Israel has reacted angrily to the issuing by a British court of an arrest warrant for the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.

The warrant, granted by a London court on Saturday, was revoked on Monday when it was found Ms Livni was not visiting the UK.

Ms Livni was foreign minister during Israel's Gaza assault last winter.

It is the first time a UK court has issued a warrant for the arrest of a former Israeli minister.

Ms Livni said the court had been "abused" by the Palestinian plaintiffs who requested the warrant.

The Irish parliament is to review its rules of conduct after a lawmaker swore heavily during a budget debate.

MP Paul Gogarty of the Green Party - a junior partner in the Irish government - used the F-word after being heckled by the Labour opposition.

He immediately apologised for the rant, which he admitted was "the most unparliamentary language".

It has emerged that the F-word is not on the list of banned words, unlike brat, buffoon, rat and scumbag.

The number of Chinook helicopters to support British troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere is to increase from 38 to 70, and the historic RAF base at Cottesmore, in Rutland, will close as part of measures being announced by the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, today.

The number of RAF personnel and civilians will be cut, Harriers from Cottesmore will be moved to nearby RAF Wittering, and the number of Harriers and Tornado jets will be reduced. These are the key elements of the package, to be unveiled in the Commons, which will cut an estimated £1.5bn from the RAF's existing expenditure.

However, much more - £6bn in total - will be spent on helicopters, defence officials say.

Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the Iraq inquiry, cut the live video of today's hearings, raising fears that he is suppressing evidence on grounds of embarrassment rather that any damage to national security.

"I interrupted the broadcast because of a mention of sensitive information," he said after hearing evidence from Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador before the invasion and special envoy in Baghdad afterwards.

The broadcast was stopped as Greenstock was speaking about how the US drew up plans on the basis of a "best-case scenario" in Iraq. Immediately before being cut off he said: "When I talked to other members of the American team, when I talked informally to the military, to the intelligence agencies, to other people who were operating, I found a very much more gloomy prognosis of what was going on than I felt or understood ambassador Bremer [Paul Bremer, the chief US civil administrator in Baghdad] was reporting back to the Pentagon."

The man arrested over the attack that left Silvio Berlusconi with a broken nose and two broken teeth has apologised to the Italian prime minister.

In a letter sent through his lawyers on Tuesday, 42-year-old Massimo Tartiglia said that the assault with a souvenir statuette was a "superficial, cowardly and inconsiderate act".

"I don't recognise myself," Tartaglia, who is reported to have a history of mental illness, said.

He said he "acted alone [with no] form of militancy or political affiliation."

TONY Blair deployed "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people over the war in Iraq, one of his top law officers has said. Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions at the time of the invasion, launched a devastating attack on the former prime minister, accusing him of acting like a "narcissist" as he tried to justify his actions.

Mr Blair had  exhibited "sycophancy" towards Washington in the run up to the war in March 2003, Sir Ken said.

His intervention came after Mr Blair, who is due to give evidence in the new year to the Chilcot inquiry, defended his actions in a weekend television interview with former This Morning host Fern Britton.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has unveiled details of a 35-billion-euro "grand loan" that will be invested in green technologies and universities in a bid to boost the national economy.

AFP - 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.

Bananas will likely be a few cents cheaper for European shoppers as a result of the settlement of the 'banana war' between Latin American banana exporters and the EU.  

The longest trade dispute between the European Union and Latin American countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO) was settled on Tuesday.

Since 1993, the EU had discriminated against Latin American growers, favoring bananas from former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific - a bloc known as the ACP states.

The so-called "banana dispute" focused on the import tariffs on bananas and other tropical fruits that the EU had imposed on Latin American banana imports, while fruit from former European colonies in ACP countries came to Europe tariff-free.

The European Union confirmed on Tuesday that it had clinched a deal with Latin American countries to end a long-running trade war over banana tariffs.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Leaders of the four largest political groups in the European Parliament on Tuesday (15 December) called for transparency and complete information about the commissioner candidates ahead of the January hearings, with the Bulgarian nominee emerging as the most controversial.

Microphones in the European Parliament are ready for the new commissioners hearings

"The hearings are a very powerful tool in the hands of the Parliament to check the skills and competences of commissioner candidates," Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said at a press conference.

