Germany's beleaguered Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has rejected reports claiming he wrongly forced the resignations of two top officials linked to a controversial airstrike in Afghanistan believed to have killed civilians. 

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told Bild am Sonntag weekly that the officials had withheld crucial information regarding the airstrike on September 4 in Kunduz. 

 

"For that the two gentlemen have taken responsibility," he said.

 

The two men - the head of Germany's armed forces, General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn and Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert - stepped down last month over the affair which has sparked a heated political controversy in Germany.

But Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung refuted the minister's account, reporting that the two officials had given Guttenberg an account of all available reports about the airstrike when he inquired about it.

> The latest controversy comes after media reports on the weekend said the target of the airstrike was a group of Taliban leaders, not a pair of hijacked tanker trucks as originally reported by the German government.

Laws forcing the 11 million people who help out in schools and nurseries to undergo criminal record checks to prove they are not paedophiles are to be dropped following a massive outcry.

In a major government U-turn, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, has bowed to public opinion and will announce tomorrow that the controversial vetting and barring scheme, due to be introduced next July, will be dramatically watered down.

His decision follows a storm of protest over the summer, when it emerged that parents who take children to sports events or drive them around on behalf of scout groups would be among those subject to checks.

Leading children's authors who visit schools, including Philip Pullman, also joined the protests after discovering they would be asked to prove that they had no record of paedophilia.

David Cameron said today he believed 25 March was a "likely date" for voters to be called to the polls as speculation grew about a snap general election.

The chance of a early election has been boosted by Labour gains in recent polls. A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times today revealed a narrowing of the Conservatives' lead, putting Labour on 31%, nine points behind the Tories on 40%, with the Liberal Democrats falling two points to 16%.

Last weekend, the Conservatives appeared to be in a significantly more comfortable position, with a 13-point lead.

The prime minister, Gordon Brown, can call a general a general election at any time before June next year, but had been expected to choose 6 May, the first Thursday of the month.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has held crisis talks this Sunday with members of her Christian Democratic Union party who are opposed to her plans to slash taxes in order to boost the economy.  

The crucial talks in Berlin were seen as a last-ditch effort to win support for Angela Merkel's first major tax cuts package.

Merkel's second term as chancellor since her re-election at the end of September has not been as agreeable as she may have hoped.

The short period since the new coalition government - led by her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), with the Free Democrats (FDP) as junior partners - took office in late October has been marked by squabbles over how best to boost the economy. A controversial airstrike in Afghanistan has also forced the resignation of a minister.

At the heart of the coalition's roadmap to recovery after Germany's worst recession since World War II, is a program of tax cuts aimed at putting more money in consumers' pockets and cutting recession-hit firms some slack.

The government faces legal action for failing to protect people from discrimination at work, throwing doubt on any proposals for a new law on equality.

The European commission has said parts of UK law, including provisions on sexual orientation and disability, are inadequate. It could refer the situation to the European court of justice.

The claim, set out in two reasoned opinions sent to the government last month, includes a warning that the law that applies to faith-based organisations, schools and adoption agencies allows too much scope for discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

"This could be difficult for the government," said Robin Allen QC, head of Cloisters chambers. "The extent to which religious organisations are exempt from the rules of sexual orientation discrimination is a particularly difficult issue. The government will certainly resist any strengthening to the current law in an election year."

Other parts of UK law singled out by the EU's equal opportunities commissioner include the lack of a ban on "instructions to discriminate", where a person is discriminated against because of the actions of a third party, and the lack of clear provisions for class actions.

Following a Friday ruling from a Turkish court banning a Kurdish political party, lawmakers from the party are boycotting parliament as clashes erupt in the country. 

Friday's decision by the Turkish constitutional court to ban a Kurdish party linked with separatist guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has sparked a boycott.

The banned Democratic Society Party (DTP) held a meeting on Saturday to determine its next move and members ended up carrying out an initial plan to boycott parliament if their party were banned.

"Our (parliamentary) group has effectively pulled out from parliament as of today. It will not participate in any work there," said Ahmet Turk, the party's co-chair.

The DTP has 19 remaining members of parliament left after Turk and another deputy were stripped of their seats as a result of the ban.

