Eurotunnel has accused Eurostar of ignoring safety rules when evacuating passengers from trains last weekend.

The Channel Tunnel operator said evacuations were prolonged because people took bags with them "in complete violation" of safety procedures.

It also rejected claims it contributed to the chaos when 2,000 people were trapped in five broken down trains.

Eurostar said an independent review currently being carried out would "establish the truth once and for all".

In a statement, the company said passengers' safety "was not compromised at any time", but voiced concern that officials at Eurotunnel had "misunderstood" the nature of the review.

European authorities increased air security on Saturday, a day after a man tried to blow up a US airliner travelling from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Reuters - Airports and airlines across Europe moved rapidly to tighten security on U.S.-bound flights on Saturday after a man tried to set off explosives on a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Authorities in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands either increased passenger checks or reinforced security measures already stepped up ahead of the busy Christmas and New Year travel period, officials said.

Scotland Yard has been ordered to reveal whether it has any evidence to support America's claim that Britain was saved from a 9/11-style disaster by the CIA's secret foreign interrogation centres.

The Times has won a case under the Freedom of Information Act forcing British police to say whether the US stopped a plot to fly planes into Canary Wharf and Heathrow. The claim was made by President Bush when he first acknowledged the existence of a clandestine CIA prison network created to fight his War on Terror.

The Office of the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, has upheld a complaint that the Metropolitan Police was wrong to stonewall inquiries by The Times. Scotland Yard has been given 35 days to comply or appeal. If it admits that there is no such intelligence, it would undermine any political defence for America's strong-arm tactics in fighting terrorism. If such information does exist, it would boost supporters of the policy of "extraordinary rendition", giving a justification for their methods.

The Information Commissioner's Office dismissed all of Scotland Yard's arguments for refusing even to say whether it holds any information about the CIA foiling London's "9/11".

Zagreb: Croatians go to the polls on Sunday amid a deepening economic crisis and concerns over high-level corruption to elect a president to steer the Balkans country into the European Union.

A dozen candidates are seeking to replace the popular centrist Stipe Mesic, who during his maximum two five-year terms in office guided the country to a parliamentary democracy following the authoritarian rule of independence leader Franjo Tudjman.

The Bank of England is leaving the door open to a new year £200bn money expansion programme after revealing that it remains unconvinced about the economy's ability to emerge from the deepest and longest recession on record.

Minutes of the December meeting of Threadneedle Street's monetary policy committee indicated that the nine-strong body is adopting a watch-and-wait approach amid concerns that an unrelenting credit crunch and a fresh wave of financial unrest abroad could put paid to Britain's recovery hopes.

The MPC said evidence that the economy was on the up after six successive quarters of falling activity were matched by downbeat signs. All nine members of the committee voted to keep borrowing costs on hold at 0.5% and to keep the quantitative easing programme - due to end in February - under review.

Sterling fell following publication of the minutes, with many City analysts convinced that interest rates will remain on hold at their lowest ever level.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen will not be seeking a new term as leader of the Centre Party at the Party Conference in Lahti in June 2010.
      The announcement that he is planning to step down from the chairmanship came in this morning's edition of the party's main mouthpiece Suomenmaa.
     
Vanhanen said his decision had been influenced by a leg operation that has been scheduled for next autumn, and which carries with it such a long post-op recuperation period that it would affect his ability to handle the joint tasks of party chairman and Prime Minister.
      He also noted that the timing of this surprise announcement was deliberate: he feels that Christmas and the New Year will give everyone concerned in the Centre Party a chance to think about their next move in relative peace, without journalists pestering them on their intentions.

OSLO (AP) -- Norway on Saturday stepped up its efforts to make its boardrooms more gender-neutral by introducing a new law requiring at least 40 percent of its municipal-owned company boards to be female.

The amount will narrow to $160 billion from an estimated $198 billion this year, Lu Ting, a Hong Kong-based economist for Merrill, said in an interview today.

