Police fired teargas at rioters who threw rocks and firecrackers in central Athens as thousands gathered to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager.

Clashes broke out as about 3,000 people, mostly students, anarchists and leftists, began a march to parliament. More protests were expected tomorrow. An evening memorial service was planned in the Exarchia district, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead.

Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the front of a Starbucks cafe.

More than 6,000 police were deployed across greater Athens amid fears that the demonstrations under way in the capital and other Greek cities would turn increasingly violent. Concern was heightened by reports that far-left groups and anarchists from other European countries have travelled to Greece for the protests.

Grigoropoulos was shot by a policeman on the evening of 6 December 2008, in Exarchia, a central Athens neighbourhood of bars and cafes popular with anarchist groups. Within a few hours of his death, riots spread from the capital to several cities, taking the government by surprise. An embattled police force took a passive approach as rioters looted and burned shops in violence that lasted two weeks.

The new socialist government, which has faced a spate of attacks by far-left and anarchist groups, since coming to power in October, has vowed not to tolerate any violence during today's anniversary.

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Romanians voted Sunday in a hotly contested presidential runoff that could resolve almost two months of political crisis and unfreeze an international loan Romania needs to emerge from recession.

Centrist President Traian Basescu is running for a second five-year term. His main rival is former Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana, who heads the leftist Social Democrats and is head of the Senate. Analysts say the race is too close to call.

Both candidates claim they will lift Romania out of its deepest political and economic crisis in 20 years, eradicate corruption and restore public trust. Almost 18 million people are eligible to vote. Voting was brisk with more than 24 percent of voters casting their ballot in the first six hours, election authorities said.

The first round of elections on Nov. 22 was marred by allegations of multiple voting and votes being bought.

Of all the millions of words written about the marathon trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, some of the most revealing appeared in a dispatch from Italy's leading news agency, Ansa, on Wednesday.

"Certainly, the decision facing the [judges and jurors] will not be an easy one," wrote Ansa's reporter, Matteo Guidelli, as he looked ahead to the final phase of the trial of Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

"Sentencing to life imprisonment two young people, aged 22 and 25, would mean destroying their lives forever," he continued, "but letting them off would mean gainsaying not only the entire investigation, but also the judges who have reached decisions before them."

It hardly needs to be said that the "danger" of contradicting police and prosecutors would not exactly weigh heavily in the deliberations of a British or American jury. But Italy is not Britain or the US.

For the "Anglo-Saxon" reporters who followed the trial, it was about bloodstains and DNA; contradictory statements and suspicious omissions. So it was for their Italian counterparts.

But for them, as for their readers, there was always a further dimension. Italy is a country in which the preservation of "face" is of enormous importance. And in this case there were many people with reputations at stake: the detectives who investigated the murder, Perugia's prosecutors, who oversaw their inquiry, and the judges who indicted Knox and Sollecito and decided that the evidence was sufficient to keep them locked up for more than two years. [...]

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- Suspects in an explosive inferno at a Russian nightclub that killed at least 112 people will face charges Monday, authorities have said.

The fire broke out Friday night in the Ural Mountain area industrial city of Perm, sweeping through a party in full swing at the Lame Horse, a nightclub celebrating its eighth year in business. An estimated 300 people were in the club.

Authorities have cited five suspects. Three people are suspected of violating fire safety regulations, and the director of the company that supplied and installed fireworks equipment in the nightclub could face manslaughter charges, said Marina Zabbarova, head of the Perm territory branch of the Investigative Committee. Authorities detained those four suspects.

Another suspect was hospitalized, in critical condition. "He is the owner of the Lame Horse premises," Zabbarova said.

Otto Graf Lambsdorff, a prominent and controversial figure in West German politics, has died aged 82. Although retired for years, his voice continued to carry weight in German politics.  

Otto Graf Lambsdorff, once one of Germany's most influential politicians, has died aged 82 in a clinic in Bonn, sources in his pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) said Sunday.

The exact cause of death was unclear, but Lambsdorff was reportedly suffering from various ailments.

Lambsdorff was honorary chairman of the FDP, which currently is junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right governing coalition.

The head of the International Monetary Fund has threatened Nicolas Sarkozy with legal action over a dirty tricks campaign that, he claims, the French leader's lieutenants have mounted to discredit him as a potential rival in the next presidential election.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French Socialist politician who heads the IMF in Washington, took Sarkozy to task over the spread of rumours about his alleged extramarital exploits when they met during a G20 summit in Pittsburgh on September 25.

