Barack Obama becomes the fourth American president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize
The American president Barack Obama will fly into Oslo, Norway for 26 hours to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the fourth American president in history to do so.
He will receive a diploma, medal and cheque for 1.4 million dollars for his exceptional efforts to improve global diplomacy and encourage international cooperation, amongst other things.
The head of the White House will be flying into the Norwegian city in the morning with his wife Michelle and will have a busy schedule.
First, he will visit the Nobel Institute, where he will have his first meeting with the five committee members who selected him from 172 people and 33 organisations.
The presidential couple then has a meeting scheduled with King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway.
Then, in the afternoon, the visit will culminate in a grand ceremony, at which Obama will receive the prestigious award.
He will be the fourth American president to be awarded the prize, and only the third to have received it while actually in office.
The White House has stated that, when he accepts the prize, Obama will speak about the war in Afghanistan.
The president does not want to skirt around this topic, as he realises that he is accepting the prize as a president whose country is currently at war in two countries.
A few days ago he stepped up the war effort by sending more troops to Afghanistan, something that his critics will be stressing.
At the ceremony, Obama will also be given a gold medal, a diploma, and a cheque for ten million Swedish krona (around 24 million Czech crowns).
He intends to donate this money to charity, but hasn't decided which yet.
Their busy schedule will then take the president and his wife to a banquet, which will be attended by the Norwegian king and queen as well as the ministerial chairman and another 250 invited guests.
Obama has always been reticent in regards to his prize.
He has said, for example, that he feels that he does not wholly deserve it.
He has repeatedly said that the prize isn't for him, but for everyone who upholds the same values.
Right after hearing about it, he described it as a "challenge to take action."
Nature protection officers accused of blackmail
The Litoměřice police have accused the chairman of the Litoměřice Nature Protection Society civil association of blackmail.
Several times during the last year he appealed against certain building permit proceedings, and has then claimed money from investors for retracting the appeal, said Litoměřice police spokeswoman Alena Romová.
The chairman of the Litoměřice Nature Protection Society is Lubomír Studnička.
He is now under arrest and faces up to three years in prison.
Recycling containers don't smell so good in Brno
In Prague, normal people can sort their beverage bottles, and, in South Moravian, villages are recycling containers on every corner.
And in Brno?
There, it will take you a good few minutes to find the right sort of bin.
I don't mean to imply that garbage isn't sorted in Brno.
But it seems to me that considering we're the second largest city in the country, the authorities are not showing enough interest in this problem.
Brno is falling way behind in its garbage sorting, not only because people here can still only put paper, glass and plastic into these bins, but mostly because of the sheer lack of containers for this kind of waste.
Have you ever tried throwing a plastic bottle into a bin in the city centre?
It's a real art form, and you need time and steady nerves.
The only place we've managed to come across is on Moravské náměstí, opposite the Potrefená Husa.
No offence to Mr. Onderka and his colleagues, but it's really not good enough.
Not to mention that it's no easy task sorting garbage in other parts of the city.
Plenty of my friends don't bother sorting their garbage.
Out of laziness.
It's just too far to the bin, you see.
I don't blame them.
After a party, I offered to throw out a few glass and plastic bottles.
But, on Kounicova ulice, there were no coloured bins to be seen.
Luckily, on the way to the tram, I found the right place.
But it was overflowing with garbage.
Come on, this is the centre of Brno. Isn't it supposed to look good?
It should, but ecology and aesthetics don't seem to interest the Brno socialists much.
They prefer to buy the city a new hockey extra-league, which puts us to shame all over the country, instead of buying a few more containers and letting us sort other garbage for a cleaner Brno.
I'm glad to see that, after browsing the net for a while, my assumptions are confirmed by official statistics.
Figures published by EKO-KOM show that Brno really is the worst off in the whole of South Moravia.
"Paroubek's" budget takes money for pensions and sick pay
The fact that the left gave extra money to the farmers and civil servants in the face of government opinion means that there might not be enough money in the budget to cover pensions, sick pay, or building society savings.
And also not enough for interest on the national debt or to cover international judicial disputes.
This will bring problems for whoever is in office in the latter half of next year, said the Finance Minister Eduard Janota.
When the social democrats and communists raised interest rates for certain groups, they were relying on the fact that the government would loan money for susceptible expenses, pensions, and sick pay. "It's just a case of postponing the problem, laying a minefield," says Janota.
Higher interest has to be paid on loaned money, and, at some point, it has to be paid back.
The state does not have much choice where to find it.
If it doesn't reduce social benefits or the costs of running the state, it will have to increase taxes.
For all those that the left just handed out money to: firefighters, teachers, farmers.
And later, their children, too.
People don't have to worry about pensions or sick pay, where 1.8 billion has disappeared from the accounts; they'll get them.
Although, at the cost of the state falling deeper into debt – next year the treasury won't just be 163 billion short, but even more.
Despite the efforts of Minister Janota, debt will continue to increase at an ever faster rate, as will interest costs.
The state will need money to cover it, and it's no longer enough just to slightly bump up VATs or reduce maternity benefits, as the government has done in its anti-deficit package.
As money has been diverted to several groups of voters, next year there will also be a shortage of five billion for building highways and railways.
These are mostly sections that have been tendered out and are half-finished and cannot be redesigned or made any cheaper.
At the most, conserve what isn't free too.
This means that delaying or halting thirty major building projects and money from European funds is also at risk, warns transport ministry spokesman Karel Hanzelka.
The ČSSD has suggested that the deficit be resolved Solomon-style – it should draw on ČEZ dividends, which are mostly state-owned, and use those to top up the transport fund.
The problem is that the level of these dividends is never certain, and they are certainly not a bottomless resource.
Last year, 18 billion of ČEZ money went into the budget.
Every year, these dividends are used to pay for clearing up ecological damage, topping up the pensions account, or are set aside as a reserve for the upcoming pension reforms.
Moreover, according to EU regulations, this trick increases the actual budget deficit to 5.7 percent of GDP.
But this is not the end of these transfers.
The budget is almost three billion shot to cover various damages owed to the victims of communism and crime, to meet the cost of judicial disputes, and even to cover building society savings.
It is still not clear if the state can get by without this money.
It's a gamble.
If we were to lose an international dispute, we'd still have to pay, claims Janota.
The minister will then have to save money within the resort or, in the worst case scenario, reach into the government's budget reserve.
The two-billion-crown State Treasury project, which is already underway, is also lacking a hundred million, and what each office is spending can be followed on-line.
The first stage will start in January.
If the finance minister can't find the money elsewhere, the project will have to be aborted and sanctions will be imposed, warns Janota.
Your next smartphone will run two operating systems
The Americans are saying that, in the future, users will be able to switch between different operating systems on their mobile phones at the touch of a button.
The plans revealed so far look promising.
Just press one key and in just a few seconds you can switch from Windows Mobile to Android.
This is the goal of the American company Vmware, which primarily develops computer virtualisation software.
This will let you have two user profiles at once on the same phone.
You can switch between them or have one for work and one for home.
Both of them will run at the same time, says Srinivas Krishnamurti of VMware in an interview with Computer World magazine.
It was presented last November and first demonstrated just a few days ago.
It will go on sale in 2012.
The virtualisation of smartphones is not science fiction.
VMware has already given reporters a demonstration of a smartphone with two operating systems.
It was a modified N800 with 128 MB of RAM, running Windows Mobile and Android at the same time.
The development of new mobile phone technology is in full swing.
VMware is now working with European and American operators to test smartphone virtualisation and the sets should reach customers sometime during 2012.
Lack of snow in mountains causes problems for hoteliers
It's not only Krkonoše ski-lift operators who are worried by these bare slopes.
The lack of snow is putting people off booking ski holidays in hotels and guest houses.
This means vacancies are still available in the Krkonoše throughout the winter, including Christmas and New Year's Eve.
We're getting plenty of visitors to our site.
People are browsing the offers, checking prices, but, so far, are worried about making a definite booking.
"When they call, the first thing they ask is if we think they'll see snow or mud," says Martin Jandura, who runs the Spindl.Info information web site.
Anyone who wants to spend New Year's Eve in Špindlerův Mlýn just how they want, had better start thinking about booking soon.
Those preferring to save money and go for cheaper accommodation can still give it a few days.
Hoteliers in Špindlerův Mlýn are so far just offering week-long stays for New Year's Eve.
I think they'll try to keep that up for a while, but even they will give in and offer shorter stays.
Then there'll be a sudden shortage of vacancies," estimates Jandura.
The Vrchlabí travel agency Ingtours is still offering vacancies throughout the winter.
What we’re interested in is Christmas week, which hasn't sold out yet.
Half of our capacity is still available.
That's why we've been preparing some cheaper last-minute Christmas breaks," said Ingtours director Petr Schiefert.
The Vrchlabí travel agency can still offer New Year's Eve in the Krkonoše, but there are fewer vacancies.
Another good time for bookings is the first fortnight in February, although bookings for the remaining winter dates tend to be average.
This year, interest in winter breaks is low due to the fact that there is still no snow on the Krkonoše.
People are waiting to see if any falls.
Nobody wants to spend the end of the year in the mountains when there's no snow.
If snow falls on the slopes this week, Christmas will sell out too," says Schiefert.
On the other hand, the Horizont Hotel in Pec pod Sněžkou has seen better bookings this year than last year.
We're up about 5 percent.
We have the last few vacancies for New Year's Eve and Christmas.
There's a lot of interest during the Polish holidays in January and we usually get plenty of bookings in February too," explains the director of the best hotel in Pec, Karel Rada.
The Omnia Hotel, by the central car park in Janské Lázně, is eighty-percent booked up for New Year's Eve.
Yet the newest hotel in Janské Lázně still has half its beds free for Christmas.
January this year has been a nice surprise, as we're already sixty-percent booked up.
So February isn't looking quite so good, but as soon as it snows, then interest in staying in the Krkonoše will definitely rise, says the owner of the Omnia Hotel, Erik Sporysch.
For now, however, the Krkonoše hoteliers will have to wait for heavier falls of snow.
Colder weather is forecast for Thursday, so if anything falls, it should be snow.
But it should get warmer again after that, said Jiří Jakubský of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute in Hradec.
USA: Repetition is the mother of wisdom
It's almost funny to see how Barack Obama, reputedly the wisest president, is trying so hard in the matter of the Afghan war to repeat the strategy of his predecessor, having himself considered him to be the most foolish.
When he finally came out with his long-awaited Afghan doctrine, it appeared that he had made a carbon copy of Bush's Iraq scenario three years earlier.
It's not just that in the text itself he repeatedly uses the words "just like in Iraq", but he even went as far as to use the name of Bush's declaration from January 2007 as the title of his own declaration:"The new way forward".
While three years ago he himself criticised Bush's idea to send fresh troops to help in the beleaguered civil war in Iraq as "an irresponsible decision with catastrophic consequences".
The following months, however, showed that Bush's strategy, which was recommended by his field commanders, was the only possible course of action and so successful that there are no reports in the news about Iraq.
It didn't help Bush's reputation, but in objective terms, it left his successor in a much more favourable position than might be expected.
Barack Obama hopes that, in Afghanistan, the miracle will repeat itself.
He was again asked to increase the military contingent by his field commanders, particularly the supreme commander of the Afghan operation General Stanley McChrystal, who even went against the custom of his subordinates to harshly criticise the reluctant gunners in the White House.
He asked for 40 thousand men to turn the situation around.
The president hesitated for three months, but failed to come up with anything better, and so at least the general did out of 10 thousand soldiers.
He managed to squeeze a promise out of Europe for another 5 thousand, even though he himself was originally counting on 10.
The trickiest aspect of Obama's strategy seems to be his plan to start pulling troops out of Afghanistan within 18 months and to finish the process within three years. Obama's doctrine as a whole calls for more questions than it answers.
Many doubt that this half-hearted increase will bear the same fruit as the action plan in Iraq.
Despite the internecine war of recent years, Iraqi society is relatively firm on its feet and its leaders have been honouring the treaties.
The Afghan situation is just the opposite - nobody can be relied upon and no treaties are being upheld.
In these conditions, it is hard for the Afghan security forces to prepare, being so used to changing leaders to suit themselves.
Political institutions, no matter how formally they might be set up, will be nothing more than a Potemkin village in which patriarchal tribal relations will run wild.
Balancing the interests of a variety of ethnic groups is unusually difficult due to the tricky relations between them, a fact which is further complicated by the influence of Pakistan and Iran.
Even building an "operational state", which is the most basic aim of the entire operation, does not seem particularly feasible.
The timing of Obama's strategy is foiled by his voluntarism.
Over the last eight years, the situation in Afghanistan has just gotten worse and worse, and is now on the verge of exploding.
Only a truly romantic soul, totally unaffected by reality, could believe that the soldiers sent into the turmoil of this war for an "early return home" will bring about any miracles here.
From a political viewpoin,t it is pure irresponsibility setting a date for withdrawing the troops, as the Taliban will see it as indirect acknowledgement of an American defeat.
The last NATO summit showed that the willingness of the European people to take part in the operations in Afghanistan is waning.
European politicians cannot and are unwilling to explain to voters what the security of Germany or Italy has to do with the war in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
Another factor which could radically stir things up is what is going on around Iran.
If the situation continues to get worse and increased sanctions against Iran have no effect, the United States will face the difficult question of whether to try to resolve the situation using military force or not.
This will need answering when, according to Obama, America orders the victorious withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan.
Any such solution will obviously also mean a dramatic turnaround in the Afghan situation.
The only saving grace for Barack Obama is the fact that there are three more years to the presidential elections, so there's still enough time for him to come up with another strategyif this one turns out to be a total whitewash.
Managers at Goldman Sachs no longer to receive cash bonuses
The top management of the American bank Goldman Sachs will not receive their bonuses in cash this year.
The announcement came from the company as a reaction to the harsh criticism of their salary policies.
Instead of money, the group of 30 top managers will receive shares, which cannot be sold for another five years.
The shares can also be confiscated if the managers take excessive risks.
According to Reuters, Goldman Sachs is leading the effort to link Wall Street bonuses with long-term performance.
I assume that Wall Street is well aware of the broader path it has to take, said former investment banker for JPMorgan, Douglas Elliott.
The problem lies in the details, he added.
Goldman Sachshas been targeted by critics since it set aside almost 17 billion dollars (almost 300 billion crowns) for bonuses in the first three quarters of this year.
Reuters claims that the total bonuses awarded by the business this year, despite today's announcement, exceeds 20 billion dollars.
High bonuses in the banking sector, what with the economic crisis, have become a political hot potato.
On Wednesday, Britain announced that it had decided to charge a one-off fifty percent tax rate on bankers' bonuses exceeding 25,000 pounds (around 712,000 CZK).
France is preparing similar measures.
This year, women were awarded the Nobel Prize in all fields except physics
In Stockholm today, a record five women received Nobel Prizes from the Swedish king Carl XVI Gustaf in the professional categories and for literature.
In addition to four scientists, they also included the German writer Herta Müller, originally from Romania.
The Nobel Prize for medicine went to two American biologists, Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, together with their fellow countryman Jack Szostak, for their research in chromosomes.
The prize for chemistry was won by the Israeli Ada Jonath, together with the Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz, for their work to clarify the structure and function of ribosomes.
The last award was the Nobel Prize for Economics, which went to the Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson for their analysis of economic management.
The only specialised category which nobody won this year was physics.
Today, this prize was won by the scientists Charles Kao, for his research in optical fibres, and George Smith and Willard Boyle, for inventing the CCD ship, which is the basis for all digital cameras, faxes, and astronomical telescopes.
All the winners received a diploma, the Nobel Medal, and a certificate for a monetary reward.
In each category, this award totals ten million Swedish krona (approximately 25 million CZK).
If there are multiple winners, they share the prize money between them.
Traditionally, the most highly-anticipated award, the Nobel Peace Prize, went to the American president Barack Obama in the Norwegian city of Oslo this afternoon.
In his speech, he acknowledged that the award was controversial, as he is just starting out in office and, moreover, heads a country which is currently at war in two countries - Iraq and Afghanistan.
In defence of his policy he added, however, that these wars were essential in order to bring about peace, despite the high cost.
Minister Janota considers resignation. Klaus invites him to the Castle
On Friday morning, President Václav Klaus will meet with the finance minister Eduard Janota, who is considering resigning as he does not agree with the government's budget for next year as approved on Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies.
It is assumed that the budget and also Janota's possible continuation in office will be the topic of Friday's meeting.
The budget has also been criticised by Klaus.
He claims the deficit is too high, which is worsening the public funding crisis.
The meeting was announced by the president's spokesman Radim Ochvat.
Janota wants to discuss his future on Monday with the Prime Minister, Jan Fischer.
According to the Budget Act, which Klaus is due to sign, the Czech Republic should get by with a deficit of 163 billion crowns.
However, on Wednesday, the House approved the left's proposals to transfer funds, gave state employees a pay rise, and allocated extra money for social services and for direct payments to farmers.
The government criticised the social democrats' proposals, saying that they will surreptitiously increase the budget deficit.
A bitter political dispute has broken out between the left on the one hand, and the government, Klaus, and the right on the other, leading to questions about the future of Fischer's interim government, which was agreed on in spring by the ODS, ČSSD and Green Party.
Critics claim that the budget, as approved by the House, essentially does away with the package of saving measures put into effect by Fischer's government in autumn and which it believes should stop the state falling deeper into debt.
At a breakfast meeting with entrepreneurs today, Klaus, who is behind the state budget law but is not obliged to sign it, declared that politicians have long been neglecting a "serious problem," which is the "unsustainable deficit level" of public finances.
Now, he claims, there is no good solution to this.
The only thing that could improve the situation is a strong government which could fall back on the broader consensus of the political parties, the president says.
ODS chairman Mirek Topolánek said that it was a terrible budget and that the government should rethink continuing in office.
The vice-chairman of the ODS, Petr Nečas, told ČTK that the concept of an interim government supported by the ČSSD, ODS, and the Green Party is evidently no longer working.
In response to this, Premier Fischer described this statement as "strong words."
The head of the ČSSD, Jiří Paroubek, reacted to Topolánek by saying that what was terrible was the deficit in the budget prepared by the former Topolánek government for this year, which exceeds 200 billion crowns.
On Wednesday the ČSSD declared the approval of next year's budget to be a success.
The People's Party was also satisfied.
Mandela played by Morgan Freeman in Clint Eastwood's new film
South Africans claim that the new Hollywood film Invictus will tell the world a lot about their country, its struggle and its victories, despite some people criticising the fact that the main roles are played by American actors.
It is a story about sport, race relations, and Nelson Mandela.
The life of the tireless fighter against the racist system of apartheid in South Africa and its first black president, Nelson Mandela, is played by the Oscar-winning American actor Morgan Freeman.
Freeman said that he had asked ninety-one-year-old Mandela if he could play him in Eastwood's film.
Another leading role in the film is played by Matt Damon.
I told him: 'If I'm going to play you, I'll need access to you".
The seventy-two-year-old actor, who won an Oscar for his role in Eastwood's boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, has already played roles such as the leader of the anti-slavery movement who eventually himself became a slave, a fictitious president of the USA, and even a god in Evan Almighty, but has only rarely portrayed someone who is still alive and means so much to people as Mandela.
The former South African statesman spent 27 years in prison for his active role in ending apartheid in South Africa.
He was released in 1990 and was then the country's president for four years.
In 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Invictus is Latin for 'unconquered' and is the name of a poem by the English writer William Ernest Henley, published in 1875.
The challenge was to speak like he does.
The film tells the true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of the South African rugby team, Francois Pienaar, to help unify the country. The newly-elected President Mandela knows that, after apartheid, his nation will still be racially and economically divided.
He believes that he can unite people through sport, so he decides to unite the rugby players who, to the world, are outsiders.
The South African team eventually makes it through to the World Cup in 1995.
Freeman worked for several years to get Mandela's story onto the big screen.
My only aim was to play this role as realistically as possible, said Freeman.
Naturally, the greatest challenge was to speak like Mandela.
The actor said that if he and world politicians were in the same ball park, he would try to meet Mandela, go for dinner with him, and be behind the scenes with him before his speeches.
The most important thing was that he wanted to shake Mandela's hand.
I found out that when I take your hand, I draw on your energy, it flows into me, and I feel that I know how you are feeling, he said.
For me it's important to try and become a different person.
In the film, Matt Damon portrays François Pienaar, the captain of the national rugby team, which was dominated by white players.
The actor said that he had six months in the tough world of rugby to prepare for the role.
It turned out to be a great surprise for him when he first met Pienaar at his home.
I remember ringing his doorbell, he opened it, and the very first thing I said to François Pienaar was: 'I look much bigger on the screen.'
Despite the evident differences in the stature of the actors compared to their real-life counterparts, under Eastwood's direction, Invictus has received positive reviews and there is even talk of an Oscar nomination.
The Daily Variety film critic Todd McCarthy summed up the film by saying: "It was a great story, a very well-made film."
In the film reviews on rottentomatoes.com, Invictus has a 76 percent positive rating.
Secret of the glare over Norway solved: the Russians were testing a rocket
Strange lights of unknown origin have been seen over Norway.
Yesterday the Russian defence ministry finally admitted that it had tested an intercontinental ballistic missile not far from the Norwegian border.
However, it was another unsuccessful launch and the missile, which is known as "Bulava" and should have been the pride and glory of the Russian army, has gradually turned into a nightmare for the Russian generals and Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.
His repeated presence at tests on the rocket has not affected the success rate of the test flights.
The Bulava has generally not lifted off or has been damaged in the air.
The Russian newspapers are describing the "Bulava" as "the flightless rocket."
The rocket that doesn't fly but lights up
This, the 13th test, started off according to plan.
But near the end of the flight there was technical damage to the missile.
Apparently the engine blew up in the rocket's third phase.
This time, the "Bulava" was launched from the atomic submarine Dmitrij Donskij, which was cruising under the surface of the White Sea.
This type of rocket can be launched from a craft which is moving and even submerged.
This makes it likely that the mysterious light over Norway, caused by an unidentified flying object, was actually the malfunctioning "Bulava."
Anyway, the Norwegians never had any doubts that it was a Russian rocket.
The generals are defending themselves this time though, claiming that it can't be described as a total failure.
The first two phases of the rocket went well, and the accident happened during the third stage.
Previously, the engines have always malfunctioned during the first phase.
Even though not one test launch has been completely error-free, the defence ministry consider only six out of the thirteen tests to have been failures.
The generals are optimistic about this almost fifty-percent success rate and keep insisting that the "Bulava" will eventually fly smoothly and will even carry up to ten hypersonic nuclear blocks weighing a total of 1.15 tons.
The legendary Fetisov signs a year's contract with CSKA Moscow aged 51
The legendary defender Vjačeslav Fetisov will again play a professional ice-hockey match at the age of 51.
The former world champion, Olympic winner and Stanley Cup holder will help out his team, CSKA Moscow, when they need him, and will evidently be playing in the fifth KHL duel against Saint Petersburg.
Fetisov, who retired at forty in 1998, is currently the president of CSKA.
Since Denis Kuljaš was injured, we urgently need another defender.
Fetisov is training regularly and has agreed to help the team.
We just need to sort out a few formalities, the AP agency quoted the Moscow club coach Sergej Němčinov as saying.
It's not year clear whether or not the famous hockey player's comeback will be for just one match.
I think Fetisov is someone who can boost the morale of the other players, said Němčinov.
According to AP, if Fetisov returns to the ice, he will be the oldest Russian professional hockey player.
In the NHL, the legendary attacker Gordie Howe played for Hartford for a whole season at the age of fifty-one and scored 15 goals and 26 assists.
The oldest of the famous quintet of Fetisov, Kasatonov, Makarov, Larionov, and Krutov is one of the best and most successful hockey players of all time.
In the Soviet Union uniform, he received two Olympic gold medals, seven world championship tiles, and triumphed in the Canada Cup and the Junior World Championship.
In the second half of his career, he also enjoyed success in the NHL, when wearing the Detroit uniform, he twice raised the Stanley Cup over his head.
Since 2001, he has been a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Hyundai obliges unions. All overtime is cut
The management of the Hyundai car plant in Nošovice has agreed with the unions to cut all overtime.
It is because of all this forced overtime that the unions have declared a strike on Monday.
This was confirmed by the Hyundai spokesman, Petr Vaněk.
The management, however, wants to come to an agreement with the trade union leaders for one Saturday shift this year.
We can't give up on our production plan, it's essential, so we have proposed voluntary overtime on Saturday December 19th, involving two shifts, said Vaněk.
The website Sedmička.cz wrote that the firm had offered all employees who are to work the Saturday shift a bonus of 400 CZK.
This bonus will also be paid retrospectively to those who worked on Saturday November 28th.
According to Vaněk, the firm has decided to change how it motivates its employees to take the proposed overtime.
Either they'll claim the additional wage for the overtime or they can take time off in lieu on December 28th and extend their Christmas holiday by one day, said Vaněk.
Additionally, all employees working the Saturday shift will have their travel expenses and lunch paid for.
