EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton has congratulated Ukraine on holding free and fair elections, in remarks that will make it harder for the losing side to contest the result.

"The generally calm atmosphere in which the elections were conducted, the open campaign in the media and the fact that the electorate were provided with a genuine choice represent important achievements in Ukraine's democratic development," Ms Ashton said on Monday (8 February).

Her statement came at a sensitive time, as Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who lost Sunday's poll by a narrow margin of around 3 percent, pondered her next move.

Three months ago, Herman van Rompuy might have struggled to be recognised on the streets of his native Belgium, let alone Paris or London. The bookish former prime minister, a fan of camping holidays and Haiku poetry, was nothing if not low-key; a studious consensus builder in the world of Belgian politics.

Three months on and Van Rompuy, 62, may not outwardly have changed much, but his title and the expectations surrounding him certainly have. In November he was chosen to be the first permanent president of the European Council, the body that represents the EU's 27 leaders, and on Thursday he will host those heads of state and government at an economic summit in Brussels -- the first such gathering he has chaired.

With Greece under extreme pressure with its mounting deficit and debt problems, and Portugal, Spain and Italy threatening to go the same way, the summit comes at a critical time. It is perhaps the most serious test of Europe's monetary union since the euro single currency was introduced 11 years ago.

Europe's new External Action Service (EEAS) could serve as a first port-of-call for small businesses looking to gain a foothold in foreign markets, according to Europe's main business lobby group.

SMEs face particular challenges in emerging markets like China, where protectionism and intellectual property rights pose major problems, says Adrian van den Hoven, director of international relations at BusinessEurope.

BusinessEurope has highlighted growing trade tensions between Europe and China in a series of letters to the EU executive, but van den Hoven believes the Lisbon Treaty provides scope for Brussels to provide advice and direct protection for companies operating overseas.

As the European Parliament prepares to flex its muscles in the vote on the SWIFT data deal, the US is trying to convince the Europeans of the importance of sharing bank transfer information. US officials say the EU and Germany have already benefited from the SWIFT reports in fighting terrorism.

The United States is upping the pressure ahead of a vote in the European Parliament later this week on an agreement that would continue to allow US terror investigators access to bank transfer data. Washington is warning the European Union and Germany that there could be serious diplomatic consequences, as well as security gaps, if the so-called SWIFT agreement gets overturned on Thursday.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions, the company that conducts the majority of the world's banking transfers, recently moved its servers from the US to Europe, raising concern among Washington's terrorism investigators that they may lose access to data on cross border financial transactions.

A classified Dutch government report has revealed that criminals stole 341,956 passports, identity cards, visa stickers and drivers' licences from European government facilities since 2000.

The new European Commission officially takes office next week if, as expected all the fresh appointments are approved by the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Former Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Barroso is due to take the reins for a second term.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Moscow is "concerned" and expects "proper explanations" on US plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile defence systems in Romania, but it is still interested in contributing to a "common assessment" of threats with Europe and the US, Russia's envoy to Brussels told this website.

Anti-ballistic missiles are not aimed against Russia, says the US

"We took note of President Basescu's statement on his agreement to host those elements. This is a serious issue which we'll be analysing when we receive all the details regarding what exact equipment is meant to be deployed there," Mr Chizhov said in a phone interview on Monday (8 February).

Last Thursday, Romanian President Traian Basescu announced that his country had accepted an invitation by the Obama administration to host land-based anti-ballistic missiles as part of US plans to defend Europe against Iranian and other regional threat

Prime Minister François Fillon (left) said an "experts committee" would take over the debate on French national identity, bringing an end to months of public debate on the tricky and divisive issue.

