Silvio Berlusconi today denied that his government authorised secret Italian payments to Taleban fighters that left French soldiers exposed in Afghanistan, amid a furious reaction to the details published in The Times.

The Italian Prime Minister said that he was also unaware of any such action undertaken under the previous Government of Romano Prodi.

The Times has learnt that when French soldiers arrived to assume control of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, in mid-2008, they were not informed that the departing Italians had kept the region relatively peaceful by paying local Taleban fighters to remain inactive.

Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.

Three Russian opposition parties, including those seen to be pro-Kremlin, staged an unprecedented walkout of Wednesday's session of the lower house of parliament to protest fraud in local elections.

A total of 135 deputies in the 450-seat Duma were part of the protest, including the Communists, the far-right wing Liberal Democratic Party and the Just Russia party.

Russia's beleaguered opposition alleged widespread fraud as the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's dominant United Russia party tightened its grip on politics with a sweeping victory in the weekend's local elections.

The EU's annual report on Turkey's membership bid has praised Ankara for its reform and foreign policy initiatives. But this is being met with little enthusiasm in Turkey as doubts over its bid continue to grow.  

The European Commission's annual progress report on Turkey's bid to join the European Union will have been welcome reading for the Turkish government. It was largely positive, stressing important steps on reforms to improve freedom of expression, efforts to resolve the conflict with Kurdish rebels and significant diplomatic initiatives, like improving relations with Armenia.

Brussels did voice concerns about press freedom in relation to a multi-billion-euro tax-evasion case against media group Dogan Media Holding, a vocal critic of the current government.

Even so, Ergemen Bagis, the cabinet minister responsible for Turkey's bid to join the EU, welcomed the report's largely positive findings.

"EU membership is one of the basic goals of our government," Bagis said. "We will continue our efforts with great determination and will work hard to get a more positive report next year."

Europe's aging population is going to put a heavy strain on public finances, according to a new European Commission report. This "time bomb" can be defused, but it will not be easy and it will not be cheap. 

According to the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) website, the ratio of older people to total population is higher in Europe than on any other continent and this phenomenon will continue well into this century.

This growing population of retirees will create additional economic pressures for European countries where debt levels are already high. Governments, faced with the current global financial downturn, have taken on new debt in an attempt to spend their way out of the recession. Yet the money they are currently spending is miniscule in comparison to the money governments will have to spend on healthcare and pensions in the future, the report said.

The projected impact on public finances will dwarf the effect of the current financial crisis "many times over," said the commission paper.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission plans to set wheels in motion for visa-free travel with Kosovo despite its non-recognition by five EU states and high levels of both corruption and poverty.

The EU executive in a report on Kosovo out on Wednesday (14 October) said it "proposes to draft a comprehensive strategy to guide Kosovo's efforts to meet the EU's requirements for visa liberalisation."

Everyday life in Kosovo: weapons and mobile phones, but no sewage

The process is open-ended for now, with visas to be scrapped only "when the necessary reforms will have been undertaken."

The move is a political response to popular feeling among Kosovar Albanians that Serbia, which is held responsible for the 1999 war and numerous atrocities, is being given privileged treatment by the EU, while the victims of the conflict are left behind.

Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro will enjoy visa-free EU travel from January 2010.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday (14 October) came out in favour of "Forza Blair" as president of the European Council.

"Tony Blair has all the credentials to become the first president of the European Council," Mr Berlusconi wrote in a letter that appeared in Il Foglio, a conservative daily.

Forza Italia's former leader has backed 'Forza Blair'

The Italian leader was responding to an editorial entitled "Vote Tony, vote Tony!" in the paper that had appeared on Monday.

"Dear editor, I absolutely agreed with your idea, even before you could think of it," the prime minister wrote.

He added that the former British prime minister should be "appointed to that post as soon as legally and politically possible."

On Tuesday, the newspaper known for its Fox-news style neo-conservatism, said that Mr Blair's candidacy was an opportunity both for Europe and for "Il Cavaliere."

Terror legislation was used to stop a British climate change activist from travelling to Denmark, it has emerged.

