Berlin's creation of a minimum wage for postal services is the government's worst policy mistake and Chancellor Angela Merkel is alone to blame for a "populist" drift in German politics, according to the leader of the country's largest opposition party.

The "biggest danger is that this measure will destroy jobs", Guido Westerwelle, chairman of the pro-market Free Democratic party, told the FT in an interview. But it would have political consequences too, he said, forcing politicians seeking re-election to campaign for higher wages. EDITOR'S CHOICEInterview transcript: Guido Westerwelle - Dec-07German post minimum wage causes rift - Dec-06Editorial comment: Berlin's blunder - Dec-07 Merkel attacks executive salaries - Dec-03Berlin under pressure to mend ties with Beijing - Nov-29Germans fear backlash as China ties cool - Nov-21

"From now on, the level of minimum wages will infect every electoral campaign, every political discussion. One economic sector after another will be dragged into election campaigns."

NB: this is at the moment the headline of the FT Web edition. A "drift to the left" -- whoever saw the FT headline a "drift to the right"? (Silly me, there's no such thing).

US intelligence on Iran dismays Europe

European officials have reacted with dismay to this week's US announcement that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, arguing that the findings give a misleading impression of the country's progress towards the bomb and weaken international leverage on Tehran.

The Europeans' disappointment is particularly acute because, until the report's main conclusions were published this week, the US and European Union had appeared to be making headway in their goal of persuading Russia and China to sign up this month to a new wave of UN sanctions on Tehran.

Dismay? Disappointment? In what twisted fucked up world do they live?  It's bad news that Iran has no nuclear weapons because it prevents us from macho posturing and from further Bush asslicking?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

European and African leaders gathered in Lisbon Friday for a summit which could revolutionize the relationship between the continents. But simmering rows and animosity over colonial rule could derail the talks.

European and African leaders gathered in Lisbon on Friday for a summit which supporters say will revolutionize the relationship between the two continents. But simmering diplomatic rows and centuries of animosity over colonial rule could derail the talks.

A row over the invitation of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and a call for colonial-era compensation from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi threaten to overshadow the meeting, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown boycotting the summit in protest at his presence.

While Mugabe kept a low-profile on his first visit to Europe in more than two years, the equally controversial Libyan leader announced his arrival by demanding that the European powers who carved up Africa for their own gain should pay for the damage.

A new report rates the climate-protection performance of 56 countries that account for 90 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. While Germany came in at second best, the US ranked second worst.

There is more to evaluating climate change than just emissions. Traditionally, environmentalists have reserved the majority of their climate-related bile for those countries belching the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But with the world gathered in Bali this week (more...) to figure out a way to combat climate change, the annual Climate Change Performance Index, released on Friday, once again reminds us that other factors should be taken into account.

When government policy and long-term trends are considered, Germany rises all the way to second place on the list, which ranked the biggest emissions offenders in the industrialized world -- meanwhile, weak policies in the US are only enough to lift it from last place to second-to-last.

The index, compiled by Germanwatch, a nonprofit climate research institute based in Berlin and Bonn, evaluates and ranks the climate-protection performance of 56 industrialized nations that account for 90 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. On this year's list, Sweden retained the top spot, while Saudi Arabia was deemed the most irresponsible emitter among the world's major economies.

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC The Top 10 CO2 Emitters The ranking is based on energy use and carbon dioxide emissions data compiled by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and on an evaluation of the climate change policies in place in each country. A country's commitment to combating climate change is assessed on a weighted scale that considers emissions (50 percent of a country's score), the upward or downward trend of total emissions (30 percent), and the strength of its governmental climate policies (20 percent).

The weighted system explains how Germany can place so well despite being the world's sixth-largest producer of carbon dioxide. The nation moved from fourth to second on this year's ranking thanks to projections of reduced future emissions and a strong governmental commitment to climate change policy. Earlier this week the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel approved a €3.3 billion ($4.8 Billion) policy package (more...) that aims to cut emissions in Germany by 40 percent by 2020 and to increase the nation's reliance on renewable energy sources.

Chest hair, biceps and boxer shorts: Doctors at a cancer research institute in Naples have posed half-naked for a pin-up calendar. Research in Italy is burdened by bureaucracy and funding shortages. It is hoped that this private initiative will re-animate patrons.