Wrapping up months of public debate on the sticky issue of French national identity at a specially convened cabinet meeting Monday, French Prime Minister François Fillon announced a set of initiatives aimed at "deepening" the discussion on what it means to be French.  Speaking to reporters at the prime minister's office, the Matignon, in Paris after a two-hour meeting Monday, Fillon said he would recommend the creation of a civic guide for young people and more civics education in schools.   Flanked by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who initiated the debate, and Education Minister Luc Chatel, Fillon also proposed the formation of an "experts committe" -- made up of politicians and historians -- to continue pondering an issue that has divided public opinion in France.

MOSCOW -- President Dmitri A. Medvedev on Monday made one of the most complex regional appointments of his presidency, nominating Magomedsalam M. Magomedov to be the next president of the combustible southern republic of Dagestan.

Mr. Magomedov, 45, is an economist and businessman who rose to prominence thanks to his father, Magomedali Magomedov, who led Dagestan from 1987 until 2006. That year, Mukhu G. Aliyev was appointed to succeed him, amid a push to fight corruption in the republic. Though violence and corruption seemed to ease during the early years of his presidency, last year saw the number of armed attacks more than double, and some blamed Mr. Aliyev's weak grip over Dagestan's combative clan groupings.

Mr. Magomedov's nomination falls in line with the appointment of a new presidential envoy, Aleksandr G. Khloponin, who is expected to bring order to the Caucasus through economic means, said Grigory Shvedov, the editor of the Web-based news service Caucasian Knot. It also suggests the Kremlin wants to see significant changes, since Mr. Magomedov has been a persistent critic of Mr. Aliyev's government.

There was no let-up in the turmoil caused by European budget deficits on Thursday (4 February), with investors turning their attention to the weak state of Portugal's public finances.

The country's stock market plunged nearly five percent, the biggest daily fall since November 2008, and bonds yields rose, even as opposition parties proposed to increase public spending on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores

Portuguese finance minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos from the centre-left Socialist party implored members of parliament not to follow through with the opposition regional finance bill, warning it would only add to investor doubts.

In a televised address, he said it would send the "the worst possible message" to financial markets, at a time when Europe's peripheral states are under intense scrutiny.

The Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has fallen behind the opposition for the first time since he came to power in 2004, according to a poll published by El Mundo newspaper.

According to a Sigma Dos opinion poll published by newspaper El Mundo, voters gave the Socialist prime minister an average 4.1 points out of 10, versus 4.21 for Mariano Rajoy who leads the conservative Popular Party.

At the last poll in January Zapatero, who is suffering a mid-term credibility crisis during Spain's worst recession for 40 years, led with 4.53 to Rajoy's 4.18.

The survey was carried out following a surprise announcement 10 days ago that the government planned to raise the pension age to 67 from 65, causing outrage among all segments of society.

Even those who [derogatory verb for people who have emigrated] will be able to vote. Netanyahu tells Likud faction his government plans to submit bill allowing every Israeli citizen to vote for Knesset from anywhere worldwide. 'It will contribute to the connection and to Israel's strength,' he says.

[...]

If Knesset approves the bill allowing Israelis to vote abroad, it will implement one of the clauses included in the coalition agreement signed between Yisrael Beiteinu and the Likud. According to the clause, "The government will form a governmental bill allowing the vote of Israelis who are abroad on Election Day, under conditions and criteria agreed upon by all the coalition members. The bill will be submitted to the Knesset within a year after the government's establishment."

Based on data from the main stastical office, about half a million Israelis with the right to vote were abroad at the time of the last elections. If the law is passed, it is expected to significantly strengthen the right-wing bloc, with whom many Israeli living abroad identify.

I hope it doesn't pass. If it does, I would have to decide what to do. I have no problem with voting for the Democrats in the U.S. (most of the time, anyway), if the U.K. allowed expats to vote, I suppose I could hold my nose and vote for NuLab. I would probably have no problem voting for the PD in Italy (if without much enthusiasm), but Israel?

Until this moment, I had naively assumed that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) was an official body, funded by the Home Office to co-ordinate policing policy. Well, guess what? It's a nice little privatised earner, as this Telegraph report suggests.