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"The key factor in the narrowing of the surplus will be the increase in imports, driven by rising domestic demand," Lu said. In 2010, imports may climb 16 percent, outpacing a 9 percent gain in exports, he added, forecasting an economic expansion of 10.1 percent.

China's trade surplus, a record $295 billion in 2008, was slashed in 2009 by the collapse in global commerce caused by the worst economic slump since World War II. Imports climbed for the first time in 13 months in November, jumping 27 percent because of the low base a year earlier and extra demand created by stimulus spending and record lending.

By DEAN BAKER

The Senate Banking Committee overwhelmingly voted to approve Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for another 4-year term. This is a remarkable event since it is hard to imagine how Bernanke could have performed worse in his last 4-year term. By Bernanke's own assessment, his policies brought the economy to the brink of another Great Depression. This sort of performance in any other job would get you fired in a second, but for the most important economic policymaker in the country it gets you high praise and another 4-year term.

There is no room for ambiguity in this story. Bernanke was at the Fed since the fall of 2002. (He had a brief stint in 2005 as chair of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors.) At a point when at least some economists recognized the housing bubble and began to warn of the damage that would result from its collapse, Bernanke insisted that everything was fine and that nothing should be done to rein in the bubble.

This is worth repeating. If Bernanke knew what he was doing, he should have been able to see as early as 2002 that there was a housing bubble and that its collapse would throw the economy into a recession. It was also entirely predictable that the collapse could lead to a financial crisis of the type we saw, since housing was always a highly leveraged asset, even before the flood of subprime, Alt-A and other nonsense loans that propelled the bubble to ever greater heights. Of course as the bubble expanded, and the financial sector became ever more highly leveraged, the risks to the economy increased enormously.

Through this all, Bernanke just looked the other way. The whole time he insisted that everything was just fine.

To be clear, there was plenty that the Fed could have done to deflate the bubble before it grew to such dangerous proportions. First and foremost the Fed could have used its extensive research capabilities to carefully document the evidence for a housing bubble and the risks that its collapse would pose to the economy.

YOU might think that board members overseeing businesses that cratered in the credit crisis would be disqualified from serving as directors at other public companies.         You would, however, be wrong.

Directors who were supposedly minding the store as disaster struck at companies like Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual or Fannie Mae have not all been banished from other boardrooms. In many cases, directors just seem to skate away from company woes that occurred on their watch.

To some investors, this is an example of the refusal of those involved in the debacle to accept responsibility for it. Whether you are talking about top executives loading up on leverage, regulators who slept while companies took on titanic risks or mortgage lenders that made thousands of dubious loans, few in this crowd have acknowledged culpability. Taxpayers and shareholders, meanwhile, who had nothing to do with the problems, are left holding the bag.

"None of these directors have stood up and said, `We made a mistake here by not calling management to account,' " said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. "They have certainly avoided the limelight as far as blame is concerned."

Searches are being carried out at a mansion flat in central London after a man with suspected links to al-Qaida allegedly tried to blow up a transatlantic plane, Scotland Yard said today.

The man, a student from Nigeria, tried to ignite a device as the Northwest Airlines flight prepared to land in Detroit. Police identified the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. It is understood he is an engineering student at University College London.

He was overpowered by passengers and crew members, who smelled smoke and heard what sounded like firecrackers, federal officials said.

Security has been stepped up at UK airports for passengers flying to the US, the Department for Transport said.

Gordon Brown said the UK would take "whatever action was necessary" to protect passengers.

UK airport operator BAA said searches on flights to the US would increase.

Iranian security forces and opposition activists have clashed in the centre of the capital Tehran, according to reformist websites and witnesses.

Some reports say shots have been fired in the air to disperse demonstrators.

The opposition had been planning to use Shia religious festivals this weekend to show their continued defiance of President Ahmadinejad's government.

Tensions have risen since influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri died a week ago aged 87.

Clashes were reported after his funeral in Qom, and in other cities since then.

Israeli troops have killed six Palestinians - three in the Gaza Strip and three in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza were killed in an air strike near the Erez crossing.

It is the largest number of deaths in a day since the Gaza conflict a year ago.

