Jailed Ukrainian ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko has been moved from prison to a hospital, where she is expected to be treated by a German doctor. She is expected also to end a hunger strike on her doctor's advice.

Tymoshenko was moved from her Kharkiv prison cell to a local hospital Wednesday morning. She was accompanied by neurologist Lutz Harms, a Berlin doctor who is expected to treat her, Ukrainian media reported.

"Tymoshenko was transferred from her penal colony to hospital for a course of treatment recommended by an international medical commission," the prisons service said in a statement.

Harms had apparently advised her that she must end the hunger strike and submit to treatment or could face permanent health problems.

Anders Behring Breivik produced "cries of joy" during the massacre he carried out on the Norwegian island of Utoeya last July, in which 69 people died, his trial has heard.

In the first of several witness accounts on Wednesday, Tonje Brenna said she heard Breivik cry "woo-hoo" as he shot people on the island.

Another witness said he saw Breivik fire at those trying to swim to safety.

Breivik admits the murders, but denies criminal responsibility.

He killed 77 people on total - 69 at a youth camp on Utoeya and eight in a bomb attack in the capital Oslo earlier on 22 July 2011.

Russia has commemorated Victory Day, the 67th anniversary of Russia's defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, with a military parade in Moscow's Red Square.

Newly inaugurated Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a military parade through Moscow's Red Square on Wednesday that commemorates Victory Day, Russia's defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Around 14,000 troops were on hand for the ceremony, which also featured a display of Russian missiles and other military hardware.

Putin (center) and Medvedev (right) have swapped jobs

Putin was joined in the stands overlooking the parade by his new prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in the role after gaining parliamentary approval Tuesday. Putin served for one term as prime minister following two stints as president. Medvedev was president during Putin's term as prime minister.

A police officer will face prosecution over allegations he assaulted a 15-year-old black teenager who was handcuffed in the custody area of a London police station shortly after last summer's riots.

Metropolitan police constable Joe Harrington is to be charged with assault "occasioning actual bodily harm" over allegations he attacked Terelle Ferguson, now 16, at Forest Gate police station.

The decision to charge the officer was announced by the Crown Prosecution Service, which had previously decided there was no realistic prospect of prosecution in the case. Alison Saunders, the chief crown prosecutor for London, said it was "regrettable" that prosecutors previously came to the wrong conclusion in the case.

"I hope the seriousness with which the CPS has taken this matter gives the public confidence that we are an organisation which will review our decisions, openly accept when we've got them wrong and then take the correct course of action," she said.

Turkey will not deport Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi despite an international Red Notice for his arrest issued by Interpol on Tuesday. In Iraq, Hashemi is accused of running a death squad.

In spite of being put on Interpol's most wanted list on Tuesday, the Turkish government said on Wednesday it sees no reason to extradite the Iraqi Vice President, who is in Turkey for medical treatment.

"We will not extradite someone whom we have supported since the very beginning," Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

Bozdag also pointed out that Iraq was not cooperating enough in Turkey's efforts to detain supporters of the Kurdish rebel group PKK, which carries out attacks inside Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.

Al-Hashemi is being tried in absentia in Iraq on charges of terrorism. He is being accused of guiding and financing death squads that targeted government officials, security forces and Shiite pilgrims.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has rounded on the government's legislative programme for the next 12 months, saying it offers "no change, no hope" for the unemployed and families hit by the recession.

"For a young person looking for work, the speech offers nothing," Miliband told MPs. "For a family whose living standards are being squeezed, this speech offers nothing. For the millions of people who think the government isn't on their side, this speech offers nothing."

The Labour leader delivered a hard-hitting attack on the prime minister, whom he accused of turning into "David Brent" within two years of taking power, after the government laid out its plans for the year ahead, including reform of the House of Lords.

Miliband told a packed Commons chamber that the government had created "the worst unemployment for 16 years, a million young people out of work and the first double-dip recession for 37 years".

Commenting on the Queen's speech, in which 19 bills had been unveiled, he said: "They promised recovery but they delivered recession - a recession made in Downing Street. They have failed."