Chris Kitchen, 31, said he was prevented from crossing the border on Tuesday at about 5pm when the coach he was travelling on stopped at the Folkestone terminal of the Channel Tunnel.

Mr Kitchen told the Guardian that police officers boarded the coach and, after checking all passengers' passports, took him and another climate activist to be interviewed under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a clause which enables border officials to stop and search individuals to determine if they are connected to terrorism.

He was asked what he intended to do in Copenhagen and also about his family, work and past political activity.

Mr Kitchen said he pointed out that anti-terrorist legislation did not apply to environmental activists but said the officer replied that terrorism "could mean a lot of things".

His coach had left by the time his 30-minute interview had finished and police paid for a ticket for him to return to London.

Lisbon treaty has been eight years in making and is on brink of coming into force, but not if Klaus gets his way

For a man standing alone between Europe and its future, Vaclav Klaus is playing hard to get. Last week a trip to Albania, this week Russia; the Czech president has performed a vanishing act just when he has the rest of Europe dancing to his tune.

He relishes being at the centre of a showdown. But it appears he is currently more interested in selling copies of his tract on global warming denial.

Last week, as a panicky campaign was launched in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Prague to try to force Europe's biggest renegade into line, Klaus was dining by the Adriatic.

For five days he refused to return phone calls from Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister and current EU president saddled with the Klaus emergency. Jan Fischer, the Czech Republic's caretaker prime minister, has an even less enviable task, as mediator between Klaus and the rest of Europe's leaders. But Klaus won't give him the time of day. Fischer admitted he had managed to get him briefly on the phone, but not to arrange a meeting.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The next European Commission is set to be filled with conservative and liberal commissioners, feature several familiar faces, and plenty of new job titles. However, when it will be set up remains the great unknown.

With just over two weeks to go before the current commission officially ends its term, and with weighty portfolios the most desired, member states have begun jostling to get a substantial seat at the commission table for the next five years.

Several commissioner hopefuls have expressed an interest in an economic portfolio. A few member states, including Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Spain and Slovakia, have either officially re-nominated the same commissioner or are thought likely to do so.

But for the vast majority of the 27 member states, there is a question mark over who they will send to Brussels. Most notable among the not-yet-named list are Germany, France and the UK. Those who are nominated late may find that the plum positions are already taken.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The next European Commission is set to be filled with conservative and liberal commissioners, feature several familiar faces, and plenty of new job titles. However, when it will be set up remains the great unknown.

With just over two weeks to go before the current commission officially ends its term, and with weighty portfolios the most desired, member states have begun jostling to get a substantial seat at the commission table for the next five years.

Several commissioner hopefuls have expressed an interest in an economic portfolio. A few member states, including Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Spain and Slovakia, have either officially re-nominated the same commissioner or are thought likely to do so.

But for the vast majority of the 27 member states, there is a question mark over who they will send to Brussels. Most notable among the not-yet-named list are Germany, France and the UK. Those who are nominated late may find that the plum positions are already taken.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Thursday it was worried about U.S. talks on the use of Ukrainian radar stations as part of a revised missile defense shield, a step that could hinder efforts to reset ties between the two Cold War foes.

Russia, which is extremely sensitive to any hint of U.S. cooperation with former Soviet republics, initially welcomed President Barack Obama's scrapping of Bush-era plans for a missile defense system in central Europe.

But Moscow has been irked by a U.S. statement that countries like Ukraine could contribute early warning information as part of the revised shield plan and reports that talks between the U.S. and Ukraine on the issue had already begun.

"We feel concerned," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by RIA news agency as saying when asked about the possible use of Ukrainian radars by the United States.

The law firm Carter-Ruck has made a fresh move that could stop an MPs' debate next week by claiming a controversial injunction it has obtained is "sub judice".

The move follows the revelation of the existence of a secret "super-injunction" obtained by the firm on behalf of the London-based oil traders Trafigura.

The injunction not only bans disclosure of a confidential report on Trafigura and toxic waste, but also banned disclosure of the injunction's very existence, until it was revealed by an MP this week under parliamentary privilege.

Carter-Ruck partner Adam Tudor today sent a letter to the Speaker, John Bercow, and also circulated it to every single MP and peer, saying they believed the case was "sub judice".