According to one account, an indignant Strauss-Kahn erupted in fury at Sarkozy when he bumped into him in the lavatory. He told the French leader that he was fed up with gossip about his private life and talk of photographs of him with women that the Elysée Palace supposedly could use to smear him in an election campaign.

"I know that all of it comes from the Elysée," he told a dumbfounded Sarkozy, according to Le Point magazine. "Tell your boys to stop it or I'll go to court."

Antoni Ruiz, 50, has become the first Spaniard to receive official recognition of his suffering more than three decades after he was imprisoned for his sexual orientation.

An estimated 5,000 men served prison sentences during the dictatorship of Gen Franco when homosexuality was made illegal but Mr Ruiz was one of the few sentenced for the crime following the death of the dictator in November 1975.

In 1976, at the age of 17, Mr Ruiz, from Valencia, told family members that he was gay. At the time homosexuality was still banned and when his parents confided in a Catholic monk, he denounced their son to the authorities.

France has triggered a fresh row over EU power-broking by excluding Britain from key-Europe wide talks on the future of farm subsidies to be held in Paris this week.

The French government has summoned a meeting of what it called the "G22" - senior ministers from 22 European states - in an attempt to influence a rethink of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

However, it has not invited Britain or other so-called "reform nations" - the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Malta - all of which have argued for a full overhaul of EU farm subsidies.

Bruno Le Maire, the French agriculture minister, said the aim was to "produce a battle plan to defend a strong common agriculture policy, to support a renewed CAP."

The British Government is under growing pressure to demand the return from US custody of two Pakistani men who were captured by British forces in Iraq, handed over to US forces and then sent to the infamous "Dark Prison" at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

In February the Government admitted that British forces captured the men in 2004 and handed them into US custody. They were then taken to Bagram, where both remain without trial. However, the Government had refused to reveal their identities.

The two men have now been identified by human rights workers as Amanatullah Ali, from Punjab in Pakistan, and Salahuddin, who was raised in the Gulf states but is a Pakistani citizen believed to be from Baluchistan.

Neither man has had access to a lawyer since their capture by the SAS during a raid in Baghdad in Iraq in 2004, and Mr Salahuddin is reported by other prisoners to have undergone a complete mental breakdown during his five-year incarceration. He is now held in the mental health wing of Bagram prison.

Experts dismiss the former prime minister's claim that Azerbaijan methanol factory is 'the way forward' for green energy.

Tony Blair has triggered an outcry on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit by endorsing a fossil-fuel power plant that is owned by an Azerbaijan oligarch.

The former prime minister was paid by millionaire Nizami Piriyev to fly to the former Soviet state to visit his AzMeCo factory last week - prompting further questions about Mr Blair's intricate private arrangements.

Mr Blair also faced criticism for holding private talks, accompanied by Prince Andrew, with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, who has banned the BBC from broadcasting in his country and whose election was declared to be undemocratic by international observers.

Speaking to local reporters in the capital, Baku, last week, Mr Blair said the AzMeCo methanol plant, which is backed by £73m of funding from a European development bank, part-owned by the Treasury, was a sign of Britain's interest in Azerbaijan. His comments appeared to blur the line between his status as a private individual and a former prime minister campaigning for British investment in foreign countries.

With the scientific consensus more or less settled that human activity -- the burning of fossil fuels, torching of forests, and so forth -- is contributing to a warmer and less hospitable planet, one might reasonably ask, why is it so hard to agree on a plan to curb those activities?

The answer lies with the many fault lines that cut through the debate over climate change. Those deep divisions will be on display beginning this week as representatives of 192 nations gather in Copenhagen for a United Nations conference on the issue.

Organizers had hoped to emerge with an international compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help countries most threatened by rising sea waters and temperatures. But the divisions between nations are such that world leaders agreed last month to put off resolving the most contentious issues until next year. They will try instead to reach a nonbinding interim agreement in Copenhagen, then work toward a binding treaty in 2010.

COPENHAGEN -- At an abandoned beer warehouse in this city's Valby district, law enforcement officials have constructed an elaborate holding facility with three dozen steel cages to accommodate over 350 potential troublemakers during a United Nations climate conference that gets under way here on Monday.

Critics call the holding pens -- and a range of other security preparations made as thousands of government officials, heads of state, environmental groups and assorted anarchists descend on the Danish capital -- over the top. The police say the detractors' reactions are overheated, if predictable.

