Czech President Vaclav Klaus has compared the Lisbon Treaty on EU reform to an unstoppable speeding train, suggesting he may have to sign it.

A staunch opponent to the treaty, he said even if it did come into force, it would not be "the end of history".

He was speaking in an interview with Saturday's Lidove Noviny newspaper.

His signature is now virtually the last hurdle before full ratification of the treaty, which is aimed at streamlining the 27-member EU's decision making.

"I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic," Lidove Noviny quoted Mr Klaus as saying.

"However, the train has already travelled so fast and so far that I guess it will not be possible to stop it or turn it around, however much we would wish to."

Royal Mail will recruit up to 30,000 temporary staff to deal with upcoming strikes by postal workers and the Christmas rush, the service has said.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called national strikes on Thursday and Friday over pay and reforms.

Royal Mail said it would hire twice the usual number of extra pre-Christmas staff to cut the impact of "unjustified and irresponsible" industrial action.

But the CWU described the decision as "a stupid move".

"I think it's something that's not going to help resolve the dispute - it's going to inflame things," CWU general secretary Billy Hayes told the BBC.

But speaking on the Andrew Marr programme, he stopped short of describing the temporary workers as strike-breakers.

Employing extra people to do the work of staff who are on strike is illegal under employment law.

The international job fair for health professionals, which opens today in Bucharest, is an opportunity for countries in need of doctors, such as the United Kingdom, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden, to fill health service vacancies -- and they have the means to offer wages and working conditions that are far beyond the scope of Romania"s health budget.

At this and other fairs, which are regular events in several major cities across Central and Eastern Europe, Western health-care recruiters lure Romanian doctors abroad with salaries that they could never hope to earn at home: typically, they offer between 2,000 and 3 000 euros per month (a starting salary in Germany's biggest chain of private hospitals, Asklepios Kliniken), as opposed to the 300 euros per month that can expect to earn in Romania. In Scandinavia and the UK, it is not unusual for medical specialists to take home between 10,000 and 12 000 euros per month.

Recruitment agencies from more than ten European countries, and also from Australia and New Zealand, have announced they will be participating at the current fair, which is organized by MediPharm Careers, a Polish recruitment agency specializing in medical staff, along with Hearty Europe LLC (an American medical tourism company), and Romanian communications specialist Houston NPA.

The EU's Javier Solana has welcomed the decision by Macedonia and Kosovo to settled a long-running border dispute. It paves the way for the two Balkan countries to establish full diplomatic ties.  

Parliamentarians in Kosovo and Macedonia on Saturday ratified an agreement ending an eight-year dispute over a border region that was used by Albanian guerrillas during Macedonia's rebel Albanian insurgency in 2001.

The deal demarcating the 150-kilometer frontier comes after months of negotiations under the auspices of the European Union and the United States.

Details of the agreement were not immediately available, but Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said that it respected "the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and the peaceful settlement of disputes."

He also said the deal would make it easier for Kosovans who own land in Macedonian territory to cross the border.

An Italian television channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi has shadowed and secretly filmed a judge who ruled against the prime minister's family holding in a bribery case, describing him as "eccentric" for wearing turquoise socks.

REUTERS - Italian magistrates and the opposition are up in arms after a television channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi shadowed and secretly filmed a judge who ruled against the prime minister in a bribery case.

Days after Judge Raimondo Mesiano ordered Berlusconi's holding company to pay 750 million euros in damages to a rival, the media mogul's Canale 5 channel aired a video of the judge taking a walk, smoking and getting a shave at the barber.

Dubbing the judge's behaviour "eccentric", a narrator points to him smoking the "umpteenth" cigarette, calls his turquoise socks "strange" and says: "He's impatient ... he can only relax at the barber's".

A large number of those who have been chosen as primary recipients of the H1N1 vaccine are declining the injection, apparently because many Danes have the impression that swine flu is not as dangerous as first suggested.

Some 360,000 police officers, nurses, doctors and others deemed to be in key functions have been offered the vaccine but under a third have applied.

