Pressure is mounting on Conservative minister Andrew Mitchell after police leaders urged him to resign and Labour called for a full account of his outburst at an officer.

The Tory Chief Whip denies claims he swore at a policeman on duty outside Downing Street and called him a "pleb".

The officer concerned has insisted reports of what happened are accurate.

Mr Mitchell has apologised but Labour said No 10 "must make clear" the exact words he used in the confrontation.

A Turkish court has sentenced three former army generals to 20 years in jail each for plotting a coup.

Nearly 330 other officers - including some senior military figures - were also convicted for their involvement in the plot.

Thirty-four people were acquitted. All the defendants denied the charges.

The officers were accused of plotting to bomb mosques and trying to trigger a war with Greece in order to justify a military coup.

France's Constitutional Council, a top legal authority, has rejected a plea from animal rights campaigners to ban bullfighting.

The campaigners wanted the fights categorised as cruelty to animals.

But the judges said the "traditional" fights, held in areas of southern France, "do not harm people's protected constitutional rights".

More than 1,000 bulls are killed annually in French bullfights, the AFP news agency reports.

The international diplomatic collective Friends of the Syria gathered in Scheveningen on Thursday to talk about strengthening sanctions, including an oil and arms embargo against Syria.

The group is a collective of over 70 countries and bodies convening periodically on the conflict-torn country.

European Union imposed sanctions this month, depriving the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of a quarter of its earnings denominated in foreign currency, forcing the country to reduce production from 380,000 barrels a day to about 250,000 barrels a day one month later.

Presentation by Paolo Becchi, Professor of the Philosophy of Law in the Faculty of Jurisprudence at the University of Genoa: "Napolitano I's 18 Brumaire and the M5S"

"We are getting near the end: the end of the presidential term of office for Napolitano, and the end of the sixteenth legislature of the Italian Republic that was split into two phases with the passage of power from Berlusconi to Monti. And yet work goes on to "block" the system, even though there are the end of office moments coming up - and there are imminent elections - and this is perhaps the reason why it's happening. Napolitano has declared that he will continue to "be watchful" in relation to respect for the commitments made to the EU. King Giorgio will no longer be President, but he is leaving an inheritance to his successor (and who could that be, if not Monti? Ciampi had a "cursus honorum" like that: from President of the Council to Head of State).
The President of the Republic seems to be saying that the forthcoming elections don't count: that all the parties have to accept the continuity of the programme of the Monti government. Paradoxically, the elections are to ensure the continuity of a government that continues to present itself as a "time-limited" experience. Monti insists on saying that the technical government" has just been a "parenthesis": "The experience of the technical government is time-limited [...]. Once the experience of the technical government has gone by, what will remain for the future will be the importance of the capabilities in political activity."

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In other words, the MoVement must not be just an Opposition, a protest force, an expression of dissent and of the "delusion" of the Italians in relation to the parties. In fact, the delusion, the abstention, the protest vote will not on their own prevent the consolidation of the "Third Republic" (in fact that is largely legitimised with the intervention of the "custodian" of the Constitution, due to the void of abstention-ism and the disapproval shown towards the political parties that were then in government).
It's true: in Parliament, the MoVement can have no role except in Opposition, but that must not "institutionalise it": it must not lose its uncompromising and anti-system momentum. It has to be in the chamber but it must always be outside beyond the Palace. The MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} now needs a positive and definitive doctrine. It will not be a party for the very reason that it is not destined for compromise. The parties have abstract ideologies that they use like cards to be played at the table of political negotiations. "Ideologies" are created to be compromised with other "ideologies". Campaign groups do not have ideologies: they have a target, an objective. This is why the MoVimento 5 Stelle cannot by definition, "form alliances". And it is with the aim of distorting it, that the newspapers have started to put forward possible election tactics by means of the alliance with the IdV or with SEL - that the MoVement can never accept. Campaign groups work in a single direction. They cannot get lost on the way. They cannot choose to "turn" to the right or to the left. This is why they cannot compromise. This is why the MoVimento 5 Stelle{5 Star MoVement} must remain as a campaign group, it must continue to evolve and it must never stop. This is why, whatever the result of the elections in 2013, it must never re-imagine itself as an Opposition force nor as a Majority force.
This is not its nature. This is not its target. What it should do is to bring Italy out of this mouse trap - out of this political and economic system that is dictated by Europe, and give back sovereignty to the Italians. " Paolo Becchi

like OWS changed the dialogue in the US about the wealth gap abyss, so is the 5* movement changing the dialogue about party politics, almost all the daily news has some discussion of them.