"This is surely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history," said Per Larsen, the chief coordinating officer for the Copenhagen police force. "But I think the complaints are the kind we are very used to hearing in this country."

Officials have made it clear that they aim to keep the peace during the 12-day conference, organized under United Nations' auspices. From new laws rushed through Parliament allowing stiffer fines and extended detentions for those deemed unruly, to public displays of newly acquired anti-riot and emergency equipment, leaders here say they are preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Meanwhile, a variety of protest and advocacy groups -- some with obscure political lineage -- have signaled in online postings and other public statements that they will not be cooperating.

As the world gathers for negotiations billed as likely to determine the very future of life on earth, many on the outside are feeling weary of the Doomsday prognoses and wary of the plodding process meant to prevent them from coming true. The world's leaders ought to be noting that.>

The easy thing would be to link those people to the sceptics who vocally deny the existence of a problem. I prefer to think of them as climate agnostics, or as the non-partisan millions still seeking clarity.

Whether they are a silent majority or a substantial minority depends on how you count them. But whether the next fortnight goes down in history rather than as a footnote to it will depend on how well the public at large receives the result. And the agnostics are a substantial presence in that public.

A Harris poll released last week found just 51 per cent of American adults believe the fundamental argument that greenhouse gases will cause the Earth's average temperature to rise. That was the lowest level measured in 12 years and down from 71 per cent two years ago.

The US has long been the bogeyman of climate change talks, but it would be wrong to say the scepticism is limited to America and its fossil fuel-guzzling SUV drivers.

As President Obama heads to Copenhagen next week for global warming talks, there's one simple step Americans back home can take to help out: Stop "going green." Just stop it. No more compact fluorescent light bulbs. No more green wedding planning. No more organic toothpicks for holiday hors d'oeuvres.

December should be national Green-Free Month. Instead of continuing our faddish and counterproductive emphasis on small, voluntary actions, we should follow the example of Americans during past moral crises and work toward large-scale change. The country's last real moral and social revolution was set in motion by the civil rights movement. And in the 1960s, civil rights activists didn't ask bigoted Southern governors and sheriffs to consider "10 Ways to Go Integrated" at their convenience.

The UN's top climate official has given an upbeat assessment on the prospects of a global deal at a climate summit which opens in Copenhagen on Monday.

Yvo de Boer told the BBC things were in "excellent shape" as officials from 192 nations began gathering in Denmark.

Any agreement is intended to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN official panel on climate change says emissions must be limited to avoid dangerous global temperature rises.

"Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different countries made so many pledges. Almost every day now governments are announcing pledges - it's unprecedented," Mr de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate convention, told the BBC.

... Action on climate, if it happens, will take the form of "cap and trade": businesses won't be told what to produce or how, but they will have to buy permits to cover their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. So they'll be able to increase their profits if they can burn less carbon -- and there's every reason to believe that they'll be clever and creative about finding ways to do just that.

<...>

The acid rain controversy of the 1980s was in many respects a dress rehearsal for today's fight over climate change. Then as now, right-wing ideologues denied the science. Then as now, industry groups claimed that any attempt to limit emissions would inflict grievous economic harm.

But in 1990 the United States went ahead anyway with a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide. And guess what. It worked, delivering a sharp reduction in pollution at lower-than-predicted cost.

Curbing greenhouse gases will be a much bigger and more complex task -- but we're likely to be surprised at how easy it is once we get started. ...

I know there are skeptics/critics of cap & trade here, and I was wondering what you think of Krugman's faith in the cap & trade approach to reducing carbon emissions based on its success with acid rain in the U.S. in the 1990's?

La Chine dorme. Laisse la dormir. Quand la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera.

Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund has made a $1bn profit after selling its stake in Citigroup for $4.1bn less than two years after acquiring preferred shares the US's largest bank during the financial crisis.

The Kuwait Investment Authority said on Sunday it had sold its entire stake in the US bank, earning the sovereign wealth fund a 37 per cent return on its investment.

The KIA sale comes as Citigroup is set to intensify efforts to break free from the US government's emergency bank funding programme.

The KIA made the investment in Citi in January 2008 as struggling western banks looked to the oil rich Arab Gulf as a source of capital. It also invested $2bn in Merrill Lynch as Wall Street banks were hit by billions of dollars of writedowns linked to investments in the US property market.