Concerns have been raised that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is being run as a private company and as such escapes many of the rules that ensure public bodies are accountable.

Nevertheless it has been taking on an increasing role in advising the government on strategies to fight terrorism and organised crime.

The `not for profit' company does not pay dividends to shareholders but its accounts show ACPO has built up £15.8m in assets, including £9.2m cash in the bank on a turnover of £18m.

It has emerged that the association is charging between £35 and £70 for criminal record checks for US visas which used to cost £10.

It also markets a service to endorse crime prevention measures which made £225,000 profit.

English newspapers today (8 February) took command of a campaign to completely write off a proposed EU regulation which would limit the activity of hedge funds, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), saying it will hurt the London-based financial sector.

London-based conservative newspaper the Daily Telegraph and its free rival, City AM, launched campaigns against the EU's proposed regulation of alternative invetsment funds.

The Telegraph has coined its campaign 'Ditch the Directive'.

Both newspapers enjoy healthy penetration rates in London's City as they focus on financial news. City AM, founded in 2005, litters London's business districts as it is handed out on the streets and in underground stations.

The European Commission today approved a multi-billion euro package of aid provided by the Dutch government to ABN Amro in the process of breaking up the bank.

The €6.9 billion provided by the Dutch government will be used to separate Dutch assets belonging to ABN Amro from the remainder of the bank.

These assets will then be integrated into Fortis Bank Nederland, which is owned by the Dutch state.

The European Commission today approved a loan guarantee offered by the Swedish government to the troubled Swedish carmaker Saab.

The aid will guarantee a €400 million loan that Saab is to receive from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition, said the Swedish government's guarantee would "contribute to the implementation of Saab's business plan without giving rise to any undue distortions of competition".

Greek civil servants threatened on Monday to stage more strikes in protest at government austerity measures, heightening fears debt-laden members of the euro zone may struggle to deliver on promises to tackle stretched budgets.

The euro was mired near 8-month lows against the dollar and the bonds of economically weak members of the 16-nation currency bloc remained under pressure as investors continued to fret about their ability to service their debt.

In Spain, the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said it was sticking with a plan to raise the retirement age despite the threat of union protests there which would mark the end of a period of relative social harmony.

As Germany steps up its plan to buy stolen Swiss bank data, a Liechtenstein court has awarded milions of euros in damages to a tax evader, who complained notification about the stolen data came too late. 

Liechtenstein trust company LGT Treuhand must pay a former client 7.3 million euros ($10 million) in damages because bankers failed to notify him about stolen data in time, the high court in the capital Vaduz said.

The plaintiff is a property developer from Bad Homburg, Germany, who claimed that he could have declared himself to German authorities had he known, and avoided a more costly fine for tax fraud.

Details in the case, which was brought against LGT in 2008, were just released to the parties last week. But the decision came down in early January. The property developer had asked for 13 million euros but the court awarded it 7.3 million.

Companies with fewer than 500 employees, such as Phoenix Technologies Ltd. and Sonic Corp., helped lead the economy out of the four recessions since 1980. This time, they continue to cut capital spending and dismiss workers, eliminating 3,000 jobs in January, according to Roseland, New Jersey-based Automatic Data Processing Inc., the world's largest payroll processor.

Improvement in the unemployment rate, which fell to 9.7 in January from 10 percent in December, may stall later this year if these firms aren't hiring, and growth likely won't meet the median 2.7 percent annual rate forecast for 2010 by 67 economists in a Jan. 14 Bloomberg News survey.
...
The Russell 2000 Index of small-cap stocks has risen 4 percent in the past six months, lagging behind a 6 percent increase in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Coming out of previous recessions, shares of companies with market capitalization between $250 million and $1 billion generally led markets higher... The Russell Index gained 17 percent in the six months following the end of the 2001 recession, compared with 0.2 percent for the S&P 500.
...
Because few economic reports capture small-business statistics, some economists say investors are being misled about the strength of recovery from the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression.