The political unrest in the country threatens to set back the efforts by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to improve relations with the Kurdish minority in the country. The European Union and the United States have expressed concern over the DTP's ban.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly been struck in the face after leaving a meeting in Milan.

He was reportedly left bleeding from the mouth. It was not clear whether the injury was caused by a punch or an object thrown by a protester.

Previous discussion here.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

The new bishop to the armed forces has apologised over comments he made about how the Taliban could be admired for their "conviction to their faith".

The Right Reverend Dr Stephen Venner said his words had been taken out of context by the Daily Telegraph.

"I'm not trying to support the Taliban," he told the BBC. "At the moment what they are doing is evil."

Paul A. Samuelson, whose analytical work laid the foundation for modern economics, died Sunday. He was 94.

"Paul Samuelson was both a path-breaking and prolific economic theorist and one of the greatest teachers that economics has ever known," said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, a former student of Mr. Samuelson's at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I join with many other former students and colleagues of Paul's in mourning the passing of a titan of economics."

Actively publishing into the 2000s, Mr. Samuelson's career in economics spanned eight decades. As a high school student in 1932, he wandered into an economics lecture at the University of Chicago and was enamored. But attending Chicago as an undergraduate, he became keenly aware, he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, of the differences between what was being taught in the classroom and "what I heard out the windows and I heard from the street."

In 1935 he went, despite his Chicago professors' protestations, to Harvard University for his graduate work. His 1941 Ph.D. thesis, later published as "Foundations of Economic Analysis," examined the mathematical structure underlying economics. The approach revolutionized the field.

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

Even as other potential buyers circle Saab, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding has struck a tentative agreement for the right to produce several of the beleaguered Swedish manufacturer's models.

If completed, people close to the negotiations said Sunday, the agreement would allow Beijing Automotive to produce older versions of the Saab 9-3 and 9-5 in China, but not prevent a separate deal for the entire company, a unit of General Motors.

The fate of Saab's 3,500 workers in Trollhattan, Sweden, was uncertain, however, following the unexpected collapse last month of a deal between G.M. and the high-end automaker Koenigsegg for Saab.

Nevertheless, a pact with state-owned Beijing Automotive "would be good for Sweden, good for China and good for Saab," according to a Saab official who insisted on anonymity because the discussions were not final.

When I asked top White House economic advisor Larry Summers if the President needs to encourage banks to do more lending, he told me that bankers "need to recognize that they've got obligations to the country after all that's been done for them, and there is a lot more they can do."

Tomorrow, the President will meet with heads of the country's biggest banks and Summers told me the White House has a blunt message: "President Obama is going to be talking with them about what they can do to support enhanced lending to customers across the country.

"We were there for them. And the banks need to do everything they can to be sure they're there for customers across this country."

re: OTS cover-up of WaMu seizure and immediate sale to JPM

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which took $10 billion in U.S. bailout funds last year, shouldn't get taxpayer support if the firm focuses on trading over banking, according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

The "safety net" provided by the U.S. government "should not be extended beyond the core commercial-banking business," Volcker, 82, said in an interview yesterday at Deutsche Bank AG's Berlin office, where he was attending a conference. "They can do trading and do anything they want, but then they shouldn't have access to the safety net."

Goldman Sachs, the most profitable investment bank in Wall Street history, has reaped more than 90 percent of its pretax earnings this year from trading and so-called principal investments, which include market bets on securities and stakes in companies. The other 10 percent came from advising clients on takeovers and capital-raising and from asset management, which includes managing hedge funds and buyout funds.

When the collapse of smaller rival Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. triggered a crisis of investor confidence last year, regulators allowed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, another competitor, to convert into bank holding companies. That put the New York-based firms under the Fed's purview and gave them access to cheap funding.

The two firms received federal guarantees on new debt issues, as did commercial banks and some companies with financing businesses, such as General Electric Co.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi stepped in to help fellow United Arab Emirates member Dubai with a $10 billion injection, of which $4.1 billion was allocated to troubled state-owned conglomerate Dubai World to pay immediate obligations, Dubai said on Monday.

The move was the least expected of all options Dubai had on the table after requesting a standstill on $26 billion in Dubai World debt on November 25, alarming markets and shaking the image of the emirate as a regional business hub.

"The government of Abu Dhabi has agreed to fund $10 billion to the Dubai Financial Support Fund that will be used to satisfy a series of upcoming obligations on Dubai World," the chairman of the Dubai Supreme Fiscal Committee said in a statement.