Separately, Israeli forces said they had killed three men - who were suspected of killing a Jewish settler - in the West Bank city of Nablus

Palestinian sources in Nablus say two of those killed were militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.

The faction was one of two groups which said they had killed the settler, a father of seven, two days ago - the first fatal shooting of an Israeli by militants in the occupied West Bank for eight months.

At least four people have been killed and several more injured in a suspected US drone attack on a house in Pakistan's northwest.

Pakistani intelligence officials said the missile strike targeted a hideout of anti-government fighters in the Babar Raghazi area of North Waziristan on Saturday.

But local security officials told Al Jazeera that those killed in the attack were all civilians.

Unmanned drones are often the weapon of choice for the United States as it targets the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in remote, rugged areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But the US military has rarely confirmed the attacks.

The use of so-called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which allow the military to operate in highly dangerous areas, is expected to grow in the coming years with the US defence department expected to buy 700 drones next year alone.

An aid convoy that has travelled over 3500km to deliver vital medical and food supplies to the Gaza Strip is currently stranded because of Egypt's refusal to grant it easy passage.

The Viva Palestina convoy, made up of almost 250 lorries, remained in the Jordanian port of Aqaba on Saturday, having waited over 48 hours to board ferries for the Egyptian Red Sea port of Nuweiba.

But Egypt has so far insisted that the aid be delivered through its Mediterranean port of El-Arish, a much longer journey that would require the convoy to go around the Sinai peninsula and through the Suez Canal.

George Galloway, a British politician leading the convoy, on Saturday appealed to Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to allow the lorries through before medical and food supplies were ruined by the heat.

Dozens of villagers in the Kenyan district of Kisii are falling prey to superstitious groups accusing them of witchcraft.

The poverty-stricken western district, known as Kenya's sorcery belt, has seen an increase in mob attacks on individuals and even killings.

The poor and elderly in particular are being targeted.

Three months ago, a group of youths tortured five suspected witches before setting them on fire.

Joseph Ondiek's 65-year-old mother was one of those killed. He says says he and his family are living in constant fear and cannot even think about getting justice for their mother's killing.

Saffron-robed monks have chanted and prayed in Phuket and adjoining Nam Khem in Thailand, among other places in Asia, for victims of the 2004 tsunami.

Saturday's gatherings in these provinces on the country's Andaman Sea coast that lost thousands of people, were part of the hundreds of solemn events across Asia in memory of the tsunami victims.

A wall of water as high as 30 metres triggered by an undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, crashed ashore with little warning on December 26, 2004, killing 200,000 people in 13 countries.

In Patong, a seaside district in Phuket popular with Western tourists, local artists performed traditional Thai songs in a pavilion where tourists gathered to look at photographs of the tsunami's damage.

A candlelight vigil was planned for Saturday evening.

A Turkish court has charged 23 Kurdish officials, including eight mayors, for maintaining links with Kurdish separatists.

According to a judicial source in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, the suspects were charged on Saturday following a police campaign spread over 11 provinces.

Those charged are among 31 people detained as part of an offensive against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its off-shoots in urban centres.

It was the third such operation this year.

The collapse of a bridge being built in western India is feared to have left some 40 people dead, local police say.

Dozens of labourers working on the bridge are thought to have fallen into the river Chambal when it collapsed late on Thursday.

Rescuers have recovered 12 bodies but there is little hope of finding anyone else alive, a senior officer said.

The accident happened near the town of Kota, some 170 miles (270 km) west of Jaipur in Rajasthan.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg says democracy according to western ideals cannot be achieved in Afghanistan and that moderate Taliban members should be represented in the Afghan government. 

Guttenberg told the Sunday mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag that Afghanistan's history and character have long convinced him that Afghanistan will never be a model western democracy.

Lasting peace in the war-ravaged country could only be achieved, he added, if moderate Taliban members were allowed to participate in Afghanistan's democracy.

"Because we are in a country with such regional diversity," Guttenberg told the paper, "we can't just leave out an entire ethnic group like the Pashtuns if we want sustainable solutions for the future."