Considering that overtime was the most pressing and thorny question for the unions, as well as for the protesting employees who brought production to such a grinding halt last week, the management decided yesterday afternoon to immediately cancel all overtime for December, said Vaněk.
Until last week, virtually every day the car plant workers had been forced to do two hours' overtime on top of their normal eight-hour shifts.
After signing the agreement, the trade unions will call off the strike
Further talks should be held between the car plant management and union leaders on Friday morning.
On Wednesday, the head of the unions, Petr Kuchař, said that if they came to an agreement on the demands and sign the document, they are willing to call off the strike.
The situation at the plant deteriorated sharply last Wednesday when some 400 workers held a spontaneous strike to protest against the incessant overtime.
They were also protesting against bad pay conditions and alleged persecution.
The management responded by saying that employees had to work overtime to meet the demand for cars.
In Monday's announcement of the strike, the unions also asked that no sanctions be imposed against the workers who halted production last Wednesday.
The trade unions are asking the firm to keep overtime to a minimum.
Moreover, this year they are requesting that a 5000 crown bonus be paid for this work.
The Hyundai car plant in Nošovice now employs 2000 people.
The firm began series production last November.
By this September, it had made around 80,000 cars, and its current capacity is 200,000 vehicles a year.
Czech discovery: a substance which works on 'tough' forms of the HIV virus
A team of Czech and German scientists has been testing a new compound which can slow the spread of the HIV virus in the body.
The main advantage of this improved substance is that it also works on viruses which have become immune to medication.
In some cases, this outweighs the fact that the compound used for the normal form of the virus does not have such a strong effect as some drugs that are already available.
No cure has yet been found for AIDS.
Patients' lives can be greatly prolonged by a mixture of drugs which prevent the HIV virus from multiplying in the body.
However, they have a number of side-effects.
Moreover, if the propagation of the virus is not completely suppressed, it can lead to the development of resistant viruses, against which drugs are no longer effective.
The work being done by experts from three institutions, the Czech Academy of Sciences, VŠCHT Prague, and the University of Heidelberg, is opening up the way to deal with the rthe virus' resistance.
They have shown that substances known as metallacarboranes act on the protein responsible for the proliferation of the HIV virus.
Metallacarboranes are a compound of boron, hydrogen, carbon, and cobalt.
These compounds block the spread of the virus in a different way to all the other drugs in use today, and so they may get over the resistance problem.
In their work, the scientists are coming up with new ‘improved’ compounds, prepared using knowledge of the molecular mechanism and its relation to the virus protein.
Metallacarboranes have a unique three-dimensional structure: two multi-walled cages consisting of boron, hydrogen and carbon atoms are connected to a metal atom, in this case cobalt.
A treacherous and hardy virus
The HIV protease is the protein of the HIV virus, which is essential to the life-cycle of the virus.
The mature infectious viral corpuscles would not occur if the HIV virus was not split by the HIV protease.
If we can stop the HIV protease, we will also stop the virus from spreading through the patient's body, the scientists explained in a press release published by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
In a paper published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, the scientists describe a series of compounds in which there are two pairs of cages (see the diagram) connected by a short organic chain, which is then systematically modified.
Somewhat weaker, but more reliable
The effectiveness of this series of substances against the HIV protease has been tested in a test-tube, as well as its effectiveness against the more immune(resistant) strain as acquired from patients infected with the HIV virus.
The effect of metallacarboranes on the normal strain of the enzyme is not as strong as that of drugs used in clinical practice, although their effect is not diminished against the resistant strains, whereas drugs currently used are often ineffective.
The unique mechanism of the effect and also of its other properties, such as its biological and chemical stability, low toxicity, and the possibility of making other chemical modifications, make metallacarboranes an interesting compound for future research aimed at suggesting new effective drugs to combat HIV, says Pavlína Řezáčová, head of the Structural Biology laboratory at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Academy of Sciences.
Fall-out over the budget. ODS attacks Fischer, who defends himself
The head of the ODS, Mirek Topolánek, described the next year's approved budget as "terrible" and said that Premier Jan Fischer's government should seriously rethink its position in office.
The government chairman described the ODS statement as strong words.
Apparently he will take some time to think about it.
The vice-chairman of the ODS, Petr Nečas, said that the concept of an interim government supported by the ČSSD, ODS, and Green Party, was evidently no longer working.
According to Nečas, the government chairman must decide if he intends to fall back on the minority in the House as a fight against the growing deficit, or if he is to stay in office with the help of the parliamentary left.
The approaches taken by the ODS and social democrats on the issue of public deficits are diametrically opposed, remarked Nečas.
On Wednesday, the House accepted the budget for 2010, naturally with the left's proposed amendments for more than 12 billion crowns.
The House gave extra money for the salaries of state employees, for social services, and for direct payments to farmers.
he government criticised the social democrats' proposals, saying that they will surreptitiously increase the budget deficit.
The Czech Republic should get by with a deficit of 163 billion crowns.
Before the vote, the ODS left the room, complying with the government's wishes that the amended budget is not as poor an option as the provisional budget.
Disappointment and futility
The finance minister, Eduard Janota, has spoken about his feeling of disappointment and futility, while Premier Jan Fischer said that the government is still assessing the current situation.
Nečas is convinced that if Janota were to really threaten to resign should the proposed amendments be accepted, the situation would look completely different.
According to Czech Television, Janota has made an appointment to see the Prime Minister on Monday after the session.
At the same time, he indicated that he was rethinking his position in office.
The reason for this is his disappointment in the budget talks.
If Fischer commits himself to continuing the fight against the budget deficit, Nečas believes that the ČSSD appointees who carried through the budget amendments have no place in the government.
The Prime Minister should also clearly state that he will hand in his resignation if the House approves other laws that will increase the deficit, those relating to sick pay, pensions, or the amendment to the Civil Servants Act for example.
Topolánek: Ministers appointed to the ODS have committed no offence
This is a matter for the ministerial chairman Fischer and the government as a whole.
Ministers appointed to the ODS have done nothing wrong, stressed Topolánek in a text report from the USA.
He pointed out that several ministries employ people in under-secretary positions who support TOP 09, which voted against the budget.
Nečas emphasised that, if Fischer were to decide to resign on the principle of the fight against the public finances deficit, "it is totally logical and correct that he falls back on the left majority currently in the House."
But then he would not be able to count on the support and tolerance of the civil democrats.
I haven't thought about it, and I'll concentrate on that when the time comes, defence minister Martin Barták told reporters in the House, having been elected by the civil democrats.
This afternoon, Prime Minister Fischer flew to Brussels to attend a European Council meeting.
ODS stands down at the request of the Prime Minister
Nečas also stressed that, on Wednesday in the House, the ODS would evidently have voted against the amended budget if the Prime Minister had not explicitly asked the civil democrats to allow the budget to be approved.
We don't look like orphans, we're not little children, was how he reacted to the question of whether the ODS was not hampered by the presence of the party chairman in the parliament and in the Czech Republic during the political negotiations regarding the budget.
I didn't notice that my vote was missing.
Back when I renounced my mandate, I knew that the following months would see the Bolshevisation of the House and the destruction of all that is positive, Topolánek himself responded.
The new Czech Railways timetable shows that fewer trains will be running for almost the same fares
From December 13th, Czech Railways will be cancelling or restricting some less frequented express and local trains, but will be adding more services to other lines.
As of the day the new timetable comes into force, there will be two percent fewer services in comparison with now.
Most fares, including basic and special tickets, will stay the same.
More links to the capital will be available, for example, to the people in the Ostrava region, as the railways are adding one Pendolino to that line.
However, the express will stop running to Bratislava.
There will be fewer express trains on the Prague - Písek - České Budějovice route, and the direct service from Prague - Letohrad will be cut dramatically.
The region planning the greatest transport cuts is the Region of Hradec Králové, with a total cut of eight percent, although Prague and the surrounding area can expect to see a rise.
Two night trains on the Prague - Tábor - České Budějovice line are also being cut, and several express services on the Prague - Písek - České Budějovice route will be reduced to just a few days a week.
One of the greatest changes is the introduction of the new direct line from Milovice to Prague, since people now travelling from Milovice have to change in Lysá nad Labem.
This is the fifteenth line in the Esko suburban system, which can now be opened since the track from Lysá nad Labem to Milovice has been fully electrified.
Long-distance services to the capital will end at the Prague Hlavní nádraží station.
Czech Railways is introducing more Pendolino routes between Prague and Ostrava and trains to Šumperk/Jeseník will run on two-hour intervals.
From December 13th, passengers will no longer be able to take Pendolino to Bratislava.
This year's cost of regional railways: 200 million more
Express trains are ordered and paid for by the Ministry of Transport, and next year it will give the railways four billion crowns to cover demonstrable losses, the same amount as this year. Local trains are ordered by the regional authorities, who, next year, will pay out a total of eight billion crowns for them, while almost three billion will be contributed by the state.
This year, regional trains are costing 200 million more.
Czech Railways have concluded a new ten-year contract for local and express trains, whereas, previously, the contract was always for one year.
The railways have praised the system, despite the fact that the great majority of fares have not been increased.
The only changes are to ČD Net one-day network tickets and eLiška cheap internet tickets.
Travellers without a customer card will find that the ČD Net price has increased from 450 crowns to 600 crowns.
The eLiška price will now depend on the distance travelled, whereas, previously, it was a flat rate of 160 crowns to travel between any regional cities.
Filipino gunmen still holding more than 50 people, Children have been released
Today, gunmen in the south of the Philippines kidnapped 75 people, including several primary school students and their teachers.
This from the AFP agency, which originally announced only 65 abductees.
All 17 of the captured children, together with their teacher, were released after eight hours.
The kidnapping happened in the province of Agusan del Sur.
Around 19 gunmen are apparently using the hostages as a human shield in their escape from the police.
Local negotiators are now trying to arrange the release of the remaining hostages.
According to AFP, the gunmen are part of the New People's Army (NPA), which is the armed faction of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
According to AP, the police had originally been chasing the kidnappers following violence that occurred as accounts were settled between two local family clans.
In the province of Maguindanao, in the south of the Philippines, martial law has been declared due to the recent massacre which left 57 people dead.
The victims of the massacre on November 23rd, which was related to the elections for governor, included 30 reporters.
The governor of this southern Filipino province has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the massacre, together with his father Andal Ampatuan, the patriarch of the influential Ampatuan family.
Muslim separatists are also active on Mindanao.
But on Tuesday, these separatists renewed peace talks with the Filipino government.
The story of South Africa affects everyone, says Morgan Freeman alias Mandela
In the next few days, the new Hollywood film Invictus by Clint Eastwood will hit American cinemas, depicting part of the life of the former South African president Nelson Mandela.
The role of the world-famous opponent of apartheid is taken on by Morgan Freeman, who was apparently chosen years ago by Mandela himself for his talent.
The supporting male role of the legendary South African rugby champion Francois Pienaar is played by Matt Damon.
With the film in cinemas critics and the public
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18th, 1918 in Mvez, in South Africa.
In 1988 he was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and in 1993 received the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk.
He was president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
There were great expectations, as he appeared in public at a time when not only was South Africa busy preparing for the football world championship, but the media was also rife with worrying news about increasing racial hatred and discrimination by the black majority.
According to the AP news agency, the response to the new film has so far been generally positive in South Africa, despite the number of objections to "brat-pack" Hollywood stars being cast in the main roles.
However, despite what he says, Morgan Freeman is proud of the new film.
I had dreamt about this role for many years and prepared for it well.
I met Nelson Mandela many times to, as they say, draw on his energy, he said in an interview after the film's grand premiere in Los Angeles.
I think it's good that we can commemorate Mandela and his mission in a film.
It is a story about South Africa, but it affects everybody, he added.
In the national rugby team uniform
The film, based on the book by the British writer John Carlin, entitled Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, portrays the South African human rights activist during his first presidential election campaign.
In the film, Morgan Freeman tries to unite the two races and the populations that had so long been segregated and, like Nelson Mandela did in 1995, appears in the film in the South African national rugby uniform at the world cup match, which was won by South Africa.
For appearing in the kit, which is an almost sacred symbol in South Africa, fourteen years ago, Mandela received a standing ovation from the predominantly white spectators and gained the esteem of the white people.
Perhaps a football championship can actually bring people together as one nation, said rugby player Chester Williams, who in 1995 was the only black person on the national team.
Whether the tense situation in South Africa will improve is only now becoming apparent.
White South Africans, however, are sceptical, as rugby fan Christopher Dawson, who fled the country to go to Britain, admitted in a recent interview for LN.
The championship begins on June 11th, 2010.
Transformer worth tens of millions of crowns burns in Louny region
In the morning, a fire broke out in a transformer owned by Čeps at the switching station in the village of Výškov, near Louny.
Six fire engines came out to fight the fire, said the spokesman for the Ústí regional firefighters, Lukáš Marvan.
Originally, the firefighters wanted to let the transformer burn, but later changed their minds and are putting the fire out using a mix of water, foam, and special fire-suppression agents.
The fire was caused by a technical fault, a short circuit inside the transformer.
Nobody was hurt, and according to company spokesperson Pavla Mandátová, the incident will not hinder the safe operation of the distribution station.
The damage is estimated at several tens of millions of crowns, although the exact figure will not be known until the fire has been extinguished.
Mandátová says that the ruined transformer will have to be replaced with a new one.
She added that nothing like this had ever happened in the ten years that Čeps has been operating, and this kind of fault was a one-off.
According to ČEZ spokeswoman for northern Bohemia, Sonia Holingerová Hendrychová, there were no power cuts and households, offices and companies were not affected by the transformer fire.
In the Czech Republic, the joint stock company Čeps is the exclusive operator of transmission systems and 400 kV and 220 kV power lines.
It maintains, restores and develops 39 switching stations with 67 transformers converting electricity from the transmission system to the distribution system, as well as 4339 kilometres of power lines.
Jančura files a slander suit against three ČSSD commissioners
The owner of Student Agency, Radim Jančura, will today file a slander suit against three social democrat commissioners.
These are Michal Hašek, commissioner for South Moravia, Radko Martínek, commissioner for Pardubice, and Olomouc commissioner Martin Tesařík.
Jančura announced this in the Twenty Minutes programme on Radiožurnál.
The suit relates to the company's attempts to operate regional trains in certain regions.
However, all the regions eventually signed a long-term contract with Czech Railways.
So now all three commissioners are attacking us and saying that we're getting the best out of it, while the offer we put forward was just what they themselves wanted.
They claim that we're more expensive than Czech Railways, which is not true, as we know the Czech Railways prices that were concluded last week.
So all we can do is defend ourselves.
It's for slander against Student Agency, Jančura told Radiožurnál.
He also said that he has proof from all the regional authorities that they did not act in accordance with European law.
He is therefore preparing a motion for the European Commission.
Hašek sees the suit as a further continuation of Mr Jančura's great media show, which works as a free advertisement for himself and his company.
It's understandable that I'm prepared to defend my good name and that of my region, and I call upon the other commissioners to do the same.
I expect that this matter will clearly show that it is Mr Jančura who is manipulating the public over regional rail transport and using lies and false arguments, said Hašek.
Last week, Jančura said that he is investing several million crowns in advertising to draw attention to these inappropriate actions taken by the regional authorities.
He told Radiožurnál that he was halting the campaign for Christmas and would restart it in the New Year.
He specified that the campaign would fight corruption as such.
Jančura started the campaign after the regions decided to operate regional rail links with Czech Railways and had not announced tenders for the order, worth around 150 billion crowns.
According to Jančura this is illegal and in contravention of the principles of the European Court of Justice.
Jančura claims that his criticism of regional rail transport has already led to his being threatened by a member of the ČSSD.
The only threat was that if we don't stop this, we could lose our bus licence.
He introduced himself as a member of the ČSSD, I know who it was but I'm not going to say his name, Jančura told Radiožurnál today.
Vaccinations against pneumococcus will be free and voluntary.
Starting January, vaccinations against pneumococcus will radically change ingrained habits.
These should be the first free yet voluntary vaccinations for families.
But some are saying that compulsory vaccinations would be more effective.
Preparations for the introduction of free anti-pneumococcus vaccinations are reaching a peak.
The pharmaceutical institute is already setting the maximum price for vaccines to be paid for by health insurance companies.
Experts are now clear on how to proceed with the vaccinations.
New vaccinations
Vaccines free of charge for children born in August
Starting January, there could be free anti-pneumococcus vaccinations for children born on or after August 2nd.
The condition is that they have not received any prior vaccinations.
Anyone who began to be vaccinated last year or earlier will have to pay for any later re-vaccinations.
The first batch of vaccinations must be given when the child is between 3 and 5 months old.
Last year, one in four families had their children voluntarily vaccinated against pneumococcus.
Parents paid 1600 crowns or more per vaccination.
The youngest children require four vaccinations.
Overall, experts estimate that health insurance companies spend 300 to 450 thousand crowns a year on vaccinations.
But they save on the treatment that unvaccinated children would otherwise need.
So far, the state has been paying around 500 thousand crowns a year on all general vaccinations for children.
Subsidised vaccinations were introduced as part of the Janota package.
Pneumococcus causes infections of the middle ear, but also serious infections of the cerebral membranes and blood poisoning.
Pneumococcal infections claim the lives of up to 28 children under the age of ten every year, according to hospital figures.
Besides the Czech Republic, around 40 countries have introduced general anti-pneumococcus vaccinations for children.
Will vaccinations be compulsory?
Some believe that in the future these vaccinations could be compulsory.
As of January, they should be paid for by the insurance companies and not compulsory.
The head of the Nahlas civil association, Rudolf Kalovský, says that compulsory vaccinations would be better.
His association has long been promoting pneumococcus vaccines.
The specialists at the international conference that our association attended were not very happy to hear that we have voluntary vaccinations.
It's not completely ideal.
On the other hand, we're happy that we managed to get at least these voluntary vaccinations in place.
I think this is the route we have to take, said Kalovský.
The Ministry of Health, however, does not want to change the pneumococcus vaccination system.
We're not considering it at this time, said ministry spokesman Vlastimil Sršeň.
Voluntary vaccinations have their drawbacks, say doctors
The chairwoman of the Professional Society of Paediatricians, Hana Cabrnochová, acknowledges that voluntary vaccinations have their drawbacks.
If all children were vaccinated, the number of revaccinations could then be cut. "With vaccines costing so much, we can understand the political decision that vaccinations should be offered on a voluntary basis," says Cabrnochová.
Experts assume that, starting next year, more than 80 percent of new parents will have their babies vaccinated against pneumococcus.
The anti-pneumococcus vaccinations are a milestone in that they are the first general vaccinations for children to be paid for by the insurance companies, not the state.
Insurance companies should fund prevention to save money on later treatment, explains Cabrnochová.
Doctors will have to buy vaccines themselves
However, practising paediatricians are concerned when it comes to buying the vaccines.
According to the original plan, the vaccines would be purchased by the insurance companies, and doctors would receive them in the same way that the state issues drugs for other vaccinations.
Some ministers, however, are worried that the insurance companies could "run wild with health insurance funds".
So doctors will have to buy the vaccines and wait until the insurance companies refund the money.
It is estimated that practising paediatricians will have to spend 40 thousand a month on vaccines, which is a lot of money.
It certainly won't be easy, says Cabrnochová.
US artist's son 'in museum theft'
The son of renowned American fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, has been charged with trying to steal paintings worth $20m (£12m) from his father's museum.
Police in Pennsylvania say Alfonso Frank Frazetta was caught loading 90 paintings into his vehicle and trailer.
They say Mr Frazetta and another man used an excavator to break into the museum in the Pocono Mountains region.
Mr Frazetta Snr, aged 81, is famed for his depiction of characters such as Conan the Barbarian and Tarzan.
The artist was in Florida at the time of the incident, the Associated Press news agency reported.
AP quoted an unnamed police official as saying the younger Mr Frazetta may have been motivated by a family feud.
A police affidavit said Mr Frazetta Jnr, 52, claimed he had been instructed by his father to "enter the museum by any means necessary to move all the paintings to a storage facility", the agency reported.
Mr Frazetta Snr denied granting any such permission, the agency said.
Labour defends budget tax rises
Ministers have defended the tax rises and spending cuts announced in the pre-Budget report against criticism from the opposition, business and unions.
The Tories said Alistair Darling "blew" an opportunity to show he was serious about cutting the deficit by delaying decisions until after the election.
The chancellor also came under fire for hitting low and middle income workers.
Among his headline proposals are a 0.5% rise in National Insurance and a 1% cap on public pay settlements from 2011.
National Insurance anger
Unions have protested that low-paid workers are being penalised for a recession not of their making and warned of "problems" ahead.
The National Insurance increase - which will raise about £3bn a year - has angered the business community, which says it is a tax on jobs when the focus should be on economic recovery.
The increase, limited to those earning more than £20,000 a year, will hit about 10 million workers.
KEY POINTS OF PBR
National Insurance up by a further 0.5% from April 2011
Economy to shrink by worse than expected 4.75% this year
New 50% tax on banker bonuses
1p rise in corporation tax for small firms scrapped
Tax rebates for electric cars and wind turbines
State pension to rise by 2.5%
According to Treasury estimates, someone earning £30,000 will be £90 a year worse off and someone on £40,000 will be £190 worse off, while someone earning £10,000 a year will be £110 better off.
Ministers said their target of halving the deficit by 2013 meant "difficult decisions" but insisted that 60% of the burden of extra taxes would fall upon the top 5% of earners.
Treasury minister Stephen Timms denied the tax rises and spending cuts outlined were a "drop in the ocean" compared to what was needed.
"These are large numbers. They will deliver for us this halving of the deficit which is absolutely essential over the next four years," he told the BBC.
Mr Timms said he was confident the economy would return to growth by the turn of the year.
However, Labour forecasts for future economic growth - which will influence the amount it has to borrow and how quickly he deficit is cut - have been questioned after the chancellor was forced to revise earlier figures.
In his statement, he said the economy was likely to contract 4.75% this year - far worse than the 3.5% decline predicted in April - while borrowing would be £3bn higher than earlier estimated.
'Blown opportunity'
The Conservatives, who will launch a new advertising campaign on Thursday warning of Labour's "debt crisis", said projected borrowing of £789bn over the next six years was unsustainable.
Mnisters had failed to lay out a credible plan for how they would pay this back, they added, "cynically" ducking tough choices until after the election - which must be held by June 2010.
"They have not included anything of significance they are going to do," said shadow Treasury minister Philip Hammond. "They had an opportunity to do it and they have blown it."
" The all important announcements will come after the election, whoever wins it "
Roger Bootle, Deloitte
Labour insist that schools, hospitals and the police will be protected from future cuts unlike under Tory proposals which would see the deficit cut faster and further.
But the Lib Dems said the money raised by tax rises and spending cuts would be used to support spending next year not to reduce the deficit, arguing the plans were "built on sand".
The BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said some of the timing of the announcements - such as the above inflation increase in some disability benefits next April - would leave the chancellor open to accusations of electioneering as the money may simply be clawed back the year after.
However, Labour insist the extra help is being provided when people need it most and the situation will be reviewed in September 2010.
'Phoney budget'
Although ministers did not publish spending details for beyond 2011, economists said it was clear the squeeze on public spending would only begin to bite in the medium term.
The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said the chancellor's figures implied substantial cuts in many areas, potentially including transport, higher education, science and defence, in the future.
"It really is holding off the pain until later," said its director Robert Chote.
"The all important announcements will come after the election, whoever wins it," added Roger Bootle, economic adviser to accountants Deloitte.
"This has been the phoney pre-Budget report. The markets realise this."
FBI probes 'US Pakistan arrests'
The FBI is investigating the arrest in Pakistan of five reported US men on suspicion of extremist links.
The men were arrested in a raid on a house in Sarghoda in eastern Punjab province, Pakistan's US embassy told the BBC.
The FBI has said it is investigating whether they are the same men who were reported missing from their homes in the US state of Virginia last month.
The US State Department said it was also seeking information on the men.
Three of them are reported to be of Pakistani descent, one of Egyptian heritage and the other of a Yemeni background.
"If they are American citizens, we of course are going to be very interested in the charges that they've been detained on and in what sort of circumstances they're being held," said spokesman Ian Kelly.
FBI spokeswoman Katherine Schweit said the agency was aware of the arrests and was in contact with the families of the missing students.
"We are working with Pakistan authorities to determine their identities and the nature of their business there, if indeed these are the students who had gone missing," she said.
The Pakistani embassy in Washington said the men were arrested in a house belonging to an uncle of one of them.
He said the house was already of interest to local police and that no charges had yet been filed against the arrested men.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to comment on the arrests, reported the Reuters news agency, but said the US had to "work more closely with both Afghanistan and Pakistan to try to root out the infrastructure of terrorism that continues to recruit and train people".
The five students were reported missing from their homes in northern Virginia by their families in late November.
Amnesty condemns Iranian 'abuses'
Human rights in Iran are as poor as at any time over the past 20 years, according to a report from campaign group Amnesty International.
The report details "patterns of abuse" by the regime before and after disputed presidential elections in June.
One man quoted in the report said he had been beaten and burned with cigarettes. Another said he was threatened with rape.