If correct, it would mean that, under Westminster rules to prevent clashes between parliament and the courts, a debate planned for next Wednesday could not go ahead.

This seems to be outright contempt of Parliament.  Sure, parliament doesn't discuss cases before the courts - but purporting to tell them they cannot (rather than them choosing not to) is attempting to interfere with MPs in the course of their duties, a classic contempt.

These scumsucking lawyers have gone way too far this time...

Time: Opposition Grows to Tony Blair's Bid for E.U. President

Here's a riddle: What unites French Socialists and British Conservatives, brings feminists together with the editors of prurient tabloid newspapers and gives shared purpose to a clutch of small European countries and more than 37,000 signatories to an online petition? Answer: Tony Blair. Across Europe, natural adversaries and strange bedfellows are finding common purpose in their efforts to stop Britain's former Prime Minister from assuming the role popularly known as president of Europe.

[...]

 Indeed there will. France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is Blair's most persuasive champion, and the Italians, Poles and Spanish are also on board. But two things could still scupper Blair's chances when the E.U. horse-trading begins: a coalition of small countries coalescing around an alternative candidate or a "nein" from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of Europe's largest economy. Westminster insiders say Merkel will back Blair, though without enthusiasm. A German government source is more nuanced. "The Chancellor worked well with [Blair] during the 2007 German E.U. presidency when the Lisbon Treaty was sealed. But of course, she worked well with others too."

As investors return to the market, big companies in Europe are finding it easier to raise money via bonds, equities and even IPOs.

The chief financial officers at some of Europe's largest firms have had a busy few months. Since markets started to recover in early summer, executives from companies including German retailer Metro and Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto have hit up investors for extra funds. And in the past two weeks, French banks Société Générale and BNP Paribas, as well as Italian counterpart UniCredit, have announced rights issues set to raise billions of dollars.

The fact that corporations are refilling their coffers is the latest sign the worst of the Great Recession may now be over. Indeed, data provider Dealogic estimates European companies have taken in almost $221 billion through rights issues and initial public offerings so far this year. That's just below the $228 billion raised in all of 2008, which analysts expect to be surpassed by the end of 2009. Firms also have bagged $1.1 trillion through corporate bonds so far this year, vs. $865 billion during all of 2008. Nonfinancial companies-still suffering from banks' high lending fees-have scored almost two-thirds of their funding from the resurgent corporate bond market.

The flurry of activity is a win-win for companies and investors alike. For recession-hit firms, the extra cash helps bolster sagging balance sheets and provides ammunition to snap up merger-and-acquisition targets at continuing knockdown prices. And for gun-shy investors -- many still hoping to recoup losses from the past two years-the chance to lock in attractive corporate bond yields and grab equity stakes amid rising markets is too good to pass up.

Investment bankers are about to enjoy a record bonus season as confidence surges in the financial markets.

Just 12 months after the global economy was brought close to collapse by reckless lending -- forcing banks to turn to taxpayers for help -- stock markets in London and New York are enjoying one of the strongest bull runs in decades and investment banks are preparing to announce huge profits.

In Britain, job losses slowed in the three months to August. Unemployment rose by 88,000 to 2.47 million, the lowest rise since July last year, and youth unemployment fell slightly. China reported strong trade figures and oil hit a high for the year.

Goldman Sachs, which employs 5,500 people in London, is expected to report a sharp rise in third-quarter profits today. Analysts estimate that, barring a major setback, the average London worker at Goldman will receive about $748,000 (£467,000) in salary and bonuses -- 13 per cent higher than 2007 and more than double the 2008 average.

The dollar may drop to 50 yen next year and eventually lose its role as the global reserve currency, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.'s chief strategist said, citing trading patterns and a likely double dip in the U.S. economy.

"The U.S. economy will deteriorate into 2011 as the effects of excess consumption and the financial bubble linger," said Daisuke Uno at Sumitomo Mitsui, a unit of Japan's third- biggest bank. "The dollar's fall won't stop until there's a change to the global currency system." ...