Certain conditions would need to be fulfilled, however, and it would be unacceptable for the Afghan government to ignore universal human rights.

The bailed out Wall Street failures are paying back just enough of their loans to the Treasury Department to allow a new round of huge bonuses. At the same time, they continue to get tons of cash through the Federal Reserve. Pay back a few billion, get seven trillion dollars in credit. Not a bad deal.

Congress failed to pass a bill to help with foreclosures. We're at eight million so far since 2008 with another four million predicted for 2010. The beat goes on.

The Justice Department and Congress failed to seriously investigate massive mortgage fraud from the very top on down to loan officers during the real estate bubble.

The White House and Congress forgot to include a cap on credit card rates in its credit card bill of rights. How unfortunate since the credit card companies jacked rates way up shortly after the bill passed.

The official unemployment rate of 10% is far below the true unemployment rate of about 17% or higher. Why? Because it might upset us to know that we're at Great Depression levels of unemployment.

Poverty is rising at a rapid rate with no end in sight but you'd never know it for all the attention it gets. Let the markets take care of it.

The people who made the financial mess on Wall Street are now running the U.S. Treasury. Key players, Secretary of the Treasury Geithner and insider extraordinaire Larry Summers, were appointed right after the inauguration.

The constitutional rights stolen by the previous administration are still missing in action with no real effort underway to restore them. The Patriot Act is alive and well. The feds can still tap your phone and email. They can get at any of your financial data they want and it's all done in secret. But we still haven't had a real investigation of 911.

Congress is about to consider an international treaty of copyright that will turn anyone with a public blog or web site into a cop required to enforce the new laws or face prosecution.

Throughout it all, not one member of Congress or the financial elite will miss a meal, worry about their health care, lose their house, or ever face prosecution for destroying the economy of the United States.

Their Ponzi scheme is literally too big to fail. If there were ever the least bit of concentrated scrutiny on the various wars and financial rip offs over just the past decade, it would be the end of all of them.

But The Money Party is a permanent fixture in our lives. It dominates politics, the media, and the economy. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that is always accurate. Rig the game so only those with money can run for office. Hold elections with invisible ballots on electronic voting machines that nobody really understands. Allow all sorts of legal bribes for legislators. And never allow the term election fraud to be mentioned anywhere but on a few internet web sites.

Marginalize the poor, ethnic groups, immigrants, and anyone who protests the system. Kill the unions. Then intimidate those who have the courage to show up and protest with SWAT Teams decked out for a serious beat down.

Take all you can from the middle class to support the big casino in banking and on Wall Street. Make husbands and wives work two jobs and be grateful for the opportunity. Provide children a lousy education that costs more every year while you talk about how much you love education.

Create false issues that pit one group against another --race against race, class against class -- so that the great horror is never realized -- a unified public movement to demand freedom, dignity, and respect in our personal and public lives and a chance to earn a decent living in return for our hard work.

The Money Party has no ideals or goals other than to take as much as they can, at every turn, all the time and never let up.

After Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced the default in December 2008, the financial press smoldered with condemnations and predictions of dire consequences for this small South American nation.
Most articles quoted only the harshest critics.  Ecuador had "lived up to its reputation as a banana republic" (Investor's Business Daily).  Ecuador was "one of the axis of evil in Latin America" (Financial Times).  A separate article in the Financial Times did quote two sympathetic analysts, but that effort at balanced reporting was an extreme exception.

We found no examples of mainstream press reporting on the long history of Ecuadorian activists calling for action to address illegitimate debts. Indeed, Ecuadorian civil society had long advocated for the creation of a commission to examine the nature of Ecuador's debt.  That commission was founded in 2007, and its results formed the basis for the Correa government's decision to default.

The mainstream media gave the overwhelming impression that this default was the result of the personal whim of a political extremist.  Virtually every story labeled Correa as a leftist and emphasized his ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  The analysts quoted reinforced this message.  "I think this default is nonsense. The market sees it as politically motivated" (Euromoney).  A former International Monetary Fund official said the default reflected "a ridiculous ideology" (Bloomberg).