Recent numbers suggest "the official data are too heavily weighted towards bigger companies, which are doing better than credit-constrained smaller firms," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics Ltd. in Valhalla, New York. "The latter employ half the workforce."
...
The nation's monthly payroll figures are inflated because the Labor Department model that estimates small-business hiring has overstated the number of jobs added during the recession, Shepherdson says.

According to the model, small companies created an average of 113,000 jobs a month from February through December -- a period when total employment fell by a nonseasonally adjusted 3.7 million, Labor Department statistics show.

The model "is creating jobs out of thin air that are not actually being generated,"
...

Traders and hedge funds have bet nearly $8bn (€5.9bn) against the euro, amassing the biggest ever short position in the single currency on fears of a eurozone debt crisis.

Figures from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which are often used as a proxy of hedge fund activity, showed investors had increased their positions against the euro to record levels in the week to February 2.

The build-up in net short positions represents more than 40,000 contracts traded against the euro, equivalent to $7.6bn.
...
The single currency fell to an eight-month low of $1.3583 on Friday but recovered a little on Monday to $1.3683. Analysts said sentiment towards the euro had soured because of the increasing concern over Greece's fiscal problems.

As we look forward, we ask, who now determines the variation margin on Greek CDS (and Portugal, and Dubai, and Spain, and, pretty soon, Japan and the US), the associated recovery rate, and how much collateral should be posted by sellers of Greek protection? If Greek banks, as the rumors goes, indeed sold Greek protection, and, as the rumor also goes, Goldman was the bulk buyer, either in prop or flow capacity, it is precisely Goldman, just like in the AIG case, that can now dictate what the collateral margin that Greek counterparties, and by extension the very nation of Greece, have to post on billions of dollars of Greek insurance. Let's say Goldman thinks Greece's debt recovery is 75 cents and the CDS should be trading at 700 bps, instead of the "prevailing" consensus of a 90 recovery and 450 spread, then it will very likely get its way when demanding extra capital to cover potential shortfalls, since Goldman itself has been instrumental in covering up Greece's catastrophic financial state and continues to be a critical factor in any future refinancing efforts on behalf of Greece. Obviously this incremental margin, which only Goldman will ever see, even if the CDS was purchased on a flow basis, will never be downstreamed on behalf of its clients, and instead will be used to [buy futures|buy steepeners|prepay 2011 bonuses|buy more treasuries for the BONY $60 billion Treasury rainy day fund].

In essence, through its conflict of interest, its unshakable negotiating position, and its facility to determine collateral requirements and variation margin, Goldman can expand its previous position of strength from dictating merely AIG and Federal Reserve decision making, to one which determines sovereign policy! This is unmitigated lunacy and a recipe for financial collapse at the global level.

In essence, through its conflict of interest, its unshakable negotiating position, and its facility to determine collateral requirements and variation margin, Goldman can expand its previous position of strength from dictating merely AIG and Federal Reserve decision making, to one which determines sovereign policy! This is unmitigated lunacy and a recipe for financial collapse at the global level.

This is yet another AIG in the making, with Goldman this time likely threatening to accelerate the collapse not merely of the US financial system, but of the global one, in order to attain virtually infinite negotiating leverage. Of course, the world will not allow a Greece-initiated domino, allowing Goldman to call everyone's bluff once again.

If there is an agency of the European Union that acts to protect Union members from financial fraud and predation, it could do Greece, the EU and the world a giant favor by declaring the whole CDS market corrupt and unenforcable. That would greatly lessen the pressure on Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal AND, as a feature, not a bug, possibly blow up Goldman-Sachs. But I dream.


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

Iran has rejected Western overtures and the international community has no choice but to move toward imposing new sanctions over its nuclear program, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday.

Several African leaders, their relatives and associates used Western banks, including British ones, to move hundreds of millions of dollars out of their countries and into accounts and companies they controlled, according to a US Senate report released late last week.