The Spanish state nationalises the holding company of Bankia, the mega-caja, which leaves the state with an effective 45% stake in the banking group; El Pais says the dismissal of Rodrigo Rato as head of Bankia was an attempt to recover credibility; Rato has been replaced by Ignacio Goirigolzarri, a former CEO of BBVA; the nationalisation occurs through a conversion of state aid from the bank bailout fund into equity; Deloitte has refused on sign off on the accounts, having concluded that BFA overvalued its assets by €3.5bn; more state capital injections likely as banks are forced to write of real estate losses; there are signs that depositors in Bankia were getting nervous; Spanish equity markets had a bad day, and bond spreads rose sharply; European Commission does not expect Spain to hit its latest deficit targets; Nouriel Roubini writes that Spain is heading for a catastrophic collapse; Syriza may be ending up with more votes in the next elections; baton to form a government has been passed on to Evangelos Venizelos, but chances are slim; Germany threatens end of rescue payments for Greece if reforms are stopped; Bundesbank signals acceptance of higher inflation in Germany; Mark Schieritz welcomes the new flexibility of German policymakers; the Irish Yes campaign for the fiscal treaty is gathering speed; the EU will not grant the Netherlands any leeway over the 3% deficit target; Angela Merkel's chief whip, meanwhile, warns Hollande not to implement his domestic programme, or risk a further ratings downgrade.

Although recession has engulfed their main markets in Europe, German firms in March exported more than ever before in a single month. With imports similarly at a record high, Europe's biggest economy helps others, too.

In March, German companies sold goods worth 98.9 billion euros ($128.5 billion) abroad - the highest volume of exports since first records were taken in 1950, the German Federal Statistics Office, Destatis, said Wednesday.

The previous German export record had been set in March 2011, Destatis added, which had now been surpassed by 0.7 percent.

Compared with inflation and seasonally adjusted February figures, exports rose by 0.9 percent, supporting analysts' assumptions that Germany might avoid a technical recession, which is two consecutive quarters of contraction.

The European executive has responded to the electoral earthquakes in France and Greece by calling for a shift towards growth across the EU as the new firebrand leftist leader in Athens stepped up his country's rebellion against austerity.

Alexis Tsipras, the leader of a group of radical Greek leftists that has been charged with trying to form a government, tore into the terms agreed by Athens for a €130bn bailout, threatening to nationalise the Greek banks and warning that Greece would walk away from its rescue deal with the eurozone.

In Brussels, Herman Van Rompuy, the European council's president, called a special summit to be held in a fortnight at which the French president-elect, François Hollande, will be able to unveil his proposals for tackling the euro crisis. The European commission supported Hollande's demands for pan-European investment to generate growth and create jobs.

"We are seizing the moment to advance our proposals in the new political climate," said Olli Rehn, the commissioner tasked with dealing with the euro crisis, as he accepted that the weekend's elections in France and Greece had changed the face of European politics.

Spain is preparing to force its banks to set aside tens of billions of euros in additional provisions against property loans as part of a fresh restructuring plan for the country's lenders.

As part of a plan to be announced on Friday, which would involve further public money being injected into Bankia, the troubled savings bank, the Spanish government is likely to announce fresh provision requirements that could total more than €30bn across the sector, officials said.p>Spain's ministry of economy said the plan was yet to be finalised and no exact number for the provisions could be confirmed at this stage as the situation could change ahead of Friday.

From the monetary fortress of the European Central Bank to the pro-European duchy of Luxembourg, policy makers are beginning to air their doubts that Greece can stay in the euro.

Post-election tumult in Athens has put the once-taboo subject of an exit from the 17-country currency union on the agenda, lifting the veil on possible scenario planning afoot behind the scenes.

"If Greece decides not to stay in the euro zone, we cannot force Greece," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at a conference sponsored by German broadcaster WDR in Brussels today. "They will decide whether to stay in the euro zone or not."

After 386 billion euros ($499 billion) in aid pledges for Greece, Ireland and Portugal, 214 billion euros in ECB bond purchases and another trillion euros in low-interest loans for banks, plus 17 high-level crisis summits, Greece's political chaos thrust Europe into a perilous new phase.

Euro-zone governments held back part of a big scheduled loan payment in a warning shot to Greece Wednesday, as outside pressure mounted on the country's politicians to pull together a pro-euro coalition to take charge of the government.

Greece's euro-zone partners agreed to release only €4.2 billion ($5.5 billion) in previously agreed financing, to be paid out Thursday, holding back €1 billion at least until June. That would be paid only if Greece keeps to pledges it made to secure a bailout.

With Athens in political turmoil after a fractured result in weekend elections, and a new vote likely by June, German politicians cautioned that further aid could be withdrawn if Greece abandons austerity targets--even if that pushes the country from the bloc.

"If Greece ends the reform process it has undertaken, then I can't see that the respective tranches [of aid] can be paid out," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, added that "if Greece does not decide to stay in the euro zone we can't force them to stay in it."

