The collectif antilibérale makes the excellent point that there is no problem with the appointments to the new jobs created by the Lisbon treaty. Two things will control their in-trays, after all - the first is the job of getting a major new institution, the EU external action service, operating and building up its credibility and budget-attracting power, and the second is the eternal one of seeking consensus between the major powers, institutions, and interest groups in a diverse confederation with a small central government.

If the EU has an effective diplomatic service and at least a rough consensus on policy, it can't help but be listened to - it's too important for this not to be the case. But if the member states, the institutions, and the interests that underly them don't have a minimum degree of consensus, or the administrative machine doesn't work, it won't be - and it won't matter who gets the job. And, of course, a major reason for the top level changes in the Lisbon treaty is to make it easier to achieve political consensus within the Union.

The Lisbon Treaty introduces a new form of public participation in European Union policy shaping, the European citizens' initiative, which enables one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States to call directly on the European Commission to bring forward an initiative of interest to them in an area of EU competence.

Before citizens can start exercising this new right, a few ground rules and procedures have to be laid down in an EU regulation.

Given the importance of this new tool for citizens, civil society and stakeholders across the EU, the Commission has opened a broad public consultation in order to seek the views of all interested parties on how the citizens' initiative should work in practice.

The scandal drags on over what exactly happened on that night in September when a German soldier called in a deadly air strike in Afghanistan. The German press is scathing in its criticism of the government's handling of the incident and most papers blame the debacle on Berlin's reluctance to admit it is at war.

It is a scandal that has already claimed three scalps and that refuses to go away. The repercussions of an air strike called in by a German officer in Afghanistan in early September are still being felt in Berlin. With new details emerging by the day of the circumstances surrounding the attack which killed up to 140 people, including civilians, German Defense Minister Karl-Theoder zu Guttenberg is coming under pressure to reveal exactly what he knows about the air strike.

Colonel Georg Klein called in the strike on Sept. 4 after two tankers had been captured by the Taliban not far from a German military base. A classified NATO report obtained by SPIEGEL states that the Klein's real target was the Taliban who had hijacked the vehicles rather than the tankers themselves.

It's funny to see this roundup given that the rules of engagement for the Americans who carried out the bombardment (or ISAF at large) specify that close air support is to be used only in case troops are under fire, following the new COIN rules set out by McChrystal.

Moldovan protesters against alleged election fraud in April were subjected to torture, ill treatment and even beaten to death, but prosecutors and judges failed to follow up on police brutality, the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, has said.

The council's report is based on a fact-finding mission carried out in July by experts from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), a specialised arm of the Strasbourg-based body of which Moldova is a member.

It was released on Monday (14 December), after the current pro-European government in Chisinau agreed to its publication.

Turnout in an "informal" referendum on 13 December on whether wealthy Catalonia should secede from Spain fell short of organisers' hopes, but they said enough voters showed up to energise their separatist campaign.

About 30% of 700,000 eligible voters in 170 towns and villages in the region's Catalan-language-speaking heartland voted on the question of whether Catalonia should become an independent state within the European Union, organisers said.

This was below the 40% target initially mentioned by leaders of the campaign, which aims to put pressure on Catalonia's biggest political parties to call for a real referendum on secession in the future.

Civil servants working for the Council of Ministers are on strike this morning, but the industrial action over pay has not impeded the meeting of member states' fisheries ministers.

The staff unions staged a demonstration today in the atrium of the Council's Justus Lipsius building in Brussels to protest against the refusal by national governments to approve a 3.7% pay rise for EU staff.

The Council staff were joined by civil servants from the European Commission and the European Parliament, whose staff are not on strike, though they have given formal notice of their intention to strike. Around 1,000 people attended this morning's rally.

The Swedish EU Presidency's proposals for a new justice and home affairs agenda, adopted by European heads of state and government at their meeting in Brussels last week (10-11 December), should lead to much-needed action in areas such as immigration and asylum, experts told EurActiv.

The final draft of the programme was described by a European Commission official as the broadest ever "roadmap" of its kind.