Meanwhile, activists associated with the global Jubilee network that has campaigned for the cancellation of illegitimate debts in countries around the world applauded Correa for fulfilling a campaign promise to respect the findings of the debt audit commission. And Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo announced less than a week after Ecuador's default that his government would also "exhaustively study" its debt.
In late April of this year, Correa was re-elected in a landslide, and as of this writing, his government appears on the brink of successfully negotiating with the holders of defaulted bonds.  Dow Jones is reporting that a very high percentage of bondholders are expected to accept Correa's offer of 35 cents on the dollar. 

And in 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret debate contract--a "Memorandum of Understanding" that dictated who got to participate, who would ask the questions, even the heights of the podiums--the League declined to implement it. Instead, the League issued a blistering press release claiming, "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

The major parties, however, did not want a sponsor that limited their candidates' control. Consequently, the CPD was created to step in.
Since the CPD took control of the presidential debates in 1988, the debates have been primarily funded by corporate contributions. Multinational corporations with regulatory interests before Congress have donated millions of dollars in contributions to the CPD, and debate sites have become corporate carnivals, where sponsoring companies market their products, services, and political agendas. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris was a major sponsor in 1992 and 1996. The major contributor, Anheuser-Busch, has sponsored presidential debates in its hometown of St. Louis in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008.

That the CPD has been able to raise millions of dollars in corporate contributions is not surprising.  Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, who co-chair and control the CPD, are registered lobbyists for multinational corporations. Kirk has collected $120,000 for lobbying on behalf of Hoechst Marion Roussel, a German pharmaceutical company.  Fahrenkopf earns approximately $900,000 a year as the chief lobbyist for the nation's $54 billion gambling industry.  As president of the American Gaming Association, Fahrenkopf directs enormous financial contributions to major party candidates and saturates the media with "expert" testimony extolling gambling's "many benefits." "We're not going to apologize for trying to influence political elections," said Fahrenkopf.

"These are the guys," author George Farah points out, "deciding who gets to participate in the most important political forums in the United States of America."

An American missionary carrying a letter for the North Korean dictator crossed illegally into the reclusive country to try bring international attention to the North Korean suffering, South Korean activists said Saturday.

"I am an American citizen," Robert Park, 28, said as he crossed the frozen river separating China from North Korea on Friday, according to Jo Sung-rae, head of Pax Koreana, a conservative civic group based in Seoul. "I am coming here to deliver God's love. God loves you."

By early Sunday, there was no word of his fate from North Korea.

Before heading to China last week to make the journey, Mr. Park said he was determined to become a "martyr" for the tens of thousands of people said to be incarcerated in North Korea's infamous concentration camps, Mr. Jo said.

In a videotaped message he made before the trip, Mr. Park said he wanted to be arrested and had no intention of leaving North Korea voluntarily until it shuts down its camps. He also said he did not want President Obama to "buy his freedom."

BEIJING (AFP) - Police in southwest China have arrested a man suspected of hacking a father and his four children to death, the latest in a string of grisly killings to occur in the nation, state press said Sunday.

Deng Xueyun was captured by police in Guizhou province on Saturday, about 17 hours after allegedly murdering his neighbour Deng Zhaoxiang, 40, and his four young children, the Beijing News reported.

The elder Deng was hacked to death outside the door of his home in Lushan village late Friday, while the two boys and two girls were killed while asleep in bed, it said.

The children were aged between six and 11 years of age, it added.

The report identified the suspect as a neighbour of the victim. It was not immediately clear if they were related.

A few days ago, Dan Harris of the China Law Blog confirmed a trend that we at CLB and others have noticed recently, namely that the non-payment of overtime is becoming the biggest single cause of labour-related lawsuits and arbitration cases in China.

The problem has become particularly severe as the economy picks up again and enterprises, many of whom sacked vast numbers of workers last year, pressure their remaining employees to work long hours in order to fulfill new contracts.

