly doesn't look her age. Perhaps it is appropriate then that the Angela Merkel Barbie Doll, debuted at the 60th annual International Toy Fair in Nuremberg on Thursday, hardly looks anything like the German chancellor. Mattel, it would seem, wanted to honor Germany's first female chancellor as a role model for girls. The problem, though, is that some people might have trouble recognizing her.

My wife and I are not planning to move our piano. We are therefore looking for someone we trust who would like to borrow a piano (straight piano, so suitable for a flat) for a few years.

Please let me know if you'd like it.

"The womb that spawned that thing is fertile yet"

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair met new US President Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

President Obama was announcing faith-based initiatives to work with communities.

Current PM Gordon Brown has not yet made Mr Obama's acquaintance.

After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells, for example -- millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.

We'll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it -- a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life -- computers, appliances, even BlackBerrys -- (laughter) -- looks largely the same as it did half a century ago. Just these first steps towards modernizing the way we distribute electricity could reduce consumption by 2 to 4 percent.

Sending large files as attachments that exceed the recipient's email box limits has always been a problem for which FTP or .mac were the only solution - neither of which were user friendly.

But if both ends are online on iChat, you can simply drag the file onto the iChat user, the user accepts, and bingo - off it goes.

You can't be me, I'm taken