A new Eurobarometer survey shows that 71 per cent of Europeans are aware that Europe's population is getting older.

However, it goes on to say that only 42 per cent are concerned about this development.

This, it says, is in "stark contrast" with the perceptions of policymakers, who regard demographic ageing as a major challenge.

For most citizens who were surveyed, people aged 55 years and older are considered to play a major role in key areas of society.

Over 60 per cent believe that the public should be allowed to continue working after retirement age and one third says that they would like to work longer themselves.

People closer to retirement are more likely to share this view than the younger generation.

The survey comes as the EU last week launched the 2012 European year of active ageing and solidarity of generations.

Greece must underscore its political commitment to economic reforms if it is to receive a second EU bailout, finance ministers meeting in Brussels warned yesterday (24 January). Meanwhile, Greece's creditor banks argue they cannot fulfil their part of the deal unless the EU first commits the money.

"All Greek [political] parties must agree to the [austerity] measures and a new programme, independently of the upcoming elections," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told journalists after a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels.

New government expected in Athens

Greece is expected to stage snap elections before 8 April. Antonis Samaras, whose centre-right New Democracy party governs in coalition with technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, has openly criticised some austerity measures prescribed by international lenders.

Opinion polls suggest Samaras would win an election, but he would need to form a coalition with other parties to gain a mandate for governing.

A meeting between European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, aimed at bridging differences over Hungary's controversial state reforms, ended up inconclusively yesterday (24 January). Meanwhile, finance ministers opened the way for sanctions to be imposed on Budapest over its deficit.

Orbán took a conciliatory tone after the end of his visit to the Commission's headquarters, but the statement, released by Barroso's office, made it clear there was little progress.

Piling further pressure on Orbán, EU finance ministers issued a statement just before the meeting, warning that Hungary could see its regional funding cut if it continues to break the EU's deficit limits.

Orbán was expected to present a calendar for changes to recently enacted Hungarian laws that the Commission and critics say could undermine the independence of the country's central bank, data protection authority and judiciary.

On 17 January the Commission launched infringement procedures in those three fields, giving the Hungarian authorities one month to respond.

BRUSSELS - Four years after the EU's biggest-ever police mission came to Kosovo it has not indicted any top suspects on organised crime, posing questions about its work and the integrity of Kosovo's leaders.

Eulex itself is proud of its record. Its training of Kosovo police and customs is a success story. When the EU completes its Eulex review in the next few weeks, it is expected to reduce personnel to let local officers take over many day-to-day functions.

Eulex' spokesman in Pristina, Nicholas Hawton, told EUobserver it also has "clear results" in chasing criminals in its war-scarred and politically complex theatre of operations.

He added it has 350 ongoing criminal investigations and that its judges have handed down 220 verdicts - 15 on organised crime and 20 on war crimes. One of the investigations concerns accusations that Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci used to run an organ trafficking gang. On the shocking case of Enver Zymberi - a Kosovar Albanian policeman murdered by a Serb sniper last year - its investigation has led Interpol to issue six arrest warrants.

(Reuters) - Britain's economy may have entered a mild recession in the last three months of 2011, hampering the government's core policy aim of spurring growth and raising the chances that the Bank of England will inject more cash soon.

Britain's recovery from the 2008/2009 recession - the deepest since the depression-hit 1930s - has already been sluggish, and unemployment has crept up to a 17-year high as the government cuts spending deeply to erase a huge budget deficit.

The economy shrank by 0.2 percent at the end of 2011, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, a bit more than economists expected as a stagnating services sector failed to offset a slump in manufacturing and construction.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has told the World Economic Forum that a "big rethink" is needed in the eurozone within the global economy.

"Structural reforms that lead to more jobs are essential," she told delegates at the Swiss resort of Davos. "Do we dare to be more European?"

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond has set out the question he intends to ask voters in a referendum on Scottish independence.

The SNP leader said Scots would be asked: "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" in a ballot which he wants to hold in 2014.

But a consultation launched by Mr Salmond asks if voters favour a second question on more Holyrood powers.

He said the referendum could be regulated by the Electoral Commission.

In a statement to MSPs, Mr Salmond described the question as "short, straightforward and clear", saying the people of Scotland would be asked to make the most important decision facing the country in 300 years.