"As a first action for the new fund, the government of Dubai has authorized $4.1 billion to be used to pay the sukuk obligations that are due today."

Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests. The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.

It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy. They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to "create stress".

The study says they are responsible for campaigns which create dissatisfaction and misery, and encourage over-consumption. And tax accountants damage the country by devising schemes to cut the amount of money available to the government, the research suggests.

JUTICALPA, Honduras -- Ulises Sarmiento, a devout and wealthy follower of ousted Honduran President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, paid a heavy price for his loyalty: A few weeks ago, hit men attacked with grenade launchers and a deluge of bullets, killing his two bodyguards.

An iron door kept the assassins at bay.

"Why do they come with grenades? You could hear this from a half mile away,'' said Sarmiento, 65, an Olancho businessman and a leader of Honduras' "Resistance Movement," formed after Zelaya was kicked out of the country at gunpoint in June.

"They knew the police were never coming, and, sure enough, they did not come,'' said Sarmiento, now watched by six men, one of whom stays perched beside his bullet-ridden armored Ford F-250.

As Zelaya approaches his sixth month of banishment, human-rights organizations here and abroad say Honduras has experienced a serious deterioration of civil rights in a country where death squads and extrajudicial killings already were commonplace.

Resistance members say they have been subjected to a campaign by police, the military and paramilitaries to execute their leaders and members. Human-rights activists have documented the deaths of 26 members who have been stabbed or shot across the country.

Activists say more than 3,000 people have been illegally detained, 450 beaten, and 114 now are political prisoners since the June coup.

KANSAS CITY -- Sebastian Pereria told a friend last year about his life in America.

How he wanted to see his wife and children in India, but his boss kept his identification papers and wouldn't let him go.

Other waiters who worked with him at a restaurant in Topeka, Kan., told of how they were forced to work 13-hour days, six days a week. They talked of how the boss underpaid them and pocketed their tips.

In the end, Pereria, 46, got his wish. He finally arrived home last year.

In a coffin.

The U.S. government could not help Pereria, even though they said he fit the criteria for being a human trafficking victim. Other waiters he worked with got help and were rescued from the Globe Indian Restaurant. But for Pereria, even in death, a judge remained unconvinced.

America declared war on human trafficking nearly a decade ago. With a new law and much fanfare, the government pledged to end such human rights abuses at home and prodded the rest of the world to follow its example.

But an investigation by The Kansas City Star found that, in spite of all the rhetoric from the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States is failing to find and help tens of thousands of human trafficking victims in America.

MALTRATA, MEXICO -- Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.

Using sophisticated smuggling networks, the traffickers have transported a portion of the pilfered petroleum across the border to sell to U.S. companies, some of which knew that it was stolen, according to court documents and interviews with American officials involved in an expanding investigation of oil services firms in Texas.

The widespread theft of Mexico's most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new front in President Felipe Calderón's war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport and sales.

Oil theft has been a persistent problem for the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, but the robbery increased sharply after Calderón launched his war against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006. The drug war has claimed more than 16,000 lives and has led the cartels, which rely on drug trafficking for most of their revenue, to branch out into other illegal activities.

Authorities said they have traced much of the oil rustling to the Zetas, a criminal organization founded by former military commandos. Although the Zetas initially served as a protection arm of the powerful Gulf cartel, they now call their own shots and dominate criminal enterprise in the oil-rich states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

BANGKOK -- In their first interview since being detained by Thai authorities, the crew of a cargo aircraft traveling from North Korea said Sunday that they did not know they had been transporting an arsenal of rockets, grenade launchers and other unidentified weapons weighing at least 30 tons.

"They said it was oil drilling equipment," said Viktor Abdullayev, the plane's co-pilot. "That's what the manager told us," he said referring to his employer, a civilian cargo company from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Officials in Thailand did little over the weekend to shed light on the perplexing seizure of the aircraft, offering only rudimentary details about the plane, its crew and its cargo.

The five-man crew is to be charged in court Monday with possession of weapons of war, in a case that may shed light on the shadowy business of global arms trafficking -- and in North Korea's role, in particular.

Thai authorities said the weapons were seized after a tip from American officials, and said the shipment appeared to violate a United Nations arms embargo but did not provide a detailed accounting of the armaments, which will undergo a more thorough inspection Tuesday.