"After planning and and carrying out 12 seasons of mass vaccinations against influenza, I would think that at the moment only about 30 percent of those in key functions are prepared to take the vaccine," says Danske Lægers Vaccinations Service (DLVS, Danish Doctors Vaccination Service) Chairman Karsten Østergaard.

The DLVS is Denmark's largest vaccination agency, which is in constant contact wioth national and local authorities in connection with the vaccination of key personnel, and based on reporting from these authorities the service says only few want the vaccine.

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Bonuses for 5,000 or fewer investment bankers around the world are unjustifiably large and reflect "market failure" because their institutions tend to overcharge clients, U.K. Treasury Minister Paul Myners said.

"We're talking here probably about less than 5,000 people globally who are being paid these enormous bonuses," Myners said today in an interview on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Andrew Marr show, when asked about the size of payouts for employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. "That has to stop. It isn't justifiable, it can be a source of risk."

Goldman has set aside $16.7 billion to pay employees so far this year, close to the amount it allocated in the first three quarters of 2007, when compensation reached an all-time high. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc said today that it hasn't taken decisions on bonuses yet after the Sunday Times said that some employees may take home record pay.

"There's an element of market failure here," Myners said. "Quite frankly, the clients of these investment banks probably are not challenging enough on the fees and the very large spreads that these investment banks are currently charging.

"I'm saying to companies: `For goodness sake, why are you paying these fees?'" he said. "I'm saying it to pension funds: `Why are you paying such large spreads?'"

The Royal Bank of Scotland, which was bailed out with government money 12 months ago, has set aside almost £2bn for bonuses and salaries to investment banking staff - a figure that could double by the end of the year.

After a week in which Goldman Sachs admitted it is on track to pay out its biggest ever bonuses, the Edinburgh-based RBS conceded that it too would be likely to offer bonuses to its 20,000 investment bankers this year.

The remuneration bill for the investment bank division at RBS in the first half of 2009 reached £1.8bn - equal to £90,000 a head.

The final total is expected to rise substantially, by the time a decision on bonus payouts is made by the bank at the end of the year.

Unions reacted angrily to the potential sums for RBS investment bankers, particularly as their division sparked the crisis inside the bank. Rob MacGregor, national officer for Unite, said: "These RBS bankers are happy to return to business as usual and line their pockets while thousands of bank staff pay the price for reckless behaviour which almost destroyed the company.

Rapidly rising unemployment in Britain's industrial heartlands has sent the real level of joblessness surging to well over 3m during the recession, according to a report to be published this week.

Urging a package of help for dole queue blackspots, the study shows that widespread lay-offs in the manufacturing sector have widened the north-south divide in the labour market.

Professor Steve Fothergill, author of the report for the Industrial Communities Alliance, said the real level of unemployment was close to 3.4m, more than double the 1.6m claimant count total once those ineligible for benefits and the hidden unemployed on incapacity benefits were taken into account.

"There are two disturbing things about this report," Fothergill said. "It underlines the extent to which the old industrial areas were quite a distance from full employment even before the recession started. But since the recession began, there has been a big jump in joblessness in the old industrial areas, which in many places is in excess of 10% of the workforce."

Scotland, Wales, the West Midlands and the north bore the brunt of job cuts in the 1980s, when most of Britain's mines were closed and large numbers of factories shut down. Despite attempts to create new jobs through retail parks and call centres, Fothergill said the traditional manufacturing heartlands had still lagged behind the richer parts of the UK in terms of employment when the downturn began 18 months ago.

Old style sexism has "died a death" in the city, so says the deputy chairman of fund management firm JO Hambro.

Equality laws are holding women back, says Nichola Pease

In fact, controversially, Nicola Pease, 48, suggests that red tape is now holding women back rather than helping them to get ahead.

The mother-of-three, who's been working in the City of London since the 1980s, made the comments to MPs investigating the issue of Women in the City.

But has sexism really left the financial sector?