The point was echoed by UK Socialist MEP Claude Moraes, who said that unlike its Tampere and Hague predecessors, the Stockholm blueprint covers "the entire JHA area".

President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that France would take out a loan to finance a 35-billion-euro spending spree aimed at boosting competitiveness and funding the best universities in the world.

"Today, we must prepare France for the challenges of tomorrow so that our country can fully benefit from the recovery, so that it is stronger, more competitive, so that it creates more jobs," he said.

Sarkozy argued that by borrowing and spending 35 billion euros (52 billion dollars), France could generate 60 billion euros' worth of state and private investments and leave its year-long recession in better shape than before.

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, will stay in hospital for at least one more day after being hit in the face when a statuette of Milan cathedral was thrown at him during a political rally yesterday.

A medical bulletin issued by the San Raffaele hospital in Milan confirmed that Berlusconi sustained a broken nose and two broken teeth.

It said he was taking antibiotics and painkillers because the pain was "persistent" and he was having difficulty eating.

His personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, said surgery would not be necessary but Berlusconi would remain in hospital until at least tomorrow.

The attack happened as the 73-year-old Italian leader signed autographs and greeted the crowd outside the cathedral.

He is an image-conscious leader who reigns in a media whirlwind of opinion pollsters, special advisers and Facebook pages. But the visibility of Nicolas Sarkozy's "omnipresidency" comes with a price tag. The communications budget of the Elysée palace will be €7.5m (£6.7m) by the end of this year.

The estimate, calculated by an investigation at Le Parisien newspaper and confirmed by the Elysée, includes spending on media preparations, opinion polls and website development. France's official financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, is expected to comb through the figures at the beginning of next year.

While the largest chunk of the budget - €2.9m - goes on paying the salaries of the 51 people who work under the umbrella of communications for Sarkozy, the next biggest amount is spent on the commissioning and analysis of opinion polls, a practice that costs almost €1.9m and has already proved controversial this year.

The Conservatives' lead over Labour has been reduced to single figures, a new Guardian/ICM poll shows today, increasing the pressure on Gordon Brown to call an early general election.

While the nine-point lead for the Tories would probably still give David Cameron a narrow Commons majority, it will reinforce the view in both major party leaders' camps that the Tories can still be deprived of victory. This is the first Guardian/ICM poll - indeed the first by ICM for any newspaper - since December 2008 to give the Tories less than a double-digit lead.

After 12 months of unbroken Conservative dominance in the polls, today's figures - showing the Tories on 40%, down two, Labour on 31%, up two, and the Liberal Democrats on 18% - are likely to increase calls for Brown to go to the country on 25 March next year, rather than the 6 May polling day that most at Westminster have been expecting.

When the opposition believes they can profit from institutional paralysis, is there any point in seeking compromise positions? I guess Obama faces the same dilemma with the Republicans.

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 Circle line never has been nor is ever likely to be London's best-loved Underground route. But at least until yesterday, it was approximately circular.

[...]

To add to the perplexity, Transport for London (TfL) insists on calling the trains that are going by the long route to Hammersmith "eastbound", although they go south, west and north until they get to Liverpool Street, and then start travelling west. "Westbound" trains between Tower Hill and Gloucester Road, are, in fact, heading east, and "eastbound" trains are heading west. Clear enough? However, there is a reassuring message on the TfL website, telling you that: "It will be easier to plan your journey as trains to and from particular stations will now always stop at the same platform."

Nadine Morano wants her young Muslims clean and tidy

(As an aside, I still need to figure out how to get tables that look as good as the ones I usually see, and how not to have a huge gap between the earlier link and the table).

Of course, none of that is accidental, it is an electoral ploy to get the far-right, Sarko's true constituency, to the urns. But it's terrible to see that France is turning into USA.

Look, what this bulldog (bullbitch should I say?) is barking for wouldn't be asked of a non-Muslim. Should I mention the unemployment rate for youth? That my brother speaks Verlan (yes, it annoys me as a lover of well spoken languages, French included, but how is that relevant to religion or citizenship?), that no-one ever complained that top French tennis players often wear their caps back to front.
We are, may I remind you, talking about the Secretary of State for Family and Solidarity

She was answering a young man asking about the compatibility of Islam with the Republic. Knowing how UMP meetings are organised these days, you can be certain that:
-The man was a UMP militant
-He was requested to ask the question.