The decision by Bank of America last week to pay back $45bn of government money has increased the pressure on other borrowers from the US government's troubled asset relief programme, including Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

International drug cartels have abandoned the US dollar for high denomination euros to launder millions in illegal profits, Europol has revealed. The gangs no longer use $100 bills because €500 notes - the largest denomination of euro - take up less room when transporting large amounts of cash across the world.

In a single consignment on a British Airways plane bound for London from the United States, US police found £11m worth of drug profits in €500 bills. The Colombian and Mexican cartels' conversion to the European currency is even acknowledged in popular culture: American rapper Jay-Z's video for his single, Blue Magic, features a suitcase full of €500 notes as he sings about "the kilo business"

ST. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands -- With federal agents mounting a probe into his offshore bank, billionaire Allen Stanford drove up a dirt road, hauling records from his headquarters to the top of a lush, tropical mountain.

As the sun set over the island, the banker stuffed the papers into a steel drum, poured gasoline over the top and sparked a fire -- the flames rising into the sky.

Months before his businesses exploded in February in a $7 billion fraud case, Stanford embarked on a mission to hide his financial records while trying to raise money to keep his banking empire alive.

He would jet off to Libya to try to convince government leaders to invest in his offshore institution.

He would even buy two Caribbean islands -- flipping the properties four times to inflate the value of the land and pump up the bank's assets.

"He was desperate,'' said Jonas Hagg, a longtime Fort Lauderdale executive chef who lived on Stanford's yacht. ``You never knew from day to day what was going to happen. He was flying by the seat of his pants.''

The job market remains the worst since 1983, but November's unemployment rate improvement -- from 10.2 percent to 10 percent -- may begin feeding an employee exodus.

Based on surveys, several management consulting and human resource organizations said about half of U.S. workers are likely to try to change jobs next year.

Among the indicators:

-- Right Management surveyed 900 workers and found that 60 percent intend to leave their jobs in 2010.

-- The 2009 Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectations Report said 55 percent of employees plan to change jobs, careers or industries "when the economy recovers."

-- CareerBuilder.com surveyed 4,285 full-time, private-sector employees. Forty percent said they had difficulty staying motivated in their current jobs, and 24 percent said they didn't feel loyal to their current employers.

Millions of Americans -- 60 million, in fact -- conduct their day-to-day financial business outside the banking system, leaving many to be preyed upon by payday-loan companies, rent-to-own establishments and other non-bank institutions.

Banks have largely ignored the unbanked and underbanked, arguing that it's difficult to figure out how to make money off them. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says it may look at using the Community Reinvestment Act -- and the weight that the act carries in bank examinations -- to encourage financial institutions to provide low-cost banking services and products.

A new FDIC report found that 17 million U.S. adults are unbanked. An additional 43 million are classified as underbanked.

You're considered unbanked if you don't have a checking or savings account. The FDIC defined underbanked households as those that have a checking or savings account but use non-bank money orders, check-cashing services, payday loans, rent-to-own agreements or pawnshops at least once a year.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The new head of Opel promised investments in new models and pledged to put an end to business as usual at the General Motors brand -- addressing two key grievances by unions when he outlined his turnaround plan this weekend.

Newly anointed as Opel chief executive on Friday, Nick Reilly's first task will be convincing European governments to trust GM with about 3.3 billion euros ($5 billion) of their taxpayers' money to finance some 8,300 job cuts as part of a turnaround plan that would stanch all losses at the European carmaker by 2011. In return, Reilly wants to encourage entrepreneurial spirit at Opel as quickly as possible by delegating most decisions to country heads and dismantling GM's bureaucratic style of centralized management that fostered a debilitating culture of passing the buck.

"It might seem obvious, but it isn't the way GM was managed and there was definitely some confusion about who was accountable," the 34-year company veteran told reporters this weekend. "From the top line of revenue to the bottom line of profit, this is now the responsibility of the managing directors of the major entities," Reilly explained.

Local operations will now be free to decide on nearly everything from manufacturing to sales, except for key central responsibilities such as product planning and development, that will be run by new Opel Executive Frank Weber.

....

The German government had repeatedly frowned on offering assistance unless a new strategic investor took over the reins at Opel and had heavily backed a deal with Canada's Magna out of fear Detroit could further damage Opel. In fact, Reilly's ideas strongly reflect the way Magna is run, which started out as a one-man company in 1957 only to became the world's fourth-largest auto parts supplier due to a corporate culture that emphasized decentralized structures, sharing best practice, employee participation and risk-taking.