how much the PTB fear their message is clearly measured by the violence of the rhetoric against them from the guardians of the corruptocracy.

The power of knowledge is in mortal combat with the knowledge of power. It really is that simple... That's the Edenic apple we are all munching on.

The EU's political season ahead of the 2014 elections will kick off this week with a Socialist Party congress, setting the ground for a centre-left candidate to run for the head of the European Commission.

Belgium's PM Elio di Rupo is the key speaker at the Socialist congress (Photo: fotospresidencia5)
The congress, which takes place every two and half years, is expected to change the inner rulings of the party allowing them to table a proposal when the current top commissioner, Jose Manuel Barroso, ends his second mandate, in 2014.

Barroso himself earlier this month said all political parties should choose candidates for the post. The Portuguese politician has already served two mandates but could, in theory, stand for another term.

"I'm really sick of this government giving away our taxes to those corrupt Greeks," said the owner of a pet shop in Amsterdam who asked not to be identified by name because he does not declare all his income to the authorities.

"That's why I only take cash here. I don't want all my money going to pay for that, especially when they are cutting back on pensions and healthcare."

George Osborne's debt reduction plans took another blow last month as government borrowing hit its highest on record for any August.

Public sector net borrowing excluding financial sector interventions - the government's preferred measure - widened to £14.41bn from £14.37bn in August 2011 - and is now the largest it has been since records began in 1993.

That takes the deficit for the tax year to date to £31bn. But, stripping out the transfer of Royal Mail pension assets, the deficit has actually widened 22% to £59bn so far this year.

George Buckley at Deutsche Bank said Friday's public finance data suggested the government will miss its targets by about £10bn or £20bn.

James Bullard, head of the Saint Louis Federal Reserve, is known for his hawkish stance on Federal Reserve policy, and he's been an outspoken critic of additional monetary easing.

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But Bullard says it's a futile attempt because unemployment simply can't return to pre-crisis levels - a reflection of the argument that the economy is facing a "new normal" going forward.

See More Reasons for Despair: Angels on Pinheads (March 5th, 2009)

Conservative economists have been arguing about the "new normal" for nearly 4 years.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

With an ageing population and slower growth, the broad outlines of responsible policy are straightforward. Japan should become a big investor in countries with younger populations, providing the capital investment needed to generate growth. Those countries can then return the savings to the Japanese as they retire. Singapore's government does just that via one of the world's largest investment funds.

The government has not been willing to raise taxes in a timely manner to match its spending.

Fifteen people have died as violent protests erupted on the streets of Pakistan's main cities in anger at an anti-Islam film made in the US.

Ten people were killed in the port city of Karachi and a further five died in the north-western city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.

Protesters also breached the diplomatic enclave in the capital, Islamabad, near the US embassy.

There has been widespread unrest over the amateur film, Innocence of Muslims.

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has said he is adamant his regime will not fall and lashed out at Gulf countries which he accused of using their enormous oil wealth to try to drive him from power.

Assad's comments were published on Friday as an opposition group, the National Co-ordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, accused the regime of being behind the disappearance of two of its leaders.

Abdul-Aziz al-Kheir and Ayas Ayyash were expected to take part in a conference this Sunday in Damascus by 20 Syrian groups that are calling for Assad to step down. But they disappeared on Thursday along with a friend who had picked them up at Damascus international airport, the group said

The main square in Libya's second city, Benghazi, is hosting rival demonstrations by citizens opposed to the control of militias, and by hardline Salafi protesters, with tensions still running high after an attack on the US consulate last week.