The three-hour hearings for each of the 26 commissioner candidates are to begin on 11 January and take place in Brussels and Strasbourg in the parliamentary committees dealing with topics related to the nominee's portfolio.

MEPs sitting in the specialised committees can push for a reshuffle of candidates or even for some competences to be given from one to another portfolio, if they are not "properly structured," said Mr Schulz.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU's newest member states are under-represented in the bloc's diplomatic service and among senior EU commission officials, Estonian president Toomas Ilves has said, urging the union's new leadership to alter the situation.

"So as not to be subjective, let's look at the figures. Out of 158 so-called European Union embassies, only one is headed by a diplomat from a new member state," Mr Ilves said in an interview with Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on Monday (14 December).

The Estonian president (right) is unhappy about the under-representation of his region

Mr Ilves was referring to Herman Janos, the head of the EU's delegation to Norway since spring this year. The 57-year old is a Hungarian diplomat who studied in Budapest and in the Soviet Union, graduating in 1975 from the Moscow State University for International Relations.

The rest of the EU's top diplomats around the world come primarily from France, Germany, the UK and Spain. A pattern is visible so that EU delegations in former French colonies such as the Ivory Coast or Algeria are headed by French nationals, while Spaniards are sent to Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Colombia.

Sweden's EU Presidency will mainly be remembered for the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, but Fredrik Reinfeldt and his team also made progress on more low-profile technical issues. Dagens Nyheter presents an inventory of the achievements of what it deems to be a globally positive six-month term in office.

Exceeding the expectations of many commentators, Sweden's EU presidency was marked by serious commitment on a number of fronts, a flexible and democratic management style, the avoidance of major setbacks, and a decision procedure that proved to be efficient, even if decision makers were not always inspired. With so much press devoted to the end of suspense on Lisbon, it is perhaps easy to overlook the Stockholm Programme (on immigration issues as well as police and civil law cooperation), the Baltic Sea Strategy and the new directives on the monitoring of European financial markets--all of which were adopted since Sweden took over in July. And while the skeptics may point to the absence of agreement on a future internal medical services market, let's not forget Iceland's successful bid to join the EU, the settlement of the maritime border dispute between Croatia and Slovenia, and the new chapter which has now been opened in accession negotiations with Turkey. In spite of what you may have been told, European enlargement has not ground to halt, and Sweden should take some credit for this positive news.

Do you pay the milkman by cheque? Slip a surprise cheque in a Christmas card to a grandson or granddaughter? Or maybe you simply don't trust direct debits when dealing with gas and electricity companies?

In the future you'll have no choice but to pay electronically, by plastic, or go online if, as expected, Britain's banks vote tomorrow to phase out the 300-year-old tradition of payment by cheque.

Cheques cost up to £1 each to process - and the number written has been falling steadily.

As recently as 2002 a typical consumer in Britain was writing 31 cheques a year, but the number fell to 14 by 2008. Big stores such as Marks & Spencer have already stopped taking cheques, and the Payments Council, which sets strategy for UK payments in Britain, says they are now used for fewer than one in 25 purchases.

A Gulf monetary union pact has been agreed by four of the six nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council at a summit in Kuwait, the country's finance minister has said.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia signed and ratified the pact on Tuesday, which will see them work towards setting up a joint central bank and implementing a single currency.

The United Arab Emirates, the Gulf's second largest economy, opted out of the union over objections to selecting the Saudi capital, Riyadh as the base for the future Gulf central bank.

Oman said it could not meet the union's prerequisites for joining at this time.

Greece's prime minister has announced a series of spending cuts to prevent the country "sinking" under $422bn of debt.

George Papandreou on Monday pledged that his government would reduce the 12.7 per cent budget deficit to under seven per cent of gross domestic product by 2011 and less than three per cent by 2013.

The deficit, which is four times the limit set by the European Union for countries that use the euro currency, has damaged Greece's image in the eyes of investors and made it more difficult and expensive for Athens to borrow money.

"Greece faces the risk of sinking under its debt," Papandreou told an audience of business and union leaders in Athens, the Greek capital.

"We are all hurt when Greece is held up as an example to be avoided in the entire European Union."