Through his glasses, Professor Mozzillo gives the camera a penetrating, slightly skeptical look. His hands are passing lightly over the abdomen of a patient, lying on an operating table. The surgeon is wearing gloves, a face mask and plastic cap, as though the operation were about to begin. But there's a small problem: The woman on the table is fully clothed, the doctor practically naked.

PHOTO GALLERY: DOCTORS STRIP FOR CANCER

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (10 Photos)
Mozillo is one of 20 doctors and researchers at the Pascale Foundation, a cancer research institute in Naples, who are going to unusual lengths to raise awareness and money for their work. Just in time for Christmas, the Fondazione Pascale is bringing out a pin-up calendar in which oncologists, surgeons, nurses, caretakers and even the institute's director are posing in their underwear. The slogan: "Without you, research is bare."

"We want to bring research closer to the average citizen, to allow them to participate," institute director Mario Santangelo told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Research, he says, has to cease hiding in the ivory tower. "It takes a little bit of irony and humor to reach the people," says Santangelo.

If Belgrade hasn't handed over fugitive General Ratko Mladic by Monday, chief UN War Crimes Prosecutor Carla del Ponte says the EU should refuse to sign Serbia's membership proposal.

Del Ponte, whose eight year mandate ends on January 1, said Mladic would only be caught if the EU made his arrest a condition for signing a partnership pact with Serbia.

Serbia's path to closer ties with the European Union has been consistently blocked by its failure to arrest four war crimes suspects including Mladic.

Del Ponte argued that if the EU signed a partnership accord before their arrest, "it will weaken the real (Serbian) intention to give us the fugitives".

"It will depend exclusively on the EU if we will have Mladic in The Hague in the next weeks and months," del Ponte told news agencies.

Mladic and former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic are still at large, wanted on genocide charges during the 1991-95 Bosnian war, including masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslims.

By and large, the world economy thrives on consumption and especially the American kind. The US economy supplies one in five dollars of global consumption. This, added to the second dollar supplied by Europe, is what pushes global warming.

The US economy doesn't produce as much as it consumes, hence its significant current account deficit. The other deficit, namely budget, is merely a function of Dick Cheney lying through his teeth (dentures?) about pretty much everything the government does.

Going back to the current account deficit though, it represents the ''dream'' target of any Green. In actual carbon terms, the import of Asian products for example represents the carbon emissions of Asian countries as well as those of the global shipping industry. All told, various publications cite different figures but it would not be hazardous to assign some 30% of global emissions to the US current account deficit.

This is what the Greens miss completely - they count the emissions of China and India in the same league as those of the US and Europe, and that is wrong because a substantial portion of Asian emissions goes to the manufacture of goods consumed in the US.

• NYT - "White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday. [Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the then-chief] of the agency's clandestine service, nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.'s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said."

• NYT - Angry Democrats call for inquiry in destruction of harsh interrogation tapes by the C.I.A. C.Y.A. "Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts accused the C.I.A. of 'a cover-up,' while Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said it was possible that people at the agency had engaged in obstruction of justice. Both called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate. 'We haven't seen anything like this since the 18½ -minute gap on the tapes of Richard Nixon,' Mr. Kennedy said in a speech on the Senate floor".

• LA Times - "State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard, who has been accused of improperly interfering with investigations into private security contractor Blackwater USA and with other probes, resigned today." His last day will be January 15th.

• AP - Senate Republicans blocked cloture on energy bill in a 53-42 vote. "Senate Republicans have made clear they are strongly opposed to a $21 billion tax package in the House-passed bill, including $13.5 billion in oil industry taxes, as well as a requirement for electric utilities to generate 15 percent of their power by renewable energy such as wind and solar."

• AFP - "A UN conference trying to lay the groundwork for a new climate change pact is unlikely to win any binding pledge by the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions, its head said Friday. Developing nations are also likely to refuse to commit to mandatory targets on cutting emissions blamed for global warming, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change."

• AP - "Federal prosecutors investigating the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians have narrowed their focus on as few as three Blackwater Worldwide bodyguards and have given others immunity for cooperating in the case... A final decision on whether to prosecute the guards -- and how many -- may still be months away. But two weeks into a federal grand jury investigation, ...authorities have focused the number who could face charges to about three of the dozen or more guards on the security detail."

• NYT - "The Supreme Court, expanding its inquiry into the role of federal courts at a time of armed conflict, today accepted two cases testing whether federal judges have authority to prevent military officials in Iraq from turning United States citizens over to the Iraqis for criminal prosecution or punishment."