Around 30,000 pro-peace Libyans marched through the eastern port on Friday in an unprecedented effort to demand the disbanding of powerful armed gangs, in the wake of the assault that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.

The giant crowd poured into Al-Kish Square square in front of the main camp of Ansar Sharia in the city, unfurling a long Libyan flag and chanting, "With our lives and souls, we redeem you, Benghazi".

Israeli troops shot the three heavily armed men when they crossed the Egyptian border and ambushed the soldiers, averting "a very big terror attack", an Israeli military spokeswoman said on Friday.

The incident took place on the Israeli side of the frontier at a place called Har Harif, which is almost half way down Israel's 240km border with the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

"Three armed terrorist entered from the Sinai into Israel," army spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich told reporters.

South African authorities have issued an arrest warrant for ANC renegade Julius Malema, President Jacob Zuma's most vocal critic and a key backer of a wave of recent wildcat strikes, according to media reports.

"We have received confirmation from the authorities that there is an arrest warrant issued for Mr Malema," Nicqui Galaktiou of Brian Kahn Attorneys told local newspaper, City Press, on Friday.

"We are busy arranging Mr Malema's appearance next week," Galaktiou said. "We don't have a confirmed date yet. We have not seen the warrant of arrest. We don't know what the charges are. He won't be jailed."

South Korea's Navy on Friday fired warning shots at fishing boats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for violating a tense western maritime border, officials here said.

The six fishing boats, which crossed the border in succession starting from 11:44 a.m. local time, retreated north of the border after the Navy fired two warning shots at 3 p.m., said South Korea 's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In recent weeks, an increasing number of DPRK fishing boats have crossed the western border called the Northern Limit Line ( NLL), a scene of deadly naval clashes between the estranged neighbors.

Russia will delay delivery of a renovated nuclear aircraft carrier to India for five months because of construction problems, the ship's builder said Friday.

"A number of units have broken down, including those made in NATO countries," Andrei Dyachkov, head of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corp. (USC), said during a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

Dyachkov cited problematic units in the aircraft carrier, including the heat insulation of diesel-powered boilers, three freezing devices and nitrogenous generators.

The Iranian armed forces staged military parades throughout the country on Friday to mark the start of the Week of Defense, commemorating Iranian sacrifices during the eight-year Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s.

The Iranian armed forces remembered the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and Iran by holding a parade in which Iran's most advanced military power and abilities are showcased.

Iran's army, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) and the volunteer militia Basij forces participated in the parade.

Iran also displayed advanced missiles, including ballistic missiles of the Shahab-3 and Sejil, which are reported to have a range of 1,300 km-2,000 km.

Hundreds of Libyan protesters forced members of the main Salafist militia out of their base in the second city of Benghazi Friday, setting fire to and wrecking the military compound.

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"No to armed formations" and "Yes to the Libya army" read banners raised by protesters gathered at the city's Tibesti Hotel before marching to Al-Kish Square, close to the barracks of several militia brigades.

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Banners also paid tribute to U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed along with three Americans on September 11 in what the White House now calls a terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

On Wednesday, I accused the government of failing to act on the significant and growing evidence that neonicitinoid pesticides cause significant harm to bees. For my trouble, I was "mythbusted" by the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra).

But I am far from alone in my concerns and I can now reveal that a full parliamentary enquiry is going ahead into the matter. Joan Walley MP, who chairs the House of Commons environmental audit committee, a powerful cross-party group that acts as parliament's green watchdog, sent this letter to the Guardian on Friday.

The number of UK homes installing solar panels has fallen dramatically since the start of August, following a cut in subsidy rates by the government.

Figures published on Friday show a huge rush by householders aiming to install panels before a 1 August government deadline, followed by a huge drop. There was nearly three-quarters less capacity installed in the past six weeks than the equivalent weeks in 2011 for the feed-in tariff scheme, which pays householders for generating green energy.