The chief executive of RBS, Stephen Hester, says political meddling is damaging the bank.

"The process of politicisation of RBS is damaging... to our business and to taxpayers' interests" he said, pointing to the fall in the bank's share price.

He was speaking after a meeting in which shareholders backed plans to enter a government insurance scheme.

The asset protection scheme means the Treasury acts as an insurer against the bank's £282bn of bad debts.

Under the terms of the support deal, the UK taxpayers' stake in RBS rises from 70% to 84% after the government invests an extra £25.5bn in the bank.

The bankrupt parent of Washington Mutual Bank asked the judge in its reorganization case to allow for an expansion of a probe into the circumstances immediately leading up to the September 2008 failure.

From the Puget Sound Business Journal:

   A filing in the Washington Mutual bankruptcy case says that new evidence supports allegations that JPMorgan Chase used access to inside information about WaMu to drive down the bank's credit rating and share price, scare away other suitors and arrange to buy the ailing Seattle bank from regulators at a bargain price.

    The 20-page motion cites hundreds of internal documents received from JPMorgan through discovery in the bankruptcy case, including emails between JPMorgan executives and other banks interested in bidding on WaMu as well as slide show presentations discussing the viability of a WaMu purchase.

    The latest motion now seeks to expand the subpoena to include regulators such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of Thrift Supervision, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, other banks that considered buying Washington Mutual, Goldman Sachs in its capacity as an adviser to WaMu, credit-rating agencies and other banks involved in lending to WaMu.

Conspiracy theories have been rampant since the S&L's failure, and WaMu's parent has been battling JPMorgan and the FDIC in multiple court venues over billions of dollars in assets.

"The Gulf monetary union pact has come into effect," said Kuwait's finance minister, Mustafa al-Shamali, speaking at a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait.

The move will give the hyper-rich club of oil exporters a petro-currency of their own, greatly increasing their influence in the global exchange and capital markets and potentially displacing the US dollar as the pricing currency for oil contracts. Between them they amount to regional superpower with a GDP of $1.2 trillion (£739bn), some 40pc of the world's proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal to that of China.

GOOG looks for subscriptions | Reuters | 15 Dec 2009

... trailing Netflix-TiVo, Hulu (GE), Fancast (Comcast), Virgin VoD etc etc....

YouTube is considering offering users the option to pay for subscriptions in a bid to encourage more media companies to license premium TV shows and movies to the popular online video site, a senior executive said.

Technology  |  Media

YouTube, which is owned by Internet search giant Google, is already known to have held talks with several major movie studios about renting movies.

Google's vice president of content partnerships, David Eun, said in an interview that some full-length shows would not be available to YouTube under its current advertising model.

"We're making some interesting bets on long-form content; not all content is accessible to us with the advertising model," Eun told Reuters, who said content partners will be able to choose what works best for them.

YouTube is keen to bulk up its licensing of full-length programs alongside the popular [gratis] short clips uploaded by users [-creators] that currently dominate [!] the site [as compared to advertisers' media content, e.g. music video, feature film trailers].

But Hollywood studios and TV companies are reluctant to cannibalize revenue streams, such as from cable TV and DVD sales, by offering premium programs for free viewing on the Web -- even under an advertising revenue-share model....

especially GOOG's PPC revenue-share model... whazzat, 95.5:0.5 on fee per hit?

PS. C- for the interface re-design.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A Democratic proposal to ban the collection of doctors' prescription records for marketing purposes is unlikely to be included as part of the Senate's overall health reform bill, a Senate staff member said on Monday....

Pharmaceutical manufacturers in particular use information on doctor's prescribing habits to better inform their drug salespeople when they visit physician offices to market certain products....

Kim Monk, a financial analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said the ban, if included, would have drawn fire from other Democrats and upset a crucial deal with the pharmaceutical industry.

Drugmakers earlier this year made an $80 billion, 10-year deal with the Obama administration and some Senate Democrats to help fund an expansion of health insurance coverage through additional taxes and certain price agreements.

"Reid has bigger policy concerns," Monk said in a research note on Friday.