"Prejudicial attitudes in flexible working structures and discriminatory pay practises means that today women suffer an 80% pay gap with regards to bonuses," says Kat Banyard, campaign director at the Fawcett Society.

Pay battle

Ms Banyard says that despite having equal pay rights enshrined in law since the 1970s, a pay gap still exists and the law is not strong enough.

"As a result companies are not required to check that they are paying equally, so it's absolutely crucial we have mandatory pay audits," she adds.

"The Equality Bill currently going through Parliament is a once in a generation opportunity to reform equal pay law we cannot afford to miss."

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland's budget committee will meet on Sunday to finalise a new law on reimbursing Britain and the Netherlands for deposits lost when the island's banks collapsed last year, the daily Morgunbladid said.

Iceland passed a law in August to repay more than $5 billion (3 billion pounds) lost in high-interest 'Icesave' accounts, but Britain and the Netherlands baulked at the terms, holding up aid from the International Monetary Fund and other lenders for the island's stricken economy.

Morgunbladid said the proposed changes to the law would mean the government's repayment guarantee will not run out in 2024 with remaining debts needing to be renegotiated at that date, as stated in the old law.

The Women's Forum for the Economy and Society in Deauville has exposed how the crisis has affected women worldwide

A Congolese woman told me: 'For you in the west, the financial crisis is a change in lifestyle. For us it is a matter of life and death.'" Iraqi-born Zainab Salbi, the founder of Washington-based organisation Women for Women International, speaks about this encounter with all the eloquence and passion she can muster as an advocate for the silent victims of the banking collapse.

Their voices may be drowned out by bankers noisily protesting about possible curbs on bonuses, but women and girls in poor countries have been hard hit by the implosion of banks thousands of miles away - and unlike the financiers, they are not being bailed out. For every dollar of development aid, Salbi says, women and girls can receive as little as half a cent. "They are just not on the radar."

Salbi, whose father was a personal pilot for Saddam Hussein, has helped nearly 200,000 women to recover from the devastation of war, to gain economic independence and to help rebuild more stable societies. Her work has won support from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

GMAC Bank | DJ Newswire | 16 Oct 2009

GMAC was granted bank holding company status in December. This status gave it access to the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, and also access to federal programs aimed at helping financial companies raise cheap debt in a frozen credit market.

The Treasury said in May it would swap $884 million of its existing preferred- stock investment in GMAC for common stock, giving the U.S. government a 35.4% equity stake in the lender. This stake could increase to more than 50% if GMAC, amid potential mounting losses and meager capital levels, further converted the government's investments into common equity.

Despite the help from taxpayers, GMAC is struggling to return to profitability as it takes hit after hit on its mortgage unit, Residential Capital LLC. ResCap, one of the largest lenders to borrowers with shaky credit, is still reeling from its souring mortgages.

ResCap reported a loss of $841 million for the second quarter, its 11th consecutive quarterly loss. But excluding gains stemming from its debt being forgiven by GMAC, ResCap's loss totaled $1.7 billion. In the same quarter, GMAC's credit loss provisions jumped 50% from a year earlier to $1.16 billion.

For 2008 and 2007, ResCap's net loss totaled a staggering $9.9 billion. GMAC also plowed in $6 billion of capital, which included forgiving ResCap debt, during those two years. Propping its mortgage unit delays GMAC's return to profitability, which, in turn, renders uncertain the lender's ability to repay federal funds.

In addition, GMAC has to raise $5.6 billion by Nov. 9 to satisfy the requirements of the government-conducted stress tests earlier this year. GMAC could raise this capital by issuing new equity, divesting its businesses or asking for additional federal help.

Almost 51 million square feet of office space is vacant in Southland, and that number is expected to continue growing well into next year.