Iran has dismissed previous criticism of its human rights record.
Officials have said such criticism is politically motivated.
Thousands of people were arrested and dozens killed in Iran after the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to the largest street protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Dozens have been given jail terms, and prosecutors say at least five people have been sentenced to death.
BBC Tehran correspondent, Jon Leyne, who is now in London, says that early in the protests, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accepted some of the allegations of abuse, ordering the closure of the Kahrizak detention centre.
But since then, there has been almost no tolerance of criticism by the authorities, our correspondent says.
'False confession'
Amnesty International cited the account of 26-year-old computing student Ebrahim Mehtari, who said he was accused of "working with Facebook networks" and protesting against the election result.
"They frequently beat me on the face," he was quoted as saying.
"I was burned with cigarettes under my eyes, on the neck, head... They threatened to execute me and they humiliated me."
After five days he signed a false confession and was taken out and left in the street, still bleeding and semi-conscious, Amnesty said.
In August, defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi said some protesters detained after the election had been tortured to death in prison and others had been raped.
Iranian officials denied the rape claims, but admitted that abuses had taken place.
Amnesty also cited the case of a former detainee who said he was held in a container with 75 others for more than eight weeks at a detention centre at Kahrizak.
Amnesty accepted that the Iranian parliament and judiciary had established committees to investigate the post-election unrest and the government's response, but it said the mandate and powers of the bodies were unclear and the parliamentary committee's findings had not been made public.
The group said at least 90 people had been arrested in the past three weeks to forestall further demonstrations.
Ski slope is created in city park
More than 100 tonnes of artificial snow were used to turn a Bristol landmark into a piste for a competition.
The Piste in the Park event attracted 16 semi-professional skiers and snow borders competing for cash prizes.
At the top of the slope in Brandon Hill park there was a short jump ramp before a 100m-long slope.
Fourth-year medical student John Hickman said there was a beautiful view from the top of the slope but it was pretty daunting.
It's a beautiful view with all the city lights below all twinkling.
There's some of the best skiers and snow borders in the county here - some real talent," he added.
Prizes were awarded for the best tricks - or manoeuvres performed on the slope.
After Thursday evening's event the snow will be left to melt away.
Still them and us
Can Islam Be French?
Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State.
AT A time when Swiss voters have called for a ban on the construction of minarets and there is widespread alarm over the supposed Islamisation of Europe, John Bowen, an American academic, has written an informed and measured account of whether Muslims can integrate—and are integrating—into one of the continent’s most avowedly secular societies.
Some readers will come to this new book as admirers of the author’s last work, "Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves" (2006), an elegant and closely argued study of an issue that divided and preoccupied the country for a decade and a half, and whose effects are still felt today.
Mr Bowen’s latest book has a broader and more ambitious canvas.
As a good anthropologist, he wants to know not just what the politicians and the media are saying about Islam in France, but what is actually happening on the ground.
He has spent months in the mosques, schools and institutes which now provide France’s 5m-6m Muslims with what Mr Bowen calls "Islamic spaces".
He is a good listener, reproducing debates between teachers and students about the questions that concern them most.
Should a Muslim get married in a mosque or a town hall (or both)?
Should young Muslims be taught about evolution and gay rights?
Can a Muslim woman marry a non-Muslim man?
Is it legitimate for a Muslim to use an interest-based banking system to get a mortgage?
It is these seemingly mundane issues, he argues, that are the stuff of daily life rather than the political dramas that preoccupy the media.
The author identifies a new generation of imams, teachers and intellectuals, none of them household names, with the possible exception of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Arab Muslim scholar and academic.
This new generation is trying to open up the debate about how to be both a good Muslim and a good citizen in a modern secular society.
They are not having the argument all their way.
Conservatives are suspicious of the very idea of a French or European Islam.
The thinkers and activists whom Mr Bowen interviews tend to be at odds with their Salafi counterparts—advocates of the purist Sunni Islam associated with Saudi Arabia—who nowadays have a small but influential presence among Europe’s Muslims.
Mr Bowen thinks that Muslim values and French secularism could be compatible.
But accommodation requires give-and-take on both sides.
He questions how far French policymakers (and the intellectual elite that so fiercely guards laïcité) are really committed to pluralism.
He suggests that Muslims are probably getting a rawer deal than the Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have also had to make their historic compromises with secular republicanism.
Rather than a growing pragmatism, he detects a "tightening of the value-screws".
Can Islam be French? After reading this book, one is inclined to say, "Yes, but not yet."
The bleakest outlook in the world
THE Arctic is changing faster and more dramatically than any other environment on the planet.
The ice that defines it is melting with alarming speed, taking with it life that can survive nowhere else.
Oil, gas, shipping and fishing interests have been heading into the newly open water, with diplomats, lawyers, and now authors, in their wake.
In "On Thin Ice" Richard Ellis, a writer and illustrator, paints a natural history of the icon of the north, the polar bear.
Well-versed in the complicated history and politics of whaling, he describes the long tradition of Arctic explorers who proved themselves by taking on the white bear.
Admiral Nelson’s encounter as a plucky 14-year-old midshipman fighting only with the butt of his musket is surely a myth, but others are true.
Young bears, captured as they swam after the bodies of their newly killed mothers, were caught and sent to zoos and circuses.
One early 20th-century big-top act featured 75 polar bears at once.
Even today, zoo enclosures are still typically a millionth of the area of a wild adult’s range. The climate is rarely suitable: the resident polar bear in Singapore has turned green from algae growing within the hollow hairs of its coat.
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Mr Ellis draws on the accounts of other writers and historians, and often returns to the threat that hunters pose to the survival of the species.
Although banned in Norway, America and Russia, the killing continues in Greenland and Canada, where hunters in helicopters and skidoo-riding Inuit Indians both use high-powered assault rifles to bring down their quarry.
Ironically it is in the waters towards the north of those two hunting nations that the ice will last longest.
In his new book, "After the Ice", Alun Anderson, a former editor of New Scientist, offers a clear and chilling account of the science of the Arctic and a gripping glimpse of how the future may turn out there.
Not that scientists have all the answers.
Neither atmospheric scientists nor oceanographers can adequately account for the speed of the changes.
It is not for want of trying.
Fridtjof Nansen’s pioneering journeys at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century first hinted at the whirling of the ice pack.
Cold-war submarines then mapped the shifting ridges running beneath it.
Satellite surveys and large arrays of iceberg-mounted probes are a useful addition, but much is still done by hardy individuals camped out in the cold.
Mr Anderson looks in on the extraordinary, tiny world of the tributary system within the Arctic ice, formed by trickles of briny water which gets squeezed as it freezes.
But from the bear above to the microscopic wonders within, all are doomed once the summer ice goes, which is expected to happen at some point between 2013 and 2050.
'In a few months...this could be us'
Marines among 6,000 who place wreaths on graves at Arlington
Pfc. De'Angello Robinson, 19, traveled seven hours by bus to place a single wreath on the tomb of a soldier whom he'd never met.
For him, and the other Marines who took the trip from Camp Johnson in Jacksonville, N.C. to Arlington National Cemetery to decorate graves, the day was about paying tribute to men and women who once stood in their shoes.
In a few months, from where we are getting shipped out, this could be us, said Robinson of the fallen soldiers.
If it is us, I would want somebody to do the same for me so I'm just trying to show respect.
He was one of more than 6,000 volunteers who gathered Saturday morning to place wreaths on veterans' gravesites across several sections of Arlington Ceremony.
In 1992, Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Company in Harrington, Maine, began the event when he and several others decided to decorate several hundred gravesites at Arlington Ceremony.
Now an 18-year-old tradition, Morrill and his wife Karen, make the trip every year stopping in different cities along the way to host events dedicated to the people in the military and victims of terrorism.
The Worcesters also founded a non-profit, Wreaths Across America, which has spread the event across other states.
This year, volunteers placed more than 16,000 wreaths on the graves at Arlington Cemetery, areas at the Pentagon, graves at Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas, Battery Park in New York City and on the memorial site for United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.
For the second year, the Walmart Foundation donated more than $150,000 to purchase, and transport the wreaths.
Charleen Hunt, 70, of Westminster, said she made the trip to Arlington in honor of her husband, a deceased career military man.
While her husband is not buried at Arlington, Hunt said this was her way of giving back to those who made sacrifices.
It's a small way civilians can support our troops, she said.
It's like visiting a family gravesite.
Wrapped in layers of warm clothing, volunteers walked across the cemetery's expansive lawns and hills.
Volunteers targeted older tombs from World War I, World War II, and the war in Vietnam because they are not visited as often as newer graves, organizers said.
The mood was upbeat as children played and couples held hands while carrying the fresh pine to the graying tombstones.
Each circular wreath was a deep green with a small red bow fastened across the top.
Nearby, Section 60, where most veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, remained virtually silent.
The United Service Organizations donated 1,000 wreaths to decorate the section but the somber mood of the current wars filled the area.
Individuals openly wept, others prayed, and families and friends held each other in the frigid air.
Some read aloud names carved into the stones while others bowed to see small black and white place cards pushed inside wet mud for those whose tombstones have not yet been completed.
Sandra Lockwood was one of the many mothers wiping tears from her eyes in front of her son's grave.
She drove eight hours from Zanesfield, Ohio to visit the gravesite of Marine Gunnery Sgt. David Shane Spicer who died in combat in July.
Nobody should ever forget why we're free. . .my son paid for that, she said.
"When I'm long gone, I want someone to remember him."
U.S. government contractor arrested by Cuban officials
The Cuban government has arrested a U.S. government contractor who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers in the country, State Department officials said Saturday.
The contractor, who has not yet been identified, works for Development Alternatives Inc., based in Bethesda.
The company works on projects for clients such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank.
Consular officers with the U.S. Interest Section in Havana are seeking access to the detainee, who was arrested Dec. 5.
The specific charges have not been made public, though under Cuban law, a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of "dangerousness."
All so-called counter-revolutionary activities, which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of arrest.
Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes.
Cuba has a fledging blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents.
Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept awards but has been denied permission.
The detention of an American contractor may likely raise tensions between the Castro brothers Communist government in Cuba and the Obama administration, which has been pursuing a "go-slow" approach to improving relations with the island.
News of the arrest was first reported by the New York Times Friday night.
The new U.S. policy stresses that if the Cuban government takes concrete steps, such as freeing political prisoners and creating more space for opposition, the United States will reciprocate.
Cellphones and laptops are legal in Cuba, though they are new and coveted commodities in a country where the average wage of a government worker is $15 a month.
The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just this year; they are used mostly for texting, as a 15-minute telephone conversation would eat up a day's wages.
Internet use is extremely limited on the island.
It is available in expensive hotels and to foreign visitors there, and at some government outlets, such as universities.
Cubans who want to log on often have to give their names to the government.
Access to many Web sites is restricted.
The detention of an American in Cuba is rare.
Most of the handful of U.S. citizens in jail in Cuba are behind bars for crimes such as drug smuggling, said Gloria Berbena, the press officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
Berbena said she could not provide more information on the arrest.
The arrest and detention are clearly wrong.
An activity that in any other open society would be legal -- giving away free cellphones -- is in Cuba a crime, said Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas program of the group Human Rights Watch, which recently issued a tough report on freedoms in Cuba called "New Castro, Same Cuba," a reference to the installation of Raul Castro as the leader of the country to replace his ailing older brother Fidel.
Vivanco said that the accused are often arrested, tried and imprisoned in a day.
He said that any solution would likely be political and that the Cuban government often provokes a negative reaction in the United States just as the two countries begin to move toward more dialogue.
Pakistani officials unraveling plot to send men to Afghanistan
Pakistani authorities on Saturday zeroed in on the alleged mastermind of a plot to send five Northern Virginia men to Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops, saying they hope the case could help unravel an extensive network of terrorist recruiters who scour the Internet for radicalized young men.
Investigators said they were hunting for a shadowy insurgent figure known as Saifullah, who invited the men to Pakistan after first discovering them when one made comments approving of terror attacks on the Internet video site YouTube.
Saifullah guided the men once they were in Pakistan, attempting to help them reach the remote area in Pakistan's tribal belt that is home to al-Qaeda and its terrorist training camps.
But a Pakistani intelligence official who had been briefed on the case said Saturday that Saifullah was unsuccessful in convincing al-Qaeda commanders that the men were not part of a CIA plot to infiltrate the terrorist network.
As a result, they were marooned for days in the eastern city of Sargodha, far from the forbidding mountains of the northwest that have become a terrorist haven.
They were regarded as a sting operation.
That's why they were rejected, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
The official said the men were undeterred and were still trying to acquire the right endorsements to gain access to the al-Qaeda camps when they were arrested by Pakistani law enforcement.
The case of the five -- who remain in Pakistan and are being questioned by the FBI -- underscores the critical role of recruiters in identifying potential terrorists and, perhaps more importantly, determining who can be trusted.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. intelligence has made it a top priority to try to place human assets inside al-Qaeda.
The organization's recruiters act as gatekeepers, keeping out those who are not serious about their commitment to holy war, and those who could be spies.
Would-be American recruits are treated by al-Qaeda with special scrutiny, analysts said.
But they are also considered enormously appealing to the group because of their potential to access U.S. targets and because of their propaganda value.
But Evan Kohlmann, senior analyst with the U.S.-based NEFA Foundation, said terror groups have also become much more cautious in recent years about who they allow in because U.S. intelligence agencies have become experts in their recruiting methods.
If you're trying to sink someone into these groups, what better way than to follow the recruitment model that so many have already followed? Kohlmann said.
The model is one that has become far more Web-based.
Tens of thousands protest in Copenhagen, demand climate 'action'
Tens of thousands of protesters marched on the streets here Saturday, demanding bolder action on climate from the negotiators working inside the city's Bella Convention Center.
Protesters said as many 100,000 people joined in the event, but police estimated the count was closer to 25,000.
The event was relatively peaceful, though a handful of masked activists set off small explosives near a group of government buildings downtown.
On a day when little happened in the U.N.-sponsored climate talks, thousands of activists walked across the city holding banners in English saying "There is No Planet B" and one in Spanish declaring, "The Earth is Saying, 'Enough.'
Several celebrities joined the protest, including Danish model and photographer Helena Christensen, who said that traveling to her mother's native country of Peru made me aware of the heartbreaking issues the country is dealing with due to the impacts of climate changes that are already occurring."
This is part of the reason why I have decided to join the big march -- to pass on the word and to appeal to the world's leaders to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding deal, she said.
It is not an easy task, but it needs to be done, there is no way around it anymore.
The police kept the protesters from getting too close to the Bella center, and said they had arrested 19 people, primarily on the grounds that they had either worn masks or carried pocket knives.
Those activities are banned during demonstrations under Danish law.
According to one bystander, who asked not to be identified because he is involved in the climate talks, activists sporting masks and black outfits set off several explosives near Copenhagen's main canal, which is nearby several ministries.
They were lobbing them by the buildings, he said, adding they began as flares but were followed by "a couple big explosions."
Inside the convention center, people gathered around television screens to watch the march throughout the afternoon.
But the protest did not seem to penetrate the consciousness of key officials such as Su Wei, China's chief climate negotiator.
When asked whether he thought the demonstration was having a constructive impact on the international deliberations, he replied in English, "Actually, that is something that I was not aware of."
He then continued in Mandarin, saying, "Because the venue is large, I cannot hear what is happening outside."
He observed that whether the march was hurting or helping depended on one's perspective.
It shows the concentration of the general public and different sectors on the subject of climate change, he said.
On the other hand, "You can also say that they disrupt the negotiations, or the freedom of other people.
Test data reveal stubborn racial gaps
Last week's federal report card on math achievement was a welcome piece of good news for D.C. public schools.
Although the District still lags far behind the country's top-performing systems, the report card showed fourth- and eighth-graders making strides at a faster pace over the past two years than cities including Atlanta, Chicago and New York.
But what remains embedded in the latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the persistent achievement gap between African American and white students both locally and nationally.
The average scores of white D.C. fourth-graders over the past two years grew from 262 to 270 (on a scale of 500), but their African American peers' rose just three points, from 209 to 212.
The achievement gap actually grew between 2007 and 2009, from 53 to 58 points.
African American progress in the eighth grade remained essentially flat, dipping a statistically insignificant one point, from 245 to 244.
Average white scores were not included in the test results because the sample size wasn't large enough.
The picture across a six-year stretch isn't more encouraging.
The gap separating white and black fourth-graders in 2003, when the first NAEP in the District was given, was 60 scale points (262 to 202).
Although the scores achieved by children in both groups have increased during this period, the difference has barely narrowed to 58.
Some education advocates in the District expressed concern last week that the gains celebrated by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) were propelled largely by white students who are already high achievers.
It would suggest that we've raised the aggregate by treating those at the higher end of the scale, which is problematic and troublesome, said Jeff Smith, executive director of D.C. Voice, a nonprofit group that advocates for educational equality in the District.
I'm not jumping up and down about a two- or three-point spread, said D.C. Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), who has a daughter in the fourth grade at Eaton Elementary.
A frequent critic of Rhee's management style, Brown said the message of the test scores is that the city's middle schools are in desperate need of attention.
Clearly, you always want to see the plus signs, and I respect that.
But what's scary is we're not spending nearly the time and energy we need to spend on our middle schools.
Rhee said the District needs to continue to find better ways to address the needs of low-achieving students.
This fall, for example, some teachers are being trained to use a new reading curriculum, the Wilson Reading System, targeted to students in the upper elementary and middle school grades who didn't master the basics of reading early in their school careers and are significantly behind their peers.
Everyday Mathematics, a K-through-sixth-grade math curriculum emphasizing games and real-life experiences that was brought to the District under former superintendent Clifford Janey, is credited with some of the NAEP progress reported last week.
I just think we have to keep working at bringing the best interventions to those students who are below grade level, Rhee said.
Others say that the NAEP's results highlight the question of whether Rhee can continue to lift the overall performance of the system and still provide the additional money and resources for low-performing schools that will be necessary to narrow the gap.
There is a sort of rough-edged dilemma here for Michelle Rhee, said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies urban test scores.
The conventional policy remedy is to target your resources and management reforms on schools located in the poorest sections of D.C.
So the targeting may yield political repercussions that go against that important agenda.
But the rub, of course, is like other urban superintendents, she's trying to hold on to the white and black middle class.
Our focus is on ensuring that we build a system of great schools.
We need to strengthen our neighborhood schools so that all families, regardless of where they live, are confident that their children can get an excellent public education.
Janey, now superintendent of schools in Newark, said in an interview this week that one essential element to closing the achievement gap is to lengthen the traditional public school year, currently 180 days in the District, to compete with charter schools.
You have to get up near 200 days to have the force of change, said Janey, who came to agreement with his teachers' union last year on a 185-day year, which he regards as "a marker" for seeking a bigger increase in the next contract.
Making higher education a part of more futures
The tour bus pulled into Gettysburg College with a loud wheeze.
Graciela Rodriguez, 12, stepped off and blinked for a moment at the white columns, brick facades and emerald lawns.
Graciela's parents had barely graduated from high school in El Salvador.
Until recently, Graciela herself, who was born in Silver Spring and lives in Riverdale, had never set foot on a college campus.
Yet as she and the other eighth-graders in the group explored Gettysburg, where the tuition runs $38,690 a year, their attitude was less that of awestruck visitors than of enthusiastic prospective students.
Yes! This is where I'll be! exclaimed Graciela, who would like to study medicine, when the guide announced that they'd entered the science building.
Wow, really? she said thoughtfully, when told of the school's low professor-to-student ratio.
The Pennsylvania college was the seventh the kids had visited on their three-day tour, and by now they had completely absorbed its intended message: The question is not whether you're going to college.
The question is where.
Although there is mounting concern about the large number U.S.-born children of Hispanic immigrants who drop out of high school or get pregnant as teenagers, there are also hundreds of thousands who are getting the college educations they need to enter the middle class.
In fact, one in five of these "second-generation" Hispanics graduates from college -- a notable achievement given that so many of their immigrant parents, mostly Mexicans and Central Americans, entered the United States without finishing high school.
Their success stories are important, researchers say, because they point the way forward for a generation that will play an outsize role in the country's workforce.
Those who study high achievers say they often have a natural affinity for school and an innate drive to succeed.
Many also have parents who set lofty goals for their children and find ways to compensate for their unfamiliarity with American schools.
But mentoring programs also can play an enormous role in helping Graciela and millions of children like her make it to college -- particularly if those efforts are sustained over time.
When you're looking at low-income kids whose parents don't have the experience and the skills to help them navigate through the system, any single intervention at any one point in time is not going to solve it, said Patricia Gándara, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, who has studied Latino students.
We need to think about providing a supportive network for these kids from preschool all the way on through high school.
The federal program that funded Graciela's college tour is a useful example.
Known as GEAR UP, it provides more than $300 million a year to local school systems to run college prep programs that begin when low-income students are in middle school and continue until they finish high school.
Since 1999, the program has served more than 10 million students, with more than 60 percent going on to college, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Iraqi Oil Ministry reaches deals with 10 foreign oil companies
Despite concerns about violence and political instability, the Iraqi government managed to attract major oil companies to rebuild its ailing infrastructure during two auctions that concluded Saturday.
The 10 deals the Iraqi Oil Ministry reached with foreign oil companies suggest that China, Russia and European oil firms are poised to play a major role in refurbishing Iraq's oil industry, crippled by decades of war and sanctions.
American companies walked away with stakes in just two of the 10 auctioned fields.
Seven American companies had paid to participate in the second auction, which began Friday.
The only one that submitted a bid lost.
Two American companies reached deals for fields auctioned in June.
The meager representation of American oil giants in Iraq's opening oil industry surprised analysts.
Iraq finally opened its doors after six years of war, and instead of U.S. companies, you have Asians and Europeans leading the way, said Ruba Husari, the editor of Iraq Oil Forum, an online news outlet.
It will be a long time before anything else will be on offer in Iraq.
Concerns over security, underscored by massive coordinated bombings Tuesday, and political instability as the U.S. military withdraws, likely kept American oil companies from venturing more forcefully in Iraq, which has the world's third-largest proven crude reserves, analysts said.
U.S. firms were in some cases at a disadvantage because rivals, particularly the Chinese and other government controlled energy firms, have markedly lower labor costs and are more prone to take risks because they don't respond to shareholders.
Exxon-Mobil and Occidental Petroleum Inc. were the only American companies that reached deals with the ministry.
Major U.S. firms such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips, which have cultivated close ties with the Iraqi Oil Ministry and have provided technical advice in recent years, walked away empty-handed.
Russian companies Lukoil and Gazprom were the top stakeholders in two of the contracts awarded this weekend.
State-owned Chinese National Petroleum Corp. bid on more contracts than any other company and walked away with large stakes in contracts for two major fields.
We all know that China is on track to become a major economic as well as technological power, Oil Ministry spokesman Assam Jihad said.
We feel confident that the Chinese company will be on par with its competitors and will deliver on its commitments towards Iraq.
Companies pre-selected to submit bids made offers that were then compared to the per barrel fee the ministry was willing to pay for boosting output above current levels at each field.
Top al-Qaeda planner apparently killed in Pakistan
An apparent U.S. missile strike along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan is believed to have killed a top al-Qaeda operations planner this week, U.S. counterterrorism officials said Friday.
If confirmed, this would be the second deadly attack against a senior terrorist leader this fall.
Saleh al-Somali was one of two Arab men thought to have been killed when a pair of missiles tore into their car Tuesday near the town of Miran Shah in North Waziristan province, according to U.S. sources and Pakistani officials in the region.
Local authorities said the missiles were fired by an unmanned aircraft of the type operated by the CIA inside Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.
They were driving in a white car, heading toward the Afghan border, when the car was hit, said an official with Pakistan's civilian intelligence agency, speaking by phone from Miran Shah.
The official said suspected local militants rushed to the spot and quickly confiscated what remained of the "totally demolished bodies."
Local authorities were unable to verify the victims' identities, but two U.S. counterterrorism officials cited unspecified evidence that Somali was among the dead.
Somali was described as a senior al-Qaeda military planner who ran the terrorist group's operations outside the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
He was engaged in plotting throughout the world, said one senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of U.S. airstrikes inside Pakistani territory.
Given his central role, this probably included plotting attacks against the United States and Europe.
He took strategic guidance from al-Qaeda's top leadership and translated it into operational blueprints for prospective terrorist attacks.
The second U.S. official said Somali had risen quickly through al-Qaeda's ranks and was well-connected with other extremist groups in the region.
He may not be a household name to some Americans, but that in no way diminishes the threat he posed to us and our allies, the second official said.
If his death is confirmed, Somali would be the second senior al-Qaeda or Taliban leader killed since September, when a similar strike killed Najmuddin Jalolov, the leader of a militant faction in the tribal belt, and three other top operatives.
The tempo of strikes by CIA-run drones has declined since the summer, from an average of about six operations per month to two, according to a tally by the Long War Journal, a Web site managed by a nonprofit group.
The decline may be due to improved tactics by terrorist groups, which have taken steps to limit their vulnerability while also ruthlessly killing suspected informants, the site said.