Communities with windfarms in their area could get money off their electricity bills or grants for facilities such as playgrounds, the government has suggested.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has launched a consultation into how communities could benefit from having windfarms sited near them, for example by receiving discounts on bills or investment in local infrastructure. It will also look at how local businesses could become involved in the supply chain and how developers can best consult local people.

The energy secretary, Edward Davey, said that too often host communities had seen the "windfarm but not the windfall" and he wanted to ensure people benefited from them.

A study of the effect of genetically modified corn on rats that you may have read about earlier this week doesn't seem to have said much about whether GMOs are safe. But it sure said a lot about how the scientists who did the work used a crafty embargo to control their message.

In an excellent post over at the New York Times' Dot Earth blog, Andy Revkin says the study, co-sponsored by the Sustainable Food Trust, is yet another example of the "single study syndrome:"

the habit of the more aggressive camps of advocates surrounding hot issues (e.g., climate, chemical exposure, fracking) to latch onto and push studies supporting an agenda, no matter how tenuous -- or dubious -- the research might be.

Revkin's post, and the stories he links to, do an excellent deconstruction of the small rat study, so I'll leave that to them.

City authorities in Zimbabwe's second largest city are appealing to home owners to flush their toilets at a specified time as a way to unblock sewers after days of severe water rationing.

Bulawayo City Council has asked its more than 1 million residents to flush their toilets simultaneously at 7:30 p.m. Saturday when water supplies are restored. City officials say "synchronized flushing" is needed to clear waste that would have accumulated in sanitary facilities which will have been affected by days of water outages.

London Metropolitan University has been given permission to challenge a ban on its recruitment of overseas students.

The High Court also ruled that existing students with full immigration status should be allowed to continue their studies for now.

Last month the UK Border Agency took away the university's right to sponsor students for UK visas.

It said the university was not making proper checks.

Facebook has suspended the facial-recognition tool that suggests when registered users could be tagged in photographs uploaded to its website.

The move follows a review of Facebook's efforts to implement changes recommended by the Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland last year.

Billy Hawkes, who did not request the tool's total removal, said he was encouraged by the decision to switch it off for users in Europe by 15 October.

It is already unavailable to new users.

A judge who criticised UK abortion policies while sentencing a woman to eight years in prison for performing her own abortion at a late stage in her pregnancy is one of at least five members of the judiciary with links to a Christian charity which has campaigned for more conservative abortion laws.

There has been surprise at the severity of the sentence Justice Jeremy Cooke imposed on Sarah Catt, who took a drug when she was 39 weeks pregnant to cause an early delivery and pleaded guilty in July to administering a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage. Catt told police that she buried the remains but has refused to disclose the location.

Grant Shapps, the Conservative party chairman, posed as a "multimillion-dollar web marketer" named Michael Green who spoke to reveal the secrets of his trade at a $3,000-a-head internet conference in Las Vegas while he was the Tory party candidate for Welwyn Hatfield.

The pictorial evidence of his double life, revealed online by a fellow conference speaker, will pile pressure on Shapps to explain his links to a network of websites which have been blocked by Google for breaching its rules on copyright infringement and encouraging customers to plagiarise content.

But at the age of 35, Shapps claimed already to have established "the world's largest internet marketing forum". A few years later while a member of the shadow cabinet, he also had time to run phone lines where for $297 an hour Green would give tips to aspiring entrepreneurs.

French filmmaker Luc Besson cut the ribbon Friday on his "Film City", a vast studio complex created in a disused power station to offer Hollywood-style facilities right on the edge of Paris.

"I had always said I'd love to make our own films here in France," Besson told an opening ceremony under the glass and steel vaults of the 1930s plant, a giant turbine brightly painted by local street artists towering in its centre.

"Whereas Americans say 'Yes We Can', here in France our motto tends to be 'Dream On!'. Pessimism is something of a national sport."

The girl whose 16th birthday was being celebrated had not set her Facebook event to "private".

Riot police broke up crowds of revellers who flocked to the town.

The girl who issued the invitation fled her home in Haren, a town of just under 19,000 near the city of Groningen, on Friday.