• NYT - "At least 46,600 children along the Gulf Coast are still struggling with mental health problems and other serious aftereffects of 2005 hurricanes, according to a new study by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Children's Health Fund. Many of these children are performing poorly in school and have limited access to medical care, according to the study, which combines government statistics with data collected by a group of researchers that has been closely following about 1,250 families displaced by the storm."

• LA Times - "A proposed initiative that drew national attention for its potential to affect next year's presidential election will not appear on the June ballot, organizers said Thursday. Republican backers of the measure, which could have tilted the presidential contest toward the GOP nominee by changing how California awards electoral votes, conceded that they were unable to raise sufficient funds" for buying signatures.

• Oregonian - "Oregon's pink shrimp industry on Thursday became the first shrimp fishery in the world to receive a sustainability stamp of approval from the Marine Stewardship Council, an international nonprofit that promotes responsible fishing practices."

• LA Times - "Their ranks thinned by age, Pearl Harbor veterans today are commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack and wondering whether Americans will remember one of the most defining moments in history after they die. 'When we're gone, we're gone,' said 87-year-old Jack Ray Hammett. 'We're already just a paragraph in the history books. Will even that disappear when the last one of us dies?'"

• DW-World - "NATO ministers agreed on Friday that they would maintain a strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo and make more troops available should violence erupt as the province moves towards independence. Mindful of the potential for a renewed outbreak of violence in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, NATO ministers pledged on Friday to maintain the current strength of their KFOR peacekeeping force, and agreed to make more troops available as need be."

• Reuters - "Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk still wants Poland to adopt the euro as soon as possible, he said in an interview published on Friday, but declined to set a date for joining the currency grouping... Tusk... also said he would continue to push for a planned Russian-German gas pipeline to pass through Poland, rather than under the Baltic Sea."

• IHT - "Austria passed a law banning cluster munitions, becoming the second country to abandon a key weapon in the arsenals of many armies and adding impetus to the campaign to conclude an international treaty banning it. Parliament voted Thursday on a law that bans all types of cluster munitions with immediate effect and requires the destruction of stockpiles within three years... Austria has some 10,000 cluster munitions that it plans to destroy over three years".

• Independent - "Some of Britain's biggest supermarket chains admitted yesterday that they had secretly swapped information with each other to make shoppers pay more for milk and cheese in a £270m scandal that represents one of the worst examples of price-fixing in British corporate history."

• Spiegel - "Saturday night's 'lights out' action in German-speaking countries -- meant to draw attention to the world climate change conference in Bali -- is intended to send a signal that more needs to be done to stop global warming. But European utility providers are warning that green thinking could lead to a brownout on Europe's power grid. Energy companies are cautioning that if, as planned, millions of homes turn off their lights for five minutes at 8 p.m. on Saturday, and then turn them back on at the same time that the sudden surge could overload the power grid."

• Moscow Times - "President Vladimir Putin is not going to take a seat in the State Duma -- for now -- a United Russia party official said Thursday. But the law allows Putin, whose name appeared alone on the United Russia federal list for Sunday's Duma elections, to fill a spot in the legislature later if he so desires. Andrei Vorobyov, the head of United Russia's executive committee, said the seat Putin was entitled to after the party's landslide win in the Duma vote would be given to a candidate on one of the party's regional lists."

• BBC News - "A sketch by Michelangelo for the dome of St Peter's Basilica has been discovered in the Vatican archives, the Vatican newspaper says. The red chalk sketch, thought to be the artist's last before his death in 1564, provided a guide for stonecutters."

• NYT - "Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that the refusal of countries to donate helicopters for the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur was endangering the scheduled start of operations three weeks from now... He spoke after he sent a letter to the [Security] Council that appealed for help in securing 24 helicopters. Without them, he wrote, the force 'will lack critical mobility and resupply capacity, which would fundamentally jeopardize its ability to carry out its mission.'"

• CS Monitor - The Egyptian government is meeting the demands of many factory workers going on strike, despite "independent labor activity" being illegal in Egypt and a past record of violent anti-strike actions. The government hopes the change will "stave off the emergence of a politicized labor movement at a time when the regime of President Hosni Mubarak was taking a beating from the domestic press and a more assertive Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most popular opposition movement. 'The government is worried about a social explosion,' says Mustafa Basyouni, the labor correspondent for Al Dustour, an Egyptian daily."