Top U.N. envoy in Kabul to step down
The United Nations' top envoy in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said Friday that he would step down from his post in March, ending a tumultuous tenure that was marred by allegations of widespread corruption in Afghanistan's U.N.-backed presidential election.
Eide's departure comes as the Obama administration has decided to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
The U.N. envoy said that he supports the surge but expressed concern that the U.S. timetable for a military drawdown beginning in 18 months would prompt other NATO governments to withdraw their forces.
We need to accelerate the buildup of the Afghan security forces and send the right signal to the Afghans that they can trust the international community, Eide said in a telephone interview from Kabul.
The commitment has to be long-term.
The Norwegian diplomat also pressed the United States and other military powers to increase the number of international civil servants aiding Afghanistan's political transition.
The surge on the military side has to be copied on the civilian side, he said.
Eide said he was not resigning but simply fulfilling a commitment he made to his family in March 2008 to spend only two years in Kabul.
He said he wanted to serve notice to U.N.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon now so that he would have time to find a replacement.
What I've said is that you better start looking for a successor, Eide said.
When I came here, there was a two-month vacuum between a departure of my predecessor and my arrival.
Ban has begun searching for a replacement, according to U.N. officials.
The officials say he has been considering Staffan di Mistura, a Swedish-Italian national who recently headed the U.N. mission in Baghdad, and Jean-Marie Guéhenno, a Frenchman who previously led U.N. peacekeeping operations.
Eide's standing in Afghanistan was tested after his former deputy, Peter W. Galbraith, accused him in September of favoring President Hamid Karzai in the country's presidential vote and of covering up evidence of massive electoral fraud.
Eide denied the allegations, but he said the accusations by Galbraith -- who was fired -- "certainly damaged the mission, because there was already a great degree of skepticism with regard to international interference" in the election.
Eide said he proposed the appointment of a senior civilian representative to coordinate relief efforts by the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.
He also urged the U.N. leadership to allow his successor to hire more staff from the United States and other Western countries that donate to the Afghan mission, saying it would increase their confidence that their money is being properly spent.
Eide expressed frustration with the limitations on his powers in Afghanistan, saying that cumbersome U.N. hiring regulations undercut his ability to bring in talent.
The U.N. rules are such that I have only been able to recruit a single person since May, he said.
That is catastrophic and can't continue.
Gates: Iran to face additional sanctions
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that world powers will soon impose "significant additional sanctions" on Iran over its failure to engage in talks on its nuclear ambitions.
Gates, speaking to a group of about 300 U.S. troops in northern Iraq during a week-long tour of war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, played down the prospect of military action against the Islamic republic.
There are no good options in Iran, he said, in response to a query from a soldier about the likelihood of such a development. ¨
One of the things that weighs on me is that if we have learned anything from Iraq over the past six years, [it] is the inherent unpredictability of war.
The Obama administration is considering a package of sanctions that would target Iran's military and political elite, but Gates signaled that some of the sanctions could also affect ordinary Iranians.
He said that "a package of incentives and disincentives" would be needed "to persuade the Iranian government that they would actually be less secure with nuclear weapons" because "their people will suffer enormously" from sanctions.
In a statement Friday by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, the administration joined European leaders in warning that Iran will face "credible" consequences if it does not bring its nuclear program into full compliance with the U.N. Security Council and its nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran insists that it wants to develop nuclear expertise only for peaceful purposes.
In talks in Geneva on Oct. 1, it indicated that it would return to talks on restraining its nuclear program and agree to give up a substantial portion of its stockpile of enriched uranium in exchange for desperately needed fuel for a medical research reactor.
The administration has pushed for such an agreement as a way to build confidence between the two sides and to buy time for negotiations.
But since then, Iran appears to have walked away from the tentative deals -- in part, experts say, because the Iranian leadership is divided over whether to engage with the United States.
Frankly, Iran's stiffing the international community on some of the proposals that they actually agreed to at the beginning of October, I think, has brought the international community, including the Russians and the Chinese, together in a way that they have not been in terms of significant additional sanctions on the Iranians, Gates said.
President Obama has set a Dec. 31 deadline for Iran to respond to the proposals before he turns to reviewing other options, including pursuing what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton once called "crippling sanctions."
In a statement issued in New York, Iran's mission to the United Nations denounced what it called "baseless and unfounded allegations" Thursday by some Security Council members about Iran's nuclear activities and said it is willing to continue talks with the United States and five other world powers "in order to achieve an appropriate, long-term solution."
Gates, who was to return to Washington late Friday, met in the morning with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki before flying to Iraq's oil-rich Kurdish region for meetings with troops in Kirkuk and Kurdish officials in Irbil.
Tensions remain high between the Kurds and Iraq's Arab majority, particularly over boundaries, property rights and revenue-sharing.
Gates urged both sides to reduce the potential for conflict to prevent any delays in U.S. plans to cut the number of American troops from 115,000 to 50,000 by the end of August.
Gates also sought to allay Kurdish anxiety about the pending drawdown. U.S. officials quoted Gates as telling Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government: "We will preserve your security, prosperity and autonomy within a unified Iraq.
We will not abandon you."
In aging China, a change of course
Wang Weijia and her husband grew up surrounded by propaganda posters lecturing them that "Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "One more baby means one more tomb."
They learned the lesson so well that when Shanghai government officials, alarmed by their city's low birthrate and aging population, abruptly changed course this summer and began encouraging young couples to have more than one child, their reaction was instant and firm: No way.
We have already given all our time and energy for just one child.
We have none left for a second, said Wang, 31, a human resources administrator with an 8-month-old son.
More than 30 years after China's one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed "little emperors," a population crisis is looming in the country.
The average birthrate has plummeted to 1.8 children per couple as compared with six when the policy went into effect, according to the U.N.
Population Division, while the number of residents 60 and older is predicted to explode from 16.7 percent of the population in 2020 to 31.1 percent by 2050. That is far above the global average of about 20 percent.
The imbalance is worse in wealthy coastal cities with highly educated populations, such as Shanghai.
Last year, people 60 and older accounted for almost 22 percent of Shanghai's registered residents, while the birthrate was less than one child per couple.
Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission, has said that fertile couples need to have babies to "help reduce the proportion of the aging population and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future."
Shanghai is about to be "as old -- not as rich, though -- as developed countries such as Japan and Sweden," she said.
A gradual easing
Written into the country's constitution in 1978, China's one-child policy is arguably the most controversial mandate introduced by the ruling Communist Party to date.
Couples who violate the policy face enormous fines -- up to three times their annual salary in some areas -- and discrimination at work.
Chinese officials have credited the policy with helping the country avoid critical strain on its natural resources, while human rights advocates have denounced abuses in the enforcement of the policy.
In rural areas, some officials have forced women pregnant with a second child to undergo abortions.
In addition, many couples have had sex-selective abortions, leading to an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio.
In recent years, population officials have gradually softened their stance on the one-child policy.
In 2004, they allowed for more exceptions to the rule -- including urban residents, members of ethnic minorities and cases in which both husband and wife are only children -- and in 2007, they toned down many of their hard-line slogans.
Qiao Xiaochun, a professor at the Institute of Population Research at Peking University, said central government officials have recently been debating even more radical changes, such as allowing couples to have two children if one partner is an only child.
In July, Shanghai became the first Chinese city to launch an aggressive campaign to encourage more births.
Almost overnight, posters directing families to have only one child were replaced by copies of regulations detailing who would be eligible to have a second child and how to apply for a permit.
The city government dispatched family planning officials and volunteers to meet with couples in their homes and slip leaflets under doors.
It has also pledged to provide emotional and financial counseling to those electing to have more than one child.
The response has been underwhelming, family planning officials say.
Disappointing response
Although officials in one rural town on the outskirts of Shanghai say they saw an uptick in applications from couples wanting a second child after the campaign was launched, the more urban districts report no change.
Huinan township, with a population of 115,000, for instance, is still receiving just four to five applications a month.
Disappointed Shanghai officials say that, despite the campaign, the number of births in the city in 2010 is still expected to be only about 165,000 -- slightly higher than in 2009 but lower than in 2008.
Feng Juying, head of the family planning committee in Shanghai's Caolu township, said financial considerations are probably the main reason many people don't want more children.
They want to give the best to their first, she said.
Yang Jiawei, 27, and his wife, Liu Juanjuan, 26, said they would love to have two children and are legally allowed to do so.
But like many Chinese, they have only the scant medical and life insurance provided by the government.
Without a social safety net, they say, the choice would be irresponsible.
People in the West wrongly see the one-child policy as a rights issue, said Yang, a construction engineer whose wife is seven months pregnant with the couple's first child.
Yes, we are being robbed of the chance to have more than one child.
But the problem is not just some policy.
It is money.
Other couples cite psychological reasons for hesitating.
Wang, the human resources administrator, said she wants an only child because she was one herself: "We were at the center of our families and used to everyone taking care of us.
We are not used to taking care of and don't really want to take care of others."
Chen Zijian, a 42-year-old who owns a translation company, put it more bluntly.
For the dual-career, middle-class parents who are bringing the birthrate down, he said, it's about being successful enough to be selfish.
Today's 20- and 30-somethings grew up seeing their parents struggle during the early days of China's experiment with capitalism and don't want that kind of life for themselves, he said.
Even one child makes huge demands on parents' time, he said.
A mother has to give up at least two years of her social life.
Then there are the space issues -- "You have to remodel your apartment" -- and the strategizing -- "You have to have a résumé ready by the time the child is 9 months old for the best preschools."
Most of his friends are willing to deal with this once, Chen said, but not twice.
Ours is the first generation with higher living standards, he said.
We do not want to make too many sacrifices.
U.N. group drafts plan to reduce emissions
The U.N.-sponsored climate conference -- characterized so far by unruly posturing and mutual recriminations -- gained renewed focus Friday with the release of a document outlining ambitious greenhouse-gas reductions over the next 40 years, with industrialized nations shouldering most of the burden in the near term.
The text, which could provide the basis for a final political deal to regulate greenhouse gases, highlighted the remaining obstacles as much as it illuminated a path forward.
But it was seen as an important advance in a negotiation that is running out of time, with more than 100 world leaders arriving in Copenhagen next week.
Forged by a U.N. ad-hoc working group, the text is silent on how much money rich countries would give poor ones to cope with global warming over the short and long term.
And it provides a range of options for the key questions, including how developed and major emerging economies would cut their carbon output, and what would be the upper limit of global temperature rise that policymakers would be willing to tolerate.
It gives a lot of flexibility to the process, said John Coequyt, senior Washington representative for the Sierra Club.
Michael Zammit Cutajar, who drafted the six-page document, boiled down a 180-page negotiation text to focus on what the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, described as "the big picture."
It shows the outlines for a possible deal, in which industrial nations would collectively cut their emissions by 2020 by 25 to 45 percent compared with 1990 levels, while major developing countries would reduce theirs during the same period by 15 to 30 percent.
Together, the countries would cut emissions between 50 and 95 percent by 2050.
The European Union gave the talks a boost as well on Friday by pledging to provide $3.6 billion a year over the next three years to help poorer countries adapt to the impact of climate change -- from coping with flood and drought to avoiding deforestation.
Still, Friday featured the same sort of verbal fireworks that have dominated the talks for the past week.
U.S. special climate envoy Todd Stern rejected language requiring binding cuts of greenhouse-gas emissions for industrialized countries compared with voluntary ones by major emerging economies if they were not funded by the developed world.
The move signaled that the Obama administration is taking a harder line with China than Bush administration officials did just two years ago.
The United States is not going to do a deal without the major developing countries stepping up and taking action, said Stern, who also complained that the text did not do enough to make sure the cuts could be verified by outside observers.
Stern made his comments an hour after Chinese vice foreign minister He Yafei said America's top climate negotiator was either lacking "common sense" or being "extremely irresponsible" for saying earlier in the week that the United States would not help China financially to cope with global warming.
With the future economic trajectory of the world's major powers at stake, fault lines have erupted both within the developing world and between the industrial world and emerging economies.
The current battle is as much about saving individual economies as saving the planet, with China and the United States feuding over their respective obligations while poorer nations insist that the world's two dozen most influential countries are ignoring the scientific imperative to take bolder action.
Ricardo Ulate, a Costa Rican delegate, said it's not surprising that the major powers are fighting over who should bear the costs for curbing greenhouse gases, even as vulnerable countries have become more aggressive in seeking to hold the big emitters accountable for their actions.
This is clearly a game where a new economic hegemony is being developed, said Ulate, who also serves as the regional Mexico and Central America climate change adviser for Conservation International.
Some of the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change indicated they would continue to push for a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen, although most of the major participants say the talks will produce a political deal at best.
The Alliance of Small Island States, which has 43 members, produced a 24-page draft treaty proposal early Friday morning.
Artur Runge-Metzger, who heads international climate negotiations on behalf of the European Commission, said the push by small island nations has "put political pressure on the entire political process," in part because they are now unified and demanding action from emerging economies such as China and India.
The talks took on new urgency as delegates focused on the fact that they must resolve most of the outstanding issues before the heads of government arrive to strike a deal.
High-level officials such as Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh and the Chinese vice minister stepped off planes and raced through the Bella Center's halls to closed-door meetings and news conferences so they could stake out claims that will be arbitrated over the next week.
The sheer sprawl of the gathering -- where 13,000 people move in and out of the convention center each day, guitar-playing activists put on nightly shows mocking the countries they think are selling out, and draft proposals are passed hand-to-hand on paper rather than via e-mail -- poses a challenge.
The intensity is only building: nearly all of the key ministers are now here, and as early as Wednesday 60 heads of government will be in Copenhagen.
We're getting into the big leagues, said Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, vice president for global policy at Conservation International.
The heavyweights are coming.
Britain’s first 140mph train to redefine that Monday feeling
At 5.13 on Monday morning a whistle will pierce the darkness to signal a train departure that marks a revolution for travel in Britain.
The first high-speed commuter train in the country will reach 140mph as it streaks from Ashford, Kent, to London St Pancras, covering the 58 miles in 38 minutes.
Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, will then be joined by Dame Kelly Holmes aboard the first Javelin commuter service out of London.
He hopes that the new service will eventually plug Britain into an international network of fast, reliable trains and connect the great conurbations of the Midlands, the North and Scotland to London.
Neglected backwaters would become thriving commuter towns, business travel times would be slashed and the shift from aircraft and cars to the railway would reduce national carbon emissions as well as easing congestion on the roads.
In theory, the three main political parties buy into this vision.
But the tens of billions of pounds needed to build a new national rail network, the inevitable planning battle and fears of environmental harm may yet put the brakes on Britain’s high-speed lines.
High Speed Two (HS2), a company created in January to provide the Government with a feasibility study, will hand its report to Lord Adonis on December 30, The Times has learnt.
It will provide him with a detailed route map of the next planned stage of the high-speed network.
The new line linking London to the West Midlands will be drawn to within five metres in urban areas and sites where the environmental impact may be contentious.
In open country, the plan will be drafted to within 25 metres of a final route.
HS2 is also expected to set out three options for a wider high-speed network running north.
Lord Adonis will respond in the spring.
The favoured option being put forward is a Y-shaped configuration in which a single high-speed line would run up to the West Midlands.
The line would split at or near Birmingham, with one branch running west of the Pennines to Manchester and Scotland and another running northeast to Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle upon Tyne.
A single line would run into Scotland.
"It looks like it is going to be the best-performing option," a railway insider said.
Once complete, journey times between London and Edinburgh would be cut to 2 hours 40 minutes.
The first leg, which would not open before 2025, would allow passengers to travel between London and Birmingham in 49 minutes, compared with just over an hour at present.
The proposals would allow trains to travel at 250mph, making the British network the fastest in Europe.
The initial track is being designed to take trains 400m in length capable of carrying 1,100 people.
As many as 18 could operate each hour on a London-Birmingham line.
That means that a London terminal capable of handling 20,000 passengers an hour would be needed.
Given space constraints in the capital, it is expected that an existing station would be expanded to accommodate the high-speed network.
Rail industry experts say that only St Pancras International or Euston offer that potential.
Lord Adonis will announce whether or not he thinks the scheme should proceed, but lengthy public consultation and planning procedures mean that a final decision would not be made until after a general election.
Even if he does put the wheels in motion, the network would have to be built in sections.
Trains would at first be forced to run off high-speed lines on to the existing rails north of Birmingham, keeping journey times between London and Scotland above three hours.
That is seen as the crucial tipping point needed to ensure a switch from planes to trains, a benchmark for the rail revolution.
Taxpayers meet mortgage on Tory's £75,000 orangery
Alan Duncan, the frontbench Tory MP, charged the taxpayer thousands of pounds a year towards the cost of an orangery he built at his constituency home.
The party’s prisons spokesman, who was demoted by David Cameron for complaining that MPs were living "on rations", increased his mortgage by £75,000 to build an oak-framed extension to his second home in Rutland.
He was allowed to charge the extra interest, totalling hundreds of pounds a month, to the taxpayer.
The Commons authorities approved the claims at the time and they have not been queried by Sir Thomas Legg, who is conducting a review of members’ expenses. Last night Mr Duncan said the claims "couldn’t be cleaner or simpler".
Mr Duncan, one of the richest Members of Parliament, owns a two-storey house in a village in his Rutland and Melton constituency.
Houses near by have sold for almost a million pounds.
The ground floor comprises a kitchen, living room and dining room, but the fees office agreed that Mr Duncan needed more space.
Last year he added a conservatory to the house, described in plans as an "orangery".
Neighbours described it as a "glasshouse for entertaining".
Mr Duncan was not required to make any reference to the increased borrowing during a recent investigation by the Commons’ Standards and Privileges Committee into his previous mortgage arangements.
The committee cleared him last month of breaching the rules after an investigation into his expenses.
In 2004 Mr Duncan changed the legal security for a £271,406 mortgage from his London property to his constituency home, which he had bought in 1991, the year before he became an MP.
Documents released this week show that Mr Duncan was claiming about £1,400 a month in mortgage interest until March last year.
In April, his claims increased to more than £1,800 a month.
The interest rate on Mr Duncan’s RBS mortgage did not change in that time, suggesting that all the increase was to fund the £75,000 borrowing.
The RBS standard variable mortgage rate went down from 7.94 per cent in December 2007 to 4 per cent in March this year, where it remains.
The latest document release by the Commons authorities show that Mr Duncan was continuing to claim £1,250 a month this May.
Mr Duncan lost his job as Shadow Leader of the House in September after an undercover reporter filmed him saying that MPs had to survive "on rations" after the expenses scandal.
"Basically, it’s being nationalised, you have to live on rations and are treated like s**t."
He said: "I spend my money on my garden and claim a tiny fraction based on what is proper.
And I could claim the whole bloody lot, but I don’t."
The MP, a millionaire from his former career as an oil trader, was first challenged over his expenses in May when it emerged that he had claimed thousands of pounds for his garden, before agreeing with the fees office that this "could be considered excessive".
An activist dug a hole in the shape of a pound sign in Mr Duncan’s lawn in protest after it was revealed that he claimed £4,000 over three years.
Asked about the increased mortgage last night, Mr Duncan said: "It was for capital improvements approved both by the fees office and subsequently by Legg."
He added: "There is no issue of ducking and weaving or pushing the rules or anything.
It is absolutely straight down the line, within the rules, authorised and everything.
It just couldn’t in many ways be cleaner or simpler."
Come all ye faithful to see Brighton’s beach hut Advent calendar
Beach huts in Brighton have found a new lease of life for the winter months as an interactive Advent calendar.
Beyond, an alternative church group that encourages spiritual exploration through creativity, invited 24 owners to decorate their huts for each day in December, using Christmas carols as their theme.
The event started on December 1, with visitors allowed to view the latest hut from 5.30pm to 6.30pm each day, with mince pies and mulled wine laid on for free.
Carols chosen so far include I Saw Three Ships, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and The First Noël, where the hut features the work of Janette Tozer, a local artist.
Martin Poole, 50, a TV marketing assistant from Hove, is a non-stipendiary clergyman within the Chichester diocese and the leader of Beyond.
He said: "We want to make religion more relevant to people in a post-Christendom society.
"Why do we as a Church expect people to come to a strange old building? It’s my feeling the Church should come to the people and celebrate in exciting ways.
"The idea of the beach hut Advent calendar began just as a conversation with some friends over dinner.
Brighton is such a fantastically creative and vibrant place and we are trying to try and represent that through spirituality."
Large climate change gatherings in Copenhagen and around the world
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday to support an ambitious and restrictive agreement in the fight against global warming around the world and in Copenhagen, where police made several hundred arrests.
At least thirty thousand people, according to police, and a hundred thousand, according to the organisers, marched in the cold in the Danish capital outside the United Nations climate conference, which is tasked with reaching an agreement by Friday that will enter into effect on the 1st of January, 2013.
For Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate conference president, the increasing number of climate rallies around the world, illustrated by these protests, has contributed to making the 'political cost' of a failure in Copenhagen very high.
The incidents in the Danish capital occurred shortly after the departure of the main procession, when a group of 300 protesters, clothed entirely in black, broke shop windows with paving and hammers, observed a reporter from the AFP.
Riot police provided an immediate and unhesitant response.
Police announced a total of 600 to 700 hundred arrests, with most, they report, being members of the 'Black Blocks'; small ultra-violent groups that had notably made an appearance at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, in the East of France, in April.
The Climate Justice Action (CJA) coalition, one of the protest organisers, reported conditions whereby hundreds of protesters were arrested "without discrimination," highlighting that a hundred of them "were still detained in the street on Saturday night" handcuffed and held in a sitting position despite the extreme cold".
Having left the Parliament, the procession headed in an orderly fashion towards the Bella Center, where negotiations were to take place.
The protesters stopped about 500 metres short of the building without trying to enter.
A stage had been raised to receive the expected speakers before a candlelit vigil, in which the former South African Archbishop from Cape Town, Desmond Tutu would be taking part.
The majority of protesters had arrived by coach and train from the major European cities, but many Asian protesters, including some Chinese and Korean, were also present, as well as those from Africa.
Around 3000 people, mainly clad in sky blue raincoats, had formed an initial rally in Copenhagen during the morning, called by Friends of the Earth, who were planning "blue waves" for "climate justice".
We are marching on the streets today to demand reparations of the ecological debt for the South, explained Lidy Nacpil, a Filipino activist in the Jubilee South Coalition in Copenhagen.
We cannot continue to tell ourselves that there is time left, assesses the singer from Benin, Angelique Kidjo.
There are rivers drying out in Africa; water courses, where it is possible to walk and never was before.
For the first time in the history of Climate Diplomacy, born in 1992 with the adoption of the UN Convention, the anti-globalisation movement has brought itself closer to environmental organisations.
The French Eurodeputy, José Bové, a face of anti-globalisation, explained that he has come to Copenhagen to "connect climate justice with social justice" : "Today there is no gap between the fight against global warming and the anti-globalisation fight."
The Asia-Pacific region, which is home to numerous islands, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of warming, had kicked off the protests.
According to organisers, some 50 000 people took to the streets in Australia.
In Manila, several hundred people, mostly students, paraded in red, brandishing banners about the benefits of solar energy.
In Hong Kong, Djakarta, and in Canada, rallies of several hundred demonstrators were also formed to demand more forceful action against climate change.
In France, the protests organised by the "350" network brought together several hundred people, notably in Paris, Marseilles (in the South), Lille (in the North), Bordeaux (in the West), and Lyon (in the East).
In Geneva, dozens of people gathered.
Separatist Abkhazia has elected its president; Georgia calls it a "farce"
Abkhazia elected its president on Saturday, a little over a year after Moscow's recognition of the pro-Russian region of Georgia, while Tbilisi calls it a "farce".
Some 131 000 people were called on to take part in this first vote following the Georgia-Russia war in August 2008 for the control of South Ossetia, another secessionist Georgian territory recognised by Russia.
The polling stations closed at 17:00 GMT.
Attendance was at 58% a few hours before closure, according to Abkhazian electoral Commission officials.
The first provisional results were to be announced during the night between Saturday and Sunday.
The five candidates in the running, among whom the existing president, Sergei Bagapsh, all categorically reject the idea of a reunification with Georgia, which has condemned the holding of the vote.
These elections are a farce.
For his part, the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, "regrets that Abkhazia has fallen under total Russian occupation," declared his spokeswoman, Manana Manjgaladze.
Other than Russia, only Nicaragua and Venezuela have recognised the independence of the territory's 216 000 inhabitants, while the rest of the world considers it a part of Georgia illegally occupied by Russian troops.
After separating itself from Georgia in the 1992-1993 conflict, which saw the loss of several thousand lives, Abkhazia is trying to show, by means of this election, that it is ready to join the international community.
This process is a stage in our new life, our new era as an independent state, declared Svetlana Kvarchia, a 54-year-old historian, who confirms having voted for Mister Bagapsh.
She was among the voters who came to the polling station in an attractive white school building with several palm trees at the front in the capital, Soukhoumi.
The question of the Russian domination is at the heart of the presidential debate, in this region gifted with a lush landscape on the Black Sea.