The American Medical Association, which represents physicians and also backs the Democrat's overhaul agenda, also generates revenue from its collection of prescribing data and likely would have balked at the proposal's inclusion.

Time called Bernanke " the most powerful nerd on the planet."

"The story of the year was a weak economy that could have been much, much weaker. Thank the man who runs the Federal Reserve, our mild-mannered economic overlord," the article said.

"He didn't just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy."

The Obama administration is to transfer dozens of prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to a largely empty maximum security prison in Illinois over the objections of Republicans who say the move could prompt new terrorist attacks on the US.

The White House has ordered the purchase of the Thomson Correctional Centre, a state prison about 150 miles north-west of Chicago along the Mississippi river, to house the detainees as Obama seeks to fulfil a pledge to close the jail in Guantánamo, popularly known as Gitmo.

Of the 220 prisoners still held at Guantánamo, about 90 have been cleared for transfer to their own or third countries. Five are to be moved to New York for trial over the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Most of the remainder are likely to be sent to Illinois either for trial or to be held indefinitely as combatants in a continuing war, although that is likely to be open to legal challenge.

At least eight people have been killed and 40 injured in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, the Afghan capital, the country's interior ministry has said.

The blast occurred on Tuesday outside the Heetal hotel in Wazir Akbar Khan, the diplomatic district of Kabul, said Ahmed Bilal, a national security directorate officer at the scene.

"Eight people have been killed. Four are women. Four others are male and 40 other people have been wounded. It was a suicide bombing," Zamarai Bashary, an Afghan interior ministry spokesman, told AFP news agency.

Japan's prime minister has reportedly delayed until next year a decision on the controversial relocation of a US military base on the southern island of Okinawa.

The dispute over the future of the Futenma air base has strained ties between the two allies and trading partners, with the US hoping for a decision by the end of this year.

According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Yukio Hatoyama, the Japanese prime minister, has deferred making the decision until May next year.

The paper said Japan would go ahead with preparations to move the airbase but explore alternative relocation sites before making a decision among the three parties making up the ruling coalition.

The top US military commander has said he is increasingly concerned about the threat posed by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters sheltering on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.

Speaking on a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, Admiral Mike Mullen said violence in Afghanistan was likely to get worse before it gets better, with fighters holding the upper hand across about a third of Afghan provinces.

"I remain deeply concerned by the growing level of collusion between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda and other extremist groups taking refuge across the border in Pakistan," Mullen, who is chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, told reporters in Kabul.

"Getting at this network, which is now more entrenched, will be a far more difficult task than it was just one year ago."

Three US citizens accused of espionage after being detained in Iran are set to stand trial more than four months after they entered the country "illegally", Iran's foreign minister has said.

Manouchehr Mottaki told state television on Monday that the three Americans - identified as Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, had entered the country with "suspicious aims".

"Interrogation of the three Americans who have illegally entered Iran with suspicious aims is ongoing," he said.

Tomas Arita Valle, justice of the Supreme Court
Marcia Facussé, Liberal Party Congress person
Rafael Pineda Ponce, Chief of Staff to Micheletti
Gabriela Nuñez, Finance Minister
Roberto Zuniga, Budget director in Finance Ministry
Arturo Corrales, Negotiator on San Jose Accord team of Micheletti
Enrique Ortez Colindres, Foreign Minister for a few days at the beginning of the coup
Miguel Antonio Andino, administrative head of Defense Ministry

And the reasons for their "recognition"?

"These are people who have contributed to the institution [Armed Forces] and the country, and what better moment than a reunion of the high command to recognize their merits in supporting defense of democracy."

So all pretense is dropped.

...which is why it is utterly pointless to get into an argument with a wingnut over the "legitimacy" of the coup in the first place.

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

ALBANY -- The Obama administration said Tuesday that the Shinnecock Indian Nation of Long Island had met the necessary criteria for federal recognition, signaling the end of a more than 30-year court battle and clearing a path for the tribe to build a casino in New York City or its suburbs.

The decision all but assures the tribe's federal recognition, though there is still a required public comment period that will take place before final recognition is granted.

"The Shinnecock petitioner has met all seven mandatory criteria for federal acknowledgment," the Interior Department said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon.