Though Wall Street investors are showing some enthusiasm about the direction of the economy, shell-shocked business owners in Southern California are still more inclined to shrink than grow their companies. ¶ Problems at white-collar firms are bleeding the region's enormous office rental industry. Almost 51 million square feet of office space in Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire is now empty -- more than 17% of the total. ¶ The exodus from office buildings that started in late 2007 accelerated during the third quarter as the anemic business climate took its toll on the real estate rental industry, according to the Cushman & Wakefield real estate brokerage. ¶ "These vacancies are a direct reflection on unemployment," said Joe Vargas, an executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield. "Companies continue to reduce their workforce, or they are not hiring." Troubled business owners facing expiring leases often choose to downsize these days and take less office space, even though rents are falling, he said.

Real estate rentals are a lagging indicator of the economy, so the shrinking-space trend is expected to persist well into next year even if the nation's financial outlook continues to improve. Industry observers were divided in their assessments about whether tenants at least showed signs of interest in renting new office space.
....
Cushman & Wakefield's Vargas predicts Southern California will remain a tenant's market through mid-2010 and perhaps longer if employment doesn't start picking up. "This is certainly the worst downturn we've seen," Vargas said. "We're not going to see real improvement until job growth occurs."

For years, whenever anyone asked Raj Rajaratnam about the success of his hedge fund, the Galleon Group, he chalked it up to being hungrier than everyone else. "It is pride, and I want to win," Mr. Rajaratnam said in "The New Investment Superstars," a book by Lois Peltz published in 2001. "After awhile, money is not the motivation. I want to win every time. Taking calculated risks gets my adrenaline pumping."

Now prosecutors are claiming that Mr. Rajaratnam, 52, crossed the line into criminal activity.

At dawn on Friday, Mr. Rajaratnam was arrested at his expensive Manhattan home, charged with running the biggest insider trading scheme involving a hedge fund. He and five others are accused by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission of relying on a vast network of company insiders and consultants to make more than $20 million in profit from 2006 to 2009. Mr. Rajaratnam's lawyer has said his client is innocent. He is free on $100 million bail and is expected to be in the office Monday to address Galleon employees.

In 2007, Mr. Rajaratnam's name arose in connection with an inquiry into fund-raising for the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan rebel group that was defeated in May after a quarter-century of violence.  News of Mr. Rajaratnam's arrest has also shaken the secretive hedge fund world, in which intelligence on companies is often shared among Wall Street analysts, traders and other investors.

"The defendants operated in a cozy world of `you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back,' " Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Friday. He added that the case should be a "wake-up call" for hedge fund managers who even think about insider trading.

Several top commanders in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have been killed in a suicide bombing in the volatile south-east of the country.

Iranian state television said 31 people died in the attack, in the Pishin region of Sistan-Baluchistan, and more than 25 were injured.

Shia and Sunni tribal leaders were also killed. A Sunni resistance group, Jundullah, said they carried it out.

President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad said the criminals would be punished.

"The criminals will soon get the response for their anti-human crimes," Irna quoted him as saying.

Taliban militants are engaged in street fighting with Pakistani soldiers as the army tries to break the militants' grip on South Waziristan.

Both sides claim to have suffered few casualties but residents in the remote area say dozens have died.

The army, on the second day of its offensive, is reported to be facing battle-hardened militants, supported by Uzbek fighters linked to al-Qaeda.

At least 20,000 people have fled the area over the last week.

Reports from the region are sketchy as it is difficult and dangerous for foreign or Pakistani journalists to operate inside South Waziristan.

Guinea's military leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara has postponed an announcement on whether he will stand in next year's presidential election.

The African Union had given him until midnight on Saturday to formally promise he would not participate.

Capt Camara says he wants the region's appointed mediator, Burkina Faso's leader, to decide his country's future.

The crisis was triggered last month when troops opened fire on protesters, angered at rumours he intended to run.

Human rights groups say some 157 people died but the junta puts the toll at 57.

The chief justice of Botswana says the governing Botswana Democratic Party has won the parliamentary election.

The victory gives President Ian Khama another five years in power in the world's largest diamond producer.

So far, the BDP has won 36 of the 57 seats contested, with the count complete in 45 constituencies.

The main opposition party, the Botswana National Front, and the Botswana Congress Party have won four seats each with one going to an independent.