Perhaps nowhere are the consequences of the European Union's one-size-fits-all immigration rules more apparent than here in Malta, a tiny archipelago in the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy, which now has the highest ratio of immigrants per capita of any European Union member. Many of its immigrants are caught in a limbo, unable to find jobs or afford housing -- and unable to move off the island.

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Their fingerprints go into a databank, as they do for all immigrants that arrive in the European Union. If they manage to get to European mainland, and many do, they are quickly returned here.

Greece, too, is struggling under the rules. Thousands of immigrants keep arriving on its borders. But faced with a crushing financial crisis, it has few resources to deal with them. Its facilities are in such bad shape that last year the European Court of Human rights found that returning an asylum seeker to Greece violated his rights.

The woman who ruined a prized Jesus Christ fresco in Spain is now demanding royalties after her botched restoration became a hit with tourists.

Lawyers for Cecilia Gimenez, who is in her 80s, say any "economic compensation" would go to charities.

She made headlines after her do-it-yourself restoration in a church left the 19th Century fresco of Christ resembling a hairy monkey.

But thousands of people have since visited the church near Zaragoza.

The airline Ryanair is now even offering deals to the north-eastern Spanish city, encouraging tourists to see the fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Borja.

Uefa should threaten to make Lazio play their next Europa League game behind closed doors if their fans are found guilty of making monkey chants, the leading anti-racism campaigner Piara Powar has said.

Tottenham Hotspur's Aaron Lennon, Jermain Defoe and Andros Townsend were the subject of racist chanting during Thursday night's 0-0 draw against the Italian side at White Hart Lane.

Uefa, whose president, Michel Platini, was at the game, is awaiting reports from the match delegate and the referee Ovidiu Alin Hategan before deciding to take action against Lazio

Christian Wulff, who resigned as president in February for taking favors from rich friends, was the wrong man for the job. It now turns out that his wife was the wrong first lady, too. She has written a book revealing personal and banal details about her life as the president's wife. It goes too far for such a prestigious position.

Let us turn to page 120 of Bettina Wulff's memoirs, where Germany's former first lady complains about the difficulties of being a president's wife. "It was also great to lie in the hotel room and to know that officers are awake 24 hours in the room opposite, effectively playing babysitters and looking after us. Some people might find that stimulating, but it wasn't for me. Instead, I kept thinking: 'Well, one will have to be damned quiet, doing all the things one does. Maybe the walls aren't that thick after all.'"

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); Savor that nugget of information. In her book, published just seven months after Christian Wulff resigned in disgrace for accepting minor favors from rich acquaintances, Bettina claims she is sick of having her life scrutinized by the media. But then she goes on to expose her life in more detail than any newspaper would have dared, or bothered, to do.

A vicious breed of crayfish has invaded Hampstead Heath ponds and begun nipping swimmers.

The red swamp crayfish, known for its aggressive behaviour and long claws, is multiplying so fast that 5,000 of them are believed to be in the pools.

Bathers in the men's pool, where many swim naked, have been advised to wear clothes.

By midnight, all the races are called. Romney has picked up North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, and Nevada -- all well within his reach. Obama has scored Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado and Virginia. It's settled.

Neither of the candidates have hit 270. They're tied at 269.

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Now, House delegations with an outright, non-threatened one-party majority -- the New Yorks, the Alaskas -- would bring the total of Obama 14, Romney 20. But let's say several tossup house races and seats make it so that states with a split majority, like Iowa, Florida, and North Carolina shift to the left. When a dozen specific final races are called for Democrats -- presumably after being caught up in months of litigation and recounts -- the state delegations from a number of crucial swing states are split, with some a hair for the Democrats.

Final tally? 25-25. To select the President, someone has to give. And with congress as entrenched as it is right now, and with the stakes as high as they are, there isn't a President, and there will not be a President.

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The Senate takes a normal vote, majority rules, without any of the delegation nonsense. But what if there's a tie in the Senate? According to the constitution, the Vice President cannot vote this time. They too may literally be deadlocked, and the Speaker of the House -- assuming someone has been elected to that post, and that the House Majority isn't still at stake -- would be sworn in in that event.