WASHINGTON -- The suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday.

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen last month, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his aviation attack and inside information on the group's leaders, locations, methods and plans to the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi intelligence and allied foreign intelligence agencies.

Officials said the agent, whose identity they would not disclose, works for the Saudi intelligence service, which has cooperated closely with the C.I.A. for several years against the terrorist group in Yemen. He operated in Yemen with the full knowledge of the C.I.A. but not under its direct supervision, the officials said.

A roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck near Deraa, wounding six soldiers just seconds after a convoy carrying the head of the UN observer mission passed by.

An Associated Press news agency reporter who was travelling in the UN convoy said the explosion blew out the military vehicle's windows and sent out a plume of black smoke. Vehicles in the UN convoy were not hit.

Major-General Robert Mood, the head of the UN mission, was in the convoy but escaped unharmed along with 11 other observers, said an AFP photographer travelling with them.

The Norwegian officer said the attack was "a graphic example of violence that the Syrian people do not need".

Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned.

The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez.

In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.

The CIA tapes are likely to become central to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, at Guantanamo Bay.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a special military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday, he refused to put on the headphones that would enable him to hear the translator.

North Carolina voters have approved a state constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage and civil unions, dealing a blow to efforts across the United States to extend gay marriage rights.

The amendment, which defines marriage between a man and a woman as the only legally recognised domestic union in the state, was passed by a wide margin on Tuesday.

With 95 of 100 counties' results reported, about 61 per cent of voters backed the amendment.

North Carolina law already blocks gay and lesbian couples from marrying, but the state now joins other southeastern states in adding the prohibition to its constitution.

The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. With 93 per cent of precincts reporting, Obama was receiving just under 60 per cent of the vote to Judd's 40 per cent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Mr Obama is enough to get Judd votes.

"I voted against Obama," said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat. "I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again."

When asked which presidential candidate he voted for, Mr Brown said, "That guy out of Texas."

WASHINGTON -- Support for the war in Afghanistan has reached a new low, with only 27 percent of Americans saying they back the effort and about half of those who oppose the war saying the continued presence of American troops in Afghanistan is doing more harm than good, according to an AP-GfK poll.

In results released Wednesday, 66 percent opposed the war, with 40 percent saying they were "strongly" opposed. A year ago, 37 percent favored the war, and in the spring of 2010, support was at 46 percent. Eight percent strongly supported the war in the new poll.

The poll found that far fewer people than last year think the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. troops increased the threat of terrorism against Americans. Overall, 27 percent say the al-Qaida leader's death resulted in an increased terror threat, 31 percent believe his death decreased the threat of terrorism and 38 percent say it has had no effect. The poll was conducted before the revelation this week of a recent al-Qaida plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner with an underwear bomb.

Chris Solomon, an independent from Fuquay-Varina, N.C., is among the respondents who strongly oppose the war. He said the military mission has reached the limits of its ability to help Afghans or make Americans any safer, and he would close down the war immediately if he could. While the rationale for the war is to fight al-Qaida, most of the day-to-day combat is against an entrenched Taliban insurgency that will outlast the foreign fighters, he said.

WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he supports gay marriage, reversing his position on a controversial social issue just six months before the November election and adopting a stance fraught with political implications.

Mr. Obama had been under intense pressure this week to lay out a clear stance on gay marriage after several of his top advisers endorsed it. Mr. Obama said he "personally" believes gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, a position he came to after several years of talking to friends and family and thinking about gay members of the military and of his staff who are raising children together in monogamous relationships.

"I've been going through an evolution on this issue. I've always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally," Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts. "At a certain point, I just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think that same sex couples should be able to get married."

Old divisions between developed and developing countries in who should lead the fight against climate change should be laid aside, according to ministers from some of the world's poorest countries and European representatives meeting on Tuesday.

The vexed issue of which countries should bear the greatest responsibility for cutting greenhouse gas emissions has been a sticking point in international negotiations for two decades. Under the original settlement reached in 1992 at the Rio Earth summit, and formalised in the 1997 Kyoto protocol, some rapidly emerging economies such as China were left out of the roster of obligations to curb emissions.

However, China is now the world's biggest emitter and second biggest economy, prompting many nations to question whether the divisions that were relevant 20 years ago should still apply today.

Ministers from the world's least developed countries, small island states and a sprinkling of developed and larger developing nations gathered in Brussels for a two-day meeting ahead of global climate change talks in Bonn next week.