Talks between Athens and its private creditors resume today, with pressure for a deal by the end of the week; Kathemerini says involvement of the ECB is now part of the negotiations, after the IMF has put on the pressure on the ECB; there is still substantial opposition within the ECB about whether to accept, and how to handle, a haircut; the Greek government withdraws a wideranging liberalisation bill after MPs withhold support; the government now promises to present an ,,improved" version; Angela Merkel warns against overburdening Germany in crisis resolution efforts; Portuguese CDS reach record high as financial markets are betting on a default; Bild see Angela Merkel as Europe's Powerfrau; French unemployment rises close to 3m; Francois Hollande's economic advisers said they had dropped Keynes in favour of Schumpeter; the Fed extended its exceptionally low rates promise until end-2014, and sets a 2% inflation target; the Irish debt agency sold three-year debt as part of a bond swap; Colm McCarthy writes that this is not the beginning of a return to the markets; Ireland's fiscal watchdog insists on medium-term budget goals; Jean-Claude Trichet, meanwhile, now creates money for himself.

The bill may be amended to set the terms for any independence referendum, and a posse of pro-union peers, including Lord Forsyth, the former Conservative Scottish Secretary, Lord Foulkes, the former Labour MP, and the Conservative hereditary peer and former minister Lord Caithness have been very busy drafting helpful changes. But these two from Lord Caithness piqued my interest:
[...]

"(2D) A vote in a referendum held under subsection (2B) of this section which results in Scotland leaving the United Kingdom shall not be binding on the residents of the Orkney Islands or the Shetland Islands unless a majority of the residents of the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands who voted in such a referendum voted that Scotland should leave the United Kingdom."

The national status of the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands (and indeed Caithness) are issues the Earl knows a thing or two about. His family, the Sinclairs, controlled them for hundreds of years - and for much of that time they owed allegiance not to the crown of Scotland, but to that of Norway.

L'eurodéputé et coprésident du groupe Les Verts au Parlement européen estime que l'électorat écologiste fait le choix du vote utile en se tournant vers le socialiste François Hollande.

The MEP and cochairman of the Green group in the European Parliament thinks that the environmentalist electorate choose the "useful vote" turning towards the Socialist François Hollande.

Part of the growth problem is that Germany insists other euro zone states must pursue the kind of structural reforms that helped it regain competitiveness in the last decade, even if these risk sending weaker economies into a deflationary spiral.

"To overcome the crisis, there is no way around strict consolidation and structural reforms in the member states," Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said late on Tuesday.

...

Financial market participants say they are more concerned about the absence of growth in the euro zone than about budget deficits and public debt levels now, because growth is what will enable countries to service and repay their debts over time. "It looks like the LTRO is having a positive contribution. Does it solve all of the problems sustainably? Probably not," said Andrew Bosomworth, a senior portfolio manager at Pimco.

"At the end of the day, it comes down to growth -- that's what these countries need to keep their debt sustainable."

EU countries broke a deadlock in talks to crack down on the derivatives market, as France and Britain resolved a turf war over how much say a pan-European watchdog can have over national markets, diplomatic sources said.

The breakthrough which came at the meeting of EU finance ministers yesterday (24 January) means member states can move ahead to negotiate with the European Parliament on a final joint text as early as next week in a bid to comply with a globally agreed December deadline for the new rules.

EU regulators have tried to forge rules to drive derivatives on to exchanges since September 2010, but talks have been hampered by a British and French impasse over which regulator has ultimate say - the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) or the national authority.

Finance ministers agreed that the EU's 27 national regulators can overturn the decision to allow a clearing house to operate in a national market by a two-thirds majority.

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve took the historic step on Wednesday of setting an inflation target, of 2 percent, a victory for Chairman Ben Bernanke that brings the Fed in line with many of the world's other major central banks.

The U.S. central bank, in its first ever "longer-run goals and policy strategy" statement, said it was not appropriate to adopt a fixed goal for employment, however, because the labor market is not largely determined by monetary factors.

The Fed said the 2 percent target - measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures - is the most consistent over the long run with its mandate.