But as Dan Harris notes, there are very clear legal provisions in China on the remuneration of overtime, and there is "no excuse for not paying overtime... or for not having a written contract with your employees."

"My firm has handled around a half a dozen cases where foreign companies came to us after having been sued for having failed to pay overtime. In every single instance, our advice and eventual action was to settle the claims because they were all valid."

This may not work for everyone, but it worked for Jeff. He tells Consumerist that after he filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy, Sallie Mae representatives continued to call him, which is sort of illegal. So his bankruptcy attorney sued them. And won a $4,000 settlement.

   I have recently gone through Chapter 13 bankruptcy and had an experience that might enlighten others. After the filing, during the mandatory stay period, Sallie Mae continued to contact me about my student loan payment. I documented each call -- time, number of origin, and person I talked to if I could get the information. I mentioned this to my bankruptcy attorney, who made effort to stop the calls. He finally filed an order that stopped the calls. He then asked me if I wanted to file a suit against Sallie Mae. I assented.

    He filed suit for $14,000 - a grand per call. Within DAYS, the Sallie Mae attorney offered a $4,000 settlement. I had my money in hand several weeks after that. The whole process took about a month.

    I don't know if my case was unique, or if Sallie Mae illegally harasses everyone who files Chapter 13. Just wanted to let you know.

The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers.

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen has lashed out at the US and China, accusing them of thwarting a binding climate agreement at the recently concluded UN summit in Copenhagen.  

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen told the news magazine Der Spiegel that the Chinese were not concerned about climate protection but instead about hindering the process.

He also said that in the United States, the political elite had not succeeded in winning support for climate protection.

The comments come amid the backdrop of criticism levelled by the German government over the attitude of countries like the US and China following the disappointing outcome at the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen earlier this month.

THE most effective way to stop climate change is to stop eating meat and dairy, says a report by the British Sustainable Development Commission on Climate Change. That is also what the European Parliament concluded from a recent hearing on Climate Change and Food Policy: Less Meat, Less Heat.

Less cows on factory farms means less methane emission. Less methane emission means helping reduce global warming since methane is known to be a lot more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The European Parliament hearing had Sir Paul McCartney on the panel agreeing that reducing meat consumption is the easiest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, in particular methane and nitrous oxide.

Al Gore, former US vice president and climate change campaigner, points out the same problems that eating meat brings to the planet. He recommends going vegetarian to save the planet. "I'm not a vegetarian, but I have cut back sharply on the meat that I eat," he says.

Hurricane Lothar swept across western and central Europe in 1999 with devastating results, but ten years on a Swiss forester says it also had positive effects.

Forester Jakob Zaugg told swissinfo.ch he still has vivid memories of the storm that took its toll of countless woods in Switzerland.

"Trees flew with their roots like arrows 80 metres into the air and then fell to the ground. I'd never seen anything like that before."

Zaugg, who has been self-employed in the special woods business since 2001, was working after the hurricane as a fireman involved in clearing-up operations.

One particular picture sticks in the mind of the 53-year-old father of three children: a roof tile lying on the pillow of an empty cradle in a room open to the heavens.

The storms caused 14 deaths in Switzerland and another 15 people died in clearing-up operations. "It's a wonder that there weren't any more fatalities," he said.

Last weekend's minimalist Copenhagen global climate accord provides a great opportunity. The old deceitful, ineffectual approach is severely wounded and must die. Now there is a chance for the world to get on to an honest, effective path to an agreement.

The centrepiece of the old approach was a "cap-and-trade" scheme, festooned with offsets and bribes - bribes that purportedly, but hardly, reduced carbon emissions. It was analogous to the indulgences scheme of the Middle Ages, whereby sinners paid the Church for forgiveness.

In today's indulgences the sinners, developed countries, buy off developing countries by paying for "offsets" to their own emissions and providing reparation money for adaptation to climate change. But such hush money won't work. Yes, some developing country leaders salivated over the proffered $100 billion per year. But by buying in, they would cheat their children and ours. Besides, even the $100 billion hush money is fugacious. The US, based on its proportion of the fossil fuel carbon in the air today, would owe $27 billion per year. Chance of Congress providing that: dead zero. Maybe the UK will cough up its $6 billion per year and Germany its $7 billion per year. But who will collect Russia's $7 billion per year?