It says that, in 2007, President Omar Bongo of Gabon brought $1m in shrink-wrapped $100 notes into the US in a suitcase; that Teodoro Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea's president, moved "more than $100m in suspect funds through US bank accounts, including $30m to purchase a residence in Malibu"; and that, between 2000 and 2008, Jennifer Douglas, fourth wife of a former Nigerian vice-president, "helped her husband bring more than $40m in suspect funds into the US".

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- A man pulled alive from the rubble of a building in Haiti's capital may have been trapped since the January 12 quake that leveled much of the city, doctors reported Monday.

The emaciated 28-year-old man was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice,

US soldier gives four-year-old daughter 'waterboarding' over alphabet
A soldier subjected his four-year-old daughter to waterboard-style torture when she failed to recite her alphabet, it has been claimed.
...The 27-year-old, who had recently gained custody of the young girl, said she "squirmed" as he pushed her under the water three or four times, it was claimed.
...Waterboarding is a controversial torture technique used by the CIA to interrogate al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay, where water is poured over detainees so they think they are drowning.

Mr Tabor, from the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after he was seen wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to smash windows.

When police went to his home in nearby Yelm, his girlfriend told them about the alleged torture.

Mr Tabor's daughter was found hiding in a cupboard with bruises on her back and throat. When asked how she got her injuries, she replied: "Daddy did it."

The soldier, who has been charged with assault and ordered to stay on the military base, will appear in court later this week.

He is not allowed any contact with his daughter and she has been taken into care.  

WTF...

A Chinese activist who sought to document shoddy construction that contributed to deaths in China's devastating 2008 earthquake has been sentenced to five years in prison for subversion, his lawyer said on Tuesday.

Tan Zuoren was formally accused of inciting subversion of state power in emailed comments about the bloody crackdown on June 4, 1989, on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square.

But Tan's supporters and Amnesty International say he was detained because he planned to issue an independent report on the collapse of school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake, in which more than 80,000 people died.

<...>

China's official statistics show that 5,335 children died in the quake, which killed about 80,000 people and left 5 million homeless. In many towns, schools collapsed, burying the children inside, while surrounding residential buildings stayed standing. ...

Last Saturday I gave the first political speech of my life. I spoke to the Manhattan Libertarian party and told them I planning a campaign for Governor of New York State. I have not decided whether to seek the Libertarian party nomination or form my own party based on my platform; legalization, regulation and taxation of prostitution, marijuana, and legalizing gay marriage.

When was the last time a candidate put forward this kind of honest, radical platform? When is the last time a politician offered the voters something different than higher taxes, more spending, greater debt and service cuts.

I will also run to highlight the inequities of our criminal justice system which discriminates against women, minorities and poor people, a system which sent me to jail while Eliot Spitzer broke the law and walked away free. Eliot Spitzer is symptomatic of the problem we are dealing with in NY- dirty politicians who believe they are above the law - this precedent must be broken!

[...]

I am in a unique position to understand the economics of sex. I built a multi-million dollar escort service from scratch before pleading guilty to promoting prostitution.  Prostitution in New York is estimated to be a $5 Billion a year business. Legalization and a reasonable tax rate could bring $ 1Billion in new revenues to New York State each year. Legalizing Marijuana would reap another $2 Billion a year. Then New York could balance the budget and still cut property and income taxes.

[...]

I have retained Roger Stone[!], a well know political consultant to help me prepare for a campaign for governor. I met Roger Stone after we were on a radio show together. He helped expose the hypocrisy of Eliot Spitzer. He is brilliant. He knows how to get the 15,000 signatures I will need to get my name on the ballot. He also shares my positions regarding legalization of prostitution, pot and gay marriage.