The era of U.S. coal-fired electric power generation will effectively end as new federal regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from fossil plants take effect, a new analysis from Bloomberg Government concludes.

The report, from energy analyst Rob Barnett, posits that the new U.S. EPA rule, rolled out last month and open for public comment until June 12, will effectively ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants because the CO2 emission rates required of fossil plants are so strenuous that no conventional coal plant could meet them.

Baseload oil-fired power plants, which account for a much smaller share of current generation assets, also would fail to meet the EPA standard, the analysis found.

And while EPA designed the rule to accommodate fossil fuel plants equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the Barnett report said such plants are unlikely to find favor with investors unless Congress provides incentives to defray their higher construction and operation costs.

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth's underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry's argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as "just a few years."

Under the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stipulates that gasoline and diesel refiners must blend a certain amount of "renewable fuel" into their products or face penalties.

The vast majority of the biofuel being produced now is corn-derived ethanol, on which the RFS places a cap of 15 billion gallons by 2015. So to satisfy the federal mandate that 36 billion gallons of biofuel be blended into the overall supply by 2022, the U.S. biofuels industry will have to produce a substantial amount of other types of biofuels--especially cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from wood chips and grasses. 

But in 2007, Congress vastly overestimated the government's ability to create a market for cellulosic biofuels, which remain much more expensive to produce than corn ethanol. There was no commercial production of cellulosic fuel in 2010 or 2011--even though the 2007 law originally called for 100 million and 250 million gallons, respectively, for those years (the requirements were subsequently scaled back to around 6.5 million gallons for each year). The chart above shows the actual biofuel production, so far, compared to future mandates.

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) -- A basic tenet underpinning scientists' understanding of extinction is that more abundant species persist longer than their less abundant counterparts, but a new University of Georgia study reveals a much more complex relationship.

A team of scientists analyzed more than 46,000 fossils from 52 sites and found that greater numbers did indeed help clam-like brachiopods survive the Ordovician extinction, which killed off approximately half of Earth's life forms some 444 million years ago. Surprisingly, abundance did not help brachiopod species persist for extended periods outside of the extinction event.

Study co-author Steven Holland, a professor of geology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, said the seemingly paradoxical finding suggests that predicting which species are at risk of extinction is an extremely dicey endeavor.

"This study shows that extinction is much more complicated than generally realized," said Holland, whose findings appear in the current issue of the journal Paleobiology. "It turns out that a lot of extinction events are idiosyncratic; there are a specific set of circumstances that come together and dictate whether something goes or doesn't."

One in six cancers - two million a year globally - are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest.

The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.

These four - human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses - account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.

Most cases are in the developing world.

The team from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France says more efforts are needed to tackle these avoidable cases and recognise cancer as a communicable disease.

An airplane from Russian manufacturer Sukhoi has gone missing on a demonstration flight in Indonesia with 46 people on board.

A Russian jet carrying 46 people has gone missing during a demonstration flight in Indonesia, according to the country's civil aviation chief.

Herry Bakti said the Sukhoi Superjet 100, pictured above, was carrying local airline representatives from the Transport Ministry.

"We're still looking for it," he said. "We don't know what happened."

The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There's never been anything like it that I can think of.  If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead -- because victory won't come quickly -- it could prove a significant moment in American history.

The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it's an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That's another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s -- although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today -- nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that "we're gonna get out of it," even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that "it will get better."

There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world -- you could see it in the business press at the time -- because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, "we're gonna get out of it."

A group of sunspots 11 times wider than the Earth turned to face our planet, raising the possibility of solar flares and auroras tonight.

More than 60,000 miles wide, Sunspot Region 1476 became visible over the weekend and two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), where a portion of the sun's atmosphere breaks off, erupted on Tuesday.

The CMEs blasts could arrive on Earth later today and cause moderate geomagnetic storms later and auroras in the higher altitudes, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.

The CMEs are traveling at 1.5 million miles per hour but, since they are only partially directed at Earth, they aren't expected to affect communications satellites or other equipment susceptible to space weather. (Special filters are needed for viewing the sun directly to protect the eye, notes Space.com.)

Too wide-ranging to quote a couple of paragraphs.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

British-born celebrity hairdresser Vidal Sassoon has died at his home in Los Angeles, aged 84.

A police spokesman said officers went to the stylist's home on Wednesday morning to confirm the death. He said Sassoon had died of natural causes.

Sassoon is regarded as one of the best-known hairdressers of his generation.

Point n'est besoin d'espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer. - Charles le Téméraire