Vast billboards showing Mister Bagapsh beside the Russian President and Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, are dotted around this small territory of 216 000 inhabitants.
In Gali, in the West of the country, the Chief of District, Beslan Archba, reserved a very warm welcome for the Russian officials who came to oversee the voting.
We, the Abkhazian people, are thankful, he said during a small ceremony, alluding to the support from Moscow, and particularly to the decision to recognise the independence of Abkhazia.
I hope that your country will soon be recognised by the United Nations, replied Alexei Ostrovsky, a member of the Russian Parliament, while raising his glass of vodka.
For their part, the opposition represented in the vote by the former vice-president Raoul Khadjimba and two businessmen, Zaous Ardzinba and Beslan Boutba, criticises the agreements made with Moscow in the previous year, such as the one giving Russia control of the Abkhazian rail network for the next 10 years.
The fifth candidate, Vitali Bganba, asserts not being in support of the current Government or the opposition.
50% plus one vote is the majority required to win the vote.
If no candidate attains this threshold, a second vote must be organised within two weeks.
Climate: demonstrations around the world, incidents in Copenhagen.
Tens of thousands of people the world over marched on Saturday to demand an ambitious and restrictive agreement at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, where police were on alert and arrested almost 700 people on the fringes of an imposing rally.
Thirty thousand people, according to police, a hundred thousand, according to organisers, paraded in the cold afternoon in the Danish capital, which is receiving delegates from 193 countries until the 18th of December, who will be seeking to conclude an agreement to come into effect by the 1st of January, 2013.
Having left the Parliament, the procession headed in a generally orderly fashion for the Bella Center, where negotiations were to take place.
The demonstrators stopped about 500 metres short of the building without trying to enter.
A stage had been erected to accommodate the speakers, before a candlelit vigil, with the participation of former South African Cape Town archbishop, Desmond Tutu.
A few moments after the departure of the procession, a group of several hundred demonstrators, clad entirely in black and holding bricks and hammers, broke shop windows, remarked an AFP reporter.
Riot police immediately surrounded them and intervened in no uncertain terms, throwing several of them to the ground.
Police announced the arrests of 600 to 700 hundred people, adding that they were mainly members of the 'Black Blocks'; small ultra-violent groups that had notably made an appearance at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, in the East of France, in April.
Towards the end of the afternoon a policeman was injured on the jaw by a piece of paving and four cars were set alight near a squat during a series of incidents, which led to the arrests of some twenty people, according to police.
We have our eye on the small extremist groups, police spokesman Henrik Jakobsen warned, as the force's helicopters circled in the sky above.
The majority of demonstrators were of European origin, arriving in coaches and trains from the main German cities, from London, from Amsterdam, and also from Milan.
Large numbers of Asians, including a few Chinese and Koreans, were also present, as were some Africans.
Around 3000 people, mainly clad in sky blue raincoats, had formed an initial rally in Copenhagen during the morning called by Friends of the Earth, who were planning "blue waves" for "climate justice".
We are taking to the streets today to demand the ecological debt be repaid to the South, explained Lily Nacpil, a Filipino activist from the Jubilee Coalition Group in Copenhagen.
We cannot continue to tell ourselves that there is time left, assesses the singer from Benin, Angelique Kidjo.
There are rivers drying out in Africa; water courses, where it is possible to walk and never was before.
For the first time in the history of Climate Diplomacy, born in 1992 with the adoption of the UN Convention, the anti-globalisation movement has brought itself closer to environmental organisations.
The French Eurodeputy, José Bové, a face of anti-globalisation, explained that he has come to Copenhagen to "connect climate justice with social justice" : "Today there is no gap between the fight against global warming and the anti-globalisation fight."
Oxfam enlisted the help of several well-known personalities, including Danish model Helena Christensen, and the former UN Commissioner for refugees, Mary Robinson, who were to address the crowd.
The Asia-Pacific region, which is home to numerous islands, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of warming, had kicked off the protests.
According to organisers, some 50 000 people took to the streets in Australia.
In Manila, several hundred people, mostly students, paraded in red in front of the capital's City Hall, brandishing banners about the benefits of solar energy.
In Hong Kong and Djakarta, rallies of several hundred demonstrators were also formed to demand action against climate change.
In France, the protests organised by the "350" network brought together several hundred people, notably in Paris, Marseilles (in the South), Lille (in the North), Bordeaux (in the West), and Lyon (in the East).
In Geneva, dozens of people gathered.
History-Geography are strengthened by the secondary schools reform, according to Chatel
French Education Minister, Luc Chatel, declared in an interview to be published in the French Paper On Sunday (JDD) that History and Geography were "reinforced" by the secondary schools reform, despite them no longer being obligatory subjects for the French technical Sixth Form.
From now on, first year pupils will have four hours per week, and the same programme for a common shared culture, states Mr. Chatel.
According to the minister, "We need to get out of this hypocrisy" because, he says, "the 'S' course of study is no longer the science course", but "more generally, it is a magnet for the stronger pupils".
The 'ES' and 'L' courses cannot remain inferior choices behind the 'S' course, he continues, highlighting that "I have not heard many historians or academics expressing indignance at the absence of History-Geography in the technical Sixth Forms either."
On Saturday, an IFOP (French Public Opinion Institute) poll appearing in L'Humanité revealed that nearly seven out of ten (69%) French people disapproved of the Government project to terminate compulsory teaching of History-Geography in technical Sixth Forms. Many academics and teachers also criticised this suppression, as have the left and some right-wing representatives.
On the other hand, the minister added that there was "no question" of eliminating the 'S' course philosophy.
Luc Chatel also defended the teachers' education reforms, just as 16 organisations (students and associations) called for a day of protest on Tuesday to demonstrate against the project, which, in their opinion, sacrifices the educational training of future teachers.
For 2nd year Master's (M2), an entry exam focusing on the candidate's discipline will be required at the start of the year, and an acceptance exam testing their capacity to teach will be held at the end of the year, the minister explained.
Furthermore, they will cover in-class placements throughout the M2 year, and will then be in front of pupils for a year as student teachers.
If you add up all the placement work proposed before the exam you already end up with more presence in front of students, which equates to over 300 hours, he continued.
Finally, the minister indicates that he will be putting forward "the individual's right to education; something that does not exist in national Education".
He also reaffirms the plan to abolish the school map "by 2012".
At Normale Supérieure (one of France's top schools), experts have 15 minutes to change opinions on climate
Fifteen minutes to talk about what is at stake at the Copenhagen summit: that was the challenge taken up on Saturday morning by Jean Jouzel, vice-president of the intergovernmental group of Climate Evolution experts (GIEC) invited by the Ecole Normale Supérieure in rue d'Ulm (Paris).
Jean Jouzel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, inaugurated the first of the conferences entitled "Ernest", a day composed of a series of 15-minute lectures from experts, filmed and open to the public, noted an AFP reporter.
We wanted to do something to catch people's attention and make them want to find out more, explained one of the day's organisers, 22-year-old Edouard Hannezo, outside the conference; this having been named after the name given to the fish in the school's pond.
We choose around twenty lecturers among the experts in their field and the more charismatic ones are selected, he added.
On the subject of global warming, "we could go on for hours, but we can also cover the key objectives in a few minutes", Jean Jouzel told the AFP, who made his presentation without notes, but with graphical aids, to an audience of around fifty.
This is part of our scientist's role, he emphasised, hoping that listeners will remember that "the Copenhagen conference is based on an extremely solid scientific case".
The video footage from the conferences will be available online on the school's website starting the 15th of December.
The next "Ernest" day is planned for February, followed by others on a bimonthly basis.
Late payments: anger from prison guards, action planned
Prison guard unions called for a "general rally" on Friday to demand payment of their bonuses and overtime before the end of the year holidays, having seen it pushed into January for budgetary reasons.
FO-pénitentiaire (2nd prison guard union) has requested that staff, who are not on duty, demonstrate Tuesday morning in front of prison buildings and to "block" them, in order to "expose the theft of their earnings".
The CGT-pénitentiaire (3rd union in the profession) calls for them to "unite in general, rallying at the various prisons, to show a strong turn-out", condemn the non-payment of "overtime, night-shift bonuses, Sunday and holiday pay" in December for their work in October as "shameful and unacceptable".
And the first prison guard union, Union fédérale autonome pénitentiaire (UFAP/UNSA), "calls for general rallying (…) to re-awaken the discontent and anger".
The penitentiary administration's Management and the Justice Ministry explain that overtime has increased considerably in 2009 and was not fully covered in the budget, but assures that the outstanding balances will be settled in January.
The Chancery stated near the end of the day that Michèle Alliot-Marie had sent a communication to the prison guard unions guaranteeing the payment would be made next month.
I am not ignoring the efforts made by the staff for the functioning and modernisation of our prison system, writes the Minister of Justice in this communication.
I have asked the penitentiary administration Management to put in place, without delay, a set of measures to ensure that this situation, caused by a poor evaluation of the number of additional work hours, does not repeat itself in the future, adds Mrs. Alliot-Marie.
The December pay packet will therefore be slim, except for management staff, who benefit from the so-called target and position-related bonuses, critics the UFAP/UNSA, saying "budgetary constraints are a convenient excuse".
It is an absolute scandal, complains the inter-regional union from Marseilles, announcing its decision to boycott "all meetings and convocations" until further notice.
Staff will not be putting in Sunday or holiday hours if the October ones are not settled in December, and the same goes for overtime, threatens the Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne trade union.
At a time when our goals and responsibilities are being expanded, but our staff numbers are not, it is more than regrettable to dare to attack the staff's salaries, judges the CGT-pénitentiaire de Bordeaux.
According to the unions, the situation is not the same in all regions, with some being worse off than others.
But in any case, the balance is not there, observes Jean-François Forget, general secretary of UFAP.
For Christmas, Obama says he gives "nicer stuff" than he receives
The American President, Barack Obama, who is preparing for his first family Christmas at the White House, intimates to TV icon Oprah Winfrey that he has one simple rule when it comes to presents: "I give nicer stuff than I get".
In a special programme to be broadcast on the ABC channel on Sunday evening, the president and his wife, Michelle, offer an insight into the way they plan to celebrate the end of year festivities in their prestigious new home.
Even Bo, the family's little four-legged friend, will be joining in.
Santa Claus loves Bo too, maintains Michelle Obama, adding that the dog would "naturally" have a present, according to the programme's advertising trailer.
And Michelle Obama feigned indignance, countering her husband's claims about the quality of the gifts he receives: "No way; I gave you good gifts last year", she teased the President.
Absolutely, he had to concede before jokingly retorting: "Who gave you this?", pointing at the First Lady's pearl necklace.
During this hour-long light-hearted programme with the famous presenter, who was a fervent Barack Obama supporter during the presidential campaign, the president and his wife also recalled their favourite childhood presents.
Barack Obama remembered a ten-speed bicycle, but also a basketball that his Kenyan father, whom he had rarely seen, had given him for Christmas.
I remember a time when I met my father, who had come to visit us for Christmas, and he gave me a basketball, said the president.
It was only much later in my life that I realised that he had given me the ball.
The First Lady, for her part, recalled her dollhouse.
I had no idea how to organise a house, so I had lined up all the furniture against the wall, rather than arranging them around the fireplace, but I adored that little dollhouse, said Michelle Obama.
Johnny Hallyday re-operated on, RTL claims he is in artificial coma
Johnny Hallyday was re-operated on in Los Angeles due to significant "lesions" after an operation in France, but the situation is "under control" according to his entourage, while RTL claims that the singer has been placed in an artificial coma to avoid pain and complications.
The 66-year-old rocker was re-operated on in the night between Wednesday and Thursday at the Cedars-Sinaï hospital in Los Angeles after American doctors noted "lesions resulting from the operation" for the slipped disc undergone in Paris on November 26th, his press office announced in Paris, adding that the lesions had "warranted a repair operation".
The singer's press office, however, wanted to be reassuring, stating that the situation was "under control", while announcing that a new medical bulletin would be communicated within 48 hours.
According to RTL, partner for the singer's first tour, however, Johnny Hallyday may have been put into an artificial coma to avoid "pain and complications".
It will only be in 48 hours that we will have a little more certainty about the state of the patient, once he has at least one eye open, added RTL.
When questioned by the AFP, the press office neither confirmed, nor commented on the information.
RTL also claims that "according to certain sources", no drain was fitted after the first operation in Paris.
The rocker had been operated on for a slipped disc at the international clinic at Parc Monceau.
The operation, scheduled several days in advance, had been carried out by the neuro-surgeon Stéphane Delajoux, a well-known doctor in artist circles.
He was not available to comment on RTL's information on Thursday evening.
Following the operation that he carried out on Johnny Hallyday, the singer was taken on Monday to the Cedars-Sinaï hospital for an infection stemming from the operation.
The singer, Eddy Mitchell, a close friend of Johnny Hallyday, said on RTL on Thursday that his friend was going through "a bad patch", but assured everyone that he had "no worries" about the rocker, who is a "fighter".
He had called me just before leaving for Los Angeles, and I told him that it was crazy, because taking a 12-hour flight after that kind of operation is not realistic, said Eddy Mitchell.
Wednesday evening, the singer's producer, Jean-Claude Camus, had wanted to be reassuring, stating that Johnny Hallyday "was reacting satisfactorily to the antibiotics" and that the infection was being "contained".
Mr. Camus had also said to have spoken with Laeticia, the singer's wife, and not to have noticed any signs of worry.
But health problems for the singer have only multiplied since he was hospitalised for nine days in July after a fall on his yacht.
Two months later, to the surprise of all, Johnny Hallyday had revealed having had a "minor colonic cancer" operation, then a slight infection.
At the end of September, the singer resumed as planned his long "Tour 66", billed as his final goodbye tour.
However, since then, every health problem is heavily commented on. Fans and reporters have noticed the singer's trouble in moving around on stage.
In mid-November, his entourage even had to deny further hospitalisation.
Euro-2009/short course: Bousquet's first in his lucky distance
The Frenchman, Frédérick Bousquet, triple medal-holder in the long course 2009 World Championship, pulled off an international title for a distance he particularly favours, the 50m freestyle, at the Euro-2009 short course event in Istanbul on Thursday.
The first day of this competition, where full-length swimsuits are permitted for the last time, has seen only three world records beaten, whereas a wave of them was expected.
One record was improved on by the Hungarian, Evelyn Verraszto, 200m medly, and the two others by Russia in the 4x50m medly relay.
A regret for Bousquet, who had his sight set on the 50m freestyle world record, for which he holds the long course title (20.94).
In one of the two high-profile swimming events, the 50m freestyle, it was the 28-year-old Frenchman who made his mark with a time of 20.53 in a final, where ten swimmers started instead of the usual eight - a first at the international level.
Bousquet bested the Croat, Duje Draganja (20.70) and the Russian, Sergey Fesikov (20.84), but he did not manage to reduce the world record time (20.30) as he had envisaged.
One can always dream of better, and I had actually stated that, if the world record was in my reach, I would certainly attempt it.
Like Bousquet, the vast majority of swimmers were in polyurethane swimsuits, which will not be permitted starting the 1st of January.
Having unleashed 238 world records since February 2008, these swimsuits will end their epic story in Istanbul, which had also seen the first ones in 1999, during the same competition.
The use of these swimsuits did not assist the German, Rome's long course two-time world champion this summer, Paul Biedermann, on this occasion, where world records were at stake.
The young swimmer did not succeed in reducing the record he currently holds in the 400m freestyle (3:32.77), but did, nevertheless, make an impression by achieving his second personal best time (3:34.55), ahead of the Russian, Nikita Lobintsev (3:35.75) and the Dane, Mads Glaesner (3:36.82).
I did not give it my all in this race.
I knew that I could not achieve a world record, but I managed to defend my title and have accomplished my mission.
Lobintsev will be a strong rival in the future, explained Biedermann.
USA: a sarcophagus panel belonging to Zola fetches 1.5 million USD
A Roman sarcophagus panel, which had notably belonged to the French writer, Emile Zola, fetched 1.5 million dollars on Thursday, a significantly higher figure than was estimated, announced art auction house Sotheby's.
This front panel, measuring two metres in length and 63cm in height, dating back to the 3rd century AD, was valued at 150,000 to 250,000 dollars.
The marble "depicting four Dionysian scenes in a sophisticated architectural decor, surrounded by satyrs and bacchantes, is a rare piece; there are only five of them in the world", Florent Heintz, vice-president of art auctions for Roman and Egyptian antiquities, had explained to the AFP on Tuesday.
It was sold among around a hundred other lots.
The auction is still going on, but this lot is certainly the one, which has got buyers bidding most so far, commented Sotheby's spokesman to the AFP, Dan Abernethy.
The discovery of Emile Zola's acquisition of this marble piece dates back some time.
The panel remained in the famous collection of the Borghese family in Rome for nearly 300 years, then it successively appeared with the French actress, Cécile Sorel, who had made it a feature of her bathroom in her private Paris mansion, then Paul Reynaud, a minister in France's 3rd Republic and briefly the Council's chairman before Marshal Pétain's accession to power.
That left a grey area of about fifty years.
By searching the Louvre Museum's database, Florent Heintz discovered that the panel was part of an "Emile Zola inheritance" opened in 1903, a year after the death of the author of "Thérèse Raquin" and the series of "Rougon-Macquart" novels.
Zelaya's departure attempt from Honduras to Mexico aborted
Mexico judged on Thursday that conditions were no longer suitable for the transfer into its territory of the deposed Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, who had been refused safe passage by the coup-installed Government.
At the moment, after a telephone conversation in the night with president Zelaya, everything seems to indicate that the potential options for carrying out this transfer are not suitable, declared the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa.
Having arrived on Wednesday in El Salvador to bring back Mr. Zelaya, the Mexican Government plane returned to its original location, according to a source from the General Directorate of Migrations.
The Coup Government had wanted to force Mr. Zelaya to "resign" and had requested a foreign asylum to allow him safe passage to.
But the president refused, because he wanted to travel to Mexico as the incumbent Head of State and an invited guest.
The Coup Government "has again met with failure by wanting me to give up my duties (...); they wanted me to resign", Mr. Zelaya told radio Globo on Thursday, through which he often makes himself heard, since the beginning of the political crisis, which has so far lasted five months in this country of Central America.
I could stay here ten years, I have my guitar here, added the deposed president while playing a few chords, having taken refuge at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa for the last two and a half months.
The Mexican Embassy presented us with a request for safe passage, but, unfortunately, we could not accept it because it did not contain an asylum request, the Coup Government Interior Minister, Oscar Raul Matute, had declared on Wednesday on Honduran HRN radio.
I am not requesting asylum from any country, Manuel Zelaya had answered in an interview on the Telesur channel, based in Caracas.
Any departure from Honduras would have to be as the president of the Honduran people, he had emphasised.
The rumours of Mr. Zelaya's departure had, on Wednesday, mobilised the partisans of the deposed president, who gathered around the Brazilian Embassy, where military forces reinforced their position.
The Brazilian Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, criticised the Coup Government's position.
This demonstrates the marginal character of this Government in relation with international standards, he asserted.
Zelaya, who had become closer with the socialist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had been overturned on June 28th, the day he had organised a public consultation to prepare for his re-election, going against the views of the Supreme Court, the Army and Congress.
Exiled to Costa Rica, he had made a surprise return on September 21st and had taken refuge at the Brazilian Embassy.
If he comes out, he will be arrested to answer to charges of "high treason", which the Law accuses him of, according to the Coup Government.
The Coup President, Roberto Micheletti, has managed to organise a presidential election on the 29th of November to replace Mr. Zelaya.
Porfirio Lobo was elected in the controversial vote, which was recognised by the United States, but was contested by Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil.
Three days later, Congress voted by a landslide against Mr. Zelaya's return to power for the remainder of his term up to January 27th.
Wall Street rises, the commercial balance of the US feeds optimism
The New York Stock Exchange finished higher on Thursday, as American commercial equilibrium figures indicate a return of activity in the United States and with its partners: the Dow gained 0.67%, and the NASDAQ 0.33%.
According to the final closing figures, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 68.78 points to 10 405.83 points, and the NASDAQ, with a technology dominance, rose by 7.13 points to 2 190.06 points.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index had a result of 0.58% (6.40 points) taking it to 1 102.35 points.
We have good news coming from various sides of the Economy, assessed Lindsey Piegza from FTN Financial.
However, this remains anecdotal evidence, she cautioned, suggesting the market was focusing on "the glass being half full".
Peter Cardillo of Avalon Partners thinks that investors have concentrated particularly on America's commercial balance figures, "which show an improvement in activity in the fourth quarter".
The US commercial deficit dropped by 7.6% in October, compared to September, to 32.9 billion dollars.
Analysts were expecting the opposite, a deepening of the deficit.
Both imports and exports increased.
The big news is the increase in trade volumes, especially in the export of goods, which reflects the economical growth of the commercial partners of the United States, commented Christopher Cornell from the research company Economy.com.
In contrast, new unemployment claims in the United States have increased beyond all expectations in the past week, to reach 474 000 claims.
However, in the last four weeks, the average number of new employment seekers "has fallen to its lowest in a year", highlighted Scott Marcouiller from Wells Fargo Advisors.
The bond market has fallen.
Treasury 10-year bond yields have grown to 3.482% against 3.423% on Tuesday evening, and 30-year bond yields are at 4.492% against 4.408% the previous evening.
Cuba: hundreds of Government supporters speak out against the "Ladies in White"
Several hundred Cuban pro-government demonstrators spoke out on Thursday against political prisoners' wives, who had gathered in Havana for International Human Rights Day, and prevented another demonstration, for which around a dozen dissidents were arrested.
Around forty "White Ladies", wives and those close to the political prisoners, were jeered at in the street by supporters of Raul Castro's government as they were marching towards the centre of the capital to demand the liberation of the political prisoners, observed an AFP reporter.
Down with the Yanks!, "Mercenaries!", "The street belongs to the Revolutionaries!", "Long live Fidel and Raul!" the pro-government supporters chanted at the dissidents, their fists raised.
These latter were escorted by plainclothes agents, who had come to "ensure their protection".
The previous evening, a similar demonstration had taken place against the "Ladies in White" in Havana without anyone being injured or arrested.
However, in the Vedado district of Havana, a dozen dissidents, who were also preparing to demonstrate Thursday for the International Human Rights Day, were arrested by plainclothes police, reported an AFP journalist.
The policemen made the dissidents, who had been jeered at by pro-government supporters, get into unmarked vehicles, according to the journalist.
Dissident arrests under similar circumstances normally only last a few hours.
Recipients of the 2005 Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament, the "Ladies in White" had organised a non-authorised march to "demand the release of all political prisoners", totalling 200 according to the dissident side, declared one of their leaders, Laura Pollan, whose husband, Hector Maceda, is serving a 20-year sentence in prison.
Mr. Maceda is part of the group of 75 Cuban dissidents arrested in March 2003, 53 of which remain behind bars.
The Cuban authorities consider the opposition as "mercenaries" or "agents" on the books of their sworn enemy, the United States.
Unusually, Cuban television covered the demonstration of pro-government supporters against the "anti-revolutionaries" on Thursday.
Cuba, lead by a single party, the Communist Party, is regularly accused by European or American NGOs of flouting rights and liberties, notably those of the freedom of expression.
A madman kills an eighty-year-old with a knife and wounds 5 at Clichy-la-Garenne
A crazed man armed with two knives has killed a man in his eighties and wounded five other people in the city centre of Clichy-la-Garenne (Hauts-de-Seine), during rush hour, towards the end of Thursday.
We have learned from witnesses and from police that, according to the investigation's initial findings, the attacker, aged 28, appears to have struck an eighty-year-old with two knives for reasons that remain unclear, in or at the front of a pharmacy at 85 Boulevard Jean-Jaurès.
Having sustained severe wounds, the elderly man, born in 1929 according to the police union, Alliance, died from his injuries in the hospital.
In or in front of the same pharmacy, he then began attacking a couple, including a pregnant woman.
The husband, aged around thirty, came between them and was wounded.
The first two victims, gravely wounded, were admitted to the hospital, where the eighty-year-old man died.
The days of the other injured person may be numbered, as vital organs have apparently been affected, according to police sources.
The pregnant woman was subsequently taken ill and was hospitalised "in a state of shock", according to one police source.
The armed man, who appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to a police source, fled into the street along Boulevard Jean Jaurès.
He is reported to have wounded two passers-by, apparently at random: one thirty-year-old, and one forty-year-old, the latter severely.
By the evening, the scenario remained unclear.
He was armed with two butcher's knives that he carried crossed on his back, explained Arnaud Pressé at the scene, an officer from the Alliance union of Hauts-de-Seine.
Several passers-by, including some youngsters, attempted to overpower the madman, according to witness reports collected by the AFP.
I saw a guy of about thirty with a green jacket.
Three youths tried to intervene.
They could not manage it, because the guy was well-built, recounted Alberto, a server in a nearby bar.
A crowd fell on him, including a town policeman, who broke his wrist, he added.
Still on Jean-Jaurès Boulevard, outside number 61, two town policemen, one of whom was the chief, attempted to arrest the armed man and were injured by punches, according to police sources.