• BBC News - "Kenyan authorities are battling swarms of locusts, which are reported to have damaged crops... It is the first time such large numbers have been seen in Kenya for 45 years. The ravenous creatures - which are capable of stripping vegetation in minutes - are laying eggs in remote areas in the north-east of the country."

• Reuters - "Eight Kurdish Peshmerga troops and three militant gunmen were killed in a battle northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, a spokesman for the Kurdish forces said. Major-General Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for the Peshmerga units of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, said the fighting took place near the town of Khanaqin... The Peshmergas, who have fought alongside U.S. and Iraqi troops, were attacked by gunmen with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades."

• AP - "A woman with explosives strapped to her body attacked the office of a Sunni group that had turned against al-Qaida in Iraq -- one of two suicide bombings in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad that left at least 22 people dead Friday... Later Friday, a suicide car bomber struck at a checkpoint about 10 miles away, killing seven Iraqi soldiers and three members of a local anti-al-Qaida group, Iraqi army Capt. Saad al-Zuhairi said."

• Independent - "while working donkeys have been bought and sold in Gaza since before Samson pulled down the Philistines' temple, it is a long time since they have been as valuable as they are now. Prices have risen, according to the traders, by up to 60 per cent since Israel closed off the enclave after Hamas's enforced takeover of the Strip almost six months ago."

• BBC News - "Lebanese members of parliament have postponed for a seventh time a vote to elect a new president. They are now set to hold the vote on 11 December. The pro-West ruling bloc and pro-Syrian opposition have agreed on army chief Gen Michel Suleiman, but are divided on the make-up of a new government. There is also said to be a dispute over how to amend the constitution to allow a senior civil servant to be elected."

• LA Times - Pakistani "security forces blew up the home of a fugitive pro-Taliban cleric Thursday after capturing two militant-held towns in northern Pakistan... Security forces faced no resistance in taking cleric Maulana Qazi Fazlullah's complex, which includes a seminary, hostels and a mosque, army officials said. The complex, near the town of Mingora, was abandoned when about 400 troops and police moved in, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships."

• Guardian - "The US government has conceded defeat in its attempt to persuade the Afghanistan government to begin the aerial destruction of poppy fields as part of its opium eradication strategy... US officials have climbed down in the face of widespread criticism from the Afghan government and other coalition partners, notably the UK."

• Reuters - Narendra Modi, "the charismatic and controversial chief minister of Gujarat, who has brought development with a hardline Hindu nationalist face and is seeking re-election next week... Gujarat is one of the richest and fastest growing states in a booming India, and the gleaming Reliance Mart in Ahmedabad is a symbol of consumerist culture in a region where money was always important. Modi's business-friendly and relatively efficient government is taking credit for what he calls 'Vibrant Gujarat'. But on the other side of town, vibrancy is in desperately short supply. Here, the minority Muslim population lives in poverty, in what can only be described as a series of ghettoes."

• Times of India - "he UPA government on Friday relented under pressure and informed Parliament that it would operationalise the controversial Forest Rights Act by January 1. But trouble for the government over the long-pending legislation is not over. The parliamentary committee on subordinate legislation has questioned the government's attempt to operationalise the wildlife-related portion of the Act while keeping the rest in cold storage."

• Telegraph - "An Indian judge has summoned two Hindu gods to help resolve a 20-year-old property dispute. Sunil Kumar Singh has placed notices in newspapers in the coal mining town of Dhanbad, in the eastern state of Jharkhand, asking gods Ram and Hanuman to appear in his court next week to present their arguments... The dispute is over ownership of a 1.4-acre plot in Dhanbad which adjoins a temple dedicated to Ram and another one dedicated to the monkey god Hanuman. Worshippers claim the land belongs to the gods but the priest, Manmohan Patnaik, insists that it is his."

• AP - "South Korea's Coast Guard dispatched dozens of ships Friday to try to contain 2.7 million gallons of oil from a supertanker spill and keep it from reaching an ecologically sensitive shoreline on the country's west coast... Crude oil gushed from a 146,000-ton Hong Kong-registered tanker after a Samsung Corp. vessel slammed into it."

• Independent - "Burma's military killed 31 people who can be identified by name during a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators - more than double the number acknowledged by the authorities, says a UN investigator who visited the country. But Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a UN human rights expert, said the toll was probably much higher because there were reported cases of killings where victims' names were not given."