And see the Maurice Barrès symbol: he supported the imprisonment of clearly innocent capitaine Dreyfus, who was chosen as a scapegoat because he was a Jew, and is quoted "the nation is stronger in the soul of a rooted than in that of an uprooted". So that's what it's all about. Justice does not matter, but what we are after are people who are not curious of the rest of the world, who feel threatened (and therefore bully) anyone who is different.

And it's now all about Islam. Hello, 50 years ago the ancestors of UMP claimed that Algeria (very Muslim Algeria) WAS France. France is supposed to be secular, so what's with the constant religious reference.

Further in the article, we learn that Justice (Justice!) Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie wants to prevent someone from being French if his wife is fully veiled. So they see Islam as such a disease that now it extends beyond the person to the immediate family. Nice.

Sarkozy is the worst thing to happen to France since 1944. Maybe I'll make that statement into my signature.

"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. - Galbraith"

Negotiations at the UN climate summit have resumed after developing countries had earlier withdrawn their co-operation from the talks in Copenhagen.

Delegates were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

The G77-China bloc said the organisers had been "undemocratic", accusing them of advancing rich nations' interests.

Rich nations have promoted the idea of a new agreement, replacing Kyoto.

Industry has struggled to sway UN climate talks in Copenhagen because of a remote negotiating process and a lobby split between climate policy winners and losers, executives said on Friday (11 December).

UN talks in Copenhagen are meant to agree the outline of a new treaty, including sharp cuts in carbon emissions, at a forum which does not involve business directly.

Senior executives met at a separate location several miles from the 7-18 December UN talks, and accepted that the business lobby was split on climate action which could disadvantage energy-intensive sectors including cement and power generation.

Denmark may be breaching European law, Danish human rights groups claimed tonight as they called for their government to launch an immediate inquiry after police in Copenhagen used controversial kettling and mass preventative arrest tactics for the third day running.

Following the arrest of 68 people on Friday, and 958 yesterday on Saturday, police today arrested 257 demonstrators, "kettling" a section of a march near Osterport station, and as they had done on Saturday, cuffed the protesters and put them onto buses transporting them to a detention centre.

As the COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen carries on into its second week, accounts were emerging of the treatment of the detainees on Saturday night - 945 of them had been released by this morning, with just 13 remaining in custody.

The European Union has probably lost at least €5bn (£4.5bn) to VAT fraud related to carbon trading and there is a risk that the criminals will now shift their attention to Europe's electricity and gas markets, according to Europol.

The news will cause further embarrassment for European governments negotiating at the Copenhagen climate summit and trying to persuade other parts of the world to sign up to carbon trading as a way of reducing emissions.

The Guardian recently revealed that the Danish government had been forced, on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, to rush through an emergency law making it impossible for criminal gangs to reclaim huge amounts of VAT on fraudulent trades they were making on Europe's various carbon exchanges.

Reporting from Copenhagen - International negotiators are quietly making progress here on steps to reduce "stealth" pollutants that contribute to climate change, including soot, refrigerants and methane gas, which together account for nearly as much greenhouse gas pollution as carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide, of course, is the poster gas for global warming. Disagreements over how to reduce its emission from cars, factories and power plants have dominated the Copenhagen climate talks so far.

But carbon dioxide accounts for only half the world's greenhouse gas emissions. And while top leaders postured and negotiated over a host of issues related to carbon emissions in the first week of the summit here, behind the scenes diplomats have worked toward compromises on a few simple strategies to reduce the other pollutants that cause global warming.

Those sources include so-called black carbon, soot from incompletely burned fossil fuels and biomass, including that produced by ships and cooking stoves that collects in the atmosphere and on ice and prevents sunlight from being reflected back into space; hydrofluorocarbon chemicals, known as HFCs, used in refrigerators and air conditioners worldwide; and methane, which emanates from coal mines and landfills.