Thailand was acting, it said, under United Nations Resolution 1874, which was passed in June in response to nuclear tests in North Korea. The resolution is effectively an arms embargo covering the transport of heavy weaponry to and from North Korea. Such weapons sales are one of the few ways the country has been able to earn foreign currency.

Mingling among the tinsel and other trappings of Christmas, the men and women who constitute the backbone of Zanu-PF swayed to old party songs.

Many wore the party's colours - black, green, yellow and red - and bore the image of President Robert Mugabe.

Mr Mugabe - the man they have chosen to lead them for the past 30 years - this weekend received a mandate to continue for another five.

With such a strong presence of Zanu-PF at the rally venue, it was hard to imagine that this was where last year's power-sharing deal was thrashed out.

It was a deal born out of necessity, given Zanu-PF's dismal performance at the polls, and a deal which forced it into an unhappy marriage with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Think of a tubby man dressed in red who has an army of helpers distributing Christmas toys, and the odds are you visualise Santa Claus, elves and the north pole.

Think again. President Hugo Chávez is delivering festive gifts to the tropics with Venezuela's first socialist toy fair.

The government has spent $1.4m (£860,000) importing 124,000 toys from China and is selling them at rockbottom prices to hordes of grateful parents. So many swamped the inaugural feria socialista de juguetes in the capital, Caracas, that police officers on horseback intervened to impose order over the weekend.

"It's amazing. There were thousands waiting this morning even before we opened," said Jesus Alvarez, a government co-ordinator, as crowds threatened to break through police lines. Dozens of colleagues, all dressed in red, feverishly unpacked boxes of toys while an official with a megaphone appealed for calm.

Depleted stocks of dolls, puzzles and remote control cars may force the fair, which opened on 7 December, to close this Wednesday, a week early. Barbies sold out within the first few days.

With discounts of up to 80%, there is no mystery to its success. Venezuela is in recession and suffering 26% inflation, Latin America's highest. Many families are struggling to buy food, let alone gifts.

Chile is voting for a new president, with opinion polls suggesting billionaire Sebastian Pinera is the frontrunner.

The centre-right businessman is one of four men vying for the job.

He is up against three left and centre-left candidates - Eduardo Frei, Marco Enriquez-Ominami and Jorge Arrate.

BBC correspondents say the signs are that the country could be about to shift to the right, after 20 years of centre-left rule.

If no-one manages to get 50% of the vote on Sunday, the two leading candidates will go through to a run-off on 17 January.

Growth promise

Mr Pinera, 60, owns a television channel, a stake in Chile's most successful football club and has millions of dollars in investments.

He has campaigned on a tough law-and-order ticket and has also vowed to use his business know-how to reactivate the economy, promising Chileans an annual growth rate of 6% for the next four years.

This past week, before he left for Europe to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft sat down with the president in the Map Room at the White House for a wide ranging discussion, much of it focused on his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan....

Kroft: The West Point speech was greeted, it was greeted with a great deal of confusion.
Obama: I disagree with that statement.
Kroft: You do?
Obama: I absolutely do. Forty million people watched it. And I think a whole bunch of people understood what we intend to do.
Kroft: But it raised a lot of questions.
Obama: Now, it-
Kroft: Some people thought it was contradictory. That's a fair criticism.
Obama: I don't think it's a fair criticism. I think that what you may be referring to is the fact that on the one hand I said, "We're gonna be sending in additional troops now." On the other hand, "By July 2011, we're gonna move into a transition phase where we're drawing our troops down."
Kroft: Right.
Obama: There shouldn't be anything confusing about that. That's-
Kroft: Well-
Obama: First of all, that's something that we executed over the last two years in Iraq. So, I think the American people are familiar with the idea of a surge. In terms of the rationale for doing it, we don't have an Afghan military right now, security force, that can stabilize the country. If we are effective over the next two years, that then frees us up to transition into a place where we can start drawing down. ...

ahahahaha suuuuuckahhss.. d'ohh wait! this one's gonna leave a mark...

Obama: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of, you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street. The only ones that are gonna be paying out these fat bonuses are the ones that have now paid back that TARP money and aren't using taxpayer loans.