• NYT - "The streets are quiet in Myanmar. The 'destructive elements' are in jail. The international outcry has faded. The junta's grip on power seems firm. Two months after they cracked down on huge anti-government demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, the generals who rule Myanmar have reason to feel relief... Diplomats and human rights groups say that an unknown number of protesters and monks remain in prison today, that many monasteries in the main city, Yangon, have emptied out and that new arrests are reported almost every day."

• WaPo - "With a rare invitation for public comment, the picturesque seaside [Chinese] city of Xiamen has released an environmental impact report for a planned chemical plant that has sparked passionate opposition and large-scale protests... More than 10,000 people, and as many as 20,000, participated in mostly peaceful protests coordinated via cellphone and the Internet, compelling Communist Party bureaucrats to take a rare second look at their plans."

• Xinhua - "Chinese police have detained 33 people after a mine blast which killed at least 105 people in Shanxi Province. The 33 people are alleged to be responsible for the fatal gas explosion that ripped through the village-run Xinyao Coal Mine at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday, said Wang Qingxian, spokesman with the provincial government."

• NYT - "Every night, columns of hulking blue and red freight trucks invade China's major cities with a reverberating roar of engines and dark clouds of diesel exhaust so thick it dims headlights... Trucks here burn diesel fuel contaminated with more than 130 times the pollution-causing sulfur that the United States allows in most diesel."

• SMH - "Sydney water plans to operate the controversial Kurnell desalination plant while there is still years worth of water in Sydney's dams - a significant shift from the original plan in which the plant would be used during times of water shortage... This week water storage levels at Sydney's dams stood at 58.5 per cent, a four-year high and sufficient to supply the city's water needs for up to six years."

• CS Monitor - "Some 212 of the world's leading climate scientists signed a petition calling for representatives attending the UN climate talks in Bali to make dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. The Bali Climate Declaration, released Thursday, calls for global greenhouse gas emissions to be cut in half by 2050. Such a reduction, the scientists say would give humans an 'even-money chance' of avoiding catastrophic climate change, a spokesman for the signatories said."

• Guardian - "Barely 600,000 of the 20m hectares (50m acres) of rainforest that originally covered Sumatra remain, and the numbers of trees felled still increases each year. Across Indonesia, an area of jungle the size of 300 football pitches is cleared every hour. It may sound a familiar story, but the world has a new reason to worry about the destruction of rainforests. The practice produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases. So much that, if they are factored into global emissions, Indonesia becomes the world's third largest producer of carbon dioxide."

• Globe and Mail - "Canadian employers added 42,600 jobs to payrolls last month, five times forecasts, suggesting the country's job-creating machine is still running strong despite a U.S. slowdown. The country's jobless rate rose a notch to 5.9 per cent after hitting a 33-year low in October as more people looked for work, Statistics Canada said Friday."

• Guardian - Greenpeace has warned that "BP will be involved in the 'greatest climate crime' in history by backing tar sands projects to extract oil in Canada and is likely to face direct action... The Greenpeace warning followed BP's announcement on Wednesday that it was buying into the tar sands schemes through a deal with Husky Oil, reversing a decision by former chief executive John Browne to stay away from an expensive and environmentally dirty business."

• CBC News - "Officials at Vancouver International Airport have announced how they will spend $1.4 million a year to improve service for international visitors... The improvements were announced Friday at the Fairmont airport hotel in Richmond. Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, died in the arrivals lounge of the airport after being stunned by RCMP officers with a Taser on Oct. 14."

• Houston Chronicle - "Shocking videos of bone-thin hostages and phone calls from foreign leaders may have convinced President Alvaro Uribe to finally give some ground to Colombia's leftist guerrillas. Uribe has won admiration abroad and two elections at home thanks to his military crackdown on the rebels. But in a major about-face on Friday, he agreed to withdraw troops from an area of rural Colombia to allow the rebels to exchange hostages -- including three Americans -- for guerrillas held by the government."

• WaPo - President "Evo Morales said Thursday that he delivered a bill to the Bolivian Congress calling for a series of popular votes -- one to decide whether he will remain president, and others to determine the fates of each of the country's nine governors, six of whom are among the president's harshest critics. Details of the votes remained vague. But Morales said that if he does not receive more ballots than he received when he was elected with 53 percent of the vote in 2005, he would immediately call for new elections. He said the governors would be held to the same standard in their respective regions."

• BBC News - "Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest fell by 20% between August 2006 and July 2007, according to interim figures released by the Brazilian government. It is the third year in a row that there has been a fall. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the new figures were good, but felt Brazil could have done more. Environmental groups said the government is celebrating a past achievement when it knows the rate of deforestation is on the increase again."

• MercoPress - "Brazil's government owned Petrobras confirmed this week the discovery of new natural gas reservoirs to the north of the Camarupim field, in the Espírito Santo Basin, off the southeastern coast of the country."

• Guardian - José Luis Aquino, "a trumpet player has been found dead with his hands and feet bound and a nylon bag over his head in southern Mexico, in what authorities said was apparently the country's third murder of a musician in less than a week... The murders of Sergio Gomez, leader of the top-selling K-Paz de la Sierra, and Zayda Peña, of Zayda and the Guilty Ones, have left mainstream singers worrying they may become targets by becoming identified with one or another of Mexico's warring drug gangs."

• AP - "Police conducted the biggest anti-logging raid in the nation's history at clandestine sawmills that cut timber on a threatened nature reserve where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter... Illegal deforestation in and around the reserves threatens the butterflies... Agents seized the equivalent of about 600 heavy truckloads of wood, the attorney general's office said".

• Bush has 408 days left. 3,886 U.S. and 4,192 total coalition confirmed deaths in Iraq. Over $473,120,000,000 has been spent on the Iraq invasion and occupation. The U.S. federal debt is now over $9,168,112,000,000.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 -- Congressional leaders are assembling a $500 billion package to try to resolve an impasse by providing President Bush with unfettered money for the Iraq war in exchange for new spending on popular domestic programs.

If acceptable to lawmakers and the White House, the package to be considered in the House as early as Tuesday would avert the threat of a shutdown of federal agencies and end a dispute that has lasted months and pitted Congressional Democrats against Mr. Bush and his Republican allies.

Senior lawmakers and Congressional aides said the broad outlines of the proposal called for the House to consider $30 billion for military operations in Afghanistan, as well as money for military bases and support programs for military families to quiet fears of Pentagon layoffs because of a lack of money.

The Senate would then add up to $40 billion for Iraq combat operations, with the expectation the final war spending total would produce enough Republican support to offset defections by House Democrats.

After the measure returns to the House for a final vote, Democrats opposed to the war are likely to vote against it but may not be able to stop it. The decision to free some money for the war without a deadline or goal for withdrawal would represent a major concession by Democrats. They had earlier said they would not send Mr. Bush any more war money this year unless he accepted a change in Iraq policy.

But Democratic leaders now say they have concluded that a logjam of 11 appropriations bills cannot be broken without acceding to at least some of the president's demand for more war money.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 -- White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The chief of the agency's clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.'s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

The disclosures provide new details about what Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, has said was a decision "made within C.I.A. itself" to destroy the videotapes. In interviews, members of Congress and former intelligence officials also questioned some aspects of the account General Hayden provided Thursday about when Congress was notified that the tapes had been destroyed.

Current and former intelligence officials say the videotapes showed severe interrogation techniques used on two Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first three terror suspects to be detained and interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret prisons after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The farm bill has been languishing in the Senate for weeks, buried under the weight of hundreds of specious, unrelated amendments.

But the chamber reached a deal Thursday; each party agreed to float only 20 amendments. That means the bill is back on track. Majority leader Harry Reid vowed the Senate would hammer out a version by holiday break, meaning it would go to reconciliation and then to the president's desk early in the new year.

So now it's crunch time. The agribiz giants will be hauling out the big guns, trying to shoot down anything that conflicts with their interests.

One major focus of their attention will be the Competition Title that by some miracle made it out of the Senate Ag Committee. I've rhapsodized about it before -- it includes a "packer ban" which would limit the power wielded by meat giants like Smithfield Foods and Tyson.

Two of the most powerful Big Meat trade groups -- the American Meat Institute and the National Pork Producers Council -- have hired the D.C. lobbying outfit C&M Capitolink, a firm shot through with dodgy former Capitol Hill ag committee and USDA staffers.