The events took place on one of Clichy-la-Garenne's main streets, where many local businesses operate.
Some passers-by came to tell me that there was someone injured outside.
I went out, saw a 70-year-old on the ground, put the person in the recovery position, then I noticed a severe wound on the abdomen, Frédéric Allione, a 35-year-old pharmacist, told the AFP.
Five minutes later, a second person arrived, aged around thirty, with knife wounds.
National police officers were the ones who arrested the man, who was not carrying any identification documents.
The case will be brought to the Nanterre Public Prosecutor's Office by the region's police service for Hauts-de-Seine (SDPJ 92).
The madman was taken to a hospital on Thursday evening.
He had not yet had a chance to speak after being taken into custody.
A police source did not exclude the possibility of him being committed to a psychiatric hospital.
According to another police source, six policemen were needed to subdue the man at the police station in Clichy, where he was taken.
He was "in a state of hyperexcitement" as are "all crazed people of this kind, whose strength increases tenfold under its effect".
USA: Polanski's lawyer calls afresh for proceedings to be dropped
The lawyer of the Franco-Polish film director, Roman Polanski, called again in Los Angeles on Thursday (California, western United States), for the abandonment of proceedings against his client, who is currently under house arrest in Switzerland for a vice case that is over 30 years old.
Chad Hummel, the lawyer for the director of "The Pianist" cited grave errors in the procedures at the time of the events in 1977, in front of three judges at the Court of Appeal of California's second district.
I am calling for charges to be dropped here and now, declared Mr. Hummel, before adding that the behaviour of the judge, who was dealing with the case at the time, Laurence Rittenband, "sends chills down the spine".
According to him, judge Rittenband -- since deceased -- is said to have spoken with one of the prosecutors, who told him that Roman Polanski deserved prison, before passing sentence -- constituting a serious error in procedure.
This discussion had been revealed in the documentary "Roman Polanski: wanted and desired", the words coming straight from the prosecutor in question, David Wells.
However, Mr. Wells had eventually declared that he had "lied" to the author of the documentary at the end of September.
In the event of the court's refusal to abandon proceedings, Mr. Hummel called for a trial to be held, which would allow him to present evidence to back his arguments.
The Prosecution, for its part, has re-iterated its argument, already formed in the first instance, that no abandonment of the charges could be seriously looked at while Roman Polanski did not present himself in court.
The 76-year-old filmmaker had fled the United States before his sentence had been passed for "unlawful sexual relations" with a 13-year-old minor.
He has not set foot in the United States since.
The deputy prosecutor for Los Angeles County, Phyllis Asayama, therefore declared that Roman Polanski "must be present at the hearing".
For this case, are we trying to send the message, not just to (Roman Polanski) but also other defendants, that it is ok to flee? asked Mrs. Asayama.
In her view, the filmmaker "is asking a favour from the court, while at the same time showing disregard for its authority".
One of the three judges -- who now have 90 days to return their verdict -- has also emphasised "that there are other alternatives to fleeing".
Mr. Hummel was not the only one to request that proceedings against Roman Polanski be abandoned.
The lawyer of Samantha Geimer, the victim, also called once again for an end to the proceedings.
Reminding that her client can no longer stand to be harassed with every resurfacing of the Polanski case, she added: "No one in this room can claim that this was a just procedure.
Thirty two years is enough".
Roman Polanski was arrested on the 26th of September in Switzerland on an American warrant.
After more than two months behind bars, he was put under house arrest at his chalet in Gstaad, pending his possible extradition.
Wall Street closes without momentum, slowed by a strengthening dollar
The New York Stock Exchange closed with no particular heading on Friday, in a market torn between better than expected indicators in the United States and a strengthening dollar: the Dow Jones gained 0.63% but the NASDAQ dropped 0.03%.
According to final closing figures, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by 65.67 points to 10 471.50 points, whereas the NASDAQ, with a technology predominance, fell by 0.55 point to 2 190.31 points.
The wider Standard & Poor's 500 has itself advanced by 0.37% (4.06 points) to 1 106.41 points.
Frankly, the market is very calm, observes Mace Blicksilver of Marblehead Asset Management.
It remains within a narrow margin; trading volumes have become very weak, and I think that this will remain the case until the end of the year.
The trend was supported by the publication of better than expected economic indicators, which "have contributed to improving market opinion in relation to the robustness of the economic recovery", summarised Charles Schwab's analysts.
In the United States, retail sales have increased by 1.3% in November, for the second month in a row, and far more than predicted.
Moreover, the confidence of American consumers has clearly bounced back in December, to 73.4 against 67.4 the previous month, according to preliminary estimates from Michigan University's index.
The indices have, however, been slowed by a renewed rise of the dollar, to a new two-month high against the Euro, which "puts downward pressure on the sectors that are sensitive to the economic situation", explained Owen Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank.
Technology securities have thereby lost some ground.
The bond market has fallen.
Treasury 10-year bond yields have grown to 3.540% against 3.482% on Tuesday evening, and 30-year bond yields are at 4.497% against 4.492% the previous evening.
Miss World pageant once again in South Africa
After a month-long trek across South Africa, the 112 candidates for the title of Miss World are preparing to enter the final straight on Saturday to make their dream come true: to be voted the most beautiful woman in the world in front of a billion television viewers.
During this grand beauty congregation organised for the second consecutive year around Johannesburg, five of them have already landed their tickets to the semi-final.
Miss Japan, Eruza Sasaki, Perla Beltran Acosta of Mexico, Mariatu Kargbo of Sierra Leone, Kaiane Aldorino from Gibraltar, and Yanbing Ma from Canada have been elected Miss World Sportswoman or also Miss World Top Model during their African stay.
It was a real whirlwind.
To visit beautiful cities like Port Elizabeth, Durban, and Cape Town is extraordinary.
I saw so many things and I have so much new experience, said Miss of Sierra Leone.
This competition, which is taking place in South Africa for the ninth time, will be transmitted live on Saturday from Midrand, north of Johannesburg, starting at 17:00 (15:00 GMT).
I could not have dreamed of a better country to award my crown.
The experience was fascinating.
I am pleased to have been able to live it twice, points out Miss World Ksenia Sukhinova in the heat of the southern summer.
For the young Russian, her second visit to South Africa has been made memorable by the many talks with candidates and the re-discovery "of landscapes in this country that take your breath away".
After a month of galas, rehearsals, press meetings, and safaris, the Miss candidates are concentrating on the competition.
The Indian Pooja Chopra hopes to follow in the footsteps of Priyanka Chopra, elected in 2000 and present at this vote, as well as those of Aishwarya Rai in 1994, both of whom have become stars of Bollywood.
It is the dream of every woman to be crowned the most beautiful woman in the world, but it is not all about appearance.
We are ambassadors for our countries and I want to return home with the crown, asserts Miss India with a broad smile.
According to organisers, music and dance will mark this 59th edition.
Candidates will parade in traditional outfits and, of course, in swimsuits.
The show will be presented by Angela Chow, an ethnic Chinese television presenter, the South African ex-beauty queen Michelle McLean, and an officer from the Miss World Committee, Steve Douglas.
South Africa showed that it could welcome the world with a warmth and pride that is difficult to better, affirms Julia Morley, president of Miss World.
The candidates went on safari, as they did last year, visited the famous township of Soweto, but this time by bicycle, and sampled the local cuisine.
Exceptionally, they also met the South African president, Jacob Zuma, who shook their hands.
Unusual for a head of State, notes Miss Sierra Leone.
Their most beautiful memory will probably be the World Cup draw in Cape Town (Southwest) for football in June 2010, a way for the country to promote the event a little more.
I have mixed with people I never thought I would be able to approach.
I will without a doubt be returning for the 2010 World Cup, enthuses Miss Italy, Alice Taticchi.
The news about Johnny Hallyday "is very positive", according to son David
The news about Johnny Hallyday "is very positive", assures his son, David, on Friday arriving at the airport in Los Angeles, where he was to be by his father's bedside, who has been in hospital for several days.
The news is very positive.
He is very strong, all will go well, declared his son, David Hallyday, to the Press on leaving the plane from Paris just after 13:00 local time (21:00 GMT).
The singer's son had a relaxed air and assured that he would be heading "without delay" to the Cedars-Sinaï hospital in Los Angeles, where Johnny Hallyday was admitted on Monday for an infection stemming from a slipped disc operation on November 26th in Paris.
The singer was "put in an artificial coma tonight in Los Angeles for comfort reasons, to prevent his suffering, and to allow his treatment to be administered", indicated the press service.
Johnny Hallyday had already been put in an artificial coma by doctors at the Cedars-Sinaï hospital in Los Angeles, where he had been admitted on Monday for an infection stemming from a slipped disc operation on the 26th of November in Paris.
The singer had to be operated on in the night from Wednesday to Thursday because of significant lesions resulting from the operation.
His wife, Laeticia, went on Friday morning to the Los Angeles French High School, where their daughter Jade is enrolled, to attend a school performance, observed an AFP photographer.
The Head of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Yves Catoné, announced that he would travel to see the singer in Los Angeles on Monday.
The producer vehemently brought into question Dr. Stéphane Delajoux, the neuro-surgeon, who operated on the singer on the 26th of November at the International Clinic of Parc Monceau in Paris.
They told us it was carnage.
The Los Angeles surgeons said they were aghast, declared Mr. Camus.
I heard talk of possible legal proceedings to come, he said.
Jean-Claude Camus reckoned that Johnny Hallyday had "left far too soon for Los Angeles, with the Paris surgeon's authorisation".
I had this doctor on the phone in person, and he assured me that there was no problem for this trip, which shocked me, as I, myself, have had two slipped discs, he added.
Shortly before, on RTL, he had indicated that the singer apparently "had left without a drain or anything", following his Paris operation.
Dr Stéphane Delajoux is well-known in artistic circles.
He had operated on the actress Marie Trintignant in Vilnius a few days before her death at a clinic in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he practiced at the time.
In 2007, he had also operated on the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg to resorb a haematoma, following a cerebral haemorrhage.
However, he is also a doctor with a notorious reputation, convicted by the Law on several occasions, in cases of medical liability, as well as for fraud and tax evasion.
Olivier Metzner, the lawyer for the Doctors' governing body, accused him of being "a man without scruples", who "regularly" has to answer to the governing body's Council, and who is "far from reputable".
After several days of silence, Dr. Stéphane Delajoux made an announcement on Friday through his solicitor, David Koubbi.
The latter indicated that the operation had "gone perfectly well" and that post-operation tests returned "normal".
The operation "was not haemorrhagic and therefore did not required a drain to be fitted", he added.
In any case, the singer's tour, for whom health problems have been multiplying since the summer, would seem to be on hold.
Clearly, resuming the tour on the 8th of January [in Amiens] as planned seems very soon, declared Mr. Camus.
The UDF alliance speaks out and orders the New Centre party to stop using its acronym
The UDF alliance, controlled by François Bayrou's Democratic Movement (MoDem), reacted on Friday to the buy-out bid made by the New Centre's president, Hervé Morin, for the acronym of the former Giscardian party, by ordering him not to use it under any circumstances, threatening legal action otherwise.
Hervé Morin announced publicly that he intended to recoup the UDF acronym, ruling that François Bayrou was not worthy of its political heritage, having extended his hand to the Left.
The Defence Minister, whose party is partner to the UMP, had in fact planned to confirm this strategy on Saturday before the NC's national Council.
In support of his move, he received backing from deputy Hervé de Charette (ex-UMP switched to NC), who claims his ownership of the UDF trademark by being the first to record it in 2004 at the National Industrial Property Institute.
However, Friday evening, the UDF Alliance's office, headed by François Bayrou's friends, who do not plan to give up possession, has come out of silence to launch an attack against the deputy, ordering him not to use the acronym, and to transfer the trademark's ownership to them, otherwise threatening legal action.
In the last few days, you have stepped up the number of declarations indicating that you were going to propose political action to regain the UDF acronym, the alliance writes in a communication signed by 19 out of the 24 members of the office, including François Bayrou and Marielle de Sarnez from the MoDem, as well as the senator, Jean Arthuis, from the centre Alliance.
You also thought it acceptable to include in your campaign literature and on your website's homepage the movement's name, the New Centre, and to follow it with the slogan: today's UDF, remark those who signed the document.
As you are well aware, you have no right to the use of the acronym, explains the UDF's office, requiring that the NC remove "immediately any mention of the UDF name from all material, and from (their) internet site".
He also requests that Hervé de Charette "transfer ownership of the trademark to its rightful owners".
If you failed to do this, the matter would be referred to the courts to ensure that the Law and the legitimate rights of UDF members were respected, warn the document's signatories.
In their communication, they specify that the UDF "is a political movement in its own right since 1978" and points out that Mr. Morin and his friends had "made their choice" to leave him in 2007 "to create a competing movement, as others had done in 2002, to establish the UMP".
The New Centre, according to them, has therefore no right to the use of the UDF acronym (Union for French Democracy).
They also remind that the UDF's last assembly voted in 2007 for its union with the MoDem for three years, and for the creation of an office charged with defending "the material and moral interests" of the body founded by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
As for Hervé de Charette, the office continues, "when he registered the trademark", he had "not been a UDF member for three years", but, in fact, with the UMP.
He is profiting in a scandalous and fraudulent manner from the absence of a registered trademark for the UDF acronym by taking it to benefit his own account.
This incident is turning into a major offence, they state, before adding ironically about the NC's strategy that: "in our opinion, in politics as in real life, it is more dignified to make one's own name rather than try to become somebody by fraudulently acquiring a name we have no right to".
Liliane Bettencourt Case: François-Marie Banier will be tried for "abuse of weakness"
The Nanterre tribunal decided on Friday to bring François-Marie Banier to trial to ascertain whether, as the daughter of billionairess Liliane Bettencourt is accusing him, he profited from the eighty-year-old's weakened mental state to despoil her of some of her fortune.
The photographer, 62, known for his photographs of the stars, will be tried on the 15th and 16th of April 2010 for "abuse of weakness", an offence that carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a 375 000 euro fine.
The decision confirms that there will indeed be a trial in this case, which is turning into a worthy family saga involving one of the richest families in France, where mother and daughter are torn apart, while at the reins of the L'Oréal cosmetics empire.
However, the 15th Magistrate's Court has also ordered a combined expert medical opinion of Liliane Bettencourt, aged 87, to be led by three doctors.
The heiress and principal shareholder of L'Oréal has always refused to undergo such an exam, at least not with the conditions proposed by the Nanterre court at the time of the investigation.
The doctors nominated on Friday will have to submit a report by the 10th of March, 2010, stating, in particular, whether Liliane Bettencourt could have found herself in a weakened state and at which times.
I think she will submit to it.
I will talk with her about it, declared Mrs. Bettencourt's lawyer, Georges Kiejman, at the exit of the hearing.
For his part, the lawyer of Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, Olivier Metzner, congratulated himself on the court's decision.
It is excellent news (…) The expert opinion will prove that he (Mr. Banier) manipulated this elderly lady, whom we should be protecting, he affirmed.
For two years, Liliane Bettencourt's daughter and only child has engaged in taking to court the case against François-Marie Banier, the photographer and all-round artist, whom she accuses of profiting for years from her mother's weakness to obtain a billion euros in donations, in the form of cheques, life insurance contracts, or works of art.
As far as she is concerned, Liliane Bettencourt has always refuted having been manipulated by the photographer, who she considers a long-standing friend.
As the court on Friday was due to examine the admissibility of the case brought by Mrs. Bettencourt-Meyers, the pleas from the lawyers at times turned proceedings into an unveiling of intimate family matters.
Thus, Liliane Bettencourt's lawyer cited three letters sent by his client (in 1999, 2003, and 2005) to her solicitor, in which she expressed having suspicions about Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers' husband.
In the letter dated from 2003, Liliane Bettencourt added, according to the lawyer: "could you explain to my daughter that I wrote to Mr. Banier once or twice a day for fifteen years."
I have been unable to speak to Françoise since her marriage".
For its part, the Court in Nanterre has again ruled that the plaintiff's claim was not admissible for action, all the more so after a judge supervising guardianship refused her request in the past few days to initiate a procedure allowing legal protection for her mother.
Liliane Bettencourt "is fully capable of participating in legal proceedings, she is not under protection and does not have a guardian.
Nobody needs to act on her behalf", affirms the Public Prosecution's representative, Marie-Christine Daubigney.
The Court determined that it would make a ruling once the case concerning the admissibility of Mrs. Bettencourt-Meyers's claim had taken place.
A management revolution or the end of competitive intelligence?
If nothing changes in the way France's biggest enterprises are run, our fight for the development of competitive intelligence will have been in vain…
For over ten years, the Management's attitude in large enterprises towards their employees reflects the position of enterprises and their consumers before the marketing revolution: employees should be made to adhere to "values" dictated from above just as it was in the past, when products dreamed up by the factory's engineers were dropped on the consumer.
By placing the consumer at the heart of the organisation, the marketing revolution put the strategies for conquering markets the right way up again... even if authoritarian temptation to impose products, which are disconnected from the preferences of the consumer tend to resurface regularly!
A demobilisation of employees can lead to terminal demoralisation.
Suicides at France Telecom, PSA and Renault are only the visible part of a far more widespread problem that affects management employees in particular.
Demobilisation gravely compromises the development of an organisation's strategic functions, notably in R&D, but even more so in competitive intelligence.
Indeed, CI "demands from all sides concerned (...) a proactive approach and a long-term vision"; it requires from employees a commitment that is entirely contradicted by authoritarian management methods.
For this reason, we are calling for a management revolution, which would consist in placing employees at the centre of an enterprise's concerns alongside consumers.
The very relative usefulness of internal opinion surveys
Will internal opinion surveys - such as those given by Orange to its employees - stimulate this revolution in managerial methods?
Unfortunately, I fear it will not.
- Firstly, because I have witnessed that, when faced with a new situation, any organisation will arrive, after many detours, at doing chiefly... what it always does!
- Next, because authoritarianism - a disease of power - grows proportionally with the magnitude of its own failures.
- Finally, because most leaders have a simplistic view of human behaviour.
Coming from the top technical educational establishments, they have a mechanistic interpretation of psychology.
They adopt, for intellectual convenience, the old behaviourist theory, which has recently been re-awakened by the "neuro-sciences" of the United States that have been widely and silently diffused by business institutes and the Media.
In this way, by suggesting that "levers" [sic] can be pulled for the commitment of management staff, a recent Ipsos survey published on Figaro.fr cradles leaders into a position of mechanistic governance, which is unsuited to the world of today.
Identify and quantify mobilisation factors
In contrast, the management revolution needed for the correct functioning of modern enterprises supposes the adoption of a finalistic vision of human behaviour.
It consists in the integration, within all management strategies and practices, of a fundamental admission: for employees, commitment to the enterprise is only possible if it is clearly perceived as a means to realising a part of their dreams, their ambitions, and their plans.
Currently, only studies produced through motivation factor analysis adopt the concept of employee motivation.
These studies have demonstrated that they form a view of their organisation based on a pre-determined consensus of opinion, which allows them, by means of this perceived view, to evaluate what it offers them to achieve their life plans.
By identifying and gauging these mobilisation factors, enterprise leaders can control, predict and anticipate their "social performance" and turn their management of resources "the right way round".
They thereby create a favourable terrain for the concerted development of robust and effective competitive intelligence.
Oslo speech: the "just war" earns Obama praise from the Right
The American Right paid tribute to the speech given the previous evening in Oslo by Barack Obama, satisfied that the Nobel Peace Prize 2009 had defended the concept of a "just war" against the enemies of the United States.
The conservatives, who had mocked the awarding of the Prize to Obama on October 9th, were this time giving the presidential speech their applause, lead by Sarah Palin, former vice-president candidate during the 2008 elections.
I liked what he said, declared Mrs. Palin, right-wing champion of the Republican party, to the daily newspaper USA Today, adding that she had herself touched on the topic of war that is "sometimes necessary" in her memoirs, which have just been published.
War is, of course, one of the last things, which Americans want to get involved in, but it is necessary.
We must stop these terrorists over there, she affirmed.
Mr. Obama, who has inherited the two wars from his predecessor, George W. Bush, in Iraq and Afghanistan, applied himself on Thursday in Oslo to justifying resorting to force, a way to explain his decision to send 30 000 additional troops to Afghanistan nine days earlier.
Another one of Mr. Obama's opponents, Newt Gingrich, concluded that the president had done "very good work" in Oslo.
I found his speech to be really very good, approved the former Speaker in the House of Representatives, who had particularly valued the mention that "Evil does exist in the world" in the presidential discourse.
From certain viewpoints, I found this speech to be of historic significance, declared Mr. Gingrich, during an interview for the radio show "The Takeaway".
The former representative, considered by some a possible candidate for the Republican inauguration of the 2012 presidential elections, was delighted to see "a president from the Left" remind the Noble Committee members "that they would not be free and in a position to award a peace prize if resorting to force had not been an option".
For Michael Gerson, a former writer for George W. Bush and re-converted columnist for the Washington Post, Mr. Obama has given "a very American speech".
As well as presenting himself as a "world citizen", as "he always does", "he spoke like an American President", reminding Europeans "that they live in a security bubble, which they did not create and they are doing little to preserve", declared Mr. Gerson.
Among the few unconvinced right-wingers, a hawkish character from the Bush era, the former UN ambassador, John Bolton, described the speech as "drab, turgid, and uninspired" on the National Review Online's website.
To the president's left, the democratic representative Dennis Kucinich was alarmed to see Barack Obama justify resorting to force.
When we wrap war inside the notion of justice, the massacre of innocent people can easily be justified, he warned.
Centre-left Press nevertheless remained full of praise for the president.
The Los Angeles Times, still of the opinion that the Nobel Prize had been prematurely awarded to Mr. Obama, described his address as "a blockbuster", even for a speaker that is known for his talent.
The Oslo speech "should serve as a roadmap for guiding international decisions made on conflicts, poverty and oppression", enthused the Californian newspaper.
Mr. Obama "made the speech that was needed", reports the New York Times, judging it "both sombre and edifying".
Road freight: three marathons for one agreement to save Christmas deliveries
Following three marathon sessions of negotiations, transport unions and the TLF, the only employer's organisation to have remained to the end, reached an agreement on Friday evening that will end the strike order and the threat on Christmas deliveries.
During the signing on Friday evening, Transport Secretary Dominique Bussereau was "delighted" with the agreement after several rounds of negotiations on Wednesday morning.
After a second night of discussions, negotiating sides left in the small hours with the hope of a swift signing of the agreement's text later in the morning.
And this, despite three employers' organisations (FNTR, UNOSTRA, OTRE) having slammed the door.
However, it took a further six hours from a meeting that started at 11am for everyone to be in agreement, and for the text to be signed at 6pm.
The disagreement "would have been very damaging for the companies" and "it looked like it might threaten the end of year festivities", Mr. Bussereau stated.
The document allows for a 4% increase in salaries for the lowest ones (in local and regional road transport), and a 2.9% increase for higher ones (international transport).
Hourly rates, for those on lower pay, "go from 8.72 euros to 9.06.
It is not much, but we have come a long way, explains Patrice Clos (Worker's Union).
This evening we will give the order to our campaigners not to form blockades or picket at delivery depots.
There may, however, always be a few difficult ones, who remain uncooperative, he added.
Philippe Grillot, president of the TLF, paid tribute to "a good agreement", even if it was "difficult to concede the increases on the higher salaries given international competition".
According to him, the increases will be of the order of 170 euros per month for the lower salaries and from 100 to 120 euros for the higher ones.
It is a common sense agreement, respecting the workers, declared Maxime Dumont (CFDT), while Thierry Douine (CFTC) praised it as "a historic agreement".
As for Richard Jaubert (CGT), he described it as "an acceptable compromise".
The agreement also allows for a rise in travel expenses of 3% and maintaining current general road transport conditions for the first half of 2010, which will give room for dealing with the questions of a 13th month's pay and the modernisation of the collective labour agreement.
Mr. Bussereau reminded everyone that "a 100 million euro cut in employers' charges" had been the subject of a Government amendment in corrective financial legislation for 2009, voted on in the night from Thursday to Friday at the National Assembly.
The Government will ask that the Senate vote on it "in the same timeframe".
The signature from the TLF allows the agreement to be applied in the first instance to all the companies that are members of the organisation, and secondly, to the whole profession, subject to it being extended by the Minister for Labour.
It will be done "in a very short time", assures Mr. Bussereau.
The opposing employers' organisations can only delay the process.
The FNTR called it a "sham", because the 100 million euros "had already been promised to the sector in compensation for part of the carbon tax".
The Transport Secretary urgently forced us to the negotiating table, not with the aim of a two-sided review, but to avoid upsetting the turkey-eaters this Christmas, deplores the UNOSTRA.
For the OTRE, the agreement risks "digging the graves of a large number of the sector's SMEs over the next 12 months".
RER A: disruptions this weekend, unions unhappy with RATP proposals
Disruptions on the RER A, the largest urban public transport link in France, are set to continue over the weekend, as a meeting on Friday, the second day of strikes, between the unions and the RATP management have left their pay demands unmet.