The dollar is now at [Elliot] wave five of the 40-year cycle, Uno said. It dropped to 92 yen during wave one that ended in March 1973. The dollar will target 50 yen during the current wave, based on multiplying 92 with 0.764, a number in the Fibonacci sequence, and subtracting from the 123.17 yen level seen in the second quarter of 2007, according to Uno.

We get a chuckle over this dollar weakness when free market people like Steve Forbes come out and look for market intervention to stop it. The market is taking the dollar where it should be, where it needs to go. If only countries with obvious pegs and ongoing manipulation to support export mercantilism were also to allow their currencies to float more freely. It is going to kill off global trade. It is the great failure of the WTO and US trade policy to have allowed pegs and overt currency manipulation policies which are de facto tariffs and subsidies on trade.

.....

The only way out, the only viable path, is for the US to embrace a serious reform of its markets and its financial system, and to change system that encourages the debilitating corruption of decision-making in Washington, which is under the influence of an army of well-heeled lobbyists.

To that extent, the "straight talking" pre-Palin version of John McCain had it right. Little serious reform can be done until campaign finance and influence peddling in Washington is addressed. McCain saw the danger of this conflict of interest in his own career as part of the Keating Five, and his own party and the rise of the neo-con statism and its assault on republican ideals.

The Democrats have shown themselves to be no better, having gone down the slippery slope of Clinton capitalism, the partnership of special interests and government. Obama failed when he embraced it. And now both parties are deep in the mire of corruption.

Richard Beales writes in Breakingviews, linked from today's NYT, (won't copy, so I'll summarize, or you can click on the title), that things are about to get interesting for some of BOA's attorneys.  Judge Rakoff has rejected a proposed settlement between BOA and the SEC over lack of disclosure. He wants to know who made what decisions and what was the legal advice on which they relied.

BOA had refused to release the legal advice on which they relied for the Merrill acquisition.  Andrew Cuomo, NY State Atty. General, threatened to charge Ken Lewis and other bank bosses.  BOA reversed course and agreed to release the advise and Lewis has announced he will resign and take no salary for '09.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz are the attorneys that provided the advice on the acquisition. BOA is now relying on other counsel. Not only will the correspondence be released, but the attorneys could find themselves testifying for Rogoff, Cuomo and the US Congress. The interesting prospect is that the advice they proffered was routine in the industry.    

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

1. The financial sector harms the real economy.

Even when not in crisis, the financial sector harms the real economy. First, it is vastly too large. The finance sector is an intermediary -- essentially a "middleman". Like all middlemen, it should be as small as possible, while still being capable of accomplishing its mission. Otherwise it is inherently parasitical. Unfortunately, it is now vastly larger than necessary, dwarfing the real economy it is supposed to serve.

[...]

2. The financial sector produces recurrent, intensifying economic crises here and abroad.

[...]

3. The financial sector's predation is so extraordinary that it now drives the upper one percent of our nation's income distribution and has driven much of the increase in our grotesque income inequality.

[...]

5. The CEO's of the largest financial firms are so powerful that they pose a critical risk to the financial sector, the real economy, and our democracy.

For a man who is sometimes seen as the Palestinian politician that the Israelis and the Americans like best, Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad was in a strikingly robust mood during a two-hour press conference in Ramallah yesterday. While too polite to criticise the Obama administration, he nevertheless had a clear message in the wake of the failure by the US to persuade the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu to grant a freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank as a precursor to serious negotiations.

He suggested that the Palestinian leadership no longer had much interest in a "process for the sake of a process" and he questioned what Mr Netanyahu's "equivocal" endorsement of a Palestinian state really meant.

Mr Fayyad had been much struck by a report from the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, arguing that the 60 per cent of the West Bank controlled by Israel and designated as Area C under the Oslo accords, including the Jordan Valley, should not be handed over in any peace deal. If the Israeli establishment was envisaging a "Mickey Mouse state" along these lines, he said, then "it looks like it would not come close to what we have in mind."

Gunmen have attacked law enforcement buildings in Pakistan, with at least 18 people reported killed in Lahore and eight in a suicide bombing elsewhere.

The highest-profile target in Lahore was the Federal Investigation Agency offices. There were also co-ordinated attacks on two police academies.