In the Absence of Real Reform

1.      Real progress towards reducing the risks inherent in the U.S. financial system is unlikely.  As long as there are financial institutions that are Too Big To Fail, we face a potential fiscal cost.  We should recognize this in our government budget and balance sheet accounting.

2.      The overriding principle behind IMF fiscal assessments is the need to capture true total fiscal costs.  Best practice for the U.S. needs to reflect this approach.

3.      All subsidies and taxation - including the entire cost of supporting the continued existence of large banks - should be reflected transparently in the budget and subjected to the prioritization of the budgetary process.

4.      Our current accounting for guarantees and governments' assumption of other contingent liabilities create the impression that government actions to support the banking system are costless. This is a dangerous illusion - as seen in the recent increase in US federal government deficit and debt.

5.      If we don't recognize these costs explicitly, we run the risk of taking on ever more contingent liability.  If the financial system reaches the point where its failure cannot be offset by fiscal (and monetary) stimulus, then a Second Great Depression threatens.

6.      Next time, we cannot be certain that the available size of fiscal stimulus - either in the US or worldwide - will match the negative shock to demand caused by the credit crisis.  Either we will already have too much debt or we will be constrained by the consequences of taking on even more debt.  Or - just as in 1930 - the financial decelerator will simply be too large to be offset by any feasible fiscal measures.

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- The slogans and posters of Che Guevara notwithstanding, this is not Havana circa 1969, nor Managua, 1979. Instead, the fervor in the offices of the Deputy Ministry of Decolonization could only be felt in the Bolivia of President Evo Morales, who seemed to be sailing toward a victory in an election on Sunday.

The writing on the wall here, literally, is in two indigenous languages -- Quechua and Aymara -- unmistakable signs of the political movement that has shaken the institutions of this impoverished nation.

"Jisk'a Achasiw Tuq Saykat Taqi Jach'a P'iqincha," says the greeting at the office of Monica Rey, who explains that it is Aymara for the new unit she leads, the Directorate for the Struggle Against Racism.

"We are in the process of conquering our country's minds and, even more challenging, its fears," said Ms. Rey, listing a variety of projects, including changing the portraits on Bolivia's currency from the white men who long ruled the country to indigenous heroes like Túpac Katari and Bartolina Sisa, leaders of an 18th-century revolt against Spanish rule.

With a sharply weakened opposition and his visceral connection to the indigenous majority -- who make up more than 60 percent of the population -- Mr. Morales, 50, is arguably the nation's strongest leader in decades.

TOKYO -- Four teenagers from an American military base in Japan were arrested on charges of attempted murder on Saturday for allegedly toppling a woman riding her motorbike, causing her to suffer a serious head injury.

In the August episode, which has received national coverage in Japan, a 23-year-old motorbike rider suffered a fractured skull when she hit rope that the authorities say had been strung across a road by the four teenagers near the Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.

The suspects are three boys and a girl, ages 15 to 18, who all are children of United States military personnel. Local police officers arrested them after surveillance videotapes showed them near the site of the crash.

One of the teenagers sought help from a passer-by for the injured woman, according to news reports.

MANILA -- The military arrested dozens of people and seized caches of weapons after martial law was imposed over the weekend in a southern Philippine province where 57 people were killed in a massacre two weeks ago, officials said Sunday.

The military has detained nearly 50 people in the province, Maguindanao, in a bid to quell a rebellion by supporters of a powerful political family accused of carrying out the massacre, said an army official, Maj. Randolph Cabangbang.

Among those arrested over the weekend were six members of the Ampatuan family, including the patriarch, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and his son, Zaldy, the governor of the five-province Muslim autonomous region that includes Maguindanao. A seventh member, Andal Ampatuan Jr., had been arrested before the crackdown.

The military said Sunday that it had raided a property owned by the family patriarch and found 40 firearms, including Armalite assault rifles and ammunition.

The raids came after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed martial law in Maguindanao, citing a breakdown of law and order.

CHICAGO -- Despite opposition from congressional Republicans, the Obama administration is signaling that a state prison in rural Thomson, Ill., will probably become the new home for scores of terrorism suspects now housed at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Officials from the White House, Defense Department and U.S. Bureau of Prisons spent two hours last week briefing more than a dozen members of the Illinois congressional delegation in the office of Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). To reassure skeptical Republicans, they emphasized security.

Although the officials left open the possibility that another site could be chosen, participants emerged from the session convinced that the U.S. government will buy the largely unused $145 million Thomson Correctional Center, which was built in 2008.