Saturday and Sunday, on this critical weekend of shopping before Christmas, trains will only run between the hours of 10am and 8pm, with just one out of two trains running on the central stretch (between La Défense and Nation), and one out of four outside the central section.
The operation of the interchange with the SNCF will be suspended at Nanterre Préfecture, forcing passengers to change trains.
The Galeries Lafayette, who welcome 200 000 customers every day, were delighted by the fact that "the RATP is making efforts to assist the department stores".
The RER A runs through the Parisian conurbation from West to East.
The RATP segment runs from Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Nanterre to Boissy-Saint-Léger and Marne-La-Vallée.
On Friday, approximately one out of two trains ran at peak times, with almost no trains at all during off-peak periods, as planned.
As on Thursday, there was no trouble with crowds on the platforms, as Parisians had gotten themselves organised.
Thus, in the early hours, the station at Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines) was far less busy than usual, notably because of the absence of school and college students.
At Boissy-Saint-Léger (Val-de-Marne), Jack Nbakina, a 29-year-old engineer, explained that he had gotten up "an hour and a half earlier, to be sure of arriving on time".
The Saint-Lazare station did not see any overcrowding, the SNCF stated, having planned for additional support staff and police officers.
The RER A trains operated by the SNCF to or from Cergy-Le-Haut were departing or arriving from Saint-Lazare station, where they link with the metro.
New general meetings for strikers will be held on Saturday and Sunday, which will review the results, seen as "poor" by the unions, of a meeting with Management held on Friday afternoon.
The RER's director proposes to negotiate a specific agreement for the RER A on all aspects, working hours, career paths, etc…
It is not what the drivers, who are demanding the bonus they are owed, want, according to Thierry Garon (SUD).
The RATP has even put its offer of bonuses on hold, the CGT complained, pointing out that the management "could not be bothered to resolve the problem, whereas road transport and the SNCF both have it done and dusted".
A new meeting is scheduled on Monday for "a wider review of the conditions of practice for the profession", the RATP elaborated.
Prompting the unions to remark further that the company "did not care about its weekend passengers".
During the morning, some 150 drivers invaded a works council meeting at the company's seat in Paris.
That is when Management, which had until then refused to enter into any discussions during the strike, had suggested the meeting "in a motion to calm the situation".
The dispute is threatening to extend to RER B on Tuesday, following the submission of an advance notice by the UNSA and the Indépendants groups.
The unions are demanding a bonus of 120 euros (UNSA) to 150 euros, with a 30-euro variable band (CGT, FO, CFDT, SUD, Indépendants) and are complaining of the deterioration in work conditions on this line serving a million passengers every day.
The RER drivers, all in the later stages of their careers, are paid a gross salary of 2200 to 2700 euros as well as 600 to 650 euros of bonus pay for split shifts, Sundays and holidays.
Turkish justice bans the pro-Kurd party, a decision laden with consequences
The Turkish Constitutional Court returned a verdict on Friday for the dissolution of the country's main pro-Kurd party, a decision which was immediately followed by angry protests within the Kurdish community in the Southeast of the country and in Istanbul.
The decision is likely to greatly complicate the Government's work, as it has just recently made positive gestures towards the Kurdish community in an attempt to resolve a 25-year old conflict.
The Party for a Democratic Society (DTP) was disbanded because it had become "a hotbed of damaging activities against the State's independence and its unfailing unity", the President of the Court, Hasim Kiliç, declared to the press at the end of four days of deliberations.
The decision was taken unanimously by the 11 judges, while a majority of seven was sufficient to force the disbanding, Mr. Kiliç indicated, adding that 37 of the party's representatives, including its president, Ahmet Türk, and the deputy, Aysel Tugluk, have been banished from political life for the next five years.
The judge also announced the lifting of the parliamentary immunity, from which both Mr. Türk and Mrs. Tugluk benefited, and the confiscation of party assets by the Treasury.
The DTP occupies 21 seats in Parliament (out of 550).
Its leaders had warned prior to the verdict that the representatives would leave Parliament rather than take their seats as representatives with no affiliation.
The decision was taken following proceedings launched in 2007 by the prosecutor of the Appeal Court, Abdurrahman Yalçinkaya, who accuses the DTP of obeying "directives" from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered to be a terrorist organisation by Ankara and in many countries.
Many observers believe the DTP serves as a legal political shop window for the PKK rebels.
The party maintains, however, that it has "no organic links" with the PKK, but refuses to recognise it as a terrorist organisation and is calling for the Government to open negotiations with it.
The court's verdict comes at a time when the Government has extended its hand to the Kurdish community by proposing a series of measures, reinforcing its rights in an attempt to quash Kurdish support for the PKK and put an end to the conflict.
DTP leaders had stated that a dissolution of the party could lead to renewed tensions in the Anatolian Southeast, where a great number of protests against the terms for the detention of the PKK's head, Abdullah Öcalan, have degenerated into clashes with police in the last few weeks.
As soon as the Law made its announcement, a thousand protesters gathered before the DTP's buildings in Diyarbakir, the Southeast's main city, populated mainly by Kurds.
Police forces fired tear-gas grenades and used water cannons, as demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and stones with slings.
Around a hundred people also demonstrated in Istanbul.
Following the verdict, Mr. Türk declared that the Law's decision would "deepen the despair".
Turkey cannot resolve this [Kurdish] issue by banning a party, he told the Press.
The Government, a party rooted in Islamic influences, also condemned the decision.
We are opposed on principle to the closing down of parties.
It does not solve anything, declared the Energy Minister, Taner Yildiz.
This decision puts a blowtorch to the Government's democratic olive branch, comments political analyst Ahmet Insel.
Of course, we can expect a reaction from the PKK, he added.
On Thursday, the PKK claimed responsibility for an attack that killed seven soldiers in the North of Turkey three days earlier, one of the bloodiest in the last few months.
The snow can come
A really hard, frosty winter, that is what Wolfgang Brauburger is wishing for.
Not because he wants to make a laughing stock of people, says the the head of the FES winter road maintenance service.
But so that his employees can try out and learn every facit of their vehicle's technology.
This may be the case for the first time this weekend, according to meteorologists.
More than 330 employees and 120 vehicles are ready to take care of the snow and ice.
Here, the FES is proceeding according to a precise plan.
As soon as Frankfurt is blanketed in snow and the temperatures drop below zero, 20 so-called "A Routes" are serviced by large-scale distribution vehicles, explains Brauburger.
These include, for instance, main traffic roads and through roads, such as Neue Weg and Hanauer Landstrasse.
But also fire roads, public transport routes, pedestrian zones and roads with slopes, such as Atzelbergstrasse.
The service of the FES starts at three in the morning
The approx. 1,040 km would, if necessary, have to be gritted with wet salt, which has better adhesive properties, within no more than three hours.
That is why the FES start at three in the morning, "so the routes are free by the time commuter traffic starts".
It becomes difficult when it only begins snowing at 7.30 am.
Then we are faced with a problem, says the head of the winter road service, "because nobody is prepared to make way for the gritting vehicles".
Only then, unless it continues to snow, is it the turn of approach and connecting roads, which also include Rat-Beil-Strasse.
The last priority are quiet side and minor roads.
That is where complaints are made, knows Brauburger.
At five in the morning, the footmen of the FES set to work, and dangerous areas and passages are cleared.
The FES can usually not attend to all bike routes.
There is a special service in Frankfurt, which keeps an eye on the bridges, in particular from 10 pm until 4.30 am, says Brauburger.
As slippery ice quickly forms on them, the gritter sets off as soon as temperatures drop below two degrees centigrade.
Where required, it is also called out by the police.
The cradle of the dinosaurs
Tawa Hallae looked like many other carnivorous dinosaurs: The animal, standing two metres tall and with a length of 1.50 metres on two strong hind legs, had a longish skull with sharp, curved teeth, short arms with sickle-shaped claws and a long tail.
If the species had lived a couple of million years later, it would not be anything special.
But Tawa Hallae was one of the first dinosaurs with such physical features, reports Sterling Nesbitt and his colleagues at the University of Texas in Austin in Science magazine of Thursday.
The animal lived about 215 million years in what is today New Mexico, which was back then in a dry zone of the super continent Pangaea at the equator.
Tawa opens a new window to the early evolution of dinosaurs, says Nesbitt.
It reveals a great deal about the relationships, the spread, and the features of early dinosaurs.
In 2006 Nesbitt and the other palaeontologists started an excavation on the Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico.
"On some days we found dozen dinosaur bones, that is exemplary for sediments from the Triassic period," reports team member Randall Irmis of the Utah Museum of Natural History.
The scientists identified some bones quickly.
During the excavations, they collected the remains of a total of five creatures.
Find confirms theories on early dinosaur history
The name Tawa comes from the sun god of the Hopi Indians.
For Sterling Nesbitt, it is an exceptional find: "Dinosaur fossils from the Triassic period are extremely rare. Mostly, only individual fragments are found."
Other dinosaur researchers do not quite share this enthusiasm.
"This find is not particularly spectacular, but it does confirm some theories on the early history of dinosaurs." says Martin Sander of the University of Bonn, for instance.
According to current doctrine, the dinosaurs appeared for the first time about 230 million years ago.
But many of the oldest fossils are incomplete, for which reason the classification of these primal dinosaurs is highly contentious.
As such, the experts debated, for instance, when the saurians split into the three most important lines of development: the carnivorous theropods, which later included Tyrannosaurus rex, the Velociraptor and birds, the four-legged sauropods known as the "long necks" and their relatives, and the plant-eating Ornithischiae (bird-hipped saurians), which included, for instance, the Triceratops and Stegosaurus species.
According the analysis of Nesbitt and his colleagues, Tawa Hallae is a primal theropod.
It has an interesting combination of primitive and progressive properties, says Nesbitt.
On the skull of Tawa Hallae, for instance, the scientists found indications of air bags, as the descendants of the theropods, birds, have.
Thanks to the air bags, the breathing of birds is more efficient than that of mammals.
Tawa Hallae's bones of the spine were obviously also partly filled with air.
Tawa is the oldest and most primitive theropod with air bags, says Randall Irmis.
As the related line of the huge sauropods later also had air bags and lightweight bones, the joint ancestor of these two groups will probably have come up with this useful innovation.
At least three migration waves to North America
As the most primitive dinosaurs known to date lived in South America, the scientists come to the conclusion that the saurians appeared there first.
Accordingly, the three lines of development separated early on and spread from South America across all parts of the planet, which still formed a single land mass as the super continent Pangaea.
This theory is backed up by the fact that the team found two more theropods which are not particularly closely related along with the remains of Tawa Hallae.
The three cannot possibly descend from a common ancestor. So they must have migrated there, is the scientists argument.
We believe that there were at least three migration waves to North America, says Alan Turner of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, a co-author of the Science study.
But there are of course contradictions.
An older species, Silesaurus, which belongs to a sister group of the dinosaurs, lived in what is today Poland, says the Bonn-based palaeontologist Martin Sander.
He believes that a distorted picture may emerge simply because a high number of primitive dinosaur fossils have survived over the years, while there is hardly anything to be found on other continents.
How dinosaurs managed to develop from a relatively rare sidearm of the reptile tree to become the ruling tetrapod vertebrate of the Mesozoic, is still anybody's guess.
During the Triassic period, the dinosaurs still shared their habitat with a large amount of other reptiles, for instance with the ancestors of today's crocodile and pterosaurs and with numerous other saurians.
Towards the end of the Triassic period, the dinosaurs spread across the globe and developed many new species, while their relatives died out on the threshold from the Triassic to the Jurassic periods.
Success story did not last for ever
There are two theories to explain this switch, says Martin Sander.
There may have been a case of mass dying, which the dinosaurs randomly survived but not the other reptiles.
Or the dinosaurs were better adjusted, meaning that they were able to beat off the competition.
In any event, the success story did not last for ever.
150 million years later, a meteorite impact helped a group of animals, which had also developed back in the Triassic period and since lived in the shadows to blossom: the mammals.
Solidarity from Vienna to Sao Paulo
The list is long and the signatories international.
Professors of Toronto University are on it, as are those from the University of Cambridge, the University of Vienna and Berkeley in California.
Lecturers from Naples are included, from Quebec, Edinburgh, New York, Sao Paulo, Berlin or Bremen.
The vacation by the police of the Casino of the Frankfurt Goethe University is having repercussions throughout the world.
278 professors and teaching assistants of the Goethe University, but also of colleges from all over Germany, Europe and North and South America are showing their solidarity with the protesting students on the Westend campus.
In a statement written in both German and English, they "condemn" the police action initiated by the executive committee.
University president Werner Müller-Estler had the building seized by students and assistant professors on strike last week, because walls and objects of art had been besmirched.
Five students were hurt in the action.
The material damage, the signatories argue, does not justify "the forceful dissolution of self-organised courses of students and lecturers by a police commando unit".
The vacation represents "an inacceptable infringement" on the freedom of research and teaching.
The exclusive focus on vandalism serves "to deligitimise and criminalise the protest" and distracts from the matter.
The executive committee has refused to enter into the necessary discourse.
The teaching staff demand the immediate termination of the criminal prosecution.
The majority of the occupiers did not support the damage to property, read the statement.
Protest legitimised
The youth ranks of the Verdi Union and the German Association of Unions are also showing their solidarity with the students.
The protest is a legitimate expression of a growing concern for their own future, says Verdi State Youth Secretary Alexander Klein.
Hesse's Science Minister Eva Kühne-Hörmann (CDU), however, supported the approach of the university president and police.
We are grateful to the university president.
Destruction and occupation are absolutely inacceptable means, the said in a topical session on Thursday in the Wiesbaden parliament.
We have sympathy for the protest, but cannot accept vandalism, said the CDU parliament member Peter Beuth.
A different stance was taken by the opposition parties - the SPD, Greens and Left Party.
The CDU is taking besmirched walls as the pretext to criminalise the protest, said Janine Wissler (Left Party).
Instead of taking the students' arguments and students seriously, they organised this vacation.
The Left Party has filed an application calling on the Minister of Internal Affairs to report on the police action.
A new Silicon Valley
For many years, it was a secret city, inaccessible to Westerners.
Zelenograd, one of ten districts in the capital Moscow, was a highly guarded location for secret arms research during the Soviet Union.
Nowadays, the municipality with its 216,000 inhabitants 37 km from Moscow centre is regarded as Russia's Silicon Valley.
Important research and production facilities for micro and nano technology are located here.
In September 2008, representatives of Zelenograd made contacts with the Frankfurt science centre in Riedberg - with the university institutes and the companies of the Frankfurt Innovation Centre (FIZ).
There were several visits, and on Wednesday Zelenograd and Riedberg finally signed a "protocol for closer cooperation" in Frankfurt on Wednesday.
The Moscow Deputy Mayor, Yuri Roslyak, and Prefect Anatoly Smirnov of Zelenograd led the Russian delegation and Economic Affairs Head Edwin Schwarz signed on behalf of Frankfurt.
In 2010 representatives of the FIZ and small- and medium-sized companies focusing on research in natural science will travel to Zelenograd for a seminar.
Scientific exchange
The idea is to establish continuous scientific exchange.
But business relations are also being eyed.
Companies of the FIZ will have the option to get a foothold in the growing Russian market.
In turn, Russian businesses want to win orders in Germany.
Zelenograd is the headquarters to the most important Russian research institutes and companies.
These include, for instance, the Moscow Institute of Electrophysics, and major companies such as Sitronics and Rossiyskaya Elektronika.
The municipality was founded in 1958 as a so-called "socialist planned city" for arms research.
Zelenograd (verbatim "green city") got its name from the wooded hills where the research facilities are located.
A Stuttgart brake block
The impact and dimensions of Stuttgart 21 cannot be overestimated.
For its supporters, the project deals no less than with the "new heart of Europe".
Quite rightly so. S21 is far more than lowering a railway station, more than a gigantic construction project, which will plunge the city of the Baden-Württemberg state capital into a terrible chaos of building sites for a decade.
Stuttgart 21 warn born out of the spirit of the 1980s.
Terminus stations with rails ending in the middle of towns were regarded as fossils of the 19th century in terms of traffic technology, which acted like brake blocks to contemporary rail traffic, as it used to take an awful lot of time to shift engines from back to front.
Pull in, stop briefly, pull out - that's the plan.
And therefore, terminus stations were supposed to disappear: as in Frankfurt and Munich.
And in Stuttgart: a non-terminus station, which is approximately half way along the trans-European rail line between Paris and Budapest/Bratislava - hence the slogan of the "heart of Europe".
S21 is actually being built now, although the vision of the 1980s has no longer been compatible with the reality for years.
Even very ambitious planners have recognised that it is virtually unpayable to lower the stations in the capitals of Hesse and Bavaria.
Terminus stations also no longer have pulling in and out problems since the development of push-pull trains with railway traction units and control cabs at either end.
And still: Stuttgart 21 along with the new ICE route to Ulm is now being started.
State and municipal politicians have enforced it.
German Rail is participating, also because the risks of the Republic's biggest single infrastructure project will be borne by the taxpayer and not the state company.
As regards urban development, the development can be more or less justified.
An urban area is being created which, if the planners' computer-generated graphics are to be believed, will feature a lot of green.
For the rail traffic system, S21 is damaging.
The non-terminus railway station and the line extension are designed for passenger transportation, which - typical for the 1980s - is estimated to see huge growth.
At the time, there was no competition from no-frills airlines.
Contemporary traffic policy, however, should be prioritising the handling of freight transportation, as transport by rail far more environmentally friendly than by lorry on the road.
But the line to be built is not suitable for freight trains due to steep slopes.
More seriously, S21 also affects many other rail projects.
A good six billion euros are to be buried in the Swabian land.
That is the official figure.
Experts expect ten to fifteen billion to be more realistic.
One thing is for sure, the money will be missing at other nodes and bottlenecks in the network over the next decade.
A total of sixty major projects are on the list of the transport ministry.
One of the most important ones is to expand the some 180 km of the line through the Rhine valley.
Work has been continuing on the line in slow motion since 1987.
It is urgent to really put the foot down here.
But S21 will act as a brake block.
The Rhine valley line will become a bottleneck for international freight transportation: right in the heart of Europe.
Government reviewing verdict on airport
The state government did not decide in parliament whether it would appeal against the verdict of Hesse's Administrative Court (VGH) to ban night flights.
The CDU/FDP coalition has commissioned experts to review the 400+-page VGH verdict, said economics minister Dieter Posch (FDP).
The VGH in Kassel recently confirmed in writing that the state would have to reorganise the ban on night flights in the event of building the planned northwest runway at Frankfurt Airport.
According to the verdict, the granting of 17 flights between 11 pm and 5 am, as planned by the state government, is not compatible with the protection of the population from flight noise as specified by law.
The coalition must decide by 4 January whether it will appeal the verdict.
The opposition criticised this delay and called upon the government representatives to do without an appeal before the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.
SPD party leader Torsten Schäfer-Gümbel demanded the CDU and FDP to return to their promises to ban night flights, which they made before the election. Otherwise, this would have to be rated as the "breaking of a promise".
It is bloody difficult when you are allowed to keep one's word, said Greens leader Tarek Al-Wazir, alluding to the FDP election slogan "We keep our word".
Minister Posch rejected the accusation from Schäfer-Gümbel that the state government was trying to achieve their night flights by "skewing justice and playing tricks".
A detailed legal examination would take time.
The coalition does not want to operate on the basis of "a brief first impression".
We need a legally compliant decision, said Stefan Müller (FDP).
As presented by the opposition, his party never made any statements regarding the ban on night flights.
US banks repay state support
The crisis-hit US major banks are breaking free from their state shackles.
On Wednesday Bank of America repaid the support from the bank protection fund TARP in the amount USD 45 billion (nearly EUR 30 billion) in one go.
And, according to reports from US broadcaster CNBC, Citigroup is also planning to repay the state support.
The institutions thereby want to wiggle themselves free from the restrictions going hand-in-hand with the acceptance of the money, such as the limits on manager bonuses and the paying of high charges.
Bank of America had raised some USD 19 billion from investors through convertible loans.
The rest of the amount was taken from its own kitty, which was well filled through the sale of business units.
Bank head Kenneth Lewis extended his express thanks to the American taxpayer on Wednesday evening: The cash injection helped over a very difficult time.
The bank overstretched at the height of the financial crisis by taking over the investment bank Merrill Lynch.
Citigroup also plans to raise cash on the capital market to free itself from its liabilities with the state.
Already on Thursday, the US bank was able to announce a capital increase of some USD 20 billion, reported CNBC with reference to circles.
A Citigroup spokesman declined to comment.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley had already repaid their support in June.
A quick choice
It all happened a lot faster than expected.
Barely two weeks after the ZDF board of directors had pushed the acting editor-in-chief Nikolaus Brender out of office, the broadcaster is able to present his successor.
Yesterday evening, the committee wanted to vote on the appointment.
The favourite was Peter Frey, head of ZDF's main studio in Berlin.
But ZDF did not confirm this - officially, not to anticipate the process.
However, the plan not to further damage ZDF director Markus Schächter, if this suggestion were also not successful with the board of directors, will also have played its part.
Frey, Schächter's candidate, needs the support of nine of the 14 committee members.
The result of the vote was not known when going to press.
Two weeks ago Schächter had been unsuccessful at the board of directors with his suggestion to extend the agreement with Nikolaus Brender by another five years.
Only seven members voted for Brender, seven were against him. Brender's voting out was a severe blow to Schächter, albeit one to be expected.
Because the majority of the Union in the administrative board had signaled already weeks before the vote that they would not confirm Brender in office.
Roland Koch, the prime minister of Hesse, had organised the opposition to the editor-in-chief.
With the argument that ZDF's news broadcasts had lost viewers under Brender, he rejected a further term in office of the highly regarded editor-in-chief.
Until shortly before the election, there were therefore protests in which the exercising of political influence on the ZDF was castigated.
Most recently, 35 civil rights campaigners had even joined the debate and rated the actions of Koch to be in breach of the Constitution.
To no avail.
Personal details
Peter Frey was born on 4 August 1957 in Bingen.
He studied political and educational sciences and Romance studies.
He later worked for the Südwestfunk and the Frankfurter Rundschau.
In 1983 Frey moved to the ZDF, initially to the heute-journal.
Subsequent activities: From 1988 to 1990 personal officer of the editor-in-chief; in 1991/92 correspondent in Washington; until 1998 head and presenter of the Morgenmagazin; until 2001 head of ZDF foreign affairs; then head of the ZDF head studio.
The Greens announced after the voting out of Brender, who was voted journalist of the year by the sector paper Medium Magazin only on Wednesday, to press constitutional charges.
Koch's opponent on the board of directors, the Rhineland-Palatine prime minister Kurt Beck, explained last week that the states should amend the ZDF treaty to the extend that staff suggestions of the director cannot be blocked by a politically motivated majority.
However, Beck too ruled out any removal of party politicians from the boards of directors of the ZDF.
Brender's expected successor, Peter Frey, had recommended himself to the board of directors with a clever move - by harshly criticising the committee immediately after it voted out Brender.
Thanks to this proof of editorial independence, both Schächter without losing face and the board of directors were able to vote for his appointment as editor-in-chief, without being suspected of promoting a partisan to this post.
In party calculations, Frey is reckoned to be a left-leaning liberal anyway.
University courses to be cleared out
Partial success for students: After a year of educational strikes, the culture ministers of the states finally came around on Thursday: At a meeting of the Culture Minister and University Principals Conference, both parties agreed to improve the conditions of studying for bachelor and masters courses.
The students should, in the future, be in a position to master their studies.
In particular, they agreed to reduce the number of exams: Every module shall, as a rule, be completed with one single exam.
In addition, the students' workload shall be reviewed and "a realistic and acceptable extent" ensured.
Politicians and colleges also want to simplify the recognition of exams taken between the colleges inside and outside Germany.
The states undertake to organise more flexibly joint structural requirements for bachelor and masters courses.
State regulations deviating from this, shall not be imposed.
Less exams
Since the start of the student protests in June, culture ministers and university principals have been referring to the dictum of better studiability.
Now it is being filled with specific contents for the first time.
The so-called accreditation council has decided to, in part, dramatically reduce the number of exams: "Every module ends, as a rule, with an exam," states the 30-page paper, which is to newly govern the admission of courses in part.
With the "clear reduction of the examination load", explains accreditation council chairman Reinhold Grimm, "an undesirable development is to be stopped, which had a grave impact on studiability".
In addition, "studiability" is to be the core criterion for the organisation in the future.
Modules and contents "shall be strictly reviewed" as to whether "unnecessary constrictions on the students in their choice of
events" would be avoided.
The students are "entitled to be granted leeway allowing and promoting initiative".
The rules are to apply for the admission of new but also for the review of existing courses.
They need to be "reaccredited" every five years, which, however, means that it may take until 2015 until all courses have been reviewed.
Ten accreditation agencies throughout Germany oversee this, which report to the Accreditation Council set up by the states.