"Communicating this inflation goal clearly to the public helps keep longer-term inflation expectations firmly anchored, thereby fostering price stability and moderate long-term interest rates and enhancing the committee's ability to promote maximum employment in the face of significant economic disturbances," the Fed said.

"It's an uncomfortable feeling to realize that everything is going up except your income," said the 74-year-old from Galloway, New Jersey.

Rising home and car insurance costs have forced her to dip into savings which have been earning less than 1.0 percent.

That isn't likely to change for some years.

The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it is likely to keep its key interest rate near zero until late 2014. That would make more than five years of rock-bottom rates.

For Smith and other pensioners struggling to cope with inflation higher than the rate of interest they earn on their savings, all of this amounts to, as she puts it, "being punished" for being prudent.

She is a casualty of the Fed's strategy to keep rates low in an attempt to generate the economic growth needed to lower the nation's jobless rate. Low borrowing costs also prevent the U.S. federal government's debt burden from getting even further out of control.

The same could be said for the policies of central banks in other developed nations, including the European Union.

(Reuters) - Japan's first annual trade deficit in more than 30 years calls into question how much longer the country can rely on exports to help finance a huge public debt without having to turn to fickle foreign investors.

The aftermath of the March earthquake raised fuel import costs while slowing global growth and the yen's strength hit exports, data released on Wednesday showed, swinging the 2011 trade balance into deficit.

Few analysts expect Japan to immediately run a deficit in the current account, which includes trade and returns on the country's huge portfolio of investments abroad. A steady inflow of profits and capital gains from overseas still outweighs the trade deficit.

MADRID - Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos and Repsol-YPF agreed Wednesday to negotiate an alliance that would require the former's stake in the Spanish oil major to fall within a range of between 5 percent and 10 percent, the companies said.

MercoPress: Brazil posted a record-high current account deficit in 2011 on rising profit remittances by multinational companies and massive spending abroad by Brazilian tourists, but the deficit was more than covered by another record, this time for foreign direct investment, the central bank said Tuesday.

Bloomberg: Ecuador received a loan commitment from China last month for at least $1 billion, helping finance a budget deficit that's projected to reach $4.23 billion this year, central bank President Pedro Delgado said.

MercoPress: Germany's BMW Ag., the world's largest luxury carmaker plans to build cars in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina from 2014 reports Automobilewoche.

When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.

Brown was among the world's most powerful dealers in raw cotton, and his family's firm, Brown Brothers & Co., served as one of the most important sources of capital and foreign exchange to the U.S. economy. Still, no small amount of his time was devoted to managing slaves from the study of his Leonard Street brownstone in Lower Manhattan.

Brown was hardly unusual among the capitalists of the North. Nicholas Biddle's United States Bank of Philadelphia funded banks in Mississippi to promote the expansion of plantation lands. Biddle recognized that slave-grown cotton was the only thing made in the U.S. that had the capacity to bring gold and silver into the vaults of the nation's banks. Likewise, the architects of New England's industrial revolution watched the price of cotton with rapt attention, for their textile mills would have been silent without the labor of slaves on distant plantations.

Flooding in northeastern Australia caused thousands of homes to lose power Tuesday and prompted authorities to start evacuations, around a year after deadly floods devastated the region.

Up to a dozen homes were evacuated on Brisbane's northern outskirts as Australia's third-largest city was hit by heavy rain, reports said, and authorities urged more people to leave their homes.

Almost 10,000 homes were blacked out and rising waters forced the closure of roads in Brisbane, which ground to a halt for several days in early 2011 due to flooding.

Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to commemorate the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that toppled their long-time ruler, Hosni Mubarak.

It is a year since Egyptians, inspired by an uprising in Tunisia, took to the streets to call for reform and to demand the resignation of Mubarak, Egypt's president for 30 years.

"Down with military rule" and "Revolution until victory, revolution in all of Egypt's streets" were chanted by one group of mainly youths in an area of Tahrir on Wednesday.

Sherine Tadros, reporting from Tahrir Square, said: "For a section of people demonstrating here, it's really just about military hijacking the revolution, and about Islamist parties and movements now making the gains instead of those who actually initiated the revolution."

"But others say it is a rocky transition but it is still a transition pointing out to the fact that Egypt had first free and fair elections in decades and people's assembly which reflects will of the people."