Closer inspection of a photo of Sarah Palin, during a speech in which she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, reveals several notes written on her left hand. The words "Energy", "Tax" and "Lift American Spirits" are clearly visible. There's also what appears to read as "Budget cuts" with the word Budget crossed out.

The European Commission today announced the winner of a competition to design a new EU-wide logo for organic food - a leaf formed from the stars of the EU.

The logo, known as the Euro-leaf, will be compulsory on all EU pre-packaged organic foods from 1 July this year.

There are already logos in the EU's member states denoting organic food, but Mariann Fischer Boel, the European agriculture commissioner, said an EU-wide logo "will make it easier for consumers to recognise organic food whichever country it is from".

The winning design, by Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany, was chosen by the general public in a contest that attracted around 130,000 votes. In all, Milenkovic won 63% of the votes cast for the shortlist of three, selected from over 3,500 entries.

EU ministers will trigger a debate on an EU strategy for electric cars this week amid warnings by green groups that the electricity used to charge the vehicles could prove as polluting as the fuel engines they are supposed to replace.

Spain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, will table a document assessing challenges facing the electric vehicles industry at an informal meeting of EU competitiveness ministers tomorrow (9 February).

It aims to adopt a common EU action plan in May to give Europe's car-manufacturing industry a competitive edge in the race against the US, China and Japan.

The dream of turning Australia's tropical north into a major food bowl to replace drought-stricken southern farmlands and feed a future Asia has been shattered by a new report released on Monday.

Despite a billion of liters of annual rain, the equivalent of 2,000 Sydney Harbours, northern Australia has limited water, with 65 percent of rain lost through evaporation and 20 percent in rivers, while only 15 percent recharges groundwater reserves.

And climate change will make northern Australia hotter and drier by 2030, reducing water availability, said the report by the Northern Australian Land and Water Taskforce.

Republican politicians and conservative activists are launching a ballot campaign to suspend California's landmark global-warming law, in what they hope will serve as a showcase for a national backlash against climate regulations.

Supporters say they have "solid commitments" of nearly $600,000 to pay signature gatherers for a November initiative aimed at delaying curbs on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and factories until the state's unemployment rate drops.

GOP gubernatorial candidates and Tea Party organizers paint the 2006 law, considered a model for other state and federal efforts, as a job-killing interference in the economy. Talk radio is flailing at what John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, drive-time hosts on Los Angeles' KFI-AM (640), call "the global-warming final solution act" promoted by "fascist, Nazi" officials.

The deal marks Areva's first foray into solar energy and the nuclear giant hopes to have the leading market share in concentrated solar power by 2012, an Areva executive told Reuters in an interview.

"This market is set to have 20 gigawatts by the year 2020. Areva has an objective to be a world leader in solar energy," said Anil Srivastava, Areva's senior executive vice president of its renewable energies business group.

The executive said Areva chose solar thermal technology -- which uses the sun's heat to create steam to run turbines for electricity -- over other solar power options because it is "the closest" to nuclear plants.

THE Copenhagen climate dance continues. This week, 55 nations representing 78 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions from energy use, submitted pledges to the UN to cut emissions by 2020.

The commitments were made to meet a deadline set at the climate talks held in Copenhagen in December. But they mostly reiterate national pledges made before the summit, and are steeped in conditions. The US, for instance, reaffirmed its commitment to cut emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels, contingent on legislation being passed at home. China repeated that it would "endeavour to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 45 per cent" between 2005 and 2020.

Norbert Roettgen has stirred up a heated debate in Germany's governing coalition by saying that no efforts should be wasted to replace nuclear technology as fast as possible.

Roettgen argues that it has very little support among Germans, even 40 years after the first nuclear power station started operating.

The environment minister raised some eyebrows in his own party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), as well as his coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), who accused him of muddying the waters with regards to the government's energy policy.

Consternation

The Free Democrats argue that Roettgen's remarks are confusing, because the government's official policy clearly acknowledges nuclear energy as a 'bridging technology' that will only be abandoned when it can safely be replaced by renewable energy sources.