The BDP has been in power since independence in 1966.

The turnout in Friday's election was reported to be high, and election observers said voting went smoothly.

This is not the first time ALBA has discussed plans for a regional currency, and the proposal does not yet seem to be concrete to us. The countries have agreed in principle to proceed, with the details to be worked out over the next year.

Nevertheless, it does start to chip away at Wall Street's usual answer to any dollar challenge, "Where else will they put their reserves, what else will they use for trade if not the US Dollar?" This has always seemed to be among the most arrogant, self-centered observations of an empire in recorded history. "Without us, who will tell them what to do, who will lead them, who will manage their money?" Were even the British at the turn of the 19th century that self-deluded, so blineded by the rationale of the white man's burden to manage other people's affairs?

Ecuador's currency was called the sucre before it shifted to the US dollar nearly a decade ago. Jose Antonio de Sucre was an early 19th century South American Independence leader who fought alongside Simon Bolivar. Sucre is also the capital of Bolivia.

In this proposal, it is known as the Sistema Único de Compensación Regional (SUCRE), a new currency for intra-regional trade, to replace the US dollar in trade among several countries: Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and Antigua and Barbuda. Most of these countries have already withdrawn their participation with the World Bank, and it's Center for International Trade disputes, which had sought to arbitrate disagreements among the countries and several western energy firms.

This may be important because Venezuela is a major source of oil imports to the US market. Will Chavez start demanding payment for his oil in the SUCRE? Will the US begin to discover the nuclear threat from Venezuela? Or merely encourage its neighbors and internal groups to challenge its sovereignty?

Environmental groups in Azerbaijan say the government is not doing enough to tackle the illegal over-fishing of caviar stocks in the Caspian Sea.

The Social Ecologist Agency say local caviar-bearing beluga sturgeon are being decimated by illegal fishing.

The group is launching an intensive national education programme and plans to repopulate the Caspian by releasing a million baby sturgeon into the sea.

In Azerbaijan, the price of beluga caviar starts at $1,000 per kilogram.

For centuries, black caviar has been extracted from sturgeon, which live primarily in the Caspian Sea. Only for the last decade or so has the fish been listed as an endangered species.

LONDON -- Representatives of the world's biggest carbon polluters began two days of informal talks in London on Sunday to map out common ground 50 days before a key UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The 17 powers that make up the so-called Major Economies Forum (MEF), along with developing nations and UN representatives, will try to iron out some of their differences before the crunch summit in December.

"We represent about 90 percent of global emissions, so if we can get a way forward and narrow some of the differences between the... countries that represent the lion's share of the problem, then it might make those UN talks easier," British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband told the BBC.

He said the Copenhagen talks, when nations will try to agree a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012, were unlikely to succeed if left to the summit itself.

"The truth is that if this is left to the negotiators in the formal negotiations, I think we'll fail," he said.

The MEF was launched by US President Barack Obama earlier this year on the back of an initiative by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to speed up the search for common ground among the most polluting world economies.

Nearly 80 people were arrested and three police officers left needing hospital treatment during a huge climate change protest at a power station.

More than 1,000 demonstrators converged on the giant coal-powered Ratcliffe-on-Soar site in Nottinghamshire yesterday, with clashes breaking out between police and protesters as they tried to tear up perimeter fencing.

One policeman was airlifted to hospital with head injuries but later released, and two other officers needed hospital treatment for minor injuries, Nottinghamshire Police said.

Police said nearly 80 people were arrested during the day on suspicion of committing offences including aggravated trespass and criminal damage.

"There are still a large number of protesters at the power station and we will continue to monitor the situation throughout the night," a spokesman said,.

Demonstrators, under the banner the Great Climate Swoop, included supporters of three pressure groups - the Camp for Climate Action, Plane Stupid and Climate Rush.

Real, gutsy solar power is as rare as hen's teeth in this country. By the real deal I mean photovoltaic (PV) systems that convert sunlight into electricity as opposed to rather prosaic solar thermal systems that heat water. Last year just 6MW of solar PV was installed in this country. Compare and contrast the situation in Germany, where more than 1,500MW was installed last year and one in 10 buildings has a solar power system.