If all goes well, administration sources involved in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison anticipate a handover of the Thomson facility by late winter. It would then take several months to prepare the prison to a level "beyond supermax" and put the staff in place, according to federal estimates.

In Thomson, a town near the Mississippi River, popular support is strong for a federal purchase of the prison. Unemployment in the area is 10.5 percent, and the White House suggests that as many as 3,000 jobs could be created -- some going to local hires, others to people who would move to the area.

The global fight to clear unexploded bombs and landmines gets little coverage, but the work is changing millions of lives.

Square foot by square foot, the world is winning one of its few good wars: the one against landmines.

Last week, at a virtually unreported conference in Colombia, organisations tackling the mines - which continue killing and maiming long after the cause in which they were planted has been won or lost - heard that vast areas of the planet's former conflict zones are being cleared. There is still much work to be done, but progress so far offers the hope that, one day, they will be eradicated.

In the past 10 years, according to the newly published Landmine Monitor Report 2009, more than two million emplaced mines have been cleared, and some 44 million held in stockpiles destroyed. The past year has been the best ever for mine destruction, with an area the size of Brussels cleared. All told, the past decade has seen land equivalent to twice the area of London made safe.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -  An estimated $10 million a day is smuggled out of Afghanistan, most of it through Kabul's international airport, rather than through secret routes over the mountains or across the desert, the country's finance minister said Sunday. The amount of corruption, both by public officials and officials of private companies, makes him embarrassed to acknowledge while traveling that he is an Afghan, Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said.

"Corruption is a stronger threat than terrorism for Afghanistan," said Zakhilwal, who was appointed in February and is the top financial advisor to President Hamid Karzai. "It is a cancer, a disease. It has destroyed the reputation of Afghanistan."

The $10-million figure comes from a 19-day undercover study conducted by the U.S. that estimated $190 million left the airport undetected during that period, Zakhilwal and U.S. officials said. No similar study was done for the international airport in Kandahar. Much of the hot cash ends up funding the Taliban insurgency, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

With its massive glass dome, the Plantagon Greenhouse wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi movie. And if all goes smoothly, one may soon crop up in a city near you. In these days of global warming, its creators argue, it's not a question of if it will become reality but, rather, when.

Nestled among the skyscrapers is a gigantic glass sphere housing a mysterious spiral pathway. At first glance, the structure may look like an alien spaceship or a modernist architectural fantasy. But, in fact, it is an unusual response to climate change and the challenges of urbanization.

This UFO look-a-like is an ambitious take on the classic backyard greenhouse. Towering up to 100 meters (328 feet), it is designed to grow plants on its carefully lit and heated spiral platform. Crops are planted at the bottom of the sphere and gradually climb higher before ultimately being harvested at the top. The idea for the Plantagon Greenhouse comes from a Swiss-American company of the same name -- and they are confident that their dramatic creation will one day become a reality.

"We've moved a long way away from the drawing board," Plantagon CEO Hans Hassle told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We expect to build the first Plantagon greenhouse within the next three years."

The design was dreamt up two decades ago up by Swedish innovator and eco-farming expert Åke Olsson. But now, backed by Plantagon, a business run by the consulting company SWECORP Citizenship AB and North American Indians of the Onondaga Nation, it is finally looking feasible.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2009) -- The controversy surrounding the unintended effects of herbicide and pesticide use has intensified as researchers from the University of Ottawa's Department of Biology have identified that atrazine, a heavily-used herbicide, alters the sexual development in frogs.

There have been numerous scientific and journalistic reports on the detrimental effects of herbicides, including atrazine, yet investigations by other research teams report no adverse effects of the popular herbicide.

In an attempt to help resolve differences between the various reports, Dr. Vance Trudeau and his team at the University of Ottawa's Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics developed a system to evaluate the effects of a commercial formulation of atrazine. Specifically, PhD student Valérie Langlois applied it to outdoor tanks where tadpoles of leopard frogs were kept for an entire spring and summer. Under these semi-natural conditions in mesocosms, the levels of atrazine were low and comparable to those measured in the Canadian environment.

At the end of the summer, the results showed that atrazine levels in the tanks were at levels within currently acceptable guidelines. However, researchers also found that the herbicide reduced the number of tadpoles reaching the froglet stage. Also noteworthy was that atrazine had a feminizing effect on the animal, resulting in sex ratios favouring females, with a reduced number of males.

LOCKPORT, ILL. -- The poisoned fish began floating to the surface in the cold Illinois dawn, but as scientists and ecologists began hauling their lifeless catch to shore, they found only one carcass of the predator they targeted -- the ravenous Asian carp.