The announcement culminates an arduous effort by the tribe, which has paid at least $1.74 million to seven different state and federal lobbying firms since 2005 as part of the recognition effort, according to public records.

Recognition for the Shinnecocks will have significant implications for the Hamptons, where the tribe is based.

Haidar has been on hunger strike in Lanzarote airport since being deported there from her home in Western Sahara on 15 November. Two days earlier she had flown back to Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara, from New York, where she had picked up the Train Foundation's Civil Courage human rights award. On her arrival in Laayoune she wrote her address on her landing card as being in "Western Sahara" rather than "Morocco". As a Saharawi, she has never recognised Moroccan sovereignty over her native land which has been occupied by Morocco in breach of international law for over 34 years. In the past Morocco has chosen to overlook her numerous "landing card protests", but on this occasion she was interrogated, stripped of her passport and expelled to the volcanic Canary Island which lies less than 80 miles off the African coast.

Spain offered to give Haidar refugee status or Spanish citizenship so she could be allowed to return home, but she rejected both options on the grounds that she did not want to become "a foreigner in her own land". According to Human Rights Watch, her forced expulsion breached Article 12 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Morocco, which makes it clear that no one can be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter their own country. In addition, by preventing her return to Western Sahara, Spanish authorities may have breached both Spanish national law and Article 2 of Protocol 4 of the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Article 12 (2) of the ICCPR also stipulates that everyone shall be free to leave any country.

On 4 December, perhaps after having been made aware of the legal situation, Spain laid on a private aircraft to carry Haidar back to Laayoune. As she boarded the plane with Agustin Santos, of the Spanish foreign ministry, it seemed as if Haidar had won a significant victory. However, celebrations among Saharawis and campaigners around the world were short-lived when it emerged that the Spanish had not received any agreement from Morocco to allow her return. In a hastily organised press conference held soon after tearful supporters had watched Haidar being stretchered back into the airport terminal, Santos claimed that Spain had attempted "to facilitate the exercise of her right to return to her country" and could do no more.

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

Three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.

Voters overwhelmingly reject the view of climate change sceptics that world leaders "are panicking about an exaggerated threat". But close to half of the electorate believes that the leaders - including Brown, who arrives at the summit today - need to worry about economic growth, too

We've long had a problem with preventative policing in the UK - it is something I have been subject to, and have campaigned against. However, the level of repressive policing displayed in arresting more than 1,000 people at the weekend in Copenhagen far exceeded anything we have experienced in this country.

I joined the march as a police observer, my aim being to monitor events and compare how the Danish police treated protesters. I was near the back of the march. There was a large contingent of people wearing black hoodies, some anarchist flags were waving, but where I was, there was no trouble. The atmosphere was good, and my friend and I commented on how lovely it was to see so few police officers on such a large demo.

Nasa satellites have weighed the water lost by the US State of California's heartland since 2003.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins which support the highly productive Central Valley have shed over 30 cubic km of water in that time.

The data comes from the Grace mission which detects changes in gravity caused by water as it cycles between the sea, the atmosphere and the land.

It illustrates the impact of a drought but also excessive irrigation use.

The head of a geothermal energy company has gone on trial in Switzerland accused of damaging property by triggering earthquakes.

Markus Haering's company had been working with the authorities in Basel to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity.

But the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered the quakes.

They caused no injuries but led to $9m (£5.54m) of damage. Mr Haering denies deliberately damaging property.

The project was shut down permanently last week after a government study found that similar quakes caused by the project would lead to millions of dollars worth of damage each year.

Scientists at NASA's Langley Research Center have completed a first attempt to accurately calculate the level of damaging radiation flight crews and passengers are exposed to on commercial airline flights. The work is an early step toward developing a model to observe radiation exposure for all commercial flights, particularly for pilots and crews who spend their careers airborne and who are at greater risk of developing certain cancers.

The study considered not only everyday radiation emanating from space, but also the additional energy unleashed during a solar storm, which can be profound. NASA scientists say not including geomagnetic effects on solar radiation in modeling radiation exposure could underestimate the dosage by 30 to 300 percent.