This is ludicrous because solar PV could provide 30-40% of the UK's total electricity needs by 2050, reducing CO2 emissions by 15% a year. An average domestic system (a fairly modest 1.8kWp PV system) can provide at least 25% of a household's energy. The sticking point has been the expense.

Luckily there are sunnier days ahead. We've been waiting years for a Feed-in Tariff scheme (rebranded as the Clean Energy Cash Back Scheme), and now it is expected to arrive in April 2010. This will guarantee domestic PV installations 36.5 pence per kw hour of electricity they feed back into the grid, probably for around 25 years.

A new type of wasp has been discovered living quietly in Sevenoaks, Kent, and, rather than being a foreign invader, it has been identified as a reclusive British native.

The wasp does not sting, but is a parasite which lays its eggs in the live bodies of whitefly that can plague maple trees. The eggs hatch inside the whitefly and the larvae eat the host insect from within until they are ready to pupate and emerge as adult wasps.

"It's a bit of a John Hurt Alien scenario," said Dr Andrew Polaszek, of the Natural History Museum in London, who discovered the species. "But it's an effective form of pest control."

Gordon Brown is not known for his cheery disposition, but even he might crack a smile at the sight of a mother pedalling three grinning children to school by cargo-bike in Copenhagen. The Prime Minister will be visiting the Danish capital - where such scenes of urban pragmatism are normal - during the UN Climate Change Conference, which takes place from 7-18 December.

If he were to duck out of the delegates' scheduled "Energy Tour" of wind turbines and refuse incinerators, his perfect day might start at Det Økologiske Inspirationhus (the house of ecological inspiration) in Frederiksberg, continue with an organic lunch at Bio Mio, and conclude over a CO2-neutral beer at Nørrebro Bryghus; were he to have arrived in summer, he might have been tempted to leave his problems behind and join the locals cooling down after work with a swim at the Havnebadet and Copencabana city-centre harbour baths. But even a couple of hours outside the conference hall will reveal why Copenhagen is regarded as one of the most liveable, people-friendly cities in the world.

The details are of course shocking, but the broad thrust of our story today on the government's secret plans to subsidise nuclear power is also sadly unsurprising. The history of atomic power has always been one of huge costs overruns, massive government bailouts and the running problem of what to do with the toxic waste - in other words, it is the history of taxpayers handing over cash to giant nuclear companies. The atomic lobby sometimes tries to pass off this woeful track record as ancient history, but it is not - just ask the Finns. A nuclear reactor was meant to open on the Finnish island of Olkiluoto this summer, but - after four years of building, countless defects and at least a €2bn rise in the original costs - the thing will not be working until 2012 at the earliest. Remind us, what is the Finnish for "trebles all round"?

The trees, which were already under duress, are being killed by insects that thrive as the climate changes. Scientists call it Sudden Aspen Decline.

Aspens are a big fall tourist draw, but this year there's less color. The trees had already been under duress before what foresters term Sudden Aspen Decline. (RJ Sangosti / The Denver Post)

Reporting from Paonia, Colo. - From the hillsides of extinct volcanoes in Arizona to the jagged peaks of Idaho, aspen trees are falling by the tens of thousands, the latest example of how climate change is dramatically altering the American West.

Starting seven years ago, foresters noticed massive aspen die-offs caused by parasitical insects, one of them so rare it is hardly even written about in scientific literature. But with warming temperatures and the effects of a brutal drought still lingering, the parasites are flourishing at the expense of the tree, beloved for its slender branches and heart-shaped leaves that turn a brilliant yellow in autumn.

What foresters have termed Sudden Aspen Decline affects more than just aesthetics. Aspen trees provide a rich habitat for birds, elk, deer and other animals. The grasses that sprout under them -- up to 2,000 pounds per acre -- hold water that is needed by metropolitan areas. The trees do not burn easily and create natural firebreaks in forests already ravaged by the pine bark beetle -- another parasite that is thriving because of global warming.