NEWPORT, Ore. -- Chris Martinson and his fellow fishermen catch crab and shrimp in the same big swell that one day could generate an important part of the Northwest's energy supply. Wave farms, harvested with high-tech buoys that are being tested here on the Oregon coast, would strain clean, renewable power from the surging sea.

They might make a mess of navigational charts, too.

"I don't want it in my fishing grounds," said Mr. Martinson, 40, who docks his 74-foot boat, Libra, here at Yaquina Bay, about 90 miles southwest of Portland. "I don't want to be worried about driving around someone else's million-dollar buoy."

The coastal Northwest is one of the few parts of the West where water is abundant, but people are still fighting over it. Amid concerns about climate change and the pollution caused by generating electricity with coal and natural gas, Oregon is looking to draw power from the waves that pound its coast with forbidding efficiency.

It might seem a perfect solution in a region that has long been ahead of the national curve on alternative energy. Yet the debate over the potential damage -- whether to the environment, the fishing industry or the stunning views of the Pacific -- has become intense before the first megawatt has been transmitted to shore.

[...]

Major technical and financial obstacles remain, and energy generated from waves is not expected to start contributing to the electrical grid in the United States for several years. Yet like wind energy in its early stages in the 1980s, wave energy is considered promising, perhaps inevitable, with the potential to one day provide 5 percent to 10 percent of the nation's energy supply, according to some projections.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) -- A new species of bacteria discovered living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could yield a tool in the fight against global warming.

Plants & Animals

    * Bacteria
    * Extreme Survival
    * Nature

Earth & Climate

    * Global Warming
    * Climate
    * Energy and the Environment

Reference

    * Biodegradation
    * Carbon cycle
    * Permian-Triassic extinction event
    * Methane

University of Calgary biology professor Peter Dunfield and colleagues discovered a methane-eating microorganism in the geothermal field known as Hell's Gate, near the city of Rotorua in New Zealand. It is the hardiest "methanotrophic" bacterium yet discovered, which makes it a likely candidate for use in reducing methane gas emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal power plants and other sources.

"This is a really tough methane-consuming organism that lives in a much more acidic environment than any we've seen before," said Dunfield, who is the lead author of the paper. "It belongs to a rather mysterious family of bacteria (called Verrucomicrobia) that are found everywhere but are very difficult to grow in the laboratory."

"The negotiations about a post-Kyoto agreement are the biggest challenge ever to face international diplomacy. The Nordic countries will play an important, perhaps even crucial, role in the process. The new agreement is scheduled to be approved in Copenhagen 2009 at a time when Sweden holds the Presidency of the EU," the Director of the Nordic Council, Jan-Erik Enestam, and Presidency of the Council's Environment Committee, Asmund Kristoffersen, write in a joint opinion piece.

"The Nordic Region must speak with one voice in the climate debate. The Copenhagen Summit constitutes an excellent platform for the Nordic Region to achieve the necessary results," Enestam and Kristoffersen believe.

A major UN climate summit opened on Bali in Indonesia on Monday. The agenda includes a road map for the negotiations about a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"The process of negotiation is now starting in earnest, and its aim is that as many nations as possible sign the new climate agreement," the pair stress.

They also point out that the agreement must must contain ambitious and binding measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and put the brakes on climate change.

"Just as Bali is a long way from Copenhagen, the path to a new global climate agreement is also long. However, the starting pistol has been fired, and the Nordic countries have every opportunity to set the pace," they conclude.

The article has already been published in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and will also be published in the biggest English-language newspaper in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post.

It's not so easy and democratic, isn't it?

Tolerance towards minorities makes a country democratic, or not?

What credit crunch? Club launches £35,000 cocktail | Money | The Guardian

Economists may be warning of tough times ahead and homeowners fretting about the state of the property market, but one London nightclub remains undeterred. Today, it will launch the world's most expensive Christmas cocktail, costing £35,000 a glass.

The Movida nightclub, a hangout of celebrities, footballers and the super-rich, has already taken a small number of orders for the drink, named the Flawless.

The cocktail consists of a large measure of Louis XII cognac, half a bottle of Cristal Rose champagne, some brown sugar, angostura bitters and a few flakes of 24-carat edible gold leaf. The drink is described as warming and refreshing, but that is not the main reason for the exorbitant cost: at the bottom of the crystal glass is an 11-carat white diamond ring.

Customers will also be treated to an unusual floorshow. The drink will be mixed in the presence of two security guards, who will then watch over the client's table until it is finished.