Fee-and-dividend, in contrast, is a non-tax - on average it is revenue-neutral. The public will probably accept a rise in the carbon fee rate, because their monthly dividend will increase correspondingly. As fee-and-dividend causes fossil fuel energy prices to rise, a series of points will be reached at which various carbon-free energies and carbon-saving technologies are cheaper than fossil fuels plus the fee. The market place will choose the best technology. As time goes on, fossil fuel use will collapse, coal will be left in the ground, and we will have arrived at a clean energy future. A rising carbon fee is essential for a climate solution. But how to achieve a fair international framework?

The critical requirement is that the United States and China agree to apply across-the-board carbon fees, at a relative rate to be negotiated. Why would China agree to a carbon fee? China does not want to be saddled with the problems that attend fossil fuel addiction such as those that plague the United States. Besides, China would be hit extraordinarily hard by climate change. A uniform rising carbon fee is the most economically efficient way for China to limit its fossil fuel dependence.

Denominate the carbon fee in energy, and we'll have the basis for a workable solution.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

I have some advice for CoffeeHousers hungry for the latest evidence about the guy who tried to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight: go to the American press and their websites.  They are 100% free to pursue these stories: the press in Britain isn't. Not any more. The suspect suffering second degree burns in hospital, named by the US authorities as a Nigerian called Farouk Abdul Mutallab, may have been living in London. This is, alas, no surprise. It fits with Britain's reputation as Europe's no1 incubator of terrorists  - let's remember that the 7/7 bombers were home-grown. And it raises huge questions which a free press should be pursuing.

But this is a subject where the British press are not free. You'll get the confirmed details, and the UK press will work as hard as they can to give you all the rest of the details. But to publish the results of any investigative work is far, far more risky here than in America. The reason for this is the notorious British libel laws, at their most pernicious when used to pursue journalists investigating Islamic terrorism.

In this case, the would-be bomber appears to be in hospital, thwarted by fellow passengers (and, from the sounds of it, candidates for heroism decoration). But these guys never act alone. What about his accomplices? After 7/7 the US press were free to name men identified by the US intelligence authorities as prime suspects. British publications repeating these names were sued by the people in question. In Britain, even convicted terrorists have successfully sued for defamation. Other aspects of a terror attack - family, friends, social networks, supportive organisations - will be in the American press far sooner than the British press. If a journalists's "security sources" won't testify in court (most won't) then it's not for use. Make no mistake: lawyers will be working overtime in Fleet St today, to cut and censor information that is written in good faith and in the public interest. This is what we all have to do now - magazines, newspapers, blogs, the lot.  It is precisely at moments like this, when journalists struggle to present a fuzzy picture as best they can to their readership, that the libel lawyers start dialling 118 and start asking those named if they'd like to try their luck and sue. 

Since Ukraine gained independence from the USSR in 1991, the ancient tradition of singing kolyadki - traditional carols and songs - has been slowly revived. While many of the songs have their roots in the Orthodox Christian faith, others are much older - hinting at the pagan winter festival from which they originally came.

Before Communism, on Christmas Eve in Ukraine groups of young people would move from house to house singing kolyadki and wishing the residents health and happiness. In return, the householders would offer small gifts of coins and food.

Japan's weather agency said Friday it would stop giving forecasts for the start of the cherry blossom season, an annual rite which sees millions of people flock to picnic under the delicate pink petals.

The start of the spring cherry blossom season is an excuse for drunken revelry across Japan but an annual headache for the Meteorological Agency, which has been trying since 1955 to predict when the trees will bloom.

Weather forecasters have been left red-faced in the past for miscalculating the start of the blossom season. In 2007, Japan's chief weatherman was forced to bow in apology after a computer glitch resulted in the wrong forecasts.

With a number of private weather agencies now giving similar information, the government agency has decided to end its service.