"It's just rolling through the forests," Wayne Shepperd, an aspen specialist at Colorado State University, said of SAD.

Noting the number of other changes to Western vegetation due to warmer, drier temperatures, he added: "Everything's happening all at once. We're living in interesting times here."

GREEN HORIZONS An increasing amount of electricity is being generated by solar panels in California and wind turbines in Texas.

Texas cares little for environmental niceties. Its governor, Rick Perry, bashes the Environmental Protection Agency at every opportunity, and recently branded the climate bill that passed the House of Representatives a "legislative monstrosity."

Yet the oil-and-gas state has nonetheless emerged as the nation's top producer of a commodity prized by environmentalists: wind power. Eager developers are covering its desolate western mesas with giant turbines. The world's largest wind farm began operations in Texas this month, and the state now has close to three times as much wind capacity as Iowa, the second-ranked state.

This achievement puts Mr. Perry's state in odd company. The race for clean-energy leadership is on -- and big red Texas is going head-to-head with the gung-ho greens of California. That state has thrown itself into solar power and now leads the nation by a huge margin; it has also aggressively pursued energy efficiency.
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Despite their vast differences, Texas and California do share one approach: each has a renewable electricity mandate, requiring that a certain amount of their electricity come from renewable sources by a given year. This policy, clunkily called a "renewable portfolio standard," is in place in about half the states. Congress is considering one for the nation too: In June, the House passed a bill that would require 20 percent of utilities' electricity by 2020 to come from a combination of renewable sources and efficiency improvements. The Senate is considering an energy bill that includes a somewhat weaker requirement (along with a separate, hotly debated climate bill).

A diehard activist for some, a pioneer for others, Joel Salatin is fighting against America's genetically-modified foods and for local subsistence farming. Leading his crusade from the heart of the Shenandoah Valley in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, this anti-globalization messenger who dubs himself a "Christian Libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer" has become the face of healthy eating and agriculture.
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"Nobody trusts the industrial food system to give them good food," said Salatin, surrounded by the many cows, pigs, turkeys, rabbits and chickens he raises in methods that remain unconventional in the highly-industrialized US agricultural sector. "The distrust is very real."

An iconoclast who has authored several books with titles like "Everything I Want to Do is Illegal," Salatin makes regular media appearances and now spends a third of his time at conferences. But farming is still a family affair built over three generations on the rocky terrain of his "Polyface Farm". Chickens and turkeys run free here, transported in a chicken coop built on wheels to a different pasture every three days. The 1,000 cows and 700 pigs raised for meat each year change pastures every week.

Salatin, 53, hails his "healing farming" method, where each animal plays an environmental role. "The cows shorten the grass and the chicken eat the fly larvae and sanitize the pastures. This is a symbiotic relation," he explained. This natural approach to farming is just as profitable as industrial farming, Salatin insists, because he saves where big chicken and beef producers are forced to invest in structures, drugs and labor.

A 16-year-old Australian girl sailed her yacht out of Sydney harbour today, beginning an attempt to become the youngest person to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe unassisted, despite concerns over her age and expertise.

If all goes to plan, Jessica Watson will spend the next eight months alone on board her 10-metre vessel, Ella's Pink Lady, navigating 28,000 miles through some of the world's most dangerous seas.

Around 100 boats congregated under grey skies in the harbour to see her off. Watson did not speak to reporters before she left, but her mother, Julie, posted an update on the solo sailor's blog. "I know you are all anxious to hear from Jess, but she's a little preoccupied on her first day, so she asked me to post a quick note to let everyone know that the departure went well this morning," she wrote.

'If you're faced by the wall every morning, it's dark all day," says Steve Morell, DJ, musician and one of Berlin's legendary night-owls. "Even though we were just in the West, it felt apocalyptic; I thought it would never end."