The culture ministers had "expressly" urged the states in October to influence the agencies in such a way that the number of subjects is not too large and the exams regime not too strict.
In some federal states, universities and colleges have already agreed on corresponding measures with the state ministries.
Rhineland-Palatine has promised additional funds for the further development of the Bologna process;so far, it is the only state to do so.
With this money, the colleges are, in particular, to set up tutor programmes and course consultations as well as strengthen exams and foreign offices.
The state and colleges plan to earmark 10 million euros for this.
In early 2010 the government wants to bring an amendment to the Universities Act before parliament.
According to it, only one exam should be necessary to complete a course model.
The course design is to become more flexible, while the recognition of past academic records at other universities is to become easier along with access to masters courses.
By the end of the coming year, all courses of the state are to be examined for their studiability.
The government and opposition had again argued over the study requirements in the state on Thursday.
On top of praise, there was also criticism for the decisions.
The federal board of the Young Socialist University Groups demanded the design of education policy should no longer take place "behind the closed doors" of ministers and university principals.
After the educational strike, at the latest, students should now also "have their say" as those affected.
The future academics received support from the president of the Conference of University Principals (HRK), Margret Wintermantel: "We need the experiences of the students," she said on Thursday at a meeting with the culture ministers, with whom the HRK was debating a joint reform paper.
The Education and Science Union (GEW) deemed the Bonn decisions to be not radical enough: It is demanding a legal claim, which would allow every graduate with a bachelor degree admission on a further masters course.
On the other hand, the states must ensure that for the current generation of bachelor students there are sufficient places on master courses with best-possible studying conditions, says GEW executive board member Andreas Keller.
The states must employ significantly more lecturers.
The culture ministers did, however, not issue a statement regarding free admission to masters courses.
More than a footnote to Herta Müller
Going in and out of Germany is nice, virtually no checks..." is the first line of a poem by the poet Werner Söllner, in which he describes in disturbing fragments a dissident's experience of arrival, who had gained freedom but simultaneously lost his language area.
Werner Söllner, born in Romania's Banat in 1951, initially worked as a German and English teacher in Bucharest and later as an editor in a children's publishing house, before he moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1982.
Söllner has won several literature awards, in 1993 he was awarded the legendary Frankfurt Poetry Readings at the Goethe University, and since 2002 he has been head of the Hesse Literature Forum in the Mouson Tower in Frankfurt.
He caused a major extra-literary stir last Tuesday during a conference in Munich, debating "German literature in Romania in the reflection and distortion of its Securitate files".
Clearly unsettled and embarrassed, Söllner read out a statement, in which he admitted before Romano-German writer colleagues, i.e. Richard Wagner, William Totok, Franz Hodjak and Helmuth Frauendorfer, his participation as an IM for the Romanian secret service, Securitate.
Jointly with some of those present, Söllner 1989 had received the German language award in 1989.
The recruitment attempts started gradually, first in 1971.
I am, Söllner concluded, "therefore someone, who did not put up enough resistance to the intimidation attempts of the Securitate."
The lyricist Werner Söllner is IM Walter.
Virtually at the same time as the awarding of the Nobel prize for Herta Müller and her unmatched literary discussion of the mechanisms of dictatorships, the literary scene and, in particular, the community of German authors with Romanian roots is being shocked by a case which reveals the dark spots and perfidy of a political system based on control and spying.
Werner Söllner is, inasmuch as can be said on the basis of the current knowledge, not only a perpetrator, but also a victim.
In his Securitate file, IM Walter played a part, said after Söllner's confession the literary scholar Michael Markel and referred to the positive influence IM Walter had for him.
He "boxed him out" in all points which were dangerous for him at the time, said Markel.
He has a moral need to make this statement.
Söllner's statement was in this form unexpected before this audience, although the confession of a former dissident and his collaboration with the Romanian secret service is not entirely surprising.
Germany was a cosy habitat for the Security spies, as Herta Müller had already written in July in the Zeit newspaper after reading her own file, 914 pages.
Those affected, one can assume, will have guessed and in some cases even known whose real name was behind the code names of Sorin, Voicu and, of course, Walter.
Contrary to the now very secure process of viewing Stasi files in Germany, the approach to the legacy of Securitate control is still very diffuse.
A systematic clarification has been undermined and hindered in recent years.
A National Council to Process Securitate Files (SNSAS), which is comparable to the Birthler Authority, was only set up in 1999, but the release of the files has been very slow.
A law regulating the administration of the files has only existed since 2005.
The fact that the influence of former Securitate members is still very big in Romania was proven after the announcement of the Nobel prize for Herta Müller by an interview, in which a former Securitate head from Timisoara spoke in derogatory terms of the prize winner.
They is psychotic, she was, after all, questioned more than once.
The infamy of power believed it could openly speak in the guise of freedom of speech.
The Söllner case does, as so often in connection with silent guilt, raise questions.
Why only now? Who fell victim? The level-headed reaction of the audience to Söllner's statement gives rise to the hope that a continuation of this chapter will be determined by the need for information than finger-pointing and shame.
Regarding the genesis of Herta Müller's oeuvre, who yesterday received the Nobel prize, it is more than a footnote.
The Champions League - a side dish
It seemed as if a well-dressed field sales representative was just coming from a very nice Christmas party, where a sports items manufacturer had handed out goodies, when the new VfB coach Christian Gross in the company of an orange plastic bag from the supplier got in a called out Mercedes C class at a quarter past midnight. ¨
The man with the striking bald head was still needing a chauffeur, as the town was still unknown to him.
Otherwise he could have driven himself - after all, no alcohol was involved and the 55-year-old was not drunk.
A nice evening, but tomorrow the work would continue.
Or only just get going.
In the words of the Swiss national, who had only just been employed three days before: "We may have reached the last sixteen," i.e. in the Champions League thanks to a 3:1 win over Unirea Urziceni from Romania, "but we mustn't be blinded by the success: We are in for a brutal fight against relegation."
The "far more important task" is scheduled for Sunday.
The Champions League performance will have to be repeated in the day-to-day job of the league.
And the again revealed weaknesses after the three quick goals by Marica (5.), Träsch (8.) and Pogrebnyak (11.) will have to be stopped.
Draw
The last sixteen of the Champions League (first leg 16/17 + 23/24 February/second leg 9/10 + 16/17 March) will be drawn in Nyon on 18 December.
The joy over the excellent start of the Babbel successor therefore remained mute.
Not only with the apparent saviour, who had given the unsettled Stuttgart professionals self-confidence, commitment and joy in playing in a short period of time.
"I addressed the players and told them that they must consider their strengths, and urged them to be more courageous," explained shrink Gross his so simple-sounding recipe for success, which no longer had any effect under therapist Babbel.
He set a certain magic alight, admitted Babbel fan Lehmann, "When now impulses are given in football, things happen which are considered to be impossible".
And Sami Khedira, who became the man of the match thanks to his dynamic approach having been injured for weeks, tried to describe the "phenomenon" with the proverbial "breath of fresh air" and the work approach of the new boss: "He is a man who takes drastic measures and demands discipline.
That is what we need in the current situation."
Under Babel this was clearly lacking.
VfB Stuttgart is still not out of the woods, warns sports director Horst Heldt
But VfB Stuttgart needs, more than anything, consistency.
Like Gross, players and managers were eager not to overestimate the win over the depleted and hopelessly overburdened defence of the Romanian guests.
They had also won in Glasgow before the horribly awakening three days later in Leverkusen in the 0:4, warned Khedira.
And sports director Horst Heldt pointed out that one aim of the season had been achieved, but that the other one was still a long way off.
We are not out of the woods yet.
The fact that Heldt was not in any mood to celebrate on his 40th birthday and even on the first home win for three months, had to do with the events of the weekend, which were revived in the form of a TV interview with goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, which was screened immediately before the match.
There are decisions which other people take and not Jens, was Heldt's response to Lehmann's harsh criticism.
He had accused the directors of a lack of leadership, who had decided to replace the manager under pressure from pubescent fans.
The fact that his day off after matches had been cancelled, was also rated by Lehmann as a sign of a lack of authority and resentment.
Lehmann's statements were "guided by pure egoism", replied Heldt and announced consequences for the keeper.
It is unlikely they will become friends for life.
But, after all, they agreed with everybody else that without the work done by the replaced team of coaches, the strong performance, both in terms of play and spirit, would not have been possible.
Babel and seine assistants had "a great share in the success", said Heldt and Lehmann unanimously - and the man with the plastic bag also agreed.
Worldcup heavyweight box match
Heated duel in Berne: Challenger Kevin Johnson kept provoking world champion Vitali Klitchko with words and gestures.
But after twelve hard rounds, the Ukrainian defended his heavyweight title according to the WBC.
The verdict of the judges was unanimous.
Hamburg - Vitali Klitchko remains heavyweight boxing world champion.
On Saturday night in Berne the 38-year-old champion (the WBC association version,) beat the American Kevin Johnson unanimously by points (120:108, 120:108, 119:109).
For Klitchko this was his third successful defence of his title since his comeback in October 2008.
Before, the Ukrainian had already twice been world champion of the WBO and WBC associations.
Unfortunately, the knock-out, which everybody had expected, did not materialise.
Klitchko extended his record to 39 wins in 41 professional matches, twice he had to give in due to injury.
Challenger Johnson saw his first defeat in 24 fights.
In front of some 17,000 spectators in the Berne Arena, the 2.02-metre tall Klitchko aimed to dictate the match predominantly with his left hitting hand.
But the eleven centimetres shorter Johnson, how had announced the end of the Klitchko era before the fight, kept evading the hits from the world champion, meaning that Klitchko was not able to apply a decisive blow with his dangerous right hand.
Overall, the passive Johnson did not do enough for a challenger and simply tried to survive the rounds.
Although he provoked Klitchko with words and gestures, his blows only rarely hit the world champion.
Nevertheless, he is only the second boxed since Timo Hoffmann in 2000 who fight the full twelve rounds against Klitchko.
The challenger had caused quite a stir in the Swiss capital before the fight.
He insulted Klitchko as "an ugly zombie", who "cannot do anything at all".
During weighing, the champion then allowed himself to be provoked to knock Johnson's sunglasses of his nose "to be able to see into his eyes."
Fourth victory after Klitchko's return
Klitchko came out on top in his fourth fight since his comeback on 11 October 2008.
After a sabbatical nearly four years, he beat the Nigerian Samuel Peter in Berlin and regained "his" WBC belt, which he had been forced to hand over before without a fight.
This year he then beat in the defence of his title the Cuban Juan Carlos Gomez from and Chris Arreola from the US in September.
I only took one blow in this fight, and am physically in very good shape, Klitchko said after the quick return to the ring.
His dream, however, remains the unification of all important titles in his family.
Brother Vladimir is world champion of the WBO and IBF associations.
But the WBA belt is worn by Britan David Haye after he dethroned the 2.13-metre tall Nikolay Valuev in November.
Haye had previously cancelled in the summer a fight planned to take place in September against Vitali Klitchko.
Apparently, his promotion company is now already planning a fight against Klitchko at London's Wembley stadium.
The Kunduz case
Frontal attack from the opposition: Green party head Jürgen Trittin calls defence minister Guttenberg a liar for providing false information on the Kunduz affair.
SPD and Left Party demanding a clarification from the Chancellor.
Hamburg/Berlin - After the recent revelations regarding the air raid of Kunduz, the opposition has accused defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) of deliberate deception.
The minister apparently made "knowingly false statements" regarding the fatal bombing of two tank trailers in September, said Green party head Jürgen Trittin on Saturday in the ARD news programme Tagesschau.
This is generally referred to as lying.
The order to kill was given in defiance of the rules of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan.
That is the substance of the report, which NATO had, which Mr. Guttenberg has read, said Trittin.
On Friday it was revealed that the attack was not only about destroying the abducted tankers, but also to specifically kill two Taleban leaders.
The US air strike ordered by the German Kunduz commander Colonel Klein, up to 142 people were killed of injured, according to the NATO inquiry report.
The Greens, SPD and Left Party Linke called on Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) on Saturday to address parliament immediately and to clarify what Guttenberg really knew about the event.
Merkel must clarify whether a strategy of targeted killing is part of the federal government's Afghanistan policy, and whether the Chancellor's Office, German army and intelligence service have approved this new strategy, demanded Jürgen Trittin and his Greens colleague Renate Künast.
Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm rejected the criticism resolutely.
The Chancellor's Office did not take any influence on specific missions of the German army in Afghanistan, he said.
On Saturday, doubts over the presentation by the ministry of the background of the dismissal of Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan and State Secretary Peter Wichert emerged.
According to information available to SPIEGEL, the two provided Guttenberg with correct and complete information on the background of the tanker trailer attack.
Officially, it was said that they had lied about the existence of the NATO reports and kept sensitive details from the minister.
From the entourage of the top official, however, it was said that the defence ministry had even been directed to several reports, including a two-page documents of the commanding colonel Klein and a report from the military police.
In the meantime, Wichert is supposed to have asked for clarification in a letter, reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
He has not received a response, it is claimed.
The ministry did not comment on the accusations on Saturday and referred to the fact that this would be clarified by the inquiry committee of parliament, which would be set up next Wednesday.
Dream worlds
Some see images and hear voices when they are awake which others do not hear or see.
Not only in the mentally sick and during intoxication with drugs do the borders between imagination and reality become blurred.
As long as this happens in sleep, things are fine.
When we are in dark rooms with our eyes closed, we can surrender to the wildest imaginations and fantasies without restraint.
But anybody experiencing dream-like conditions or seeing and hearing things other people do not when they are awake, is regarded in contemporary Western society as a madman or drug addict, or strange at the very least.
But such images and voices are formed not only in the mentally sick or during drug intoxication.
This is down to our imagination: The same neural processes which allow us to design houses, draw paintings or write novels can make the borders between dream, madness and reality become blurred.
Conscious conditions which are warped like dreams can occur in the most different forms, in the best case we call them visions, in the worst case madness.
Even if their triggers and effects may differ, the visions of mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the drug experiences of New Age prophet Carlos Castaneda, shaman detachment from reality conditions, psychoses and hallucinations can be traced back to similar processes.
Hallucination or delusions occur when the balance of the neural transmitters of the brain - predominantly dopamine noradrenaline, serotonin and acetylcholine - derails and the interaction of different brain segments is dysfunctional.
Complex hallucinations and delusional thoughts often occur during schizophrenic psychoses.
Gravity no longer has any power over him
The connection between madness and dream has occupied philosophers and doctors since ancient times.
Aristotle understood hallucinations to be a form of dream while awake, Wilhelm Griesinger, a founder of modern psychiatry, detected in 1861 a "huge similarity of madness and dreamlike conditions", for Sigmund Freud dreams were even "a psychosis, with all puzzles, delusions and misperceptions of such".
It is autumn 2001 when Henning T. turns into a comic figure.
His body is two-dimensional and excessively gaudy.
Gravity no longer has any power over him, he floats at the ceiling of the room.
He feels a kick.
Behind him are winged devilish figures with red, distorted faces, snarling.
They hunt him, kick him with heavy, flaming boots, throw him against walls, he feels the pain all over his body.
Loud, evil voices emerge from the walls and radio.
He can no longer stand them, the voices that abuse and insult him.
Henning T. pulls two cables out of the stereo system, ties them to a knot and attaches it to a hook on the ceiling.
He climbs on a speaker and puts the noose around his neck.
He jumps.
The noose becomes loose.
Let that be a lesson to you, the voices scream in an eardrum-tearing choir, "go to the clinic and get treated!"
Today, Henning T. is 40 years old, he has had six acute psychoses, the last one is two years back, the first nearly 20 years ago.
It was caused by LSD.
His diagnosis is a schizoaffective-paranoid psychosis, he is also a manic-depressive, he takes drugs against depression, the mania and schizophrenia.
He has learned to live with his illness, he has been married for three years.
In psychosis I experienced the worst fear and deepest desperation, he says.
The illusions are a brutal reality
About 1 per cent of the population suffers at least once in their lifetime from schizophrenia; in psychiatric clinics, it is treated with a frequency only second to depression.
In an acute schizophrenic psychosis, people affected can no longer distinguish between internal and external world, they reach an overexcited condition which can result in hallucinations, megalomania, paranoia or persecution mania.
Particularly common is the hearing of voices - voices which command, comment or involve in dialogue.
Visual hallucinations are also not rare.
The affected person can no longer distinguish important things from unimportant things, the brain can no longer filter out disturbing signals, the conscious is flooded by impressions.
Like dreams, a psychosis also opens the floodgates on a flood of ideas and phantasies, which stem from the deeper levels of the conscious.
The perception of reality in a psychosis is subject-centred, says professor Thomas Fuchs, senior physician at the Clinic for General Psychiatry at the University Clinic of Heidelberg.
Schizophrenic patients are at the heart of the events, the meaning of everything is directed to him.
At the same time, he finds himself in a passive role, he is, like in a dream, overwhelmed by the events can cannot affect them actively.
Schizophrenic patients therefore often feel threatened, controlled and manipulated.
A reality comparison is often not available to them, the illusions are a brutal reality, waking up is not possible.
To experience a hallucination once in your life
Contrary to dreams, says Fuchs, "the sensual and spatial structure of reality, as perceived during a psychosis, remains intact as a rule".
The delusional thoughts and hallucinations are based in reality, the distortion of the events takes place within a framework of reality.
Precisely why our brain plays such tricks on us, is still puzzling to scientists.
Extraordinary conditions can cause any person to lose his sense of reality for a short period of time, says Fuchs.
But not everybody will develop a psychosis.
There seems to be a genetic tendency to schizophrenia, but studies of twins have shown that genes are not the sole factor.
Scientists assume that patients have minimal brain damage.
We think that the neuronal maturing of the brain is disturbed in an early stage of development, through a virus infection in the mother during pregnancy, for instance, explains Fuchs.
But it remains a mystery how disturbances to the neuronal system comes about which also do not become manifest for many years initially.
Environmental impacts also play a part - stress or traumatic experiences can trigger psychoses if the disposition is given.
Hallucinogen drugs can trigger psychoses, as they interfere with the transmitter system.
When our brain runs hot
The mad thing is that psychotics suffer from their hallucinations and take expensive medication to get rid of them, others spend money on drugs to get the same, says Lübeck-based psychology professor Erich Kasten.
Whether these illusions are perceived to be pleasant or unpleasant is often only a matter of perspective.
Kasten has been collecting reports for ten years on hallucinations and delusions; last year he assessed his results in a book titled The unreal World in our Head.
Hallucinations are a typical by-product of psychoses, but also of a remarkably large amount of other diseases.
These include, on top of mental illnesses such as borderline or depression, also often diseases such as migraine, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's disease and traumatic brain injuries.
Surprisingly, even the brain of healthy people hallucinates under certain conditions.
Hallucinations, says Kasten, consist of memory fragments, which are often held back.
They occur when areas of the brain, where sensory perceptions are processed, are overactive or not sufficiently restrained; when our brain runs hot and also when there is a lack of stimulation.
Drugs can trigger this condition as much as brain damage or a psychosis.
But sensory deprivation, stress, lovesickness or other mental exceptional conditions too.
In more recent studies, up to one third of respondents claimed to have experienced a hallucination at least once in their lives.
In summer 2005 Sarah K. is 16 years old, she is living in a small town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and goes to the local secondary school.
Indeed, a perfectly normal girl.
It it were not for the images and voices.
During breaks, it can happen that a lanky boy with long dark hair approaches her.
When she answers him, her schoolmates look at her in surprise - nobody else sees or hears this boy.
They think the girls is a nutty daydreamer, but Sarah K. is not dreaming, she knows that much.
She is awake, she sees and hears this boy, just like she sees and hears the girl at the desk next to her.
She can even feel his presence, at least for some moments.
A pleasant feeling it is, she likes the boy.
Am I mad? she sometimes asks.
But she knows that this boy and the other illusions are not real and disappear again.
At night the appearances are usually frightening
The illusions are often a strain.
When she is sitting in the classroom, she sometimes cannot follow because the teacher is to her eyes and ears just introducing a new schoolmate, while she is explaining mathematical equations on the blackboard for everyone else.
At night the appearances are usually frightening.
When she is waiting for sleep in her dark room, which comes far too rarely and late, she often cannot distinguish whether she is awake or already dreaming, whether the images she sees, the grimaces or the girl with the bleeding cuts on her arms and legs is standing in front of her open or closed eyes.
Let me be, she screams at the figures.
She does not tell her parents or friends anything about this, they would think she was mad.
Autumn 2009. Sarah K. is 20 years old now.
She passed her A levels last year and is now living with her boyfriend.
A year ago the hallucinations stopped.
Since she contacted psychologist Kasten via the internet, she knows exactly that she is not mad.
Madness is also work of art born out of desperation
If someone is socially isolated or suffers from sensory deprivation, he will very probably suffer from hallucinations after some time, says Kasten.
I assume that the brain is not busy enough and creates its own entertainment.
Sarah K., a single child, was afraid of other children when she was small; she often played alone.
Her hallucinations started when she learned at the age of 13 that the man she called dad since she could think was not her natural father.
As during visual and acoustic hallucinations those areas of the brain become active which also process real impressions and sounds, it is often difficult for patients like Sarah K. to distinguish between illusions and reality. "Every experience," says Kasten, "takes place in the brain, reality is reproduced there.
Hallucinations are also images, which the brain creates, this is why they seem so real."
Illusions at night are also classified by Kasten as a form of hallucination.
The hallucinations of the healthy are not fundamentally different from those during an acute psychosis.
Contrary to schizophrene patients, mentally healthy people are able to identify illusions as unreal.
Kasten therefore advises his patients to appreciate hallucinations as a special ability.
Border between dream and hallucination
In our far too conscious-centred world, imaginary experiencing is often unfortunately pathologised, says Michael Schmidt-Degenhard, professor in Heidelberg and senior physician of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Florence Nightingale Hospital in Düsseldorf.
A psychosis is a severe, painful illness, but it also brings positive aspects, creativity - madness is also a work of art born out of desperation.
Schmidt-Degenhard has researched the so-called oneiroid experience, a particular form of conscious conditions which are warped like dreams.
Oneiroids are highly complex, detailed quasi dreams, which the person experiencing them believes are real and which he later cannot distinguish from being awake.
The oneiroid condition occurs in trauma- or sickness-related extreme situations, for instance in polyradiculitis patients, who experience a motor paralysis in full consciousness.
If a person is threatened by self- or world loss, for instance due to persistent, complete loss of mobility, he replaces the life-threatening real situation with an own, imaginary world, which is uncoupled from reality, says Schmidt-Degenhard.
A kind of border between dream and hallucination
As the mastering of a situation is not possible in reality, a change of world takes place, but the real situation is not updated in the imagination.
An intense form of creating and applying meaning in an unbearable situation, which allows us people our own ability to design and not go under in the emptiness of a loss of consciousness.
Everything is real, even later in the memory
The Zurich-based art historian Peter Cornelius Claussen also describes his oneiroid experiences in his book A Change of Heart as the sole's attempt to safe itself.
He is 49 years old when his consciousness takes off on journeys for days after heart valve surgery with subsequent heart transplantation while his body is damned to immobility in the intensive care unit.
Claussen delves into a world of his creation, visits foreign places and times: He experiences himself as a bedridden, old man, on board a train sanatorium, a robot watching over his health.
He lives in the early Middle Ages amongst noblemen who make intoxicants from blood.
He is abducted by a Greek man on his motorbike to his homeland, surfs with his hospital bed in the spring snow of the Alps and meets a Korean member of the mafia.
He is fully taken up with the imaginary events; everything is real, even later in his memory.
These inner trips, Claussen believes, are fundamentally different from every dream.
Dream is a different condition, he describes his experience.
Contrary to that, the memories from mental trips are overtly clear to me even after years and in minute detail.
Even clearer and more intense that real events.
The intensity of this experience breaks the horizon of our day-to-day experiences, says psychiatrist Schmidt-Degenhard.
Ultimately, oneiroids, psychoses, hallucinations and drug intoxication show how fragile our images of the external reality are, even when awake.
Every change to the conscious, summarises psychologist Kasten, "can result in a warping of what we call reality".
An experience which can indeed be enriching.
The snow can come
Burda
Children set to take over the publishing house at the age of 27
Kallen, the new head of the publishing house, is an interim solution: In the long term, Hubert Burda wants his company to be taken over by his two children, he has told the SPIEGEL magazine.
The holding is to remain to 100% in the family.
Hamburg - The publisher Hubert Burda sees the long-term future of his company in his children's hands.
Both children will inherit at the age of 27 and are strongly intent on joining the company, the 69-year-old has told the SPIEGEL magazine.
The details have already been organised as a precaution.
The question whether they will be active in the company will only arise later.
Also the question whether they are able to do so.
One cannot put one's children in charge of 7,500 employees if they are not capable of this.
That will kill the children, and the company with them.
On Thursday, Burda announced that he would be resigning from his post as chairman as of January and appointed Paul-Bernhard Kallen as his successor.
52-year-old Kallen has been a member of the board at Burda since 1999.
He was initially responsible for technology.
Later, with the Treasury department, he assