The head of the German Bishops Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, has admitted that the Roman Catholic Church consciously covered up cases of sexual abuse for decades.  

The weekly German news magazine Focus reported on Sunday that Archbishop Zollitsch, the leader of the German Roman Catholic Church, admitted during an interview with the publication that cases of child sex abuse were known and covered up. "Yes, we did have that," he said, but denied allegations that he personally had suppressed information.

While most cases happened outside the Church, "assaults that took place in such numbers within our institutions shame and frighten me," Zollitsch told Focus. "Every single case darkens the face of the entire Church," he said.

Zollitsch emphasized, however, that the Church has been moving for years in the other direction to uncover and investigate reported cases of sexual abuse.

The archbishop was critical of proposals to file a complaint in every instance of suspected abuse. He said many victims had told him explicitly that they did not desire legal action. He stressed that it was also important to avoid baseless allegations which could ruin the lives of those falsely accused. 

Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, today insisted he had complied with the MPs' code of conduct after a group of Labour MPs were targeted in an elaborate sting operation in which journalists set up a bogus lobbying company and offered to pay them in return for political influence.

Byers, an arch Blairite, was filmed describing himself as a "bit like a sort of cab for hire" and offering to trade Westminster contacts for £3,000 to £5,000 a day.

Amid condemnation from senior cabinet ministers, the Labour party tried to limit the damage by saying some MPs were "mortified" by how stupid they had been, and promising a crackdown on lobbying by former ministers, rushing forward a manifesto pledge for tighter regulation and monitoring.

Others who were targeted in the undercover operation included former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt. Margaret Moran, Labour MP for Luton South, was also involved.

Police detain two more suspects involved in Berlin poker tournament robbery on Saturday after they stole prize money 242,000 euros.  

Two weeks after a spectacular daylight robbery at a poker tournament in Berlin police have arrested all four suspects who had made off with nearly a quarter of a million euros.

The 19- and 20-year-old pair were detained separately around noon and late Saturday at Berlin's main Tegel airport. Both men had informed police through their lawyers that they would be traveling back to Germany from Istanbul and Beirut. Authorities had issued an international arrest warrants for the alleged robbers.

The German leg of the European Poker Tour attracted around 950 participants including German tennis legend Boris Becker who had been eliminated from the competition a day before the March 6 heist.

On Monday, a 21-year-old German national surrendered to police, naming his three accomplices. A 20-year-old suspect was later arrested by police on a routine patrol two days later.

Vince Cable has held unprecedented and detailed talks with the top official at the Treasury about the Liberal Democrats' economic policies - and declared himself willing to serve as chancellor after the next election.

As Whitehall gears up for a possible hung parliament, Cable told the Observer that he had been questioned by Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury's permanent secretary, about what the Lib Dems' demands would be in a coalition with Labour or the Tories.

Cable was unaware of such meetings having taken place with Lib Dem shadow chancellors before previous general elections. The talks were a sign that the Treasury was "taking seriously" the prospect of his party playing a leading role in economic policy in what could be the first hung parliament since 1974.

"He wanted to know what we attached priority to. He wanted to know what we felt strongly about," Cable said, adding that his ideas on tax and spending were well received. He didn't say to me: 'Yes, minister, but you can't do that'."

Cable, whose credibility has grown throughout the economic crisis, made clear that, if he was to be offered the chancellorship in a hung parliament, he would jump at the chance. He did not want to be "the most unpopular person in Britain" as public spending is slashed, he said, but added: "I wouldn't be in this business if I wasn't willing to take the responsibility if it was to come my way."

The UK faces £300m in fines after failing to meet EU pollution targets, but Britons also pay the price with heart disease, asthma and cancer

More than 50,000 people are dying prematurely in the UK every year, and thousands more suffer serious illness because of man-made air pollution, according to a parliamentary report published tomorrow. The UK now faces the threat of £300m in fines after it failed to meet legally binding EU targets to reduce pollution to safe levels.

Air pollution is cutting life expectancy by as many as nine years in the worst-affected city areas. On average, Britons die eight months too soon because of dirty air. Pollutants from cars, factories, houses and agriculture cause childhood health problems such as premature births, asthma and poor lung development. They play a major role in the development of chronic and life-shortening adult diseases affecting the heart and lungs, which can lead to repeated hospital admissions. Treating victims of Britain's poor air quality costs the country up to £20bn each year.

A resurgent left, and the rapid growth of the Greens, look certain to condemn President Nicolas Sarkozy to two years' hard labour when French regional elections are completed this weekend. Opinion polls suggest that an alliance of the Socialists, the Greens and the harder left is likely to sweep at least 21 of the 22 regions in Metropolitan France after the second round of voting tomorrow.

Despite the low turnout, last Sunday's first round suggests France has undergone a severe electoral earth tremor, if not an earthquake. Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front has regained some ground, but far more threatening to President Sarkozy may be the recovery of the left.

The Socialists, the Greens and two somewhat harder-left parties scored 49.9 per cent of the vote last Sunday - the highest score for the left in an equivalent nationwide poll for more than half a century.

Berlusconi's supporters attended the premier's "party of love" election rally in Rome ahead of regional polls. Berlusconi used the occasion to launch a blistering attack on his political enemies.

AFP - Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the Italian capital Saturday in a massive show of support for embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ahead of regional elections.

Berlusconi used the occasion to launch a blistering attack on his political enemies, saying left-leaning judges and centre-left politicians had concocted "a laughable investigation based on the tapping of my calls."

The billionaire prime minister addressed a rally at a packed Piazza San Giovanni in Rome after two giant processions of supporters of his centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party had wound their way through the city.

The heads of the 27 European Union member states meet later this week to discuss long-term economic policy. But the EU's field of vision remains occupied by how to resolve Greece's financial predicament. 

Although European Union commissioners are pushing for quick action on some sort of rescue provisions for heavily indebted Greece, Germany is still disavowing the need for any such proposal - especially one that would dominate the agenda of the March 25-26 summit of EU heads of state.

"There's no looming insolvency," Merkel told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Sunday. "I don't believe that Greece has any acute financial needs from the European community and that's what the Greek prime minister keeps telling me."

But European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Friday that an EU standby aid package for Greece should be assembled "as soon as possible."

Asking for a hand, or a handout?

Greece may not be asking for immediate loans from its fellow euro-zone members, but it is hoping they can offer some security that would allow them to borrow money at less than the interest rates it is currently being offered.

The latest U.S. Treasury Z1 Flow of Funds report was released on March 11, 2010, bringing the data current through the end of 2009. What follows is the most important chart of your lifetime. It relegates almost all modern economists and economic theory to the dustbin of history. Any economic theory, formula, or relationship that does not consider this non-linear relationship of DEBT and phase transition is destined to fail.

It explains the "jobless" recoveries of the past and how each recent economic cycle produces higher money figures, yet lower employment. It explains why we are seeing debt driven events that circle the globe. It explains the psychological uneasiness that underpins this point in history, the elephant in the room that nobody sees or can describe.

Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank today amid a new descent into violence.

The two, who Palestinians claimed were detained while ploughing a field of olive trees near Nablus, were shot several times. Palestinian officials said both were 17. The Israeli military said they had tried to stab a soldier.

The deaths bring to five the number of people killed in the region in the past week.

As the violence placed further strain on US efforts to get peace talks under way, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said he would be meeting Barack Obama in the US on Tuesday.

Netanyahu's visit comes at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and the US over a controversial Jewish housing project in east Jerusalem. The project embarrassed Washington because it was announced while the vice-president, Joe Biden, was in Jerusalem to kickstart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

WASHINGTON -- Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted "nigger" Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s.

Protesters also shouted obscenities at other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, spat on at least one black lawmaker and confronted an openly gay congressman with taunts.

Capitol Police escorted the members of Congress into the Capitol after the confrontation. At least one demonstrator was reported arrested.

"They were shouting, sort of harassing," Lewis said. "But, it's okay, I've faced this before. It reminded me of the 60s. It was a lot of downright hate and anger and people being downright mean."

[...]

Protesters also used a slur as they confronted Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., an openly gay member of Congress.

Frank told the Boston Globe that the incident happened as he was walking from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building, both a short distance from the Capitol. Frank said the crowd consisted of a couple of hundred of people and that they referred to him as 'homo.' A writer for The Huffington Post said the protesters called Frank a "faggot."

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication, pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest.

From Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on down, the military's position is clear: "U.S. forces no longer eradicate," as one NATO official put it. Opium is the main livelihood of 60 to 70 percent of the farmers in Marja, which was seized from Taliban rebels in a major offensive last month. American Marines occupying the area are under orders to leave the farmers' fields alone.

"Marja is a special case right now," said Cmdr. Jeffrey Eggers, a member of the general's Strategic Advisory Group, his top advisory body. "We don't trample the livelihood of those we're trying to win over."

United Nations drug officials agree with the Americans, though they acknowledge the conundrum. Pictures of NATO and other allied soldiers "walking next to the opium fields won't go well with domestic audiences, but the approach of postponing eradicating in this particular case is a sensible one," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, who is in charge of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime here.

Afghan officials, however, are divided. Though some support the American position, others, citing a constitutional ban on opium cultivation, want to plow the fields under before the harvest, which has already begun in parts of Helmand Province.

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraq's president on Sunday called for a recount in this month's parliamentary elections, which have turned into a tight race between the prime minister and a secular rival amid accusations of fraud. A new count could further extend political wrangling in the contentious race.

The demand from President Jalal Talabani came a day after Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared to back the idea by calling on the election commission overseeing the counting to quickly respond to requests from political blocs for a recount.

The demands are the latest twist to an election that will determine who will govern the country as U.S. troops go home. Counting since the March 7 vote has been slow and plagued with confusion and disarray, fueling claims of fraud, though international observers have said the vote and count have been fair.

It remained unclear what the demands from Talabani and al-Maliki, which come before the first count has been finished, would produce.

The electoral commission -- an independent body appointed by parliament -- swiftly dismissed the calls and urged political parties to be patient and lodge their complaints through the appropriate channels.

Many African soldiers have been trained by the German Armed Forces, but the military training assistance program is under scrutiny. In recent years, German-trained soldiers staged a coup and shot at civilians in Guinea.  

Over the last decade, Germany's military cooperation with African countries has been organized and implemented by the Foreign and Defense Ministries. In fact, the military training assistance program has trained defense personnel from 28 African countries and over 1,200 experts. 

Defence Spokesman Thomas Silberhorn  of the Christian Social Union says the military training strenghtens bilateral relations.  

"The military training assistance aims at strengthening relationships with other countries and thereby also teach democratic ideals. That is a good thing. It is military training, but from the basis of what we have in Germany," he told Deutsche Welle.

[...]

But military cooperation does not always yield the desired results. The example of Guinea in West Africa shows that the ideals of democracy and rule of law are not always successfully transmitted. In September 2009, German-trained paratroopers gained notoriety when they shot at peaceful demonstrators.

And in December 2008, Moussa Dadis Camara overthrew the government in what is sometimes called the "German Coup." His trademark was a red beret with a bronze eagle - the symbol for German paratroopers. Camara's rule only lasted until December 3, 2009, when there was an assassination attempt on his life. He was then replaced by his Vice President, Sekouba Konate (a French-trained paratrooper).

Venezuela has said it will cut the power for a 24-hour period to 80 firms that have failed to meet electricity usage reduction targets.

Caracas announced the measures on Sunday as part of a nationwide drive to save energy amid rationing to cope with electricity shortages.

The 80 firms did not reduce their power consumption by the required 20 per cent and will have their electricity cut on Monday, the state utility said.

Those companies include hotels, restaurants, car dealerships, gyms and a yacht club, as well as Sony de Venezuela SA, the local arm of the Japanese firm Sony Corp.

Hugo Chavez, the president, had ordered the firms to reduce their consumption by presidential decree.

The decree was made after a severe drought in the country depleted hydroelectric electricity production which provides for more than 66 per cent of the country's power.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington Tens of thousands of people began assembling in Washington on Sunday to march for immigration reform, a politically charged issue that has been pushed to a back burner by the intense focus on healthcare.

In a tactic that reflects the current economy, march organizers have tried to cast the immigration debate as part of economic recovery.

"What's important today is that jobs and immigration go hand in hand," Marc Morial of the National Urban League said on Sunday in a television interview. "When you've got millions of undocumented workers working off the books, that affects the economy for everyone."

Organizers are hoping to draw tens of thousands of people to the National Mall then march to RFK Stadium. Organizers say they have attracted hundreds of groups from almost every state for what they call a "March for America."

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, and efforts to fix the current immigration system have failed in recent years. Liberals have sought a path for citizenship for undocumented workers, while conservatives have been just as adamant in opposing what they have called plans for amnesty. Both sides support efforts to secure the border with Mexico, but they differ on what tactics to use.

TASMANIA'S Liberals have left open the possibility of a deal with the Greens, who wield the balance of power, as the state's future government remains in doubt.