Meanwhile, in the north-western town of Kohat, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police station, killing eight.

There has been an upsurge in violence in Pakistan in recent weeks.

Lahore itself was long spared the brunt of Pakistan's militant violence, but there have been a number of attacks in the city since the start of the year.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is damaging his standing with his own supporters as he careens back and forth between Israel and the United States. As his support fades, Palestinians are beginning to discuss a possible successor. Someone who might pave the way for reconciliation between Abbas' Fatah party and the radical Hamas.

Laila al-Bukhari has a limp handshake. It is hard to believe that her hands once attached explosive belts to Palestinian suicide bombers.

Al-Bukhari, now 32, was released just days ago after spending seven years and four months in an Israeli prison. Her eyes constantly dart around the room as she talks, as if to make sure that she is no longer incarcerated in a small cell at Damun Prison in the Israeli port city of Haifa. Instead she is sitting in the large living room of her parents' house, a former British governor's residence in the Palestinian city of Nablus in the mountains of the West Bank.

The young woman is wearing trousers and a T-shirt, her reddish-brown hair is tied back into a ponytail, and her bare feet are inserted into white platform sandals. Bukhari, a member of the secular Fatah movement, is not a devout Muslim.

The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.  The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.

Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations  Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.

"It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome," Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Defense panel, said in an interview with The Hill. "When I heard that figure from the Defense Department, we started looking into it."

The Pentagon comptroller's office provided the fuel statistic to the committee staff when it was asked for a breakdown of why every 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan costs $1 billion. The Obama administration uses this estimate in calculating the cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

An influential Pentagon strategist advocates a fifty-year counterinsurgency campaign.

Let us say, hypothetically, that American forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, enabling President Obama to declare victory and bring our troops home. Would he? Not according to the Pentagon's plan for a fifty-year "Long War" of counterinsurgency spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond.

Military intellectuals envision a prolonged cold war against Al Qaeda, with hot wars along the way. It happens that the Long War is over Muslim lands rich with oil, natural gas and planned pipelines. The Pentagon identifies them as hostile terrain where Al Qaeda and its affiliates are hidden.

Among the top experts responsible for this fifty-year war plan, concocted in 2005 in windowless offices in the Pentagon, is Dr. David Kilcullen, a former Australian soldier, an anthropologist, former top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus and current aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Kilcullen is a media favorite, the subject of a long New Yorker profile by George Packer, glowing columns by David Ignatius in the Washington Post and weighty late-night conversations with Charlie Rose.

Kilcullen's recent book, The Accidental Guerrilla, presents the case for a Long War of fifty or even 100 years' duration, with chapters on Iraq (a mistake he believes was salvaged by the military surge he promoted in 2007-08), Afghanistan (where he recommends at least a five-to-ten-year campaign), Pakistan (whose tribal areas he sees as the center of the terrorist threat) and even Europe (where, he says, human rights laws create legislative "safe havens" for urban Muslim undergrounds).

The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years' time, a top polar specialist has said.

"It's like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet," said Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge.

Professor Wadhams has been studying the Arctic ice since the 1960s.

He was speaking in central London at the launch of the findings of the Catlin Arctic Survey.

The expedition trekked across 435km of ice earlier this year.

Led by explorer Pen Hadow, the team's measurements found that the ice-floes were on average 1.8m thick - typical of so-called "first year" ice formed during the past winter and most vulnerable to melting.

In the wake of a French investigation into reports that nuclear waste is sent from French plants to Siberia, news has emerged that Germany has a long tradition of shipping toxic waste to Russia.  

The German anti-nuclear group "ausgestrahlt" said that since 1996, Germany's only uranium enrichment plant in Gronau has shipped about 22,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride, which is a compound used in the uranium enrichment process, to Russia.

"Ausgestrahlt" reported on Wednesday that only 10 percent of that was returned to Germany as enriched uranium. The anti-nuclear activists said the remaining 90 percent was stored in Siberia, outdoors and in rusting containers. Uranium hexafluoride is highly toxic and corrosive to most metals.