The space shuttle Endeavour bolted off its seaside launch pad in Florida on Monday, carrying six astronauts on a voyage to install the last two main pieces of the International Space Station.

The 4:14 a.m. EST (9:14 a.m. British time) blastoff from the Kennedy Space Centre shattered the predawn tranquillity with a deafening roar and a brilliant tower of flames that momentarily turned the dark Florida sky as bright as day.

"What a beautiful launch we had this morning," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space flight. "This is a great start to a very complicated mission."

Neil Gaiman has been picking up literary prizes left, right and centre over the last year, but the fantasy author announced this weekend what could be the biggest honour yet for a long-time fan of Doctor Who: writing an episode of the television series detailing the adventures of the Time Lord.

On clear winter nights, from his chalet 3,400 feet up in the Alps of Switzerland's Berner Oberland, Roman Polanski is afforded spectacular views of a star-studded heaven forming the backdrop to a breathtaking mountain panorama heavy with snow. It is the reason, no doubt, why his holiday home of 30 years is called "Milky Way".

Yet "Milky Way" on Alpenblickstrasse, Gstaad - a winding road in the Swiss ski resort famed for its super-rich celebrity population - is as close to experiencing the stars as Polanski will get when his latest movie The Ghost Writer premieres at the Berlin film festival on Wednesday.

The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, has closed to the public due to technical problems just a month after it was formally opened.

The observation deck on the Dubai building's 124th floor, which had been open since the building was formally named on Jan 4, has been closed indefinitely because of unspecified technical problems.

At 2,716 feet tall, the tower contains a hotel, apartments and offices. The first occupants of the apartments were due to move in later this month.

Five centuries of Turkish domination left their mark on culture, cuisine, language and even gestures in Balkan countries. It is an influence that is still apparent in attitudes that have affected the pace of integration in the European Union for a number of Balkan states.

For the most part, Balkan scholars tend to overlook the influence of Ottoman heritage on contemporary Balkan identities. In so doing they are largely aligned with public opinion in the Balkans, which also prefers to minimize the significance of an Ottoman legacy that is nonetheless omnipresent. Maria Todorova, author of Imagining the Balkans (Oxford University Press, 1997), has sparked controversy by accusing official historians and other Balkan state sanctioned academics of disguising the truth about the region's Ottoman past and heritage, which is often denied or perceived with disdain. In her native Bulgaria, where "Turkish subjugation" is the only officially sanctioned term for the Ottoman era, Todorova goes even further to suggest that it is no longer a question of studying "the Ottoman legacy in the Balkans," but rather of studying the "the Ottoman legacy that is the Balkans." And as a starting point, she proposes the etymology of the word "balkan," which comes from the Turkish for "wooded mountain."

This heritage is perceptible on every level of social interaction. For example, in political life, it is expressed by an exclusively extra-institutional approach to problem solving (pazarlık - bargaining). Then there is the absence of an indigenous cultural elite. In all of the regions of the Ottoman empire, elites were mainly composed of intellectuals who had been educated abroad: a situation that remained relatively unchanged when the different nations of the empire finally obtained their independence. At the same time, the lack of a local bourgeoisie or aristocracy, and the failure to industrialize that characterized the Ottoman era continued to contribute to the economic weakness of Balkan countries well into the 20th century.

Here's a horrific story: A 27-year-old soldier in Tacoma, Washington has allegedly admitted to police that he waterboarded his four-year-old daughter - mere weeks after winning custody of her -- because she could not recite the alphabet.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the soldier, Joshua Tabor, "admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry."

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

It's not clear whether Tabor has served in Iraq or Afghanistan -- the soldiers at his military base have served in both -- but there's little doubt that he is a very disturbed individual. Tabor was initially arrested after "being seen walking around his neighborhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows."

But hey, I guess the French think they can sell us Exocets now...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Me ducks.