It's a blue-sky morning outside the Rauchhaus, one of the oldest squats in Berlin, right up by the former death strip. I've come to see how the city has changed in the 20 years since the wall fell, with the help of Steve and my old friend Nackt, from cult Berlin band Warren Suicide. The idea is a personal road trip across the spaces that have transformed their cultural landscape.

Before 1989, Kreuzberg was the centre of alternative youth culture in West Berlin, and the Rauchhaus, a neo-Romanesque hospital, was on the eastern tip of this once-desolate neighbourhood, enclosed by the Landwehr canal and the wall. Named after left-wing radical Georg von Rauch, it now welcomes visitors, but check the website first. If you don't mind sharing with strangers, a bed in the "international guest room" costs from €3 a night. If that sounds a little scary, its Smoke House parties offer lashings of authentic Berlin spirit on the second weekend of each month

There was a time when people talked of videogames as an art form. They had sophisticated modular narratives, critics would say, as well as parallax scrolling and anamorphic perspective. Halo? Its killzones had a radiant beauty. BioShock? Love those eerie 1940s stylings. But the games that are booming today are different: they're what used to be called "resource management" games, and a lot of them can be found on Facebook. They are games, if we're honest, that people play sneakily on their computers while at work.

Parahawking

Mason was a typical trekker when he arrived in Pokhara eight years ago. The day before he was to leave, a colorful wing caught his eye, and he booked a tandem flight. As he circled in the sky with a pilot guide, Mason was thrilled by the sight of so many raptors. Hawks and enormous steppe eagles veered inches from the glider. A falconer since the age of 11, Mason wondered: Is it possible to train birds to help pilots scout thermals?

The next day, Mason heard about two black kite chicks rescued from a destroyed nest. He changed his travel plans and spent the rest of the season in Pokhara. While he learned to fly a paraglider, he began working out the techniques to teach the raptors to fly alongside. It led to a successful commercial venture offering tandem parahawking flights to tourists.

...

Following the vulture's lead, we begin to pivot around the core of a thermal. Mason blows a whistle, calling Kevin in for a reward. As instructed, I thrust my gloved arm out like a perch and grip a chunk of raw meat. The vulture swoops in from behind, flares his wings and sinks his talons into my leather glove. He devours his snack and hitches a ride on my arm. Suddenly, he dives back into the sky.

The parents of Falcon Heene, the six-year-old boy who sparked a major rescue operation after he was wrongly believed to have been carried away inside a helium weather balloon, are likely to face charges imminently, police said today.

The announcement came as a friend of the Heene family described how Falcon's father, Richard, had previously discussed a possible media hoax involving a balloon to drum up interest in a reality TV series the family hoped to make.

Deputies from the Larimer county sheriff's office again searched the family home in Fort Collins, Colorado, last night, taking away several boxes and a computer.

A BUBBLY, blonde divorcée, Sylvie Brunel has more than an inkling as to why President Nicolas Sarkozy seems so fond of her ex-husband, the minister of immigration and national identity.

"They're the same," she explained with a giggle. She was referring not to the president's political convictions but to one of the reasons for her recent divorce from Eric Besson, her husband of 25 years: his serial infidelities, including his present relationship with a woman "almost as young as our eldest daughter".

France is well known for its tolerance of politicians' peccadilloes, and Sarkozy, the first French leader to divorce and marry in office, has done more than his share to keep alive the presidential tradition of amorous exploits.

Brunel, nevertheless, is breaching a taboo by parading her former husband's betrayal in public. Her book, the first about a serving minister by his ex-wife, has been widely seen as an act of delicious revenge against the 51-year-old father of her three children, a former socialist who became known as "the traitor" after defecting to Sarkozy's camp during the presidential election.

Top story in the Sunday newspapers is by my colleague Jane Merrick, about the BBC rewriting Humpty Dumpty so that it ends with all the King's horses and all the King's men who "made Humpty happy again".

This had been spotted by Tom Harris, Labour MP, former transport minister and all round good egg, who was watching CBeebies with his children and who mentions it in his blog about political correctness today

(look down to the poem  as the comment)

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell. Frank Borman