URENCO, the uranium-processing firm that runs the Gronau enrichment facility, confirmed that it has shipped more than 27,000 tons of depleted uranium to Russia's state-run firm Tenex since 1996. About 10 to 15 percent of the material was treated and returned to Germany. URENCO says it has meanwhile terminated cooperation with the Russian

Germany's incoming government has agreed to reverse plans to abandon nuclear power. Berlin is eager to reduce dependency on gas and oil imports but environmentalists have already vowed to fight the decision. 

Germany's next center-right government of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats (FDP) under Chancellor Angela Merkel now says that the timetable of abandoning nuclear power by 2020 cannot be kept.

Already ahead of Germany's general election at the end of September, the two parties had pledged to extend the life of some of the country's 17 nuclear power plants.

Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg on Thursday confirmed that as coalition talks progress to form a new government, the two sides have agreed to accommodate that pledge and keep the nuclear plants running longer.

The executives of electric utilities worldwide are dreaming of a renaissance in nuclear power. But problems with a new, state-of-the-art reactor in Finland suggest that this is unlikely to happen. The industry's alternative strategy is to modernize older plants to drastically extend reactor lifetimes.

The managers at Finnish electric utility TVO expressed one last wish before ordering what would be the world's largest nuclear power plant from Siemens and the French nuclear power conglomerate Areva. They wanted the reactor to be painted oxblood red and white, the traditional colors of the picturesque summer homes on Finland's western coast.

At least the two companies have managed to fulfill that request. Workers are currently securing colored panels to the turbine building. Otherwise, not much is going as it should be on Europe's biggest nuclear construction site.

The Big WrapThis matchup between a Florida gator and Burmese python shows the snake's tenacity in hunting big game. Exotic snakes are making inroads in domestic climes, as described in the Science & the Public blog. USGS

Some were pets whose bodies and appetites apparently got too big for their owners to support. Most are probably descendants of released pets. Today, thousands of really big non-native snakes -- we're talking boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons -- slither wild in southern Florida. And there's nothing holding them in the Sunshine State. Which is why a report that was released today contends they pose moderate to high ecological threats to states on three U.S. coasts.

Indeed, the homelands of these snakes share climatic features with large portions of the United States -- territory currently inhabited by some 120 million Americans. Based on comparisons of the temperatures, rainfall and land cover found in the snakes' native range, it's possible that these slithering behemoths could stake claims to territory as far north as coastal Delaware and Oregon. Or so Gordon Rodda and Robert Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey observe in a 300-page assessment. As North America's climate warms, the two predict, these invaders might even expand that range -- by the end of this century becoming permanent residents of the Midwest.

The red states contain climate and land features that might make them hospitable to giant, invasive snakes.

Researchers have just linked prenatal exposure to bisphenol-A - a near-ubiquitous industrial chemical - with subtle, gender-specific alterations in behavior among two year olds. Girls whose mothers had encountered the most BPA early in pregnancy tended to become somewhat more aggressive than normal, boys became more anxious and withdrawn.

This is the first study to link human behavioral impacts with BPA, a common ingredient in hard polycarbonate plastics and the resins used in food-can linings. Emerging data from an unrelated research group points to another especially rich newfound source of BPA to which people unwittingly may be exposed: thermally printed cash-register receipts (see next blog).

At present, there's no way to know whether the apparent behavioral impact of BPA exposures early in development will persist or disappear, says Bruce Lanphear of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. But this epidemiologist, an author of the new study, says his worry is that if the kids don't grow out of these behaviors - and indeed, the changes are expressed widely across a population - they could greatly increase the number of teens at risk for delinquency, say, or for one day needing medical treatment of depression or anxiety.

....

Girls whose mothers had the highest BPA exposures in early pregnancy tended to score high on the "externalizing" component of a test known as BASC-2, for Behavioral Assessment System for Children-2. It's geared to young children and evaluates their tendency towards aggression and hyperactivity. Boys with the highest womb exposures to BPA tended to exhibit an increased "internalizing" BASC score. They were more likely to "be withdrawn or show depressive symptoms, or maybe complain about aches and pains - which is often a manifestation of anxiety," Braun explains.