NASA researchers studying urban landscapes have found that the intensity of the "heat island" created by a city depends on the ecosystem it replaced and on the regional climate. Urban areas developed in arid and semi-arid regions show far less heating compared with the surrounding countryside than cities built amid forested and temperate climates.

"The placement and structure of cities -- and what was there before -- really does matter," said Marc Imhoff, biologist and remote sensing specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The amount of the heat differential between the city and the surrounding environment depends on how much of the ground is covered by trees and vegetation. Understanding urban heating will be important for building new cities and retrofitting existing ones."

Cameron's £20bn plan for green homes | Politics | The Guardian

David Cameron has pledged that a Conservative government would from "day one" kickstart £20bn of investment to make millions of homes more energy-efficient in a groundbreaking green partnership with Tesco and Marks & Spencer.

In a Guardian interview to coincide with the critical stage of the Copenhagen summit, the Tory leader reveals the plan to let householders share in the savings made on their power bills with the high street names who provide them with lagging and insulation.

He says he has already signed up a group of local councils and the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, for the scheme which would tackle more than 30% of UK carbon emissions by offering six million households the chance to get £6,500 worth of energy-efficiency measures.

Cameron sees the idea for a "localist green revolution" as an answer to his fear that what he describes as the current top- down climate change agenda is "in danger of starting to lose people".

COPENHAGEN -- Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change.

... The authorities say it is impossible to quantify the level of fraud in public spending on wind energy because investigations are scattered across different countries among the regional and fiscal police. But critics say the available riches and patchy controls are luring a rogue's gallery of corrupt politicians and entrepreneurs trying to literally create money out of thin air.

<...>

The European Wind Energy Association -- which represents 600 manufacturers and members in 60 countries, including some outside of Europe, and which attracted more than €10.9 billion last year in investments -- argues that problems with corruption are rare and that industry regulation is not needed.

"We have fraud legislation in all countries, and this is a matter for the national police," said Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the trade group.

But critics like John Etherington, a former professor of ecology at the University of Wales and author of "The Wind Farm Scam," contends that because the industry is so dependent on subsidies, it is highly vulnerable to scams. Mr. Etherington said that he is "not sure that the industry is regulated at all -- let alone well regulated." ...

Reporting from Lijiang, China - If you want to see a glacier melt with your bare eyes, try Yulong Snow Mountain, an 18,000-foot peak in southern China's Yunnan province. On this early December morning, the mountain is etched against the technicolor sky in shades of gray -- definitely more gray than white. Naked boulders of limestone and daubs of shrubbery protrude from the shallow snow cover.

In the study of climate change, glaciers are sometimes likened to the canaries in the coal mine, and to many observers the condition of Yulong ("Jade Dragon") mountain is troubling. He Yuanqing, one of China's leading glacier experts, found that the mountain's largest glacier, known as Baishui No. 1, has retreated about 275 yards since 1982.

....

Anywhere from five to 20 scientists work here at any given time -- planting sticks in the drifts to measure snow accumulation and taking time-lapse photographs of the retreating snows and the advancing tree line up the mountain. Yulong Snow Mountain is a fitting object for their obsession: It has the southernmost glaciers on the Eurasian continent. Its location at the edge of the Tibetan plateau is also critical.

....

The Tibetan plateau is also extremely vulnerable to global warming. The China Meteorological Administration calculates that temperatures on the plateau have risen an average of 0.58 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, more than four times the average warming rate in China as a whole.

....

When glaciers disappear, they don't necessarily go quietly. The ice becomes unstable; gentle slopes of snow erode into steep ridges that can collapse at unpredictable times. Yulong has had two such avalanches recently -- one in 2004 and another over the summer.

We knew Teletext was set to suffer an early demise, but owner Daily Mail and General Trust just pulled the plug even earlier than expected. Hope you said your fond farewells, as the service switches off from tomorrow.

Not had a chance to say your last goodbye yet? Better go home quick and pop the red button, as Teletext will soon be gone. Old faithful Teletext is ending almost all of its editorial operations as of today and tomorrow after 15 years as the text provider for commercial terrestrial broadcasters.

Previously, the service was expected to be ditched by DMGT in 2012, but that was brought forward to January 2010, only to be brought forward again.

Australia intends to introduce filters which will ban access to websites containing criminal content.

The banned sites will be selected by an independent classification body guided by complaints from the public, said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

A seven month trial in conjunction with internet service providers found the technology behind the filter to be 100% effective.

However, there has been opposition from some internet users.

Twitter users have been voicing their disapproval by adding the search tag "nocleanfeed" to their comments about the plans.

IT HAS become the "official" portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, regarded by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as the best likeness of the Jacobite hero.

FORMER Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan and his wife Gail appeared in court yesterday on perjury charges.

The couple, both 45, are accused of lying on oath in connection with the ex-MSP's successful 2006 defamation action against the News of the World.

Sheridan, a former contestant in Celebrity Big Brother, won £200,000 in damages after the Sunday newspaper printed allegations about his private life.

A date has not yet been fixed for the trial, which is expected to become the longest perjury case in Scottish legal history.

Hackers have released software they say sabotages a suite of forensics utilities Microsoft provides for free to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the globe.

Decaf is a light-weight application that monitors Windows systems for the presence of COFEE, a bundle of some 150 point-and-click tools used by police to collect digital evidence at crime scenes. When a USB stick containing the Microsoft software is attached to a protected PC, Decaf automatically executes a variety of countermeasures.

Terry Childs finally went to court yesterday, as prosecutors accused him of being a rogue admin who locked the San Francisco city government out of its own computer network.

Childs' lawyers disputed this picture, saying he was a man who'd zealously guarded the network's security, and only flipped out because city officials hadn't followed security protocols.

Childs, 45, has been in prison since last July, after he was accused of setting a master password for the City's spanking new network and promptly locking the city out.

A popular Asian microblogging site has accused Microsoft of ripping off its code and interface design to build a new MSN social-networking site in China.

Microsoft tells The Reg it's investigating the matter. According to reports, the software giant is suspending access to the MSN site, but it appears it is still online.

"Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world. Yes, we're talking about Microsoft," reads a blog post from Canada-based startup Plurk, which claims a membership in the "mid seven figures" concentrated primarily in Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. According to a company spokesman, it also has members in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada.

The post claims that Microsoft's new Chinese microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, is "by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk's" system and that 80 per cent of its code "appears to be stolen directly from Plurk." To support the claim, the company posts screenshots of the two services:

Low-cost imports of nutcrackers pose a risk to the age-old woodcraft of eastern Germany's Erzgebirge region, famous for its Christmas ornaments. The Chinese-made replicas may increasingly look like the real thing -- but don't try cracking a nut with them, warns Germany's chief woodcarver.

The German nutcracker -- the bearded, wood-carved soldier who stands to attention in households around the world at Christmas waiting to bite the shells off walnuts -- faces growing competition from cheap Chinese copies that are threatening eastern Germany's centuries-old woodcraft tradition, the industry's leader has warned.

The nutcracker was invented in the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains, a range of hills along Germany's border with the Czech Republic, in the 19th century. Tucked in the wooded valleys of this sparsely populated, scenic region, craftsmen and women assemble ornaments under the Erzgebirge brand name that has become synonymous with German Christmas.

You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.

And yet, I'm a woman.

This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy -- I'm literally a woman.

This is my story.

In an effort to make its materials globally accessible, Cornell University Library is sharing tens of thousands of digitized books with the Internet Archive.

"We have been carefully preserving and storing materials for years, and now we're diversifying the channels for them to be studied and used," said Oya Reiger, associate university librarian for information technologies. "We have the ability to take books to the places where readers are."

The new collaboration repurposes nearly 80,000 books that the Library has already digitized in-house or through its partnership with Microsoft and Kirtas Technologies. All the books are in the public domain, printed before 1923 mainly in the United States. They cover a host of subject areas, including American history, English literature, astronomy, food and wine, general engineering, the history of science, home economics, hospitality and travel, labor relations, Native American materials, ornithology, veterinary medicine and women's studies.

A normal digital camera can take snaps of objects not directly visible to its lens, US researchers have shown. The "ghost imaging" technique could help satellites take snapshots through clouds or smoke.

Physicists have known for more than a decade that ghost imaging is possible. But, until now, experiments had only imaged the holes in stencil-like masks, which limited its potential applications.