Never before have Illinois agencies tried to kill so many fish at one time. By the time the poison dissipates in a few days, state officials estimate that 200,000 pounds of fish will be bound for landfills. But they say the stakes -- the Great Lakes ecosystem and its healthy fish population -- could hardly be higher.

Asian carp have slowly been making their way up the Mississippi River and its tributaries, shifting the ecological balance as they devour enormous quantities of plankton that once sustained other species.

Neither prayers nor multimillion-dollar electronic fences have stopped the carp, which commonly grow to a fat-bellied four feet long. Amid fears that the fish are drawing closer to Lake Michigan on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, scientists turned to a poison called rotenone.

"It's time to man the barricades. We've simply got to protect the Great Lakes at all costs," said John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which is leading the chemical attack while an electronic fence is being repaired.

William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini `ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by a mini ice-age, known by scientists as the Younger Dryas, and nicknamed the `Big Freeze', which lasted around 1300 years. Geological evidence shows that the Big Freeze was brought about by a sudden influx of freshwater, when the glacial Lake Agassiz in North America burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. This vast pulse, a greater volume than all of North America's Great Lakes combined, diluted the North Atlantic conveyor belt and brought it to a halt. Without the warming influence of this ocean circulation temperatures across the Northern hemisphere plummeted, ice sheets grew and human civilisation fell apart.

....

Patterson and his colleagues have created the highest resolution record of the `Big Freeze' event to date, from a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland. Using a scalpel layers were sliced from the core, just 0.5mm thick, representing a time period of one to three months.

Carbon isotopes in each slice reveal how productive the lake was, while oxygen isotopes give a picture of temperature and rainfall. At the start of the `Big Freeze' their new record shows that temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped over the course of just a few years. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard, creating icy conditions in a very short period of time," says Patterson, who presented the findings at the European Science Foundation BOREAS conference on humans in the Arctic, in Rovaniemi, Finland.

....

Looking ahead to the future Patterson says there is no reason why a `Big Freeze' shouldn't happen again. "If the Greenland ice sheet melted suddenly it would be catastrophic," he says.

Sigh:

Michael Schlesinger, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois, sends an message to Andy Revkin of the New York Times (via his widely circulated email distribution list) threatening some sort of boycott -- whatever that means -- of Revkin among climate scientists, for having the gall to mention my views and those of my father. The reference to prostitutes in the email presumably comes from this post at Dot Earth where Revkin mentioned a funny news story in his Twitter feed, (emphasis added).

Andy:

Copenhagen prostitutes?

Climate prostitutes?

Shame on you for this gutter reportage. This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes.

The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists. Of course, your blog is your blog. But, I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.

Copenhagen prostitutes?
Unbelievable and unacceptable.

What are you doing and why?

Michael

You'd think that after the actions of certain activist scientists to suppress certain perspectives was revealed in the CRU emails that there would be a little bit more self-awareness in this community. Ironically enough, the public editor of the NYT today cites my father to help justify why the CRU email story is "a story, not a three-alarm story." The irony is that my father is trying to help restore some lost credibility to the climate science community even as these activist climate scientists continue their attacks.

Follow the link for the version that is more thoroughly back-linked and referenced.

A group of artists are protesting the development of a historic neighborhood in Hamburg. They've occupied buildings and held rallies. But instead of sending in the police, the city is now trying to meet their demands. 

The name Gaengeviertel literally means the neighborhood of passageways. And that's exactly what the Gaengeviertel in Hamburg once was, a dense district of narrow alleys.

There's very little left of the old Gaengeviertel now. But just west of the showy Jungfernstieg waterfront boulevard, shoulder to shoulder with modern office and apartment buildings is a remnant of the neighborhood a bit like it once was.

This group of twelve run-down buildings has stood mostly empty for years and the city was delighted when an investor willing to foot the bill for the development of the project was found.

Dutch investment company Hanzevast drew up plans to tear down some of the original buildings, restore the facades of others, and develop a complex of high-end offices and apartment buildings.

But what the city and Hanzevast had not realized is that new life had sprouted in the historic neighborhood.

IAN LYNCH SMITH, a shaggy-haired ball of energy in his late 30s, beams as he ticks off some of the games that Freeverse, his little Brooklyn software company, has landed on the iPhone App Store's coveted (and ever-changing) list of best-selling downloads: Moto Chaser, Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling and Skee-ball.