Kroft: Do you think that's why they paid it back so quickly?

Obama: I think in some cases that was a motivation. Which I think tells me that the people on Wall Street still don't get it. They don't get it. They're still puzzled. "Why is it that people are mad at the banks?" Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we've got ten percent unemployment. Why do you think people might be a little frustrated.
Kroft: Do you think that they've made some of these bonuses based in part on the generosity and policies of the United States government to help put the financial system back on its feet?
Obama: I think there is no doubt about it. And what's most frustrating me right now

ooohh shiiit... the bu'wheat defense...

is you've got these same banks who benefitted from taxpayer assistance who are fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists up on Capitol Hill fighting against financial regulatory reform.
Kroft: Why is it taking so long?
Obama: Well, everything appears to take long in Congress. We can talk about health care (LAUGHS) if you want. This is democracy in action.

very funny, yassuh.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) -- In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them. The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars -- a pair of stars that orbit each other -- ever known.

Modern telescopes have since found that Mizar is itself a pair of binaries, revealing what was once thought of as a single star to be four stars orbiting each other. Alcor has been sometimes considered a fifth member of the system, orbiting far away from the Mizar quadruplet.

Now, an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor is also actually two stars, and is apparently gravitationally bound to the Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky.

"Finding that Alcor had a stellar companion was a bit of serendipity," says Eric Mamajek, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and leader of the team that found the star. "We were trying a new method of planet hunting and instead of finding a planet orbiting Alcor, we found a star.

KANO, Nigeria -- The boy stepped into the grubby street, looking both ways for traffic. He was wearing the clothes he wore yesterday and seemingly all the days before: a pair of too-big cotton pants and a black shirt so tattered that it seemed ready to fall off his body. His bony shoulders peeked through the holes where the sleeves once were stitched.

At an intersection, the 10-year-old beggar weaved between idling cars, his feet clapping the asphalt in mismatched flip-flops, one yellow, one red. He held out a plastic bowl and tried to lock eyes with the people behind the smudged car windows, hoping for a flash of sympathy, a rolled-down window, an outstretched arm proffering a crumpled bill.

Until a year ago, Ghaddafi Auwalu lived with his family on their small plot outside this fast-growing city in northern Nigeria. His parents sent him away, Ghaddafi said, for reasons that might be difficult for faraway people to understand: They had too many children, and they couldn't afford to look after him.

"I'm less of a burden to my mom if I am here," said the polite boy, the 11th child in a family of 12, not unusually large for this part of West Africa. "Now she'll have more time for my sisters and brothers."

Although it's frequently portrayed as a continent decimated by epidemics, starvation and war, Africa is gripped by one of the greatest population explosions ever recorded. Over the past 60 years, while birth rates in the rest of the developing world declined by half, Africa's population quadrupled to 1 billion, an epic baby boom that threatens to trap a generation of children in poverty and strangle economic progress across the world's neediest continent.

WASHINGTON -- With a new theory surfacing that toxic algae rather than asteroids killed the dinosaurs, scientists are still trying to unravel the mystery of what caused a massive algae bloom off the Northwest Coast that left thousands of seabirds dead and may have sickened some surfers and kayakers.

The bloom, which stretches roughly 300 miles from Newport, Ore., north to the Canadian border, still persists, though it's a shadow of its September and October peak.

Whipped by waves and storms, the microscopic phytoplankton, which had turned the ocean a rust color, broke apart, releasing toxins and creating a meringue-like foam that coated the feathers of birds like spilled oil. Up to 10,000 birds died of hypothermia in September, and researchers are still trying to come up with a count for October.

Researchers are also checking reports that surfers and kayakers who came in contact with the foam may have suffered cold-like symptoms, including temporary loss of smell and taste. The toxins also may have become aerosolized and affected beachcombers. In another strange twist, pathologists performing necropsies found that some of the birds lacked normal bacteria in their stomachs and other internal organs.

"It's definitely a warning sign of something," said Julia Parrish, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington. "We don't know what."

A new program from Google is helping environmentalists see the forest for the trees. Literally.

In Copenhagen on Thursday, the Internet giant launched a new technology that will allow governments, environmentalists and others to observe and measure on a global scale how the Earth's forests are changing. Google worked with the Carnegie Institution for Science and with Imazon, a non-profit research institution dedicated to sustainable development in the Amazon, to bring the project to life.