Labor and Liberal powerbrokers yesterday paused to take stock ahead of a likely 10-10-5 split in the House of Assembly following the state election.

This is probably as much as anything a result of the continued construction of a wood chipping mill against the majority opinion, with strong support from both state and federal Labour.  It seems that the Labour party has become corrupt in the last few years, with even Peter Garrett (midnight oil, Bruce's favourite) supporting this destructive and unnecessary mill.

Three years after Obama eloquently opposed the Military Commissions Act, the now-president signed a Military Commissions Act of his own, as part of the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill. The law, which sought to overhaul the discredited Bush-era military commissions for "alien enemy combatants," introduced what is apparently turning out to be an important new term to the counterterror lexicon: Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent, defined as "an individual who: 1) has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or 2) has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."...

In Obama's defense bill, the word "alien" preceded the term "unprivileged belligerents," in defining who can be held before a military commission. For McCain and Lieberman's purposes, omitting the word "alien" apparently means the label can apply to U.S. citizens, while, politically, the word "unpriviliged" provides a useful connotation: terror suspects will not be coddled like common criminals!

Read more...

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington
Delivering a hard-fought victory in President Obama's yearlong pursuit of a national healthcare overhaul, a divided House narrowly approved legislation Sunday night that could reshape the way Americans deal with wellness and illness.

House Democratic leaders proved they could hold the majority caucus together, passing the Senate version of the healthcare legislation, 219-212, after weeks of arm-twisting and politicking. Thirty-four Democrats opposed the bill, as did all Republicans.

The holding of elections in Iraq gave rise to a spate of articles on how may George W. Bush really did change the Middle East and maybe Iraq is turning out all right after all. These arguments derive not from analysis but from a desire to bolster the Republican Party and its ideology (which combines militarism abroad with Marie Antoinette-style lack of empathy with the woes of the common person domestically.)

...

So some authoritarian regimes are moving to put up democratic facades and so becoming semi-authoritarian. And the few regimes that seemed earlier to make a place for more democratic governance--Israel, post-2001 Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, post-2003 Iraq-- seem to be moving toward semi-authoritarianism and slipping back from democracy.

Ironically, the most genuine steps toward democratization have taken place in Turkey and in Pakistan. But Bush and the neoconservatives had backed the Turkish and Pakistani militaries, so this heroic story of the little people attaining their rights was never celebrated by the US mass media. Democracies are unpredictable and hard to control (as Bush found out when US allies like France and Turkey declined to line up behind the invasion of Iraq), and so Turkey and Pakistan are disturbing the world status quo. That is the real reason for which some Obama administration officials have talked about Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world. They did not speak that way when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was in control of the country. You have to wonder how committed most Washington elites really are to democratization, and have to wonder whether semi-authoritarianism in Middle Eastern allies might not be perceived as holding benefits for the US.

Authorities have evacuated hundreds of people after a volcano erupted beside a glacier in southern Iceland, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The eruption occurred around 11.30pm yesterday, beside the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the fifth largest in Iceland.

Authorities initially said the eruption was below the glacier, triggering fears that it could lead to flooding from ice melting, but scientists conducting an aerial survey today located the eruption and said it did not occur below the ice level.

"The eruption is a small one," said Agust Gunnar Gylfason, a risk analyst at the civil protection department. "An eruption in and close to this glacier can be dangerous due to possible flooding if the fissure forms under the glacier. That is why we initiated our disaster response plan."

Scientists can see lava flows in the half-mile long fissure, and are watching for further activity.

Science News Share   Blog   Cite Print   Email   Bookmark Earlier Butterfly Emergence Linked to Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2010) -- Butterflies are emerging in spring over 10 days earlier than they did 65 years ago, a shift that has been linked to regional human-induced climate change in a University of Melbourne- led study. The work reveals, for the first time, a causal link between increasing greenhouse gases, regional warming and the change in timing of a natural event.

The study found that over a 65 year period, the mean emergence date for adults of the Common Brown butterfly (Heteronympha merope) has shifted 1.6 days earlier per decade in Melbourne, Australia. The findings are unique because the early emergence is causally linked with a simultaneous increase in air temperatures around Melbourne of approximately 0.14°C per decade, and this warming is shown to be human-induced (anthropogenic).

Lead author of the study Dr Michael Kearney from the Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne says the findings could help our ability to forecast future impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

"Shifts in these seasonal life cycle events represent a challenge to species, altering the food and competition present at the time of hatching. Studies such as ours will allow better forecasting of these shifts and help us understand more about their consequences," says Dr Kearney.

By Barnaby Phillips in Alexandria

Deep inside the waterways of the Nile Delta, it is hard to believe that this region is in an environmental crisis. It is an idyllic setting as the canoes of fishermen drift through the swamps; kingfishers and egrets fly overhead, and reeds glisten in the early morning sunshine.

But the fishermen are not happy. They say their catches are down, and that the water is more and more polluted from nearby factories.

There is certainly enormous pressure on the Delta's resources; most of Egypt's 80 million people are crammed into this fertile, green landscape, where the Nile ends its epic journey half the length of Africa, and fans out into a series of tributaries and lakes, before flowing into the Mediterranean.

[...]

We leave the fishermen, and drive north, closer to the Mediterranean coastline. Our engaging guide is Mamdouh Hamza, a prominent Egyptian engineer and head of a company that specialises in underwater construction.

[...]

As the sea on Egypt's coastline rises, (Hamza says by 20cm during the last century, a statistic that leading Egyptian government scientists concur with) salt-water infiltrates the Delta's soil from below, and destroys the farming land.

The consequences of this are very serious for Egypt, which relies on the Delta for food production.

Water is scarce in arid Saudi Arabia. Now the king has hired a team of German scientists to search for groundwater trapped in aquifers beneath the massive kingdom's sands. Their pioneering work could provide solutions for other desert countries.

German geologist Randolf Rausch, 59, is showing his visitors the desert. He walks nimbly across the narrow crest of a sand dune, pointing his toes outward like a ballet dancer. The wind blows away his tracks immediately and tugs at his green Tyrolean hat.

[...]

Rausch has been working for GTZ International Services, part of Germany's federal GTZ development agency, in Riyadh for the last six years. The Saudi king has hired him and his visitors, who are from the Technical University of Darmstadt, to search for water in the desert. By drilling holes up to 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) deep, conducting pumping tests, and applying complex measuring techniques and computer models, they are trying to find out how much fossil groundwater remains stored between layers of rock beneath the Arabian Peninsula.

The Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in the eastern German city of Leipzig is also involved in the large-scale project. "Using the supercomputers at the UFZ," says Rausch, "we can simulate groundwater currents from the last ice age until today."

Seven years ago, a reclusive Russian mathematician, Grigori Perelman, startled the scientific world by claiming to solve one of the most famous and intractable problems in mathematics, called the Poincaré conjecture, and then disappearing back into St. Petersburg. RSS Feed Get Science News From The New York Times »

Now Dr. Perelman, who did not show up to receive a prestigious Fields Medal from the International Mathematical Union in Madrid in 2006, has been named the winner of the million-dollar prize for solving the problem by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.

The prize was announced Thursday by James Carlson, president of the institute. It is the first of the million-dollar Millennium prizes to be awarded. They were established in 2000 by the institute for the solution of seven longstanding problems.

Will Dr. Perelman accept? "He will let me know in due time," Dr. Carlson wrote in an e-mail message, acknowledging that they had been in touch. He declined to provide more details.

Poincaré's conjecture, elucidated in 1904, is fundamental to topology. It essentially says that any three-dimension space without holes in it is a sphere. Many distinguished mathematicians had grappled with the problem.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2010) -- Johns Hopkins scientists have found that a safe and inexpensive antibiotic in use since the 1970s for treating acne effectively targets infected immune cells in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, lies dormant and prevents them from reactivating and replicating.

The drug, minocycline, likely will improve on the current treatment regimens of HIV-infected patients if used in combination with a standard drug cocktail known as HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy), according to research published now online and appearing in print April 15 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. "The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins," says Janice Clements, Ph.D., Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs, vice dean for faculty, and professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"The big challenge clinicians deal with now in this country when treating HIV patients is keeping the virus locked in a dormant state," Clements adds. "While HAART is really effective in keeping down active replication, minocycline is another arm of defense against the virus."

Unlike the drugs used in HAART which target the virus, minocycline homes in on, and adjusts T cells, major immune system agents and targets of HIV infection. According to Clements, minocycline reduces the ability of T cells to activate and proliferate, both steps crucial to HIV production and progression toward full blown AIDS.

He was considered a loner and a misanthrope, but J.D. Salinger, who died recently, also had a warm and affectionate side. Previously undiscovered letters he wrote to an old army friend, which have been seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE, offer fascinating insights into the private life of the reclusive US author.

The letter is short and laconic. Six paragraphs, neatly typed, signed by hand. The sender writes that he misses the recipient, and he reports on the things that happened during his absence: Two fellow soldiers were wounded, a third soldier was given a military discharge, and another -- described as a "nice guy" -- is in Cuba. The writer's tone wavers between sarcasm and self-pity. He seems depressed, but he also mentions the possibility of having a drink with the recipient soon.

It is a letter from one friend to another, and yet it is so much more. The document, dated April 25, 1945, is a slice of contemporary and literary history.

Not just because it was written by a young GI on the German front, shortly before the end of World War II. Or because the "nice guy," as the writer elaborates in the course of the letter, was literary giant Ernest Hemingway.

In fact, the letter's importance stems from the identity of its author: Jerome D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive American writer who died in January, at the age of 91. His first and only novel, "The Catcher in the Rye," published in 1951, shaped the attitudes of generations, but Salinger went into seclusion shortly afterwards and did not publish anything at all after 1965. Since his death, researchers have been grasping at practically every word that might have come from his pen.

Caught in a sting by Oscar-winning film-makers, a top California fish restaurant has shut its doors after being exposed selling illegal whale meat at $85 (£57) a plate.

The Hump, a sushi restaurant near Santa Monica airport, was the subject of a secret camera operation by producers of The Cove, a movie chronicling environmentalists' battles with Japanese dolphin hunters, which won best documentary at this year's Academy awards.

The restaurant was selling a meal billed as omakase, a Japanese term for chef's choice. Posing as diners last month, while in town for the Oscars, the film-makers discreetly recorded a waitress describing slices of exotic pink flesh on their plates as kujira, meaning whale.

Facing a fine of up to $20,000 and a possible year's imprisonment, the owners of the restaurant shut up shop yesterday, describing closure as "a self-imposed punishment on top of the fine that will be meted out in court".

The Hump pledged a "substantial contribution" to charities aimed at preserving the endangered whale population, adding: "The Hump apologises to our loyal customers, the community of Santa Monica and the public at large for our actions."

On the day the US Congress passed legislation providing health coverage to 32 million Americans without insurance, Political Scrapbook can reveal the Conservatives' Cash Gordon campaign was developed by an anti-healthcare lobbyist described as "Karl Rove 2.0″.

Writing on the Blue Blog yesterday, the affable Sam Coates claimed that Conservatives' campaign site against Labour/Unite links was "built in just a few days". What he doesn't tell you is that the system has been purchased off-the-shelf from Republican strategists David All Group and was originally developed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.

Cash Gordon is based on Operation Waiting Game, which leverages social media against reforms which, it is claimed, "will have the same devastating effects in the United States as it has in Canada and in nations across Europe: longer wait times and lower quality care".

In an embarrassment for CCHQ, the party's flagship campaign is currently hosted alongside those attempting to "rescue America from government-run health care",

The Texan billionaire who married Anna Nicole Smith in the last year of his life never intended to leave her any part of his fortune, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The ninth US circuit court of appeals backed a Houston jury that said J Howard Marshall was mentally fit and under no undue pressure when he wrote a will leaving nearly all his $1.6bn (£1bn) estate to his son, E Pierce Marshall, and nothing to Smith.

Friday's ruling was the latest development in a 15-year battle. Smith, who died in 2008, claimed Marshall had promised her more than $300m

The battle between Smith and Marshall started in a Houston probate court and continued to the US supreme court, outliving the two combatants. It may reach the high court again.

Kent Richland, a lawyer for Smith's estate vowed to appeal against the latest ruling, possibly to the supreme court, on different issues than those it first considered.

James Randi comes out as gay. He discusses his life as a closeted gay man, and why he is now at age 81 coming out, and why he hasn't been publicly open about his sexuality sooner.

There was a very significant development last week in the case of Paul Chambers, whose ill-conceived joke on Twitter about blowing up an airport resulted in a criminal investigation, an arrest, a charge, and a decision to prosecute by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Mr Chambers has now switched his plea to Not Guilty, thus forcing the CPS to prove that he has committed an offence.

By way of background, you may recall Mr Chambers pleaded Guilty at Doncaster Magistrates Court last month.