Skee-ball, Mr. Smith says, took about two months to develop and deploy and then raked in $181,000 for Freeverse in one month. The company's latest bid for App Store fame? A game featuring a Jane Austen character in a lacy dress who karate-chops her way through hordes of advancing zombies.

Women with breast cancer are five times more likely to undergo a mastectomy rather than have less invasive surgery in some parts of the country compared with others, research has shown.  

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent and Sally Lewes
Published: 9:30AM GMT 06 Dec 2009 Women with breast cancer are five times more likely to undergo a mastectomy rather than have less invasive surgery in some parts of the country compared with others

Sufferers living in some parts of the North are far more likely to undergo the major operation, rather than having the "breast conserving" surgery more common elsewhere, according to NHS figures revealing a "postcode lottery" in cancer care.

Statistics showing the ratio of mastectomies to less invasive procedures to treat breast cancer, show that Redcar and Cleveland, in the North East, is the place where patients were most likely to have at least one breast removed

ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2009) -- Practice makes perfect. But imaginary practice? Elisa Tartaglia of the Laboratory of Psychophysics at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and team show that perceptual learning -- learning by repeated exposure to a stimulus -- can occur by mental imagery as much as by the real thing. The results, published in Current Biology, suggest that thinking about something over and over again could actually be as good as doing it.

Everywhere in Europe, Father Christmas has a dark side alter ego. Whether he's dressed in black, covered in carbuncles or dressed as an old witch, he has one aim only - terrorising kids who have been bad all year. Cafebabel.com rounds up.

"'And is that cane there by your side?

'The cane's there too,' I did reply. `But only for those, those naughty ones, Who have it applied to their backsides.'"

This is how the Christ child in Theodor Storm's poem Knecht Ruprecht - "Farmhand" or "Servant" Ruprecht) quotes his eponymous Christmas helper, surely Europe's cruellest Christmas horror figure. According to late medieval tradition, it's not only St Nicholas who comes on 6 December to fill children's polished-up boots with gifts. No, he also has his buddy Ruprecht in tow, his negative alter ego, who is there to drum good behaviour into the little ones - with a good beating if necessary. Well, we wouldn't want them to turn into spoilt brats...

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

Now there may be two. Six years after the Episcopal Church exploded in dissension over the election of the nation's first actively gay bishop, The Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the Diocese of Los Angeles has elected a second.

The Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore was narrowly elected Saturday to be an assistant bishop. (Friday, the diocese also elected a woman bishop) If the vote is ratified by a majority of the nation's dioceses, Glasspool will be consecrated May 15, according to the Associated Press.

How iffy is this? At the tri-annual legislative meeting last summer, the Church affirmed that gays and lesbians could be called as bishops -- despite fierce pressure from traditionalists in the US all the way up to the head of worldwide Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Last summer, traditionalists in the U.S. have split off to form the Anglican Church in North America, which not only forbids gay bishops, it won't permit women bishops either. Then, in October, Pope Benedict XVI surprised Williams by throwing open a wide welcome to traditionalist Anglicans -- including married Anglican priests -- to move to the Catholic Church.

Most of the world's 77 million Anglicans in Africa, Asia and South America lean to the traditionalist direction and are likely to find the latest American choice of another gay bishop to be a renewed affront.

Imagine being stuck on a plane next to this guy!

A stewardess reportedly snapped this amazing photo of a passenger who was not only too big for his seat -- but almost too big to fit on the aircraft.

One side of the jumbo jetter's body took up a full seat, while the rest of him jutted so far into the aisle, it nearly touched the opposite row of seats.

The picture was apparently taken aboard an American Airlines 757 as it was at the gate getting ready for takeoff -- although it is not known where the flight originated or where it was headed, according to Kieran Daly of the Unusual Attitude airline blog at Flightglobal.com, which first published the image.

"The [flight attendant] took it to show her manager what was happening on the aircraft and why she was unhappy about it," he wrote. "Seems the guy paid for only one seat and the gate staff let him board."

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

En interprétant le rôle de « L'Haïtien » dans la série fantastique américaine Heroes, Jimmy Jean-Louis est devenu une star du petit écran. L'acteur a aussi imposé sa présence sur le grand écran en participant à plusieurs longs métrages aux Etats-Unis, en France et dans la Caraïbe. Il est le parrain de la 4e édition du festival international de cinéma Cinamazonia, qui se déroule du 19 au 24 novembre en Guyane française.

English translation in part here.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne