EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has called EU parliament chief Jerzy Buzek to voice concern over a vote due next Thursday in which MEPs could scrap a deal allowing American investigators to track down terrorist funding via European bank transactions.

Ms Clinton's late-night phonecall to Mr Buzek comes on top of other efforts by the US administration to try and convince EU lawmakers not to reject the agreement.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU diplomats at internal meetings in Brussels and Kiev on Thursday (4 February) raised concerns about the potential collapse of Ukraine's presidential election process.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and rival candidate Viktor Yanukovych are due to face off against each other in the second round of the presidential vote on Sunday.

But a last-minute change to the country's electoral law, signed into force on Thursday morning, has seen Ms Tymoshenko threaten to declare the poll invalid and to bring thousands of her supporters onto the streets on Monday.

The legal change means that local election commissions in charge of the country's 38,000 or so voting stations will be able to sign off on the results without the approval of commission members nominated by Ms Tymoshenko.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday (4 February) are set to unveil their own economic and political strategy document, the "Franco-German Agenda 2020," in an attempt to put some substance in the widely advertised but not always smoothly working partnership between the EU's two major economies.

The plan, including 80 separate measures, ranges from economic and fiscal initiatives to common school books and simpler rules for Franco-German marriages. It is set to be published at the end of a joint ministerial council meeting of the two countries, chaired by both Mr Sarkozy and Ms Merkel in the Elysee palace.

Romania has agreed to host missile interceptors as part of a new US defence shield, President Traian Basescu announced on Thursday. US President Barack Obama last year scrapped a previous version of the shield, involving Poland and the Czech Republic, which had been fiercely opposed by Russia.

Polish leader Tusk has accepted an invitation by Russian premier Putin to attend a ceremony in April marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. The move signals a warming-up of relations, with Russia's unrepentant outlook on the Soviet slayings of Polish officers causing past tensions.

A Russian think tank set up by President Medvedev in 2008, the Insor institute, has said in a report out on Wednesday that Russia should bring in a genuine multi-party democracy, end state control of media and the economy. It also recommended joining a reformed Nato and being open to EU membership.

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly 400 MPs claimed excessive expenses for years, according to a report on Thursday that revived a politically damaging scandal ahead of an election that must be called by June.

The report recommended 390 MPs pay back a total of more than one million pounds in taxpayers' money received for claims ranging from mortgages for second homes to payments granted for gardening work. One claim was for a floating duck house.

REUTERS - Romania's top defence body approved a plan by Washington on Thursday to deploy interceptor missiles in the Black Sea state as part of a missile shield to protect Europe, President Traian Basescu said.

The announcement came unexpectedly and Basescu gave few details on the project. But it appeared to be part of the revamped approach taken by U.S. President Barack Obama since he scrapped a Bush-era plan for a radar site and interceptor rockets in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The missile shield has angered eastern Europe's former Cold War master Russia, who sees it as a threat to its own nuclear arsenal and has bristled at what it says is Washington's meddling in its sphere of influence.

The parents of Italian children who commit violent crimes face the threat of crushing financial penalties following a landmark ruling by a judge in Milan.

The mothers and fathers of five teenage boys who repeatedly raped a young girl have been ordered to pay her compensation totalling €450,000 because of their failure to give their sons an "education in feelings and emotions". Judge Bianca La Monica awarded the damages against all the boys' natural parents, including those who had separated from their partners and no longer had custody of their sons.

South Wales Police are investigating the former Auditor General for Wales, at the request of his employers, it has been confirmed.

Jeremy Colman, 61, head of the public spending watchdog the Wales Audit Office (WAO) since 2005, resigned with immediate effect on Wednesday.

It is understood there was an internal review after pornographic material was discovered on his work laptop computer.

The WAO confirmed the resignation followed a personal conduct inquiry.

Customs officials and tax inspectors in Greece are holding a two-day strike to protest against government austerity measures, including wage cuts.

The strike is disrupting Greece's import market, with lines of trucks being held at the country's borders.

The austerity measures have been introduced to try and tackle Greece's huge budget deficit and national debt.

The EU approved the plan on Wednesday, but insisted on inspecting Greece's notoriously unreliable accounts.

Part of the government's plan relies on tax collectors recovering billions of euros lost to tax evasion.

If you watch this video on YouTube it is very clear that a group of Belgian peace activists not only got inside the wire at Kleine-Brogel Airbase -- where some US nuclear weapons may be stored -- but they also got into the area where the hardened shelters are located (within the shelters are aircraft and WS3 storage vaults with US B61 nuclear gravity bombs.)

It looks like the activists approached Kleine-Brogel from the farms to the south of the airbase. Indeed, another group hopped the fence in November 2009. Apparently, they planned to go out on the runway and get arrested just like the previous group in November 2009. But, according to the group's website "to their surprise, they were able to walk for over an hour on the runway." (One of the press reports suggests it was forty minutes.)

The base is surrounded by signs indicating that the area is patrolled by guard dogs, but Milou was nowhere to be found.

Ein privater Wachdienst sei günstiger gewesen als Beamte dafür abzustellen, sagt Ralf Kunz, Sprecher der Innenbehörde. Jetzt aber will man zur naheliegendsten Lösung zurückkehren, wie sie bis vor etwa 30 Jahren auch praktiziert worden war: Wenn der Vertrag mit der Wachfirma Anfang kommenden Jahres ausläuft, soll die Polizei wieder selbst auf sich aufpassen. Polizeischüler könnten zum Beispiel die Hauswache übernehmen, sagt Kunz - das mache 856.000 Euro weniger Ausgaben pro Jahr.

Three Labour MPs and one Tory peer will face criminal charges over their expenses, Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer has said.

MPs Elliot Morley, Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Lord Hanningfield will be charged under the Theft Act.

In a joint statement the MPs said they denied any charges and would "defend our position robustly".

Revelations about MPs expenses emerged in May last year with the police going on to investigate a handful of cases.

Labour peer Lord Clarke will not be charged but a sixth case remains under investigation, said Keir Starmer.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU-China trade tensions were further strained on Thursday (4 February), after China filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organisation over European shoes tariffs.

The Chinese government said European tariffs "violated various obligations under the WTO and consequently caused damage to the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese exporters."

NEW YORK/ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - New York's attorney general charged Bank of America Corp, former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis and former Chief Financial Officer Joe Price with fraud for allegedly misleading shareholders about the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the largest U.S. bank agreed to pay a $150 million (95 million pounds) civil fine and strengthen disclosure and corporate governance to settle its two lawsuits alleging poor disclosure of Merrill's losses and bonus payouts. The accord requires court approval.

LISBON (Reuters) - Investors sold off stocks in Portugal, Spain and Greece and the euro plunged on Thursday as market fears over the fiscal problems of debt-laden southern members of the euro zone widened.

The head of the International Monetary Fund called for painful steps to cut huge fiscal deficits across Europe, saying no country should be under the illusion that it was possible to escape the financial crisis without paying the cost.

The Portuguese government's defeat over a regional finance bill, a climbdown by the Spanish government over pension reform, and protests by tax officials in Greece added to the woes of states struggling to cut budget shortfalls bloated by recession.

LONDON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - European shares fell more than 2 percent on Thursday, on worries about the peripheral economies in the euro zone, and downbeat U.S. economic data.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cooperation of two former hedge fund managers in a 2007 insider trading case led to the arrest of seven traders and lawyers last November in the wide-ranging Galleon prosecutions, a U.S. prosecutor said on Thursday.

During a sentencing proceeding for former Chelsey Capital hedge fund manager Mark Lenowitz in the 2007 case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Fish told the judge that Lenowitz's cooperation led to the prosecution and cooperation of his onetime colleague at Chelsey Capital, David Slaine.

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England announced on Thursday no increase to its unprecedented 200 billion pound asset-buying programme, but left the door open to more so-called quantitative easing if economic conditions deteriorated.

It also left interest rates at a record low of 0.5 percent, as expected.

Almost all analysts had predicted a pause in the programme after 11 months of pumping newly-created money into the economy but sterling rose and gilts fell as some traders had positioned for an increase, given the fragility of the economy which has only just come out of recession.

AFP - The government of Dubai, facing dwindling oil resources and a mountain of debt, announced on Thursday the discovery of a new offshore oil field which it hoped would rescue its limping economy.
  
The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum, "heralds the good news to the people of the United Arab Emirates that a new offshore oil field has been discovered in Dubai," a government statement said.
  
The UAE sits on the world's fifth largest proven oil reserves, amounting to 97.8 billion barrels of crude oil. But 95 percent of those reserves are controlled by the leading partner in the federation, Abu Dhabi.
  
The UAE also has 214.4 trillion cubic feet (six trillion cubic metres) of gas reserves, ranking it sixth in the world after Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
  
Dubai's poor oil reserves, mostly offshore, are expected to be exhausted within 20 years, while it controls only two percent of the country's gas wealth, according to UAE government website.

Thousands of campaigners have signed a petition calling for quake-stricken Haiti's international debt to be written off.

The petition, with more than 15,000 signatures, was handed to the Treasury asking Chancellor Alistair Darling to call on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel Haiti's 890 million dollar (£560 million) international debt.

Haiti was already one of the world's poorest nations before the devastating earthquake struck.

Up to 200,000 people died in the 7-magnitude earthquake on January 12, including more than 30 UN workers, while leaving thousands of others injured and homeless.

The cost of rebuilding the country's battered infrastructure is expected to cost billions of pounds.

WASHINGTON/DETROIT (Reuters) - In the latest blow to Toyota Motor Corp, U.S. safety regulators opened a formal probe on Thursday into problems with the brakes of the Prius, the world's top-selling hybrid and a vehicle that has powered the automaker's reputation for fuel-efficiency.

The Nikkei newspaper reported that Toyota would recall an estimated 270,000 units of its new Prius in the United States and Japan to fix the brake problem.

LONDON (Reuters) - Rocketing prices in South Africa are causing major concern among World Cup organisers, who fear profiteering could deter more soccer fans than alarmist reporting about violent crime.

South African and FIFA officials have angrily condemned what they see as emotional and inaccurate reporting, especially in England and Germany, about the dangers to soccer supporters from some of the world's most violent criminals.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said on Thursday the security situation remained serious but was no longer deteriorating, offering a more upbeat assessment than other U.S. military and intelligence officials.

Dire warnings from General Stanley McChrystal and other commanders last summer about the worsening outlook prompted U.S. President Barack Obama to order the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to battle a resurgent Taliban.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has offered to hold official-level talks with Pakistan, a top Indian government official said on Thursday, signalling a return to bilateral dialogue suspended after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

New Delhi blames the attacks, which killed 166 people, on Pakistan-based militants and wants Islamabad to act against them.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Blocks from where U.S. and U.N. soldiers distribute sacks of rice to Haitian women in earthquake-shattered Port-au-Prince, street vendors are openly selling rice by the cup from bags stamped with U.S. flags.

In the early days after the January 12 earthquake that killed up to 200,000 people and left more than a million homeless, food handouts were often chaotic in the capital. On a couple of occasions, U.N. soldiers fired tear gas into hungry crowds jostling for a limited amount of goods.

PARIS (Reuters) - China told other world powers on Thursday that discussing broader sanctions against Iran was counter-productive, striking a blow to a Western push to rein in Tehran's nuclear programme.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a conference during a visit to France that Tehran's negotiating position was evolving and he wanted to see more direct talks with Iran.

"To talk about sanctions at the moment will complicate the situation and might stand in the way of finding a diplomatic solution," Yang said.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has eased some curbs it placed on black market trading, the South's spy agency said on Thursday, rolling back part of what was widely seen as a policy blunder that caused unrest in the authoritarian state.

The North's impoverished citizens have increasingly turned to the black market for essentials not provided by the broken state distribution system after a famine in the late 1990s killed about five percent of the population.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A top Colombian judge has recommended that the country's highest court reject a proposal to allow President Alvaro Uribe to seek re-election in May, local media reported on Thursday.

The judge's report cast new doubt on the political future of Uribe, a key Washington ally popular at home for his U.S.-backed security drive against leftist rebels and with Wall Street for his pro-investment policies.

Citing court sources, local newspapers and radio reported Constitutional Court Judge Humberto Sierra had recommended in a confidential paper that his fellow magistrates rule against the re-election proposal due to legal irregularities.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government called on Thursday for a special session of parliament and branded as illegal an appeals panel decision to suspend a ban on candidates suspected of ties to an outlawed party until after an election.

Political wrangling is heating up ahead of the March 7 vote, seen as a crucial test for Iraq as it emerges from years of conflict unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion and tries to make peace between once dominant Sunnis and the Shi'ite majority.

The appeals panel said candidates barred by the Justice and Accountability Commission -- set up to ensure Saddam Hussein's Baath party did not return to public life -- could stand in the poll, but would still have a case to answer.

Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle children out of the country.

If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams at the court hearing in Haiti's quake-hit capital, Port-au-Prince.

When stopped on the border last Friday, they said they were taking the children to a Dominican Republic orphanage.

But it has emerged some of the 33 youngsters had parents who were alive.

"The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?" said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry.

Read more...

GOOG still in China.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission and some EU member states hope to redefine palm oil plantations as "forests," according to a leaked document from the EU executive.

Rules governing the use of biofuels were supposed to be designed to sort out the sustainable versions of the technology from their dirtier cousins following a massive backlash against it in 2008. At the time, an avalanche of reports revealed that many forms of the fuel source both increase greenhouse gas emissions and put pressure on food prices.

The production of palm oil was one of the most egregious examples of the problem.

In the wake of the biofuels boom, there has been a rush to chop down rainforests to make way for palm oil plantations. The UN says that the growth in such plantations is now the main cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia.

AFP - Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Thursday requested explanations from a previous government on Russia's release of toxic waste into Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea, his spokeswoman told AFP.

Swedish public television SVT reported Wednesday that between 1991 and 1994 Russia dumped chemical weapons and radioactive waste off the shores of Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea.

The network also said the Social Democrat government that came into power in 1994 was informed of the dumping by military intelligence in the late 1990s, but failed to act on the information.

The current centre-right government "didn't know" about the issue, Reinfeldt's spokeswoman Roberta Alenius told AFP.

It soon becomes clear that the giant salamander has hit Claude Gascon's enthusiasm button smack on the nose.

"This is a dinosaur, this is amazing," he enthuses.

"We're talking about salamanders that usually fit in the palm of your hand. This one will chop your hand off."

As a leader of Conservation International's (CI) scientific programmes, and co-chair of the Amphibian Specialist Group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Dr Gascon has seen a fair few frogs and salamanders in his life; but little, he says, to compare with this.

Last night's 10 O'clock News saw another classic illustration of BBC bias. 

Reporting on the looming energy crisis Britain faces, the BBC kept referring to the "failure of the markets" to provide energy.  The idea that we are not producing enough energy because of "the markets" is absurd.   

The energy sector is one of the most heavily regulated parts of our economy.  Energy producers need the permission of officials at almost every turn.  Suppliers are unable to supply enough energy precisely because of the rules that force them to shut down power plant, purchase renewables, and jump through all manner of regulatory hurdles.

LONDON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Organisers of Glastonbury Festival, the world's biggest green field arts and music event, launched a survey on Thursday to see whether flags should be banned from the main stage at this year's event.

Fans are being asked to take part in an online vote on the festival's website (www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk ) to decide whether to outlaw banners following complaints that they spoil the view for some of the crowd.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The saturated fat found mainly in meat and dairy products has a bad reputation, but a new analysis of published studies finds no clear link between people's intake of saturated fat and their risk of developing heart disease.

Research has shown that saturated fat can raise blood levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, and elevated LDL is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Because of this, experts generally advise people to limit their intake of fatty meat, butter and full-fat dairy.

A female security agent in Paris who was suspended for wearing the Islamic headscarf on the job will appear before a disciplinary committee, sources close to the case have said.

The hearing was scheduled for Thursday morning, but a request by the officer for the appearance to be postponed was granted, according to a police source.

A new date for the hearing has not yet been specified.

Nora B. was suspended in November 2009 by Paris police headquarters after being reprimanded several times by her superiors for wearing the Islamic headscarf or veil at work.

Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.

The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.

The girl had previously been reported missing.

The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.

I had a great weekend, thanks for ­asking. A bunch of like-minded souls and I got together in a frosty square in central London and took a massive overdose. Now, I should add at this point that I have not joined an extreme Christian cult (I couldn't - the Christian bit would upset my ­parents too much), and, as you can guess from the fact that I am writing this, the overdose was unsuccessful. I was at one of the many "mass homeopathic overdoses" taking place around the country to prove that homeopathy has as much effect on one's health as ­being hit in the face with a twig.

Whereas many of my fellow overdosers were protesting against the availability of homeopathic remedies at Boots, this doesn't bother me so much. If I felt outrage at the thought of Boots selling something that didn't live up to its promises, I'd have taken to the streets over several moisturisers years ago. ("Really? Literally reverse time?") What does offend me, though, is that this stuff is available on the NHS.

The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.

Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.

She said that India had lost an irreplaceable part of its heritage.

Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.

The islands are often called an "anthropologist's dream" and are one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world.

S President Barack Obama has criticised as "odious" proposed anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda.

The bill calls for long jail terms or the death penalty in some cases of homosexual intercourse.

It is "unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are," he told politicians and religious leaders at a prayer breakfast in Washington.

Homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda and punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

The bill would raise that penalty to life in prison.

It also proposes the death penalty for a new offence of "aggravated homosexuality" - defined as when one of the participants is a minor, HIV-positive, disabled or a "serial offender".

Mongolian sumo champion Asashoryu has announced his retirement following allegations he attacked a man outside a Tokyo nightclub last month.

"I feel heavy responsibility that I have caused trouble to so many people, Asashoryu said.

The wrestler's stable master said he could not remember what happened on the night because he was too drunk.

Asashoryu, the first Mongolian to become champion, has been described as the "bad boy" of sumo for his conduct.

A senior judge could be called on to investigate a complaint that Cherie Blair handed down a more lenient sentence to a man who had been convicted of fracturing a person's jaw because he was religious.

Mrs Blair, a devout Roman Catholic who sits as a part time judge under the title Cherie Booth QC, spared Shamso Miah from jail last month after he was convicted of assaulting a person at a bank queue in east London.

The 25-year-old from Redbridge, north-east London, was given a two-year suspended sentence instead of a six-month jail term because, Mrs Blair said, he was a "religious person" who had not been in trouble before.

A boy who went on a rampage at home in the Republic of Ireland has been ordered by a judge to do household chores for the next six months.

Judge Clare Leonard yesterday told the boy, 15, he must attend school, not lose his temper at home when his parents say "no", attend sporting clubs, "clean his room and do cooking".

The teenager had pleaded guilty at the Children's Court to causing criminal damage at his south Dublin home on a date last May, when his mother had to call the gardai over his unruly behaviour.

Garda Jamie Ryan had told the court that the boy "became aggressive and broke cups and plates".

"He entered his bedroom and pulled curtains from the wall and punched a hole in the wall," he said, adding that the boy said "sorry" when he was charged.

Scientists have succeeded in reading the mind of a man thought to have been lacking all awareness after a traumatic head injury, opening a host of questions about what it is to be a sentient person and how we should treat people in his condition.

The 29-year-old, who had been presumed to be in a vegetative state for five years following a road accident, was able to communicate with the researchers by thought alone, giving "yes" and "no" answers to questions. Using an advanced brain scanner, researchers were able to detect that he was thinking, and interact with him, even though it proved impossible to establish any communication at the bedside. It was the first time since his injury in 2003 that he had managed to make contact with the outside world.

Cherie Blair has been reported to the office overseeing judges' behaviour for apparently sentencing a man convicted of assault more leniently because he was religious.

The National Secular Society wrote to the Judicial Complaints Office on Friday complaining that Mrs Blair -- a prominent Roman Catholic -- suspended the six-month prison sentence passed on Shamso Miah, a Muslim who broke a stranger's jaw in row over a bank queue, on the ground that he was devout.

"We think this is discriminatory and unjust and we wish to make a formal complaint about it," wrote Terry Sanderson, the president of the NSS.

Today Mr Sanderson told The Times that the complaints office had acknowledged his letter and confirmed that it was going to investigate the case.

(ANCHORAGE)-- Records show that Sarah Palin has not paid any property taxes on cabins that have been built on two back country plots partially owned by the former Alaska governor.

It's unclear how long ago the structures were built, but records show that there are no tax assessments for the buildings. Property taxes were only paid on the land -- and not the structures themselves.