Now Yanhua Shih of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and colleagues at the US Army Research Laboratory, also in Maryland, have now taken the first ghost images of an opaque object - a toy soldier (see image, top right).

Widespread overuse of CT scans and variations in radiation doses caused by different machines -- operated by technicians following an array of procedures -- are subjecting patients to high radiation doses that will ultimately lead to tens of thousands of new cancer cases and deaths, researchers reported today.

Several recent studies have suggested that patients have been unnecessarily exposed to radiation from CTs or have received excessive amounts, but two new studies published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine are the first to quantify the extent of exposure and the related risks. Each year that current scanners are used, researchers reported, 14,500 deaths could result.

In one study, researchers from UC San Francisco found that the same imaging procedure performed at different institutions -- or even on different machines at the same hospital -- can yield a 13-fold difference in radiation dose, potentially exposing some patients to inordinately high risk. While a normal CT scan of the chest is the equivalent of about 100 chest X-rays, the team found that some scanners were giving the equivalent of 440 conventional X-rays. The absolute risk may be small for any single patient, but the sheer number of CT scans -- more than 70 million per year, 23 times the number in 1980 -- will produce a sharp increase in cancers and deaths, experts said.

"The articles in this issue make clear that there is far more radiation from medical CT scans than has been recognized previously," Dr. Rita F. Redberg of UC San Francisco, editor of the journal, wrote in an editorial accompanying the reports. Even many otherwise healthy patients are being subjected to the radiation, she said, because emergency rooms are often sending patients to the CT scanner before they see a doctor.

Whole body scans of healthy patients looking for hidden tumors or other illnesses are also becoming more common, even though they rarely find anything wrong. The irony is that, by exposing healthy people to radiation, the scans may be creating more problems than they solve.

Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes Grand Prix (nee Brawn) has reportedly discovered details of a fraud in relationship to a sponsorship that had been planned for its new Formula 1 team. According to the respected financial journal Handelsblatt, Brawn GP met with a Henkel employee as long ago as Monaco in May. They began discussing a deal being worth $43m a year. By the end of July a three-year deal worth $130m had been agreed. It was due to begin in March 2010.

According to the newspaper the scam was discovered only after Brawn and Mercedes did their deal.

An Olympic weightlifter has unexpectedly given birth to a baby boy during training. Chilean Elizabeth Poblete, who competed at the Beijing games, was practising lifts in Sao Paulo ahead of an event when the boy was born.

Poblete had admitted to feeling unwell during training a week before the birth, according to reports in Brazil, but was "shocked" to find she was pregnant.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner has taken off on its first test flight - almost two and a half years late.

It had been grounded by a series of hitches, including design problems, strikes and even a shortage of bolts.

Boeing has pegged its hopes for the future on the plane, which promises to be one of the most fuel-efficient in the world.

It has attracted some 840 orders from all over the globe, although some have been cancelled because of the delays

Careless talk by Rachida Dati, the fallen star of President Sarkozy's Cabinet, has upset her campaign to relaunch her career as a diligent and modest member of the European Parliament.

In a telephone call broadcast on French television Ms Dati, 44, tells a friend that she is utterly bored by her new life at the Strasbourg assembly. She was exiled there last June when Mr Sarkozy dismissed her from her post as Justice Minister.

Her comments, which prompted mirth from opponents and embarrassment for Mr Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, contrasted with the humility that the glamorous Ms Dati has been projecting as she strives to clamber back to the top of the Paris scene.

FAST TRACK: Although a Paris court recently accepted a plan to reduce couture house Christian Lacroix to a licensing operation, the designer continues to dress thousands. Last week, French railway operator SNCF said some 20,000 employees would sport new Lacroix-designed threads starting next month. The new uniforms are gray and purple and include blouses, skirts and jackets for women, and pants, jackets and striped shirts for men. No stranger to transportation, Lacroix has also designed the uniforms and train interiors for Tézo and TGV lines, as well as the flight personnel uniforms for Air France.

TED Blog: Underwater astonishments: David Gallo on TED.com

David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a shape-shifting cuttlefish, a pair of fighting squid, and a mesmerizing gallery of bioluminescent fish that light up the blackest depths of the ocean. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 5:21.)