Using the "Google Cloud," the company's system of networked computers and computing power, the technology will be able to analyze deforestation and detect illegal logging in seconds, the company says. Indeed, in addition to helping scientists, it could also be a potential boon to local law enforcement. It will also lower the cost for nations to monitor and thereby protect their forests by providing an online platform to access and analyze the data collected. Google points out that Google Earth already allows people to view deforestation, but up until now there has been no way to measure the destructive activity.

"We hope this technology will help stop the destruction of the world's rapidly-disappearing forests," said Rebecca Moore, engineering manager, and Dr. Amy Luers, environment manager, of Google in a company blog post. The company is currently testing the service, but plans to making it more broadly available over the next year as a not-for-profit service.

The northern trade winds of the Canary Islands have long tempted daredevil windsurfers, but now the gusts rising up to 33 miles per hour are attracting giant wind turbines and the millions of euros behind them.

With their blades whirling, the 55 turbines that stand beyond the gray pebble beach of Pozo Izquierdo are stark, white symbols of a growing industry and the potential for abundant clean energy -- and corruption.

The town of Santa Lucía Tirajana, host to the annual Grand Slam windsurfing championships, was struck this year with gale force. A yearlong investigation by the Guardia Civil -- Spanish gendarmerie -- turned up irregularities in a plan to build a new wind park. Now the mayor, five town officials and two wind park developers are fighting criminal charges that include influence peddling, misuse of public office, misappropriation of land and bribery. The motivation? Up to €40 million in European Union subsidies.

This investigation and others taking place in Europe and the United States have shed light on the sometimes freewheeling approach of the fast-evolving wind energy industry. Stoking the frenzy in Europe is the vast revenue available through a variety of subsidies, including the European Union's farm subsidy system, which distributes more than €50 billion, or $73 billion, a year to farmers, corporate agribusiness and rural development projects.

As news spread around the conference centre, activists chanted "We stand with Africa - Kyoto targets now".

Informal talks continue, and the UN climate convention head said the formal agenda should resume in the afternoon.

Blocs representing poor countries vulnerable to climate change have been adamant that rich nations must commit to emission cuts beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.

But the EU and the developed world in general has promoted the idea of an entirely new agreement, replacing the protocol.

Europe's small-scale wine producers, usually in competition with one another, have come together to fight what they see as the two biggest threats to their industry: the EU and multinational corporations.  

In France they're called vignerons, in Italy, vignaioli: small-scale wine producers who do everything from growing and harvesting the grapes to transforming them into wine in their cellars, then bottling and selling it.

 

But, throughout Europe, the future of these artisan winemakers is under threat for a variety of reasons.

 

In an attempt to address their problems and come up with some common solutions, the Slow Food organization invited winemakers from across the continent to participate in a three-day meeting of Vignerons d'Europe.

 

Over 700 artisan wine producers and enologists from 16 European countries met in the Tuscan spa town of Montecatini Terme last weekend to compare ideas and experiences.

Last night, we started seeing some Tweets from Google employees and others about a new Android-powered Google phone that was apparently handed out at an "all hands" meeting. Now Google is confirming that it is indeed "dogfood" testing a new Android device with employees around the world.

But this isn't just another Android phone. Very trustworthy sources who have seen the phone say that it is the Google Phone we first wrote about last month (despite the uninformed saying we were dreaming). It will be branded Google and sold by Google as an unlocked phone, which could change everything. As we wrote in our original post:

Google is building their own branded phone that they'll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won't be any negotiation or compromise over the phone's design of features - Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google's pure vision of what a phone should be.

The phone itself is being built by HTC, with a lot of input from Google. It seems to be a tailored version of the HTC Passion or the related HD2 (Unlocker scored some leaked pictures back in October which are of the same phone). Update: Here is a more recent picture.

Gadget Lab Hardware News and Reviews DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes

• By Priya Ganapati
• December 11, 2009  | 
• 7:42 pm  | 
• Categories: Hacks, Mods and DIY

For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC.

Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products.

So over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that's fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he's done, software on Reetz's computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn't automated-you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it's fast and inexpensive.

"The hardware is ridiculously simple as long as you are not demanding archival quality," he says. "A dumpster full of building materials, really cheap cameras and outrageous textbook prices was all I needed to do it."

