Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May has said that street gangs and hardcore activists were behind the protests against tuition fee rise last week.

May said on Monday that street gangs rampaged through London and attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, and several vandalized government buildings. May said police believe "the protests were infiltrated by organized groups of hardcore activists and street gangs bent on violence."

She also said that many of the protestors in central London last Thursday became involved in the violence. "It is quite clear that these acts were not perpetrated by a small minority but by a significant number of troublemakers," May told the House of Commons.

The government has revealed that 93 magistrates' courts are to be closed in England and Wales.

Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly also said the government would shut 49 County Courts, as part of its deficit-reduction programme.

These figures are slightly lower than the 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts previously earmarked for closure.

Mr Djanogly told MPs the current system was "unsustainable".

There are some 300 magistrates' courts, who deal with minor crimes, crown court committal hearings and licensing applications.

It is estimated that closing the courts will save the government at least £15m a year in running costs, plus an extra £22m in maintaining the buildings.

Lib Dems don't expect their Lords rebels to muster more than single figures in tonight's vote on tuition fees.

If Labour confounded their expectations and got its way and won the vote the Government would have to come back with another resolution and get it through the Commons again in the New Year.

Universities want to issue prospectuses with new prices in the Spring ready for 2012 entry and a Whitehall source says that timings would get "very difficult."

It is impossible to say how long it will take before Mr Assange is out. The problem is that £200,000 can't be paid in by cheque because cheques take seven days to clear. We have to go around to find money in cash. Until this court is in possession of £200,000, an innocent man stays in jail.

Stephens trotted out the adjectives to describe the conditions that Assange is being held - he used the words Orwellian, Dickensian and Victorian.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has narrowly won a vote of confidence in the lower house of parliament by 314 to 311, prompting street protests.

In Rome, violent clashes have left 50 police officers and at least 40 protesters injured.

The marchers set fire to cars, threw stones and overturned bins in Italy's worst street violence in recent years.

Mr Berlusconi's critics say he is too deeply mired in scandal and corruption allegations to remain in office.

Internet giant Google holds a dominant position in the online advertising market linked to search engines, a French competition watchdog has said.

But the Autorite de la Concurrence regulator said Google would only face sanctions if it abused this power.

"Only the abusive exercise of such market power could be sanctioned," the anti-trust regulator said.

Google said search advertisements were just "one of many options for advertisers".

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, will contest the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection, the far-right party confirmed today.

Griffin, who currently serves as MEP for the North West, is the latest candidate to confirm his bid to enter the race for the seat left empty by Labour's Phil Woolas.

Judges ordered a rerun of the constituency election after ruling last month at a specially convened court that Woolas had lied to win his seat in May by 103 votes, exploiting racial tensions in order to defeat Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins.

Measures changing redundancy terms for civil servants will lead to increased strikes and legal challenges, ministers have been warned.

Labour's John McDonnell claimed the Superannuation Bill is the "worst example of industrial relations practices" seen in years.

Mr McDonnell (the Hayes and Harlington MP) criticised what he said was the Government's threat to impose severe caps on the redundancy terms for thousands of civil servants, who will lose their jobs as a result of the coalition's spending cuts.

The Bill will see civil servants receiving one month's salary for every year of service. This would be capped at 12 months for compulsory redundancy and 21 months for voluntary redundancy, with all civil servants entitled to a three-month notice period.

Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

This is a direct consequence of the EU forbidding industrial policy except in the areas of military technology.

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

Last week, every single Labour MP turned out to vote in the same division lobby. We voted `no' to the tripling of tuition fees. There were no forgetful absences. Nobody rebelled. No-one sneaked off early. I couldn't remember the last time this happened so I asked the House of Commons library to tell me. And guess what? It hadn't happened in my parliamentary life. Not once since 2001 has the PLP felt collectively strong enough to march in complete unanimity through the same division lobby.

We've nearly ended our rollercoaster year with the whole Labour crew turning out resolutely to oppose David Cameron's Tory-Lib Dem government. We're ahead in the polls. Britain is now so broken that Nick Clegg can't safely ride a bicycle - despite all those close protection officers. And the government is already a cabinet minister and a handful of PPSs down after resignations.

The UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) annual inflation rate rose to 3.3% in November, up from 3.2% in October.

It followed record price rises for the October to November period in food, clothing and furniture.

Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation - which includes mortgage interest payments - rose to 4.7% from 4.5%.

One Bank of England interest rate policymaker said he expected CPI to hit 4% next year due to the VAT increase, and that interest rates needed to rise.

In an interview with the BBC, Andrew Sentance said he favoured a gradual raising of rates.

Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, is likely to come under pressure to reopen the regulator's probe into Royal Bank of Scotland after leaked US cables show the bank's new chairman Sir Philip Hampton said the former bank directors had failed to live up to their duties.

The private remarks by Hampton that directors had breached their "fiduciary responsibilities" are disclosed barely a week after the City regulator controversially shut its investigation into what went wrong at RBS.

The FSA's decision, revealed by the Guardian, was greeted with astonishment in the financial community and means no action will be taken against the bank or any of its former directors, including former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin.

The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, was so concerned about the health of the world's banks in March 2008 that he plotted a secret bailout of the system using funds from cash-rich nations, according to a US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.

Six months before the world financial crisis reached its peak, forcing taxpayers to rescue collapsing financial institutions, King told US officials in London that the UK, US, Switzerland and Japan could jointly enable a multibillion-pound cash injection into global banks, overriding the "dysfunctional" G7 nations.

The leak may allow King to claim that he - rather than Gordon Brown - was one of the brains behind the bailout of the banks, which took place in October 2008.

Pressure on high-deficit European countries increased today as Belgium was warned that its credit rating could be cut within six months, and Spain was forced to pay higher interest to lure investors.

S&P lowered Belgium's outlook to "negative" from "stable", because ongoing political instability is hampering efforts to bring the country's deficit under control. Unless the situation is resolved, S&P is likely to cut its rating on Belgium's long-term debt by one notch by June 2011.

"We believe that Belgium's prolonged domestic political uncertainty poses risks to its government's credit standing, especially given the difficult market conditions many eurozone governments are facing," warned S&P.

"We anticipate that prolonged political uncertainty could hurt Belgium's credit standing," it added.

The row over the €40m (£34m) Allied Irish Banks bonuses deepened today after extraordinary claims that executives of the bank had tried to rush the payments through as the bailout loomed.

Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole says a source at AIB told him the bonuses were "a looting of the bank by management before the government became involved in the institution".

The source claims the bonuses were deliberately brought forward by two months because the bank was about to be taken into public ownership and knew bonuses might be legally challenged after the bailout.

The claims will be a further blow to embattled finance minister Brian Lenihan who last night announced that he was blocking the payments which were due to be made this Friday to 2,400 staff following legal action by trader John Foy who took a test case to the high court.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. economy needs "forward momentum" to boost recovery and curb high unemployment, said President Obama's chief economic advisor on Monday.

In his last public speech delivered at the Washington based think tank Economic Policy Institute, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers said that it was crucial to ensure that the economic recovery is as rapid as possible.

Summers, who is scheduled to return to Harvard University next year, noted that lack of demand was a main constraint facing the economy.

HONG KONG, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese economic growth is forecast to slow to 9.1 percent in 2011, from an estimate of 10.3 percent this year, and the 9 percent growth is expected to be a new normal for China in the post-crisis period, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a regional economic outlook report released on Tuesday.

After fluctuations since late 2008, China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth has stabilized at about 9 percent in both year on year and sequential terms, in comparison with the average 11-percent growth in years before the crisis, said the report.

The authorities are making at least two mistakes. One is that they are determined to avoid defaults or haircuts on currently outstanding sovereign debt for fear of provoking a banking crisis. The bondholders of insolvent banks are being protected at the expense of taxpayers. This is politically unacceptable. A new Irish government to be elected next spring is bound to repudiate the current arrangements. Markets recognise this and that is why the Irish rescue brought no relief. Second, high interest rates charged on rescue packages make it impossible for the weaker countries to improve their competitiveness vis-à-vis the stronger ones. Divergences will continue to widen and weaker countries will continue to weaken. Mutual resentment between creditors and debtors is liable to grow and there is a real danger that the euro may destroy the political and social cohesion of the EU.

Both mistakes can be corrected. With regard to the first, emergency funds ought to be used to recapitalise banking systems as well as to provide loans to sovereign states. The former would be a more efficient use of funds than the latter. It would leave countries with smaller deficits, and they could regain access to the market sooner if the banking system were properly capitalised. It is better to inject equity now rather than later and it is better to do it on a Europe-wide basis than each country acting on its own. That would create a European regulatory regime. Europe-wide regulation of banks interferes with national sovereignty less than European control over fiscal policy. And European control over banks is less amenable to political abuse than national control.

I haven't seen a lot of press on these statements by  Paul O'Neill on Bloomberg but they are significant. In essence, O'Neill said that he told George W. Bush not to cut taxes in 2001. Bush went ahead and cut taxes anyway - twice. And he added an unfunded Medicare prescription giveaway while overseeing two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now Bush is acting like O'Neill never said anything about the tax cuts. In Bush's book "Decision Points", he claims never to have spoken to O'Neill about the matter. These are not the only problems with Bush's book. O'Neil was fired, leaving the Administration at the end of 2002.

As for the present deficits and debt, O'Neill believes the day of reckoning is coming. See his comments in the video below. Note that while O'Neill compares the U.S. to Greece, Greece does not have a sovereign monetary policy which makes it vulnerable to liquidity crises in a way the U.S. is not.

Video links are at the title link.

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

After recently debunking the economic "recovery's" flagrantly misrepresented employment data, the OMB's David Stockman makes a third appearance in as many months (previously here and here), this time on Dylan Ratigan. And as always, it is a must see: key soundbite: "We have had a Fed engineered serial bubble, that has created the appearance of wealth, that has caused people to consume beyond their means through borrowing, and that has flushed the income and wealth of our society up to the top, as a result of the Fed turning the financial markets into a casino. These are pure casinos, they are not capital markets, they are not adding to the productive capacity of our economy, they simply are a bunch of robots trading with each other by the millisecond as a result of the Fed giving them zero cost overnight money, and giving them all kinds of hand signals on what to front-run." It is almost as if Stockman reads Zero Hedge... And he continues: "The Fed is destroying prosperity by funding demand that we can't support with earnings and productions, causing massive current accounts deficits and the flow of funds overseas and the build up in China, OPEC and Korea of massive dollar reserves which is a totally unsustainable, unsupportable system, and we are coming near the edge of where that can continue to remain stable." Ironically, Stockman is spot one when he notes that America incurred enough debt to have effectively LBOed itself. The net result, as every PE principal knows all too well, is a husk of an entity, whose most valuable assets have been bled dry. At this point, the last straw for America will be the inevitable rise in interest rates (at some point over the next five years, the Fed and Treasury will have to sell a combined $5 trillion in debt - that alone will destroy the supply/demand equilibrium and send rates surging) which will result in either debt repudiation or outright bankruptcy. The only good outcome is that the great experiment of LBOing America by the kleptocratic elite is coming to its sad conclusion.

Some other facts:

    * In 2000, there were 72 million middle-class jobs: manufacturing, construction, FIRE, transportation, etc; today, there are 65 million jobs, we have lost 10% of our middle class supporting jobs. We have replaced these with part-time jobs.
    * In 1981 the national debt was $1 trillion. Today, it is $14 trillion. The economy in the same period is 3.5-4 times bigger, the national debt is 14 times bigger.
    * Booby-trapping the 2012 election with a the latest set of tax-cuts that expire just days ahead, will panic the White House into doing the wrong decision for the economy once again in another political trade off that delays the inevitable collapse.

The one point that did not come through is that the USA actually lent the banksters enough to LBO the country and they did, in the process destroying the industrial base and generating a debt greater than the annual GDP that the Fed and Treasury have been rolling over since October '08.  

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

When President Barack Obama today holds his largest private meeting with chief executive officers since he entered the White House, he may find some of his corporate critics cheering.

Obama is generating more optimism among CEOs after a series of business-friendly decisions, such as extending Bush-era tax cuts and reaching a free-trade accord with South Korea, even as skepticism remains.

...

It has been several decades since a U.S. president held office during record corporate earnings while the stock market's benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 46 percent in the 21 months since he was inaugurated, all at a time with no prospect that inflation or interest rates will surge anytime soon. Still, it's the tax and trade initiatives that may be changing attitudes.

Longtime U.S. diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, whose relentless prodding and deft maneuvering yielded the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia - a success he hoped to repeat as President Obama's chief envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan - died Monday in Washington of complications from surgery to repair a torn aorta. He was 69.

A foreign policy adviser to four Democratic presidents, Mr. Holbrooke was a towering, one-of-a-kind presence who helped define American national security strategy over 40 years and three wars by connecting Washington politicians with New York elites and influential figures in capitals worldwide. He seemed to live on airplanes and move with equal confidence through Upper East Side cocktail parties, the halls of the White House and the slums of Pakistan.

Obama praised him as "a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer and more respected. He was a truly unique figure who will be remembered for his tireless diplomacy, love of country, and pursuit of peace."

Haiti's Electoral Council Tries Alternate Ways to Legitimize Fraud - by Stephen Lendman

It's almost surreal following Haiti's November 28 elections, a process elevating fraud to a new level. So bad, in fact, most candidates demanded voiding it and starting over, but no matter. On December 9, New York Times Deborah Sontag headlined, "Haitian Vote Results to Be Reviewed," saying:

"Seeking to defuse the violent protests that have shut down this country for two days, Haiti's electoral council (CEP) promised....to rapidly review the widely mistrusted preliminary results...."

Beijing - Police in south-western China have arrested the manager of a private shelter for the homeless on charges of selling residents, some of whom were mentally disabled, as forced labourers at a remote factory, state media said on Tuesday.

Zeng Lingquan was arrested on Monday for allegedly selling 11 residents of his centre in Quxian county, Sichuan province, to the Jiaersi Green Construction Material Chemical Factory in the far western region of Xinjiang, state media said.

November is ordinarily the month when the air war in Afghanistan -- and really, the whole American-led campaign -- ratchets down for the winter. This November, with Gen. David Petraeus in charge of the war effort, things have been different. Radically different. NATO fighter jets and attack planes launched their bombs and missiles on 850 separate missions this November. That's three-and-a-half times the number of attack sorties they flew in November 2009.

It's another sign of the bloody turn the Afghan conflict has taken since Petraeus took over. Petraeus unleashed special operations forces, who have killed or captured thousands of militants. His generals relied on massive surface-to-surface missiles to clear the Taliban out of Kandahar, and ordered tanks to help crush opponents in Helmand province. And then there's the metastasizing air war.

Mitt Romney has a solution to America's unemployment problems. Rather than giving Americans government help when they lose their jobs (help which he says will keep them unemployed), Romney suggests workers pay for their own unemployment insurance. The government, on the other hand, should spend its money spurring companies into making new jobs.

As part of a sharply-worded attack on the Bush tax cut extension compromise published in today's USA Today, Romney states his case that the extended unemployment insurance contained in the compromise will keep those out of work from looking for new jobs. In its place, Romney suggests "individual unemployment savings accounts over which employees would exercise direct control when they lose their jobs."

In a meeting with U.S. envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah on Tuesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed his disappointment with the United States for failing to declare that talks on borders with Israel will be based on 1967 lines.

Abbas said he was upset that Mitchell insisted that border negotiations won't necessarily be based on 1967 lines, a term former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert committed to in the past.

The department for coordinating government activities in the territories expressed their regret for refusing entry to Palestinian firefighters who had helped fight the massive Carmel forest fire, blaming it on a 'technical error.'

In a public statement, the department requested that the incident not spiral into a scandal or "be blown out of proportion."

Hugo Chavez, the Venezualan president, has announced plans to pass laws by decree for the next six to 18 months.

Chavez says that he needs the fast-track powers to deal effectively with a major national crisis caused by rains that have left 130,000 people homeless, devastated crops and damaged roads.

Opponents fear he will use the powers to legislate in areas unrelated to the crisis sparked by rains.

They say Monday's presidential announcement would effectively eliminate any chance for the opposition to influence national politics for the next few months.

VENEZUELA - More Protests - and More Crackdowns: "The criminalisation of social protests, using the justice system, has been growing since 2005. At present, more than 2,400 people are facing prosecution for exercising their right to peaceful protest," lawyer Mariana Belalba, lead author of the study, told IPS. This coincides with a steady rise in the number of protests: between October 1999 and September 2010, there were 19,250 street protests in Venezuela. The annual average grew from 1,200 to 1,500 protests in the early 2000s to nearly 2,900 in 2008-2009 and to roughly 3,300 for 2009-2010, Belalba said.

Brasil: The VSB-30 V07 rocked developed with Brazilian technology at the Aeronautics and Space Institute (IAE) was launched from Brazil's Alcantara space launching base, close to the equator, in the state of Maranhao, according to an official report from the Brazilian Air Force. The rocket took off at 12:35 local time and reached 242 kilometres altitude. Following an 18 minute flight, as was planned the VSB 30 V07 dropped into the Atlantic 145 kilometres from Alcantara. The experiment was tracked all along its flight, points out the release.

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A total of 2,323 people have died and 104,614 have been sickened so far in the cholera epidemic besieging Haiti since mid-October, authorities said Monday.

SANTO DOMINGO - Four more cholera cases have been registered in the Dominican Republic, raising the total number of cases in the Caribbean country to 32, the Public Health Ministry said.

Before the midterms, conservative leaders were warning that they'd force a showdown over federal spending much earlier than expected: in the lame duck session, before the newly elected Republicans come to Washington.

They weren't joking. Republican and Democratic leaders are now engaged in a brinksmanship that could result in a temporary shutdown of the federal government. After the election, Republicans voted among themselves to eschew all earmarks for two years, and now they have to make good on their pledge. Yesterday, Democrats' chief appropriator, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) unveiled what's known as an omnibus spending bill -- a bundled up package of appropriations legislation, earmarks, and other measures -- which would keep the government running for a year.

In response, most Republicans -- even those whose multimillion dollar earmark requests are included in the legislation -- are saying, "Hell no you can't!"

That puts them all in an awkward position. At a press conference this morning, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) were at pains to explain away why they requested earmarks that appear in the bill they're now railing against. But it also sets the two parties up for a standoff -- and one side must blink by this weekend, or the lights will start going out in the federal government.

It's been a rough year for the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body responsible for assessing the latest science on global warming. The group has faced criticism--some fair, some much less so--from all sides.

First there was the release ahead of last year's climate negotiations of more than 1,000 emails between climate scientists--many of them involved in writing the IPCC's reports--that climate doubters excerpted and cherry-picked in order to smear the entirety of the group's work. And in January, a few errors were spotted in the IPCC's 2007 report--most notably, scientists significantly overestimated the speed at which the Himalayan glaciers are melting. They were relatively minor errors in the 1,000 pages of the last assessment, but were spun into an all-out war on the IPCC's work.  

Details have been released of the first nine electric cars that will be eligible for grants of up to £5,000 in a government subsidy scheme.

Under the £43m initiative that starts on 1 January, buyers will get a 25% discount up to the maximum £5,000.

However, only three of the nine cars will be immediately ready for delivery, with others following as late as 2012.

The government also said that a further five areas were to install charging points after bidding for funds.

The additional locations getting a share of £20m to build plug-in points are the Midlands, Greater Manchester, the east of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Representatives of the American company Evergreen, owners and operators of the 'supertanker' jet, claim that they had already offered their services to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on the first day of what would become the massive Carmel forest fire, but that their offer of aid had been refused.

Yoram Gavron, representative of Evergreen in Israel, told Israel Radio in an interview on Tuesday that he relayed the offer after he received approval from the president of the company in the United States.

The government's environmental bank is likely to be scaled back to begin life as a fund, jeopardising billions of pounds of badly-needed loans to green technology. 

The green investment bank (GIB) was devised by the chancellor, George Osborne, when in opposition as crucial to the development of green energy projects such as clean coal plants and offshore wind farms in the UK.

Now the cabinet minister in charge of seeing the plan come to fruition - a devoted ambassador for the idea of a bank - has floated the possibility of a staggered introduction.

This would see it initially set up as a more limited fund unable to raise finance by issuing "green bonds" to back green projects.

Julian Assange's supporters couldn't get into courtroom because there were too many journalists inside - #c4news http://bit.ly/h6VdHX

But if current reports are correct -- that the Obama DOJ has now convened a Grand Jury to indict WikiLeaks and Julian Assange -- this will constitute a far greater assault on press freedom than anything George W. Bush managed, or even attempted.  Put simply, there is no intellectually coherent way to distinguish what WikiLeaks has done with these diplomatic cables with what newspapers around the world did in this case and what they do constantly:  namely, receive and then publish classified information without authorization.  And as much justifiable outrage as the Bush DOJ's prosecution of the AIPAC officials provoked, at least the actions there resembled "espionage" far more than anything Assange has done, as those AIPAC officials actually passed U.S. secrets to a foreign government, not published them as WikiLeaks has done.

To criminalize what WikiLeaks is doing is, by definition, to criminalize the defining attribute of investigative journalism.  That, to be sure, is a feature, not a bug, of the Obama administration's efforts. 

Those of you who aren't local will have to forgive me as I use this blog to protest. But the situation here is probably being reproduced elsewhere in the country, thanks to budget cuts-and if anyone out there has any advice for me, I'd be most happy to hear it.

Today, I received this email from the library I have been using for my entire life. (Tiny bit of background: Charles City County, my home, has never had a library; just a bookmobile. The Williamsburg Regional Library, within the city limits, is our only local library.)

A Richard Littlejohn column in the Daily Mail that compared student fees protester Jody McIntyre to Matt Lucas's Little Britain creation Andy has prompted 500 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.

Police launched an internal investigation after footage appeared to show McIntyre being pulled out of his wheelchair and dragged across the road by an officer during last Thursday's demonstration in central London.

Littlejohn said if McIntyre was "looking for sympathy he's come to the wrong place". Littlejohn described McIntyre as "like Andy from Little Britain" before imagining a spoof dialogue between McIntyre - as Andy - and David Walliams's Lou.

A BBC News channel interview with McIntyre also prompted a "considerable" number of complaints from viewers, who said interviewer Ben Brown asked inappropriate and "insensitive" questions.

(Reuters) - Revelations on the WikiLeaks website which have enraged governments around the world should force the traditional media to rely less on official sources, award-winning journalist John Pilger said.

In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter told Reuters the internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.

One reason the media did not challenge the U.S. and British governments' justification for going to war in Iraq in 2003, later shown to be misplaced, was their eagerness to believe the official version of events, Pilger argued

Fifa president Sepp Blatter says gay fans going to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, should "refrain from sexual activity".

When asked if he foresaw any cultural problems, Blatter, apparently joking, said: "I'd say they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activities."

Then, speaking seriously, he said he was sure there would be no problems.

Gay rights groups, already unhappy at the choice of tournament venue, say he should apologise or resign.

KHQ.COM - On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukaemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

While Brown is the first person to ever be declared cured of HIV, his case paves a path for constructing a cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells.

The scene: a mass demonstration in Tehran/Harare/Rangoon/Pyongyang/&c. The police are filmed shoving a 20-yr-old demonstrator with cerebral palsy from her/his wheelchair & dragging her/him across the pavement, to the horror of onlookers. Footage of this event is sneaked out & publicised. Accordingly, Iranian/Zimbabwean/Burmese/North Korean/&c state broadcasters cannot ignore it. Forced to report it, they stress, however, that there `is a suggestion' that said demonstrator was `rolling towards the police'. 

The British & American media response can be imagined. Shock. Disgust at such overt & disgraceful victim-blaming. Sympathy for the young activist, who becomes an international hero. Revulsion at the outlet's patently ridiculous claims of `objectivity'. Bitter humour, perhaps, at the sheer Leviathan absurdity of the implied justification.

Constitutional conventions have been rewritten to prevent an outgoing prime minister offering his or her resignation to the Queen before a new government has been formed.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, today published the first attempt to codify the rules of government into a "cabinet manual" that is being seen as the first step towards a written constitution. It sets out everything from the way cabinet should work to how governments are formed in the case of a hung parliament.

Compared to an earlier draft, the document makes it even more explicit that the Queen should be kept out of the formation of the new government in a hung parliament, to avoid accusations of political interference. But it also suggests that the situation whereby the losing prime minister can force the formation of a new government by offering his or her resignation before a coalition is fully formed should not occur again.

The first sign the disease is developing -- before there are any symptoms -- is a buildup of amyloid. And for years, it seemed, the problem in Alzheimer's was that brain cells were making too much of it.

But now, a surprising new study has found that that view appears to be wrong. It turns out that most people with Alzheimer's seem to make perfectly normal amounts of amyloid. They just can't get rid of it. It's like an overflowing sink caused by a clogged drain instead of a faucet that does not turn off.

That discovery is part of a wave of unexpected findings that are enriching scientists' views of the genesis of Alzheimer's disease.

"The majority of people are turning to alternative treatments not because they are dissatisfied with their conventional care, but because they wish to add something beneficial to their care," Heese said.

From a list of reasons for using alternative treatments, the most commonly chosen responses were "to support conventional therapy," "to build up body resistance" and "to do something for the treatment by myself." The least commonly chosen responses were "because I am afraid of the conventional methods" and "because the physicians don't have enough time."

Of those who used alternative treatments, 39 percent used homeopathy, 31 percent used vitamin supplements and 29 percent used various psychological methods.

See yesterday's thread for background and explanation of terms.

Of all the ways of organizing banking, the worst is the one we have today — Mervyn King, 25 October 2010

PICAYUNE, Miss. -- A man caught naked in a south Mississippi church cemetery says he was trying to take photographs of spirits. Robert Hurst told The Picayune Item newspaper that he shed his clothes because he believes skin is the best canvas to show spirits' orbs of energy.

The 47-year-old said he only intended to remove his shirt, but he took off all his clothes - a move he now calls "stupid."

A judge who swore and stormed out of court after being convicted of failing to keep her German Shepherd under control has been fined £2,500.

The dog, owned by Judge Beatrice Bolton who sits at Newcastle Crown Court, attacked a sunbathing student in his parents' Northumberland garden.

Bolton, 57, who was asked during the trial to stop chewing gum, denied one charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

Outside court she said she would appeal against her conviction.

A spokesman for the Judicial Office for England and Wales said the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor would be considering her position as a judge.

LONDON, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Royal Mint will produce around 4,700 victory medals for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, announced the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) on Tuesday.

Royal Mint will make these medals at their headquarters in Llantrisant, South Wales.

Adam Lawrence, Chief Operating Officer at the Royal Mint, said that "As a UK manufacturer, this is great news for the country, the 800 people we employ and our suppliers."

The magazine's No. 2 runner-up after Zuckerberg was the Tea Party, a loose affiliation of American citizens united by their dislike of big government.

No. 3: Julian Assange, whose WikiLeaks organization has shared reams of sensitive diplomatic cables with the world. Referring to a poll of Time readers as to who should have been chosen, Stengel told Lauer and Vieira: "Assange won our poll by a great margin -- but of course, Lady Gaga was No. 2. We take all that into account."

No. 4: Hamid Karzai, the elected leader of the volatile nation of Afghanistan.