The White House has confirmed that United States Special Forces carried out a nighttime raid in northern Somalia and freed two hostages while killing a reported nine pirates.

A statement released on Wednesday from US President Barack Obama read, "Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our Special Operations Forces, yesterday Jessica Buchanan was rescued and she is on her way home."

The statement continued: "The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice."

The two aid workers, US citizen Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Dane Poul Hagan Thisted, 60, had been working for the Danish Demining Group. They were abducted in Galkayo in the semi-autonomous Galmudug region in October.

Mohamed Ahmed Alim, president of Galmudug, told the Reuters news agency that nine pirates were killed and five captured during the operation near the pirate haven of Haradheere.

The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the northern town of Idlib was shot dead on Wednesday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"We just learned a few minutes ago of the death of Mr Abdulrazak Jbero, head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent branch in Idlib. Mr Jbero was on his way by car from Damascus to Idlib. He was shot. Circumstances are still unclear," Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the head of ICRC operations for the Middle East, told Reuters.

Colombia:

Colombia Reports: Colombia insisted Tuesday it would expand the use of military tribunals despite warnings from Human Rights Watch (HRW) that the proposed reform "threatens to facilitate impunity for military abuses."  Colombia's Justice Minister Juan Carlos Esguerra said in a press release that the government will maintain the proposal and that the government will not change legislative procedures "to accomodate" HRW.

Colombia Reports: Colombia's neo-paramilitary groups continue to enjoy the protection of elements of the state, the director of a leading think tank said Tuesday.  In an interview with Colombia Reports, Leon Valencia, director of Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris, which monitors Colombia's illegal armed groups, said "it is impossible to exhibit such a degree of illegal activity without the protection of the security forces and without ties to politicians. The day the state as a whole is directed to pursue all of these people is the only time it can be over," he added.

Tim's El Salvador Blog: Violence and intimidation continue in El Salvador against environmental activists and defenders of human rights who have publically opposed metallic mining. The latest round of threats was focused against a Salvadoran Catholic priest, Father Neftalí Ruiz, and a community radio station, Radio Victoria.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) -- Uruguay's president has approved a $513,000 payment to Macarena Gelman, who was illegally adopted during the dictatorship after her mother was tortured and disappeared.  The payment complies with an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling that accuses Uruguay of delaying justice for crimes committed by its dictatorship in the 1970s, according to a brief statement posted Tuesday on the presidency's website.

Aguachile: How many children does Peña Nieto really have?  According to him, six - with various women, to be sure.

Central American Politics: The Miami Herald has a new editorial, Central America's free-fire zone, calling for stronger action against Honduras in light of escalating violence and corruption. (...) In my opinion, the editorial is poorly framed. First, why all this talk about civil wars, armies returning to their barracks, and insurgents laying down their arms when, in the case of Honduras, it didn't experience a civil war, the army returned to its barracks but never relinquished power, and few insurgents ever posed a threat to the survival of the regime.

UNPO: Argentina's push for energy threatens the life and culture of Mapuche communities, says member of Neuquen Mapuche Confederation.

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is -- and I mean this seriously -- the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,"

And, who knows? The Adelsons are billionaires. They might decide to put in another $5 million or perhaps $20 million into Gingrich's Super Pac. The point is, there's no limit.

Do you know who Sheldon and Marian Adelson are? Do you know what Gingrich has promised them, or what they think they'll get out of a Grinch presidency? I don't. But if Newt becomes President of the United States, they'll be singularly responsible. And we better find out, because Newt will owe them big time.

Monsanto has announced it will scrap plans to sell an insect-resistant maize in France, the second move in a week by biotech company to retreat from the genetically modified foods market in Europe.

Monsanto's announcement on Tuesday (24 January) came a week after Germany's BASF said it would suspend the development of GM crops in Europe and move its plant science arm to the United States.

BASF's move is a particular blow for Europe, said Carel du Marchie Sarvaas, director of agricultural biotechnology at EuropaBio.

"The BASF decision is not good for Europe because I think it is the reaction of a quintessentially European company to what is a stifling political and regulatory environment," said du Marchie Sarvaas, whose Brussels organisation represents agricultural technology companies.