Since the economic collapse of 2008, the controversial novelist and philosopher has emerged as a leading intellectual on the right - and she's been dead for nearly 30 years.

Rush Limbaugh touts Rand as a prophet of sorts. "Ayn Rand, she wrote `Atlas Shrugged,' " he told his listeners. "The sequel, `Atlas Puked,' we're in the middle of it." At the tea parties that swept the nation last spring, protesters waved signs claiming "Ayn Rand was right" and warning "Read `Atlas Shrugged' before it happens."

The fresh appeal of 'Atlas Shrugged'

Consider this: "Atlas Shrugged," Rand's most famous novel, is set in a dystopian future America, where a socialist government has brought the country to the brink of ruin. Fleeing punitive regulations and crushing taxation, the country's top industrialists and executives have gone on strike, virtually shutting down the economy.

A Dutch passenger who tackled the man accused of trying to bring down a US plane said yesterday that his courageous response "came completely natural" after he saw flames coming from the man.

Jasper Schuringa, a 32-year-old film maker from Amsterdam is being hailed as a hero in America.

He was applauded by fellow passengers after he and cabin crew subdued Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as their Northwest flight was about to land at Detroit airport.

The official choir of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known by its French acronym Cern) is to record a song dedicated to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC is the vast physics experiment built in a 27km-long underground tunnel, which runs in a circle under the French-Swiss border.

The ditty written by clinical psychologist Danuta Orlowska has been set to the tune of the Hippopotamus song by Flanders and Swann and its chorus celebrates the Higgs boson - a sub-atomic particle that the LHC is designed to detect:

"Higgs, Higgs glorious Higgs," the tune goes, "the theory told them these thingamijigs, were so fundamental."

VATICAN CITY -- To put it as the devout Ned Flanders would, the Vatican's newspaper thinks "The Simpsons" are an okely dokely bunch.

L'Osservatore Romano on Tuesday congratulated the show on its 20th anniversary, praising its philosophical leanings as well as its stinging and often irreverent take on religion.

Without Homer Simpson and the other yellow-skinned characters "many today wouldn't know how to laugh," said the article titled "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut."

The paper credited "The Simpsons" - the longest-running American animated program - with opening up cartoons to an adult audience.

The man who was arrested with two guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition near the Capitol during President Barack Obama's health care speech in September had been an employee of the George W. Bush White House. The arrest of the man, Joshua Bowman, was widely reported at the time, but the news stories made no mention of his previous employment: For several years he worked in the Executive Office of the President, dealing with tech issues, including White House emails, his lawyer, George Braun, tells Mother Jones.

Karl Rove's chief IT consultant, Mike Connell--who was facing subpoena in connection with 2004 Presidential election fraud in Ohio--mysteriously died in a private plane crash in 2008.  Connell was allegedly the central figure in a longstanding plot to electronically flip votes to Republicans.

In July 2008, Connell was named as a key witness in the case known as King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, which was filed against Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell on August 31, 2006 by Columbus attorneys Clifford Arnebeck and Robert Fitrakis. It initially charged Blackwell with racially discriminatory practices--including the selective purging of voters from the election rolls and the unequal allocation of voting machines to various districts--and asked for measures to be taken to prevent similar problems during the November 2006 election.

t is understood the Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Initial tests are said to have shown that he is suffering with a malignant tumour.

The severity of his illness is to be assessed over the coming days.

Just before the Dáil broke up for their Christmas break the minister was rushed to hospital with a suspected hernia.

In a statement, the minister said he is "well and enjoying Christmas with his family and does not propose to talk to the media until the New Year".

Pancreatic cancer is one of the worst...my mother died of it.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Knut Haugland - the last of the six Norwegian crewmen who crossed the Pacific Ocean on the Kon-Tiki balsa wood raft in 1947 - has died aged 92.

The explorer died of natural causes in Oslo's hospital, the Kon-Tiki museum director said.

The expedition was launched from Peru by anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl to demonstrate that South Americans could have settled Polynesia.