Many scientists and environmentalists say reducing the "forgotten 50%" of pollutants will be faster, easier and substantially cheaper than cutting carbon dioxide, and could buy the world time in its climate clock race.

The restriction was announced today outside the Copenhagen conference center after several thousand accredited NGO conference delegates, including three from the National Center for Public Policy Research, waited outside for eight hours or longer in 32-degree F temperatures for admission.

NGOs apparently are being banned because the United Nations accredited 45,000 people for a building with a capacity of 15,000, although the stated reason was "security concerns." The "security concerns" may be related to the fact that, after waiting several hours in the cold, delegations began to chant, "Let us in! Let us in!"

"To be an 'accredited' or 'admitted' NGO to a COP conference, NGOs must apply months in advance, and typically only make travel plans to attend after receiving complete credentials from the United Nations," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an accredited COP-15 NGO organization that is as of now banned from the conference. "To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 people is insane, although the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence."

Maybe the UN should revoke the accreditation of 2/3 of the world's population, thereby solving the problem of overpopulation.

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

Oracle offered the EU's antitrust regulator a set of new terms over the weekend intended to curry favour for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. But sources close to the deal say Oracle's "public remedies" are unlikely to satisfy the EU's original objections to the deal.

At a two-day hearing in Brussels last week, Oracle, alongside customers such as mobile phone maker Ericsson, made its case for the Sun deal to go ahead.

The EU executive issued a statement of objections to Oracle's planned acquisition in mid-November, arguing that the group is already a dominant database distributor and that its potential ownership of MySQL would distort the market.

The European Commission today approved aid given by the UK government to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) during the financial crisis.

The decision means that RBS will not have to pay back the £60 billion-£100bn (€67bn-€111bn) that the Commission estimates it received, the largest amount that any government has given a single company in the history of the EU.

RBS was rescued by the UK government, and part-nationalised, in October 2008 after a collapse in its share price.

Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich governing emirate of the United Arab Emirates, surprised investors on Monday by pledging to provide $10 billion to Dubai, easing fears about an outright debt default by the smaller, struggling emirate.

The move will allow repayment of a $4.1 billion bond issued by Nakheel, a property developer owned by Dubai World, the emirate's flagship investment company and creator of the iconic palm-shaped islands that have come to epitomize Dubai's construction boom. The bond matured Monday.

Stock markets in Europe, Asia and the United States rose on the announcement. In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, stocks of beaten down banks and real estate com panies rallied sharply.

Greece will use its worst debt crisis in decades to rebuild itself, Prime Minister George Papandreou pledgedtonight as he unveiled reforms to set right the parlous state of the nation's public finances.

In a televised address in which he acknowledged the "reasonable concerns" that the economy has caused for Greece's EU partners, Papandreou outlined "a road map" of change to shore up competitiveness, combat corruption, crack down on tax evasion and overhaul the public sector.

"There are certain moments in the history of a nation when the choices made define the decades to come," the socialist leader said. "Today is such a moment. It is time to address and resolve, once and for all, deep-rooted problems that are holding the nation back."

video

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

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

John Williams, who runs the popular counter government data manipulation site Shadowstats, has thrown down the gauntlet to deflationists, and in an extensive report concludes that the probability of a hyperinflationary episode in America over the next year has reached critical levels. While the debate between deflationists and (hyper)inflationists has been a long and painful one, numerous events set off in motion by the Bernanke Fed (as a direct legacy of the Greenspan multi-decade period of cheap and boundless credit) may have well cast America as the unwilling protagonist in the sequel of the failed monetary policy economic experiment better known as Zimbabwe.

Williams does not mince his words:

   The U.S. economic and systemic solvency crises of the last two years are just precursors to a Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. Such will reflect a complete collapse in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity, a collapse in the U.S. financial system as we know it, and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment. The current U.S. financial markets, financial system and economy remain highly unstable and vulnerable to unexpected shocks. The Federal Reserve is dedicated to preventing deflation, to debasing the U.S. dollar. The results of those efforts are being seen in tentative selling pressures against the U.S. currency and in the rallying price of gold.