"Research, jobs, money will go to where it is welcomed. In this case it will be somewhere else. It's a bad day for Europe."

Monsanto said it would not resume sales of MON810, a maize genetically modified to improve pest resistance, despite a French court ruling in November that overturned a 2008 government ban on the sale of MON810.

"Monsanto considers that favourable conditions for the sale of the MON810 in France in 2012 and beyond are not in place," the St. Louis, Missouri-based company said in a statement.

While the topic of climate change in this country often feels like the truth that dare not speak its name, there is no escaping what Grist's own David Roberts refers to as its "brutal logic." The planet will warm no matter how international climate negotiations -- the latest round having just occurred in Durban, South Africa -- play out.

It's because of that inevitable warming that Britain's chief scientist, John Beddington, along with an international group of scientists, have taken to the pages of Science magazine this month to ask climate negotiators to stop ignoring agriculture.

Agriculture has been hovering just on the margins of climate change policy. Of course, that's no coincidence. Precise measurement of the climate impact of many industrial farming practices remains difficult and controversial, and the U.S. in particular has resisted any attempts to formalize the agricultural sector's obligation to climate mitigation.

The reasons for this are twofold: Big and Ag. After all, it was American agribusiness that exacted virtual exemption from the Obama administration's failed attempt at a climate bill as a price for its potential support. The EPA continues to develop its carbon emissions tracking plan, but the agricultural sector has managed to keep itself out of that, too.

WASHINGTON, DC, January 24, 2012 (ENS) - Increased oil, natural gas and renewable energy production within the United States and energy efficiency will lower U.S. reliance on coal and imported energy sources through 2035, finds the latest forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, the statistical and analytical agency within the Department of Energy.

Energy-related emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are projected to remain below their 2005 level through 2035.

The EIA Monday released its Annual Energy Outlook 2012 Reference case, which reflects only the effects of energy policies that have been implemented in law or final regulations.

EIA Acting Administrator Howard Gruenspecht said, "Our updated Reference case projections show natural gas and renewables gaining an increasing share of U.S. electric power generation, domestic crude oil and natural gas production growing, reliance on imported oil decreasing, U.S. natural gas production exceeding consumption, and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions remaining below their 2005 level through 2035."

The successful bank robber no longer covers his face and leaps over the counter with a sawn-off shotgun. He arrives in a chauffeur-driven car, glides into the lift then saunters into an office at the top of the building. No one stops him. No one, even when the scale of the heist is revealed, issues a warrant for his arrest. The modern robber obtains prior approval from the institution he is fleecing.

...

As the writer Dan Pink has shown, high pay actually reduces performance(7). Material rewards incentivise simple mechanistic jobs, such as working on an assembly line. But they lead to the poorer execution of tasks which require problem solving and cognitive skills. As studies for the US Federal Reserve and other such bolsheviks show(8), cash incentives narrow people's focus and restrict the range of their thinking. By contrast, intrinsic motivators -- such as a sense of autonomy, of enhancing your skills and pursuing a higher purpose -- tend to improve performance.

...

Let's say £500,000 a year, a figure that includes bonuses, share options, pensions and benefits. It will rise with inflation, but no faster than that. If you want to make more, you can invest in a risky venture of your own or someone else's. If you want to make more money as a salaried worker - in other words while other people carry the risks - you can go abroad, and good riddance to you. Another country, incautious enough to set no cap, can deal with the consequences of your destructive greed.

EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding is expected to table a draft bill on Wednesday giving individuals the right to ask for data about them to be deleted from the Internet unless there are "legitimate" grounds not to. The new law as part of an overhaul of the Data Protection Directive.

In California's Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought-and that conditions for a sequel may exist today.

Up to now, geologists were vague on the age of the 600-foot deep crater, which formed when a rising plume of magma hit a pocket of underground water, creating an explosion. The most common estimate was about 6,000 years, based partly on Native American artifacts found under debris.

Now, a team based at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has used isotopes in rocks blown out of the crater to show that it formed just 800 years ago, around the year 1200.

That geologic youth means it probably still has some vigor; moreover, the scientists think there is still enough groundwater and magma around for another eventual reaction. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

An Emory University neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.

"Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred - whether it's a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics - is a distinct cognitive process," says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits.

Berns headed a team that included economists and information scientists from Emory University, a psychologist from the New School for Social Research and anthropologists from the Institute Jean Nicod in Paris, France.

LILONGWE, Jan 25, 2012 (IPS) - A campaign to stop people buying merchandise from street vendors is gaining momentum in Malawi's main cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu after the small-scale traders went on a rampage undressing women and girls wearing trousers, leggings, shorts and mini-skirts.

Street vendors occupy the pavements and street corners in the busiest parts of the country's major cities and towns. Here they sell everything from clothing to electronic items to food and groceries. But when the vendors in Lilongwe began rioting last week in protest against their forced removal by the local city council, things took a turn for the worse as vendors began stripping women and physically assaulting them.

Dubbed "lero nkugule, mawa undivule," which is vernacular Chichewa and translates into "today I buy from you, tomorrow you undress me", the campaign was initiated on Jan. 18, the day after the assaults. Women activists want to use the campaign to teach the vendors a lesson on respecting women, according to Seodi White, executive director of the influential women rights organisation, Women in Law in Southern Africa-Malawi.

Researchers at the RIKEN SPring-8 Center in Harima, Japan have clarified the crystal structure of quinol dependent nitric oxide reductase (qNOR), a bacterial enzyme that offers clues on the origins of our earliest oxygen-breathing ancestors.

In addition to their importance to fundamental science, the findings provide key insights into the production of nitrogen oxide, an ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide.

As the central process by which cells capture and store the chemical energy they need to survive, cellular respiration is essential to all life on this planet.

While most of us are familiar with one form of respiration, whereby oxygen is used to transform nutrients into molecules of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for use as energy ("aerobic respiration"), many of the world's organisms breathe in a different way.

Behold homo sapiens lashed on the wheel of the digital social network: held frozen over a computer which is tied by a cord to a wall wherein the fiberglass cable carries the message; staring into the lit screen, the face pale in the unnatural light; or, with head bent in the street, the appearance sullen, running fingers across the blinking object of desire.   The creature is secretly harried: Constant updates are necessary, the user must tend the machine whenever and wherever possible - which is all the time and everywhere - and god forbid there is too long a lapse in the slipstream.  On Facebook, new friends and old are counted - may they always increase in number!  Some are in fact "friends," in the now rotting sense of the word: the person who is to be confided in, who listens, cares what to listen for, knows secrets, keeps them, knows who you are to the extent that a friend can - the friend as he or she who might look into your eyes and, with affection and even love, claim to see the windows of the soul.

As we know, however, many Facebook "friends" bear no relation to how we want to understand the term.  Perhaps known to the user at work or at school in the flesh, yet they cannot be counted as real friends.   Some are strangers, known only via the interface of the machine, attracted to the user by an algorithm calculating the databit "likes" and "dislikes."

Earlier this month, I questioned the credentials of the alternative weather forecasters being used by the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph and the Sun. I suggested that their qualifications were inadequate, their methods inscrutable and their results unreliable. I highlighted the work of two of these companies: Exacta Weather and Positive Weather Solutions (PWS).

...

Both Charlotte and Emma have been quoted in the Daily Mail and their forecasts have formed the basis of some prominent stories. In April last year, for example, their claims were all that justified an article titled "It's sunshine all the way as forecasters predict 21c by Grand National weekend". Citing both women as sources at different points in the report appeared to lend it weight. But are either of them real?

...

"Quite frankly, the filing system I have is a mess and I cannot put my hands of the information you require. ... Your column which was understandably critical of us at Christmas made me face a few things about the company and where it was going, and now as I can't find anything to back anyone up then quite frankly PWS is now more trouble than its worth and in debt. Therefore, I have taken the decision after 6 years to close the business forthwith."

Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords has formally resigned from the US Congress, receiving a standing ovation from her colleagues.

Ms Giffords, shot by a lone gunman during a constituency meeting in January 2011, announced on Sunday she was resigning to complete her recovery.

Before the ceremony, the House voted unanimously in favour of a final bill she introduced, on immigration.

In her resignation letter, Ms Giffords promised to return to public life.