Reetz went on to upload a 79-step how-to guide for building a book scanner (.pdf). The guide has sparked more than 400 comments. It has also spawned a website, DIYbookscanner.org, where more than 50 independent book scanners spread across countries such as Indonesia, Russia and Britain have contributed hardware refinements and software programs.

Ms Jess Hurd, a well known and highly respected photojournalist has made a formal complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (`IPCC') after officers from the Metropolitan Police Service stopped her under terrorist legislation when she was working in a professional capacity covering a wedding on 10th December 2008 at the Ramada Hotel in London Docklands.  Despite the officers being fully aware of her status as an accredited photo journalist and Ms Hurd explaining her presence and offering her identifying Press Card, she was still questioned and her footage viewed by officers, purportedly interested in her as a potential terrorist.

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Ms Hurd's camera was forcibly taken from her by the officer, despite her protests that there were safeguards in place to ensure a free press.  The officer's response was: "We can do anything under the terrorism act".

Paging Marco!  Video of what appears to be a reversing spiral starts at about 1'00" in. About the only thing I could recognize in the talk was "UFO". China will not be outdone, I guess. And they saw it first, if this is to be believed.

FIRST UFO INCIDENT FOR OUR COUNTRY
UFO incident causes sensation throughout half of China
Long Ruyi
It was a clear, brightly starlit night, on 24 July 1981, in southwest and northwest China as well as a large area of southern and southcentral China. The Milky Way slanted across the night sky and there
was no moon. Suddenly at 2238 hours, a strange star-shaped bright spot was sighted by a large number of people in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces when it appeared in the sky to the north. The glimmer became
brighter, began to oscillate and then a cloud-like band of light formed around the circumference of the bright spot. The huge spiral shaped UFO with its bright silver color lighting up the cloudless
night sky was an especially striking, magnificent and grand sight in contrast with the star-studded sky. In the brief six or seven minutes from its appearance to its disappearance, some 10,000,000 people simultaneously witnessed this extraordinary sight in the night sky., In the first few month after the incident occurred, approximately 40 newspapers* periodicals, and radio stations have published and
broadcast some 70 news reports and analytical research articles concerning this incident. The New China News Agency transmitted this information to the entire world and the Hong Kong press continues to print reports with impressive layouts. The U. S. Center for UFO research in Illinois has also followed this event with great interest. According to the Chinese Association for UFO Research, such a huge spiral UFO has occurred at least three times in the last four years over northwest China. During the inquiry into these matters, three main viewpoints have been formed: "the meteor theory", "the aircraft theory", and "the flying saucer theory".

The beer was made with grains descended from barley that spent five months in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. The very limited results, just 250 precious six-packs, will be sold through a lottery for 10,000 yen ($110) each. But only people living in Japan are eligible. Sigh.

Why are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okayama University and presumably Russia's space agency Roscosmos aiding this scheme? Well, science of course. And charity.

"This beer will be sold for charity, to contribute to the promotion of science education for children and the development of space science research in Japan and Russia, through donation of all proceeds to Okayama University," Sapporo stated in a press release Dec. 3.

And that sounds nice. But I think the real reason is: Space Beer!

Also, what will astronauts drink on future extended spaceflight missions? They can't take multiple years' worth of beer with them, so clearly they will have to brew it themselves. But what about the hops, you say? Don't worry, those were launched into space in August. Super Space Beer!

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shocked leaders at an EU summit on Friday by sending them doodles showing women's underwear through the ages.

He passed round his etchings of bloomers and thongs as the leaders discussed climate change at the meeting in Brussels.

[...]

It is understood the rude drawings passed across Mr Brown's desk, but it is believed he ignored them.

Mr Berlusconi, 73, started doodling as the leaders discussed giving more money to help poorer nations combat the effects of climate change.

At first, the other leaders thought he was making his own calculations with a view to taking part in the complex talks. Then they realised he was sketching women's underwear.

His vulgar prank caused titters among some, but indignation among others who passed them back to him.

Rrrrrring
Timmay: O HAI
Bandit: Take my failout munny, plz
Timmay: LOL, U NO CAN HAZ UR INDEPINDINS, U NOT EVEN HAZ KWARTERLEE INCOMEZ
Bandit: Srry
Timmay: GTFO