....

The crises have been generated out of and are centered on the United States financial system, triggered by the collapse of debt excesses actively encouraged by the Greenspan Federal Reserve. Recognizing that the U.S. economy was sagging under the weight of structural changes created by government trade, regulatory and social policies -- policies that limited real consumer income growth -- Mr. Greenspan played along with the political and banking systems. He made policy decisions to steal economic activity from the future, fueling economic growth of the last decade largely through debt expansion.

The Greenspan Fed pushed for ever-greater systemic leverage, including the happy acceptance of new financial products, which included instruments of mis-packaged lending risks, designed for consumption by global entities that openly did not understand the nature of the risks being taken. Complicit in this broad malfeasance was the U.S. government, including both major political parties in successive Administrations and Congresses.

The continuing controversy over the American Christian right's connection to a new law in Uganda giving the death penalty to gays may not on its surface seem like a European issue. After all this is a America-Africa story right? But watch with amazement as I find the European connection!

There is actually a third player in this story: the Anglican church. In fact this entire episode is an illustration of the continuing conflict between American evangelicals and British Anglicans in a new "scramble for Africa" - as the former works tirelessly to replace the latter as the spiritual coloniser of that "magnificent African cake."

The new legislation in Uganda which is about to be adopted mandates life in prison for gays, death by hanging for gays with HIV, and 3 years in prison for anyone who knows of a gay but does not alert the police. The introduction of the legislation follows the heavy infiltration of that country by American anti-gay Christian evangelical groups. They have sent missionaries to talk to that country's parliament about the evils of homosexuality. Emissaries to Uganda to talk about the American brand of evangelical Christianity have included Rick Warren, the hugely popular American evangelist who was selected by Barack Obama to deliver the national prayer at his inauguration.

Clashes across Pakistan's northwest have killed 16 Taliban militants and two soldiers, the army said Monday, as a top US general met with officials to discuss the battle against extremists.

US General David Petraeus is in Pakistan for talks on President Barack Obama's new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, which Washington says depends heavily on Pakistan dismantling militant sanctuaries along the border.

Obama's administration is pressuring Islamabad to do more to tackle Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the northwest who cross over into Afghanistan, but the country is also battling a surging homegrown insurgency.

The intended destination of a plane carrying 35 tonnes of arms from North Korea and impounded in Thailand was tonightstill unclear, with none of the governments apparently linked to the seized flight admitting any responsibility for its cargo. Ukraine today said it had launched an investigation into the Ilyushin-76 aircraft, amid speculation it may have been transporting arms to Iran as part of an illegal North Korean smuggling network used to fund North Korea's banned nuclear weapons programme.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Demands by the United States for Pakistan to crack down on the strongest Taliban warrior in Afghanistan, Siraj Haqqani, whose fighters pose the biggest threat to American forces, have been rebuffed by the Pakistani military, according to Pakistani military officials and diplomats.

The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan's spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama's surge, which envisions drawing down American forces beginning in mid-2011.

The demands, first made by senior American officials before President Obama's Afghanistan speech and repeated many times since, were renewed in a written demarche delivered in recent days by the United States Embassy to the head of the Pakistani military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, according to American officials. Gen. David Petraeus followed up on Monday during a visit to Islamabad.

The demands have been accompanied by strong suggestions that if the Pakistanis cannot take care of the problem, including dismantling the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, then the Americans will by resorting to broader and more frequent drone strikes in Pakistan.

A do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do situation. Particularly the US experience illustrates how fast intelligence assets can turn into liabilities.

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

Officials have launched a search for Eritrea's national football team after the players reportedly failed to return home following a tournament in Kenya.

The Eritreans were knocked out of the Cecafa competition for East and Central African nations last week.

But when the team plane landed back home, it was reportedly only carrying the coach and an official.

The government, which is frequently accused of repression, denies any players are missing.

But the country's football federation confirmed to Cecafa head Nicholas Musonye that the players had not returned.

WASHINGTON -- Two nonprofit groups say that computer technicians have found 22 million White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush.

The two groups say the electronic messages were previously mislabeled and effectively lost.

An announcement today by the two groups is the latest development in a controversy that surrounded the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record-keeping system.

The two private organizations -- the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- say they are settling lawsuits that they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007.

The critical step toward fulfilling President Obama's pledge to shut the Guantanamo detention center will be announced Tuesday, said the official, who reported that Obama has ordered the acquisition of the eight-year-old Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles northwest of Chicago.

Obama made the move despite the objections of Republicans in Congress and in Illinois, where critics say the transfer of prisoners -- some for indefinite detention, some for trial -- could make the state a target for terrorists. Rep. Mark Kirk has called the move "an unnecessary risk."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that a bipartisan majority in Congress "already rejected bringing terrorists to U.S. soil for long-term detention."

Millions of households across America are taking a first step into the world of the "smart grid," as their power companies install meters that can tell them how much electricity they are using hour by hour -- and sometimes, appliance by appliance. But not everyone is happy about it.

Customers in California are in open revolt, and officials in Connecticut and Texas are questioning whether the rush to install meters benefits the public.

Some consumers argue that the meters are logging far more kilowatt hours than they believe they are using. And many find it unfair that they will begin to pay immediately for the new meters through higher rates, when the promised savings could be years away.

The European Union reached agreement on Monday to put an end to a decades-long trade dispute with Latin American and other smaller producers over tariffs on banana imports, diplomats said.

"Everybody is finally on board and an initialling of the deal is scheduled for Tuesday," one diplomat with direct knowledge of the negotiations told Reuters.

The deal resolves the world's longest-running trade dispute, which involves banana exporters in Latin America and other regions challenging the EU's preferential treatment of producers in the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific region.

As global leaders and top scientists in Copenhagen debate how to deal with climate change, farmers in flood-prone areas of northern India are taking it into their own hands to adapt to shifts in the weather.

For decades, people of Uttar Pradesh, whose population is more than half that of the United States, have been witnessing erratic weather, including increasingly intense rainfall over short periods of time.

The rain, combined with heavy mountain run-off from nearby Nepal, which is also seeing heavier-than-usual rains, has inundated villages, towns and cities in the region.

An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia's Museum Victoria, told BBC News: "I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time."

EL ALTO, Bolivia -- When the tap across from her mud-walled home dried up in September, Celia Cruz stopped making soups and scaled back washing for her family of five. She began daily pilgrimages to better-off neighborhoods, hoping to find water there.

Though she has lived here for a decade and her husband, a construction worker, makes a decent wage, money cannot buy water.

"I'm thinking of moving back to the countryside; what else can I do?" said Ms. Cruz, 33, wearing traditional braids and a long tiered skirt as she surveyed a courtyard dotted with piglets, bags of potatoes and an ancient red Datsun. "Two years ago this was never a problem. But if there's not water, you can't live."

The glaciers that have long provided water and electricity to this part of Bolivia are melting and disappearing, victims of global warming, most scientists say.

If the water problems are not solved, El Alto, a poor sister city of La Paz, could perhaps be the first large urban casualty of climate change. A World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people.

Watch me debate Bjorn Lomborg over responses to climate change on Fareed Zakaria's show.

It used to be that computer viruses attacked only your hard drive. Now they attack your dignity.

Malicious programs are rampaging through Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, spreading themselves by taking over people's accounts and sending out messages to all of their friends and followers. The result is that people are inadvertently telling their co-workers and loved ones how to raise their I.Q.'s or make money instantly, or urging them to watch an awesome new video in which they star.

"I wonder what people are thinking of me right now?" said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoria's Secret.

Ferrari have insisted they will not prevent Michael Schumacher making a Formula One return with another team.

The seven-time world champion has been a consultant for Ferrari since retiring in 2006 and said recently he would continue for another three years.

But the 40-year-old has been linked with a move to Mercedes and Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said Schumacher's role was "not binding".

He added: "If he takes another road our agreement will no longer be valid."