The trend towards a behavioral deviation from the norm in all of these kids was small, Braun says, perhaps 2 to 6 points (as measured on about a 100-point scale) for each 10-fold increase in mom's urinary BPA. That's a magnitude of change similar to the subtle IQ drops attributable to environmental lead exposures in U.S. children, notes Lanphear. Yet when extrapolated across a population, the societal cost of those tiny IQ losses becomes staggering, his calculations indicate. (My bold.)

Reporting from Washington - The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.

The existence of the finding -- and the refusal of the Bush administration to make it public -- were already known. But no copy of the document had been released until Tuesday.

The document "demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today," said Adora Andy, EPA spokeswoman. "The conclusions reached then by EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered."

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world's biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I'm not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I'm talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like "Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal" and "Search for Future Influence From LHC," posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

A new exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's work is set to open in the Vatican.

The Catholic Church once labelled Galileo, now regarded as modern astronomy's founding father, a heretic.

He was tried for challenging the widely held belief that the sun travelled around the Earth.

Although Copernicus did much ground-breaking work on the link between the sun and the Earth, it was Galileo's instruments that proved the theory.

It was not until 1992 that Pope John Paul II declared that the Church's ruling was an error and that Catholics were not hostile to science.

A leading sexual health organisation has praised the Netherlands for its liberal approach to sex, which has helped the country achieve one of the world's lowest abortion rates. A study released by the US-based Guttmacher Institute found there has been a global drop in the number of women choosing to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

"The Netherlands' example ought to be an inspiration for the rest of the world. You start when people are young and give them an unambiguous message, which is: human sexuality is fine, it's part of life, we hope you will wait to have sex until you're in a committed relationship but in any case it's not alright to become a parent before you're ready to raise a child and it's not alright to pass on a disease."

Decrease in abortions
Abortions decreased worldwide from around 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, which Dr Camp described as a positive development.

"Most of the findings in the new report are good news. Around the world we see significant declines in both the numbers and rates of abortion. The main reason for that is that there has also been a significant decline in unintended pregnancy.... Overall, contraceptive use has increased from a little over half, to almost two thirds of women around the world."
 

Work is good for you, according to a new study, which concluded that disgruntled workers dreaming of early retirement may want to think again.

Older people who hold temporary or part-time jobs after retirement enjoy better physical and mental health than those who stop working entirely, according to the US study, which was released on Tuesday.

Those who continue to work in their original field also have better mental health than those who change fields, according to the study published in the October issue of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, a magazine published by the American Psychological Association.

The law firm Carter-Ruck has made a fresh move that could stop an MPs' debate next week by claiming a controversial injunction it has obtained is "sub judice".

The move follows the revelation of the existence of a secret "super-injunction" obtained by the firm on behalf of the London-based oil traders Trafigura.

The injunction not only bans disclosure of a confidential report on Trafigura and toxic waste, but also banned disclosure of the injunction's very existence, until it was revealed by an MP this week under parliamentary privilege.

Carter-Ruck partner Adam Tudor today sent a letter to the Speaker, John Bercow, and also circulated it to every single MP and peer, saying they believed the case was "sub judice".

I will be around, maybe at the beginning a little less, am also trying to reduce my internet time, but then on and off for joining in on what's going on at ET.

President Barack Obama's new pastor is an evangelical Iraq veteran who has denounced Islam as a faith that "from its very birth has used the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer".

Carey Cash, a US Navy chaplain who baptised more than 50 men during the Iraq invasion in 2003, is a fervent believer in spreading Christianity within the armed forces and believed a "wall of angels" protected his men as they fought their way from Kuwait to Baghdad.

A 6ft 4ins graduate of the Citadel military academy in South Carolina, the Rev Cash nearly became a professional American footballer.

HAMMOND, La. -- A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.

According to the accompanying article, the reporter-photographer Antonello Zappadu, consigned his production of over 10,000 photos of Berlusconi's antics to the Columbian agency Ecoprensa to keep it safe. Requests for photos arrive from throughout the world, some of them amusing. An Israeli agency would like to use pictures of Berlusconi and his escorts to advertise a hotel chain.