Hungarian disaster management spokesman Dr Attila Nyikos says a large scale clean-up is under way

Hungary says it will cost tens of millions of dollars and take at least a year to clean up the damage caused by a spill of toxic, red industrial sludge.

Emergency workers are trying to stop the spill, from an alumina plant, from flowing into major waterways, including the River Danube

A state of emergency has been declared in three western counties after the chemical waste burst from a reservoir.

Four people are known to have died, and 120 were injured. Six more are missing.

At least seven villages and towns are affected including Devecser, where the torrent was 2m (6.5ft) deep.

Is Europe the next place set for Chinese `colonisation'? Some say it's already happening, in Greece. But acccording to analysts, that's overstating the case - though Europe does need to stay alert.

While the main bone of contention for China and the European Union at their Brussels summit this week will be China's currency, the yuan and its value  - an issue that may not be directly addressed is that of Greece and fears about China moving in there as a 'coloniser'.

China is making huge investments in Greek ports and railways, and even wants to buy up Greek government bonds. Greek trade unions are up in arms. Chinese investors are taking over the port of Piraeus, Athens, while the Greek docks are losing more and more customers. China wants to bring its products into Europe via its own container port, as former RNW correspondent Garrie van Pinxteren warned some time ago.  

The last obstacle to a rightwing coalition is removed as Christian Democrat dissidents back down, Geert Wilders' trial goes ahead despite "unfortunate" remarks by the judge, and the Netherlands braces for a frog invasion.

No more talking - it's testosterone time
"The time for talking is over, the time for action has arrived," populist De Telegraaf announces dramatically. All the papers lead with the news that the two Christian Democrat "dissidents" Ad Koppejan and Kathleen Ferrier have finally agreed to toe the party line, removing the final obstacle to a VVD-CDA coalition resting on the parliamentary support of Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party.

"It is my conviction that we will be giving up a core value of our party if we agree to this government construction." That was what Kathleen Ferrier said at the CDA conference on Saturday - and just to rub it in, nrc.next blows up this quote to fill its entire front page. Three days later the Christian Democrat MP, daughter of the first president of Suriname after the former Dutch colony became independent, has agreed to "not to block the formation" of the cabinet.

Nrc.next also gleefully reminds us of fellow dissident Ad Koppejan's Saturday speech: "In a divided country, we mustn't give Wilders a platform with this construction to preach his message of hatred against Islam." He now explains that "our objections stand", AD reports, and the two dissidents will "judge it on its actions". They say they'll be keeping a critical eye on the government's every move, particularly when it comes to immigration and integration policy. "So they should," comments Geert Wilders, "they're paid to do that."

The upshot is that the opposition is "increasingly cynical about the cabinet's stability," says Trouw. The coalition will already have to look elsewhere for support on policies that aren't to Mr Wilders' taste - anything to do with the European Union for example. But now, with its flimsy one-seat majority, it will have to turn to the right-wing orthodox protestant SGP for support when it comes to Mr Wilders' beloved tough measures on immigration.

Despite all the controversy, the papers are unanimous. By the middle of next week, the Netherlands will have Mark Rutte as its new prime minister, at the head of what Trouw describes a "rightwing, testosterone cabinet".

France has urged citizens travelling to Britain to be "extremely vigilant" amid raised fears of a terror attack there.

The French government said it was now "highly likely" public transport and tourist sites in the UK would be hit.

The warning followed revelations that a UK terror suspect killed in Pakistan was being groomed to lead a new group in raids on the UK, France and Germany.

On Sunday Britain raised its terror alert level from general to high for travellers to Germany and France.

In the controversial Roma affair, the European Union's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, has announced that Brussels has begun legal proceedings against France over European rules on freedom of movement.

Reding said in Brussels: "The European Commission has decided today to begin an infraction procedure against France. As guardian of the Treaties, the European Commission is determined to make European legislation respected."

The separate matter of ethnic targeting allegations in France's expulsion of Roma migrants is not being pursued for the time being.

France's Immigration Minister Eric Besson said in the National Assembly: "This is far from being an affront against France, on the contrary. Firstly, the most important point in the Commission's view is that there has not been discrimination. Its action only concerns the dismantling of the illegal camps, where, like the renditions to the borders, there was no discrimination."

Most of the press has described Europe's labor demonstrations and strikes on Wednesday in terms of the familiar exercise by transport employees irritating travelers with work slowdowns, and large throngs letting off steam by setting fires. But the story goes much deeper than merely a reaction against unemployment and economic recession. At issue are proposals to drastically change the laws and structure of how European society will function for the next generation. If the anti-labor forces succeed, they will break up Europe, destroy the internal market, and render that continent a backwater. This is how serious the financial coup d'etat has become. And it is going to get much worse - quickly. As John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation, put it: "This is the start of the fight, not the end."

The CIA used a secret prison in Poland to detain and torture its most important 9/11 suspect, a former top human rights official alleges in a new BBC documentary.

On 7 March 2003 a CIA Gulfstream Jet landed at a remote airstrip in north-eastern Poland. Human rights officials and campaigners are convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the most senior al-Qaeda suspects, was on board.

American agents took him to a secret facility where, he says, he was tortured before being eventually transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

The Treasury is working on plans to "reprofile" spending cuts next April, spreading the pain of deficit reduction more evenly over the next few years, senior Whitehall officials have told the Financial Times.

Confronted with the difficulties of quickly cutting spending - including financial penalties for breaking contracts and redundancy costs - ministers have been forced to consider delaying some of the big savings until later in this parliament.
...
The Treasury insisted there was absolutely no change in the government's economic strategy of eliminating the current structural deficit within a parliament, which David Cameron reiterated in his speech to the Conservative party conference on Wednesday.

But it would not confirm that the spending review on October 20 would maintain the £23bn spending cuts in 2011-12, rising to £83bn a year cuts by 2014-15. This week it has already become clear that many of the cuts will be difficult to start in 2011-12.

Can parliament still be sovereign if, as the courts have consistently ruled, European Union law is supreme over national law? Legally, the answer is surprisingly simple: it can be, and is. Yet the question nags at Eurosceptic Conservatives, and the coalition agreement committed the government to "examine the case" for legislation that makes it clear that ultimate authority over British law remains in Britain.

But they've not taken long to examine it. The foreign secretary, William Hague, announced yesterday in Birmingham that an EU bill to be put before the Commons later this year will contain a clause intended to "reaffirm once and for all the sovereignty of our ancient parliament". His case for doing so, though, does not bear even brief examination.

Governments are risking a currency war if they try to use exchange rates to solve domestic problems, the head of the International Monetary Fund has warned.

The comments by Dominique Strauss-Kahn came before the yen fell as a result of the Bank of Japan shifting towards quantitative monetary easing, cutting its key interest rate and proposing a new fund to buy government bonds and other assets.

"There is clearly the idea beginning to circulate that currencies can be used as a policy weapon," Mr Strauss-Kahn told the Financial Times on Monday.

"Translated into action, such an idea would represent a very serious risk to the global recovery . . . Any such approach would have a negative and very damaging longer-run impact."

ADP reports:

Private-sector employment decreased by 39,000 from August to September on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from July to August was revised up from the previously reported decline of 10,000 to an increase of 10,000.

The decline in private employment in September confirms a pause in the economic recovery already evident in other data. A deceleration of employment occurred in all the major sectors shown in The ADP Report and for all sizes of payroll.
...
Unlike the estimate of total establishment employment to be released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), today's ADP National Employment Report does not include the effects of federal hiring -- and now firing -- for the 2010 Census.

Note: ADP is private nonfarm employment only (no government jobs).

The consensus was for ADP to show an increase of about 23,000 private sector jobs in September, so this was way below consensus.

High unemployment, public debt and fragile banking systems pose risks to global prosperity, the International Monetary Fund said, urging policy makers to take bolder steps to assure a sustained recovery.

The world economy will expand 4.2 percent next year, the Washington-based IMF said in a report, down from its forecast of 4.3 percent three months ago. The fund projects growth of 4.8 percent this year, up from 4.6 percent.
...
"The result is a recovery that is neither strong nor balanced and runs the risk of not being sustained," chief economist Olivier Blanchard wrote in an introduction to the IMF's World Economic Outlook. "If growth stops in advanced economies, emerging-market economies will have a hard time decoupling," he said. Global coordination "may be even more important today than at the peak of the crisis."

France appears to have dropped its outright opposition to current European Union proposals for regulating hedge funds and private equity funds, meaning that a deal on the controversial regulations may finally be in sight.

The French move, at a meeting of ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday morning, came just 24 hours after Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, sent a letter to Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, protesting at the French position.

Paris has been adamantly opposed to part of the proposals that would give non-EU fund managers pan-EU marketing rights - or a so-called "passport" - provided they met certain standards.

The French would prefer to maintain the current private placement system, whereby funds outside the EU seek approval from individual member states if they wish to sell into EU markets.

Germany saw a surge in manufacturing orders in August, boosting hopes that Europe's largest economy will still power growth across the continent even as the euro strengthens and the US recovery splutters.

Orders rose by a larger than expected 3.4 per cent in August compared with the previous month, the Berlin economic ministry said on Wednesday. That reversed a 1.6 per cent fall in July and showed that considerable momentum remained behind Germany's economic pick-up.

The data came as members of the European Central Bank governing council gathered in Frankfurt for Thursday's interest rate setting meeting, where they are expected to debate the pace at which they can unwind exceptional measures taken to support the economy since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Ireland's debt rating has been downgraded by Fitch, with a further downgrade more than likely in the next two years, the credit rating agency said on Wednesday.

The downgrade of Ireland's long term debt from AA- to A+ reflects "the exceptional and greater-than-expected" cost of recapitalising the country's banks, announced last week.

The agency has also changed its outlook on Irish debt from stable to negative which it says "implies a slightly greater than 50 per cent probability of a further downgrade over a 12-24 month horizon".

The negative outlook reflects "uncertainly regarding the timing and strength of economic recovery and medium-term fiscal consolidation effort."

Fitch said the rating could be downgraded further "if the economy stagnates and broad-based political support for and implementation of budgetary consolidation weakens".

The European Union has sealed a vast free-trade agreement with South Korea, the first in a wave of bilateral pacts the 27-member bloc hopes to strike with Asian nations.

The European Union and South Korea signed a free-trade deal on Wednesday which could double trade between them and trigger more calls among Asian states for such pacts with the 27-nation bloc.

The accord, Europe's first with an Asian nation, is set to take effect on July 1 once ratified by the European Parliament.

"This agreement is by far the most important trade deal ever concluded by the European Union with one country, and the first free trade agreement with an Asian country," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said the deal would enable South Korea's economy to grow at more than 5 percent per year, create thousands of jobs and set a model for EU-Asia relations.

There is a Part 2 to the story of Consumer Deleveraging that will play out over the next decade. Consumers will deleverage because they must. They have no choice. Boomers have come to the shocking realization that you can't get wealthy or retire by borrowing and spending. As consumers buy $500 billion less stuff per year, retailers across the land will suffer. To give some perspective on our consumer society, here are a few facts:

    * There are 105,000 shopping centers in the U.S. In comparison, all of Europe has 

      only 5,700 shopping centers.

    * There are 1.2 million retail establishments in the U.S. per the Census Bureau.

    * There is 14.2 BILLION square feet of retail space in the U.S. This is 46 square 

      feet per person in the U.S., compared to 2 square feet per capita in India, 

      1.5 square feet per capita in Mexico, 23 square feet per capita in the United Kingdom, 

      13 square feet per capita in Canada, and 6.5 square feet per capita in Australia.

Retailers expanding into an oversaturated retail market in the midst of a Depression, when anyone without rose colored glasses can see that Americans must dramatically cut back, are committing a fatal mistake. The hubris of these CEOs will lead to the destruction of their companies and the loss of millions of jobs. They will receive their fat bonuses and stock options right up until the day they are shown the door.

All of the happy talk from the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and the other mainstream media about commercial real estate bottoming out is a load of bull. It seems these highly paid "financial journalists" are incapable of doing anything but parroting each other and looking in the rearview mirror. Sound analysis requires you to look at the facts, make reasonable assumptions about the future and report the likely outcome. Based on this criteria, there is absolutely no chance that commercial real estate has bottomed. There are years of pain, writeoffs and bankruptcies to go.

International ratings agency Fitch said yesterday that Ireland's credit rating could be lowered further if there was not 'broad political support' for measures to tackle the public finances.

So far bank regulators are only asking the institutions they supervise to gather information and take steps to ensure they are in compliance with state laws that govern foreclosures.

Ally Financial Inc's GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America have already announced that they are suspending some of their foreclosures to review whether they have been conducting them properly.

The New York Times said PNC Financial Services Group became the latest bank to declare a moratorium on the sale of foreclosed properties, suspending them for at least the next 30 days. The newspaper cited a memo received by a title insurer from the bank.

he judge in the first civilian trial of a former Guantanamo inmate has ruled that a key US government witness cannot testify, in a blow to prosecutors.

Defendant Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani denies helping al-Qaeda kill 224 people in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa.

The judge ruled that the witness could not testify as he had been named by Mr Ghailani while he was "under duress".

Hitler was said to have fled there, the Spanish conquistadores failed to penetrate it, and the only uncontacted tribe outside Amazonia lives within its borders. But now the vast Paraguayan wilderness of thorn trees, jaguars and snakes known as the Chaco is being transformed by a Christian fundamentalist sect and hundreds of Brazilian ranchers.

Worldwide food shortages and rock-bottom land prices in Paraguay have made the Chaco the last agricultural frontier. Great swaths of the virgin thorn forest once dubbed Latin America's "green hell", are being turned into prairie-style grasslands to rear meat for Europe and grow biofuel crops for cars.

Recent satellite imagery confirmed that about one million hectares, or nearly 10%, of the virgin, dry forest in northern Paraguay has been cleared in just four years by ranchers using fire, chains and bulldozers to open up land. By comparison, Brazil claims to have nearly halted its deforestation of the Amazon.

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) held "tense" talks with the ANC in Johannesburg on Thursday about a proposed media appeals tribunal.

"It was quite a tough engagement," said Sanef chairperson Mondli Makhanya. "I will use the words, 'very robust'. We did have tense moments."

He said Sanef explained to the ANC, represented by spokesperson Jackson Mthembu and secretary general Gwede Mantashe, that a panel had been set up to look at how the self-regulation mechanism of the press ombudsman could be improved.

At the same time, the Press Council was conducting its own probe into how it could strengthen itself.

A DR Congo rebel commander has been arrested on suspicion of leading raids on villages in the country's east where 500 people were raped in late July and early August, the UN has said.

UN headquarters in New York circulated an announcement by the UN peacekeeping force in Congo of the arrest of commander of a tribal Mai-Mai militia, known as Lieutenant Colonel Mayele, for alleged mass rapes.

The UN said Mayele was arrested on Tuesday in a military operation carried out by the UN Mission for the Stabilisation of the DR Congo (Monusco) and the Congolese military.

Palestinians in a West Bank town have received a group of Jewish Rabbis who brought copies of the Quran to replace those burnt and damaged in what locals say was an attack on a mosque by Jewish settlers.

Nidal Thawabte, the mayor of Beit Fajjar, told Al Jazeera that the Rabbis were received by the town as men of God and not as settlers because they did not identify themselves as settlers.

"A group of Jewish Rabbis came on Tuesday afternoon with a box of 25 to 35 Qurans. While the cost and the extent of the damage was much more than just a few copies of the Quran, we accepted their gesture as an act of goodwill," Kamel Hammash, president of the municipality council, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

Suspected Islamic militants have attacked and set fire to at least 20 trucks and fuel tankers carrying supplies from Pakistan for Nato troops deployed in Afghanistan.

Nato supply trucks have come under repeated attack in Pakistan over the past week since Islamabad shut the main route into Afghanistan via the Torkhum border post, in reaction to an apparent Nato helicopter strike that killed three paramilitary soldiers.

Early on Wednesday, about 12 gunmen fired at Nato tankers in a parking lot in a suburb of Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province. At least one truck driver was killed, according to local officials in Quetta.

Envoys from all 15 members of the UN Security Council head to Sudan on Wednesday to show support for a scheduled Jan. 9, 2011 referendum on secession for Southern Sudan amid fears of a unilateral declaration of independence sparking new violence.

Envoys from the main world powers go to Sudan on Wednesday aiming to maintain international pressure to hold a referendum that could lead to the breakup of the country, diplomats said.
   
Envoys from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus envoys from the 10 other nations on the 15-member Council, will make up the delegation, said UN Security Council chairman Ruhakana Rugunda, from Uganda. Uganda currently holds the rotating presidency of the council.
   
But the envoys will not meet with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is under an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of genocide in his country.

Over 200 Burundian refugees living in the Democratic Republic Congo were repatriated on Tuesday. This first group of refugees are returning to Burundi following a tripartite agreement between Burundi, the DRC and the UN refugee agency in December 2009.
...
DRC hosts more than 15,000 Burundi refugees, mainly living in Eastern Congo. In December 2009, Burundi, the DRC and UNHCR reached an agreement  to repatriate 5,000 refugees to Burundi. Under the terms of an accord, The UN refugee agency will also facilitate the repatriation of Congolese refugees living in Burundi. More than 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers live in Burundi

On October 28, The UN refugee agency will also start repatriating Congolese refugees living in Burundi. 2,000 would be repatriated by the end of the year.

Saudi police raided a secret Catholic mass in Riyadh last week and arrested a dozen Filipinos and a Catholic priest, charging them with prosyletising, a local daily reported on Wednesday.

The raid took place as some 150 Filipinos were attending the mass in a Riyadh rest house on Friday, the second day of the weekend in Saudi Arabia, Arab News said.

The twelve Filipino men and the priest, whose nationality was not specified, were "charged with prosyletising," the daily quoted an official from the Philippine embassy in Riyadh as saying.

Israel's hawkish environment minister, who backs ongoing Jewish settlement in the West Bank, on Wednesday said he was seeking to halt construction of a new Palestinian city over "green" concerns.

Gilad Erdan told Israel's army radio it was "a mistake" for Israel to allow the Palestinians to break ground on the massive new project to build a city called Rawabi just north of Ramallah.

Asked if he was trying to halt construction of the project, which will cost some 700 million dollars (570 million euros), until it complies with certain environmental criteria, Erdan replied: "Exactly."

"I don't like the establishment of that city. I think it was a mistake to allow it," he said, claiming that the Palestinians had no proper plans for managing sewage or other waste generated from the city, which will house some 40,000 people.

But Bashar al-Masri, head of the Bayti Real Estate Investment Co, which is jointly running the Rawabi project, denied Erdan's claims, telling AFP US-funded plans for a sewage and waste water treatment plant were well under way.

One of Ethiopia's key opposition figures was freed from jail on Wednesday morning. Birtukan Medeksa had been behind bars since late 2008.

After days of rumours, Medeksa's release from jail was announced on Wednesday in a communiqué from the Ministry of Justice.

It said that she wrote to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in mid-September requesting a pardon.

Medeksa, the president of the Coalition of Unity and Democracy party, was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to life for disrupting the constitutional order, which in Ethiopia is paramount to treason.

Most of the party leadership were also arrested on similar charges and faced the death penalty.
However, many were released three years ago after requesting a pardon.

But in 2008, Medeksa publicly denied she had asked to be pardoned, and was sent back to jail.

Upon her release this Wednesday, she said that she was happy to be with her family and confirmed that she had this time requested a pardon.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Hundreds of FBI agents flew into Puerto Rico to round up dozens of police officers accused of aiding drug traffickers Wednesday -- one of the darkest days yet for a force tarnished by recent allegations of brutality, discrimination and incompetence.  In pre-dawn raids, about 1,000 federal agents swept up about 130 people, including nearly 90 law enforcement officers accused of providing security to drug dealers on a U.S. territory where police are struggling to curb spiraling crime and rampant drug smuggling.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said it was the largest police corruption investigation in the FBI's history.

Bloomberg: Total SA, OAO Gazprom and Tecpetrol SA plan to start output at the Ipati and Aquio blocks in Bolivia in 2013, the Russian gas producer said.

The Cuban Triangle: It is necessary to cut spending in Cuba's health sector too, Granma reports today, because "unnecessary spending hurts not only the country's economy, but also an institution's functioning and quality of care." The article is a straightforward explanation of what appears to be a thorough re-evaluation of material and human resources in the sector, and to prepare the public for changes and consolidation of services.

HAVANA, Oct 6, 2010 (IPS/IFEJ) - The cultivation in several Cuban provinces of genetically modified maize, obtained by the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, endangers biodiversity and contradicts the government's own agricultural production plan, warns Cuban agro-ecologist Fernando Funes-Monzote.

LAHT: HAVANA - Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes returned to his country on Wednesday after wrapping up a two-day official visit to Havana, where he presided at the signing of several bilateral accords and met with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro.  Cuban state television reported Wednesday that Funes was seen off at Havana's international airport by Deputy Foreign Minister Rogelio Sierra after concluding what was the first visit by a Salvadoran president to Cuba in 50 years.

LAHT, MEXICO CITY - Mexico sold $1 billion worth of 100-year bonds on foreign markets in the largest issue of this type in Latin America, the Finance Secretariat said.  The bonds, which come due in 2110, carry a coupon rate of 5.75 percent and have a yield to maturity of 6.10 percent.

ROAD TOWN, BVI -- At 5:00 pm on Wednesday, a subtropical depression in the Western Atlantic was upgraded to subtropical storm Otto. Also on Wednesday, Governor Boyd McCleary issued a state of emergency for the British Virgin Islands in a 4:00 pm press conference. Four shelters have been opened up to accommodate displaced residents that may be affected by flooding.

...says Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron....Pot, cocaine, LSD, crystal-meth --- you name it.

"Legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government," Miron claims in a recent Cato Institute report he co-authored.

According to their website, "The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs."

....

Our current drug policy doesn't work, Miron observes. Despite ~$40 billion spent on enforcement and prosecution, drug use is still widespread.  Meanwhile, because the products are illegal, they're dangerous, low-quality, and unregulated, and they generate zero tax revenue.

Legalizing drugs would solve those problems, Miron says.  It would help close the budget deficit.  And it would eliminate a bizarre double standard, in which Americans are encouraged to drink and smoke themselves to death -- while guzzling addictive coffee and tea -- but become criminals if they dare to get stoned.

At last! What I like about Harvard economics professors and the Cato Institute. My inner libertarian rejoices. We could replace the "War on Drugs" with a "War Against Being Un-Cool". A lot cheaper, regardless how it comes out.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Until 2008 the Israel Air Force was a frequent guest in Turkey's sky and a regular participant in the country's big annual exercise, Anatolian Eagle.

In the wake of Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent deterioration of bilateral relations Turkey last year revoked Israel's participation in the maneuvers. The United States decided not to take part in the exercise this year because of that decision. A number of other NATO members followed suit.

Turkey replaced the Israel Air Force with its Chinese counterpart. China sent Sukhoi SU-27 fighter aircraft and pilots to train with Turkey's F-16 fighters. In the past these exercises were held in relatively openness, but last week they were held covertly, with only a brief report appearing in the Turkish media after the exercise.

The West has been watching the changes in the Chinese army's structure, and especially the long-range naval and aerial exercises that indicate Beijing's intention to acquire the ability to conduct warfare far from China's borders.

The national oil spill commission released today four reports written by commission staff assessing the government's response to the Gulf oil spill. The reports offer a detailed look at the oil spill from a number of angles, including the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil that spewed into the Gulf and the efforts of the government's Unified Command.

One report, "The Amount and Fate of the Oil Spill," offers many new details on how the government and BP estimated the size of the oil spill in the weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. It suggests that the federal government kept key information from the public in the weeks after the spill, with the White House in at least one case rejecting a request by government scientists to reveal to the public worst-case scenario flow rate data.

The report says BP's initial estimate that 1,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking out of the was essentially pulled out of thin air.

Wind power is likely to play a large role in the future of sustainable, clean energy, but wide-scale adoption has remained elusive. Now, researchers have found wind farms' effects on local temperatures and proposed strategies for mediating those effects, increasing the potential to expand wind farms to a utility-scale energy resource.

Led by University of Illinois professor of atmospheric sciences Somnath Baidya Roy, the research team will publish its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper will appear in the journal's Online Early Edition this week.

Roy first proposed a model describing the local climate impact of wind farms in a 2004 paper. But that and similar subsequent studies have been based solely on models because of a lack of available data. In fact, no field data on temperature were publicly available for researchers to use, until Roy met Neil Kelley at a 2009 conference. Kelley, a principal scientist at the National Wind Technology Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, had collected temperature data at a wind farm in San Gorgonio, Calif., for more than seven weeks in 1989.

Analysis of Kelley's data corroborated Roy's modeling studies and provided the first observation-based evidence of wind farms' effects on local temperature. The study found that the area immediately surrounding turbines was slightly cooler during the day and slightly warmer at night than the rest of the region.

A controversial proposed 130-turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound has been awarded the nation's first lease for offshore commercial wind power generation, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced this morning.

The 28-year lease for 25 square miles in federal waters will cost Cape Wind an annual fee of $88,278 and a 2 to 7 percent operating fee during production based on revenue from selling the energy.

PASADENA, Calif. - A unique partnership between NASA and agencies in Africa and Europe has sent more than 30 terabytes of free Earth science satellite data to South African researchers to support sustainable development and environmental applications in Africa.

The data from one of the instruments on NASA's Terra satellite provide observations of Africa's surface and atmosphere, including vegetation structure, airborne pollution particles, cloud heights and winds. Transfer of these data to a distribution center in Africa will make it broadly accessible to African users who have not been able to remotely download the large data files because of limitations in the continent's Internet infrastructure.

A petition for a Europe free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has hit the one million signatories target and will be handed to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, campaigners have announced.

The petition calling for a moratorium on all new GM crop production in Europe until a proper safety regime has been put in place was launched in March 2010.

Spearheaded by Greenpeace, the initiative follows the authorisation by the Commission of a BASF antibiotic-resistant GM potato that month - the bloc's first GM cultivation approval in 12 years.

According to Greenpeace, one million signatures from across every country in the EU were collected by 28 September and "signatures continue to pour in from across Europe".

Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio's ban on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods.

Leading humanitarian agency Oxfam believes anti-competition policies and farm subsidies in the US have hobbled Haiti's agricultural sector by undermining local food production.

International food aid to Haiti following the devastating January earthquake no doubt saved many lives in the impoverished Caribbean island nation. But a new report by a leading international NGO warns that the delivery of subsidised food - especially from the US -, while well-intentioned, is fatally undermining Haiti's critical agricultural sector and its hopes of economic recovery.

In a report released this week, UK-based international charity Oxfam said the international community's food aid effort in quake-shattered Haiti had undercut the agricultural sector, which employs over 66 percent of the country's  workforce.   When buying their staple foods, Haitians have a choice between extremely cheap produce imported from the US, which is grown on massively subsidised super-farms, or the locally-grown varieties.   Local producers cannot compete and consequently the agricultural sector is in terminal decline, the humanitarian organisation says.

Scientists found that a decline in the Sun's activity did not lead as expected to a cooling of the Earth, a surprise finding that could have repercussions for computer models on climate change.

The Sun's activity is known to wax and wane over 11-year cycles, which means that in theory the amount of radiation reaching Earth declines during the "waning" phase.

The new study was carried out between 2004 and 2007 during a solar waning phase.

The amount of energy in the ultraviolet part of the energy spectrum fell, the researchers found.

But, contrary to expectation, radiation in the visible part of the energy spectrum increased, rather than declined, which caused a warming effect.

Lead poisoning has killed 400 children under five over the past six months in Northern Nigeria, according to international humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres, saying that the number of fatalities could increase.

The epidemic is linked to the illegal gold mining in Zamfara state, where villagers bring home lead-laden dirt to sift through to find gold. They inhale the lead-laden dust while working on the dirt and become ill. Mining for gold is more lucrative than the traditional farming, leading to the rising number of homes that process the dirt.

A chimpanzee famous for smoking cigarettes has died at a South African zoo, aged 52.

Charlie the chimp started smoking when some visitors to Mangaung zoo, in Bloemfontein, threw him lit cigarettes.

Zoo spokesman Qondile Khedama said Charlie had become an institution, entertaining thousands of visitors every year with his antics.

An autopsy is being conducted to determine the cause of death.

For years, zookeepers had been trying to get the chimp to kick the habit, and they discouraged visitors from giving him cigarettes.

The Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam has found itself to be the proud owner of an extra Rembrandt. The painting Tobias and his wife has always been attributed to one of the 17th-century master's pupils, but according to Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering, it's by Rembrandt himself.

Museum director Sjarel Ex: "The painting was on display, but not in the museum. It was hanging in one of the reception rooms. Then one day we had a visit from Ernst van de Wetering, the driving force and brains behind the Rembrandt Research Project.

Better look
Van de Wetering said he'd like to get a better look at the thing, with some people and some microscopes. At a certain point it became evident that in his mind he was attributing this painting, this Barent Fabricius, to Rembrandt."

And indeed, this is just what the study concluded. Ernst van de Wetering is absolutely positive: the painting is "undoubtedly" the work of the master.

The Jordanian government has officially denied that the jamming of Al Jazeera's broadcast of the 2010 World Cup happened from its territory.

In a written statement to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, the Jordanian minister for information "categorically rejects" the allegations that Jordan was behind disrupting the signal.

The statement followed a report in the UK-daily Guardian alleging that "secret documents" prove that Jordan deliberately jammed Al Jazeera's broadcast of the World Cup games in South Africa.

The signal interruptions frustrated millions of viewers across the Middle East and North Africa, who had to deal with pixelated, fuzzy images, blank screens and game commentary in wrong languages.

Bizarrely, the most read article on the Guardian website last week wasn't about Ed Miliband or the Labour party conference, but a quirky special-interest piece spoofing science journalism which I assumed only about three people would get. Apparently I hit a nerve, but why? What's wrong with science journalism? How did it become so dull and predictable? And how do we fix it?

My point was really about predictability and stagnation. The formula I outlined - using a few randomly picked BBC science articles as a guide - isn't necessarily an example of bad journalism; but
science reporting is predictable enough that you can write a formula for it that everyone recognises, and once the formula has been seen it's very hard to un-see, like a faint watermark at the edge of your vision.

The place, according to a jokingly chalked board, is "somewhere in France". The time is the winter of 1915 and the spring and summer of 1916. Hundreds of thousands of British and Empire soldiers, are preparing for The Big Push, the biggest British offensive of the 1914-18 war to date.

A local French photographer, almost certainly an amateur, possibly a farmer, has offered to take pictures for a few francs. Soldiers have queued to have a photograph taken to send back to their anxious but proud families in Britain or Australia or New Zealand.

Sometimes, the Tommies are snapped individually in front of the same battered door or in a pear and apple orchard. Sometimes they are photographed on horseback or in groups of comrades. A pretty six-year-old girl - the photographer's daughter? - occasionally stands with the soldiers or sits on their knees: a reminder of their families, of human tenderness and of a time when there was no war.

Montana State University researchers have discovered a rare oasis of life in the midst of hundreds of geothermal vents at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake.

A colony of moss, worms and various forms of shrimp flourishes in an area where the water is inky black, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and a cauldron of nutrients, gases and poisons, the researchers reported in the September issue of Geobiology.

The vent is close to 100 feet below the surface of Yellowstone Lake and a third of a mile offshore in the West Thumb region. The worms and shrimp live among approximately two feet of moss that encircles the vent.

You may have been sleeping. You may have been sat in your smoking jacket and your fez, enjoying a beaker of port. You may have been sat in your underpants playing late-night internet poker and slamming espresso shots. Either way, at 00.01 am this morning, the pithily named Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 (Commencement No. 2) Order 2010 brought §38 of that Act into force, speedily closing a legal loophole that effectively legalised non-assault domestic abuse in Scotland.

The US Supreme Court has heard arguments about whether a fundamentalist church had the right to protest at a Marine's funeral.

The father of a Marine killed in Iraq is asking the court to reinstate a $5m (£3m) civil verdict against members of Westboro Baptist Church.

Members had carried signs with slogans like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers".

The case is being seen as a test of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which ensures the right to free speech.

Researchers have identified a language new to science in a remote region of India. Known as Koro, it appears to be distinct from other languages in the family to which it belongs; but it is also under threat.

Koro was discovered by a team of linguists on an expedition to Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India. The team was part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project on threatened indigenous languages.

The researchers were searching for two other little-known languages spoken only in one small area. As they heard and recorded these, they found a third which was completely new to them and had never before been listed.

The first dinosaur-like creatures emerged up to nine million years earlier than previously thought. That is the conclusion of a study on footprints found in 250 million-year-old rocks from Poland.

Writing in a Royal Society journal, a team has named the creature that made them Prorotodactylus. The prints are small - measuring a few centimetres in length - which suggests the earliest dinosaur-like animals were about the size of domestic cats.

"Technology has made virtually anything possible," says Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the publishing industry magazine The Bookseller. "If you look at it conceptually - there's a five-link chain between the person who writes and the person who reads. You've got Author-Agent- Publisher-Retailer-Reader. Theoretically, the three middle bits could all now vanish and the author could write online directly to the reader."

However, he continues, "A more likely possibility is that just one of the three central links will vanish on-line. It could be that Amazon, the retailer, becomes the publisher. Or that the agent becomes the publisher, or the publisher becomes the retailer, and you go to a publisher's site to buy the book. One of those links will certainly disappear on-line. We just don't know which."

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 was awarded to Mario Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".

The researchers say that the failure of the U.S. to make greater gains in survival rates with its greater spending on health care may be attributable to flaws in the overall health care system. They point to the role of unregulated fee-for-service payments and our reliance on specialty care as possible drivers of high spending without commensurate gains in life expectancy.

"It was shocking to see the U.S. falling behind other countries even as costs soared ahead of them," said lead author Peter Muennig, assistant professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "But what really surprised us was that all of the usual suspects--smoking, obesity, traffic accidents, and homicides--are not the culprits. The U.S. doesn't stand out as doing any worse in these areas than any of the other countries we studied, leading us to believe that failings in the U.S. health care system, such as costly specialized and fragmented care, are likely playing a large role in this relatively poor performance on improvements in life expectancy."

"This study provides stark evidence that the U.S. health care system has been failing Americans for years," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. "It is unacceptable that the U.S. obtains so much less than should be expected from its unusually high spending on health care relative to other countries."

A Saudi prince accused of murder was not in a gay relationship with the alleged victim, his lawyer has said.

Bandar Abdulaziz, 32, was found beaten and strangled in central London's Landmark Hotel, on 15 February.

Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, 34, admits manslaughter but denies murder and a separate count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

This year's Nobel laureates will receive the lowest prize money in real terms for a decade after the annual pay-out was frozen for the eighth successive year amid financial pressure on the foundation that manages Alfred Nobel's endowment.

The prize for each of the six awards, which are being announced in Stockholm this week, has remained at SKr10m ($1.5m) since 2001 and is at its lowest level in real terms since 1999.

The fund lost 22.3 per cent of its value during the 2008 financial crisis and, while some losses have since been recouped, its SKr3.11bn value at the end of last year remained nearly a third lower than at the height of the dotcom bubble a decade earlier.

The fall in the prize money contrasts with the prior decade, when the pay-out increased almost every year, after falling to as low as SKr2.2m in real terms in 1919 and languishing below its original 1901 SKr7.9m level until 1991.

Research into liver transplant patients found those who were actively "seeking God" had a better survival rate than those who did not hold religious beliefs, regardless of which faith they held.

They found some patients were up to three times more likely to survive by having a "strong religious connection", even if they didn't attend church.

Lingerie-clad students from Moscow's most renowned university have posed in an erotic calendar proclaiming their love for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who turns 58 on Thursday.

The calendar, called "Vladimir Vladimirovich, We love you. Happy Birthday Mr Putin," features twelve women wearing only underwear and pouting at the camera with saucy slogans.

The women are all named as journalism students at the Moscow State University and a spokeswoman for the faculty confirmed to AFP that the models study there.

Clad in a black lace negligee, Miss March, Lena Gornostayeva, wishes Putin a happy birthday with the message: "You put out the forest fires, but I'm still burning."

A Canadian woman had to be rescued from the roof of her submerged car after driving into an isolated marsh as she relied on GPS navigation, police said Wednesday.

The Ontario Provincial Police said the woman called 911 emergency services on her cellphone for help, after she became lost on her way to work east of Toronto late Tuesday.

"She advised she was standing on top of her car as it was submerged in a heavy marsh," police said in a statement. "She was following her GPS (Global Positioning System) directions and became lost."

Milan city council has extended the display of a controversial new sculpture by Italy's most famous living artist, Maurizio Cattelan.

The sculpture - officially titled L.O.V.E. but popularly known as The Middle Finger - will now remain in the Piazza d'Affari outside the Milan stock exchange until the end of a retrospective of Cattelan's work in the city on 24 October.

Now admirers of the artist's work are pressing for the piazza to become its permanent home.

The man who was one of the most famous photographers in the world in the 1920s - courted by the rich and famous when not going on street photography safaris with his friend George Bernard Shaw, yet almost forgotten when he died in 1972 - will be celebrated in a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, it was announced today.

Anyway he wants to meet up and chat, and have me sign his albums. I would have said no - though I don't mind doing it if I'm at an event. But then I checked him out. Seems he's a Dr Soc. Sc. and a leading world expert on: Activity Theory

Activity theory theorizes that when individuals engage and interact with their environment, production of tools results. These tools are "exteriorized" forms of mental processes, and as these mental processes are manifested in tools, they become more readily accessible and communicable to other people, thereafter becoming useful for social interaction....

...Activity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N. Leont'ev (1903-1979), and Sergei Rubinshtein (1889-1960) who sought to understand human activities as complex, socially situated phenomena and go beyond paradigms of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. It became one of the major psychological approaches in the former USSR, being widely used in both theoretical and applied psychology, in areas such as education, training, ergonomics, and work psychology.

I guess it will be a mutually beneficial meeting, though I'm sure we'll be talking at cross-purposes. Do we talk paradigms or plectrums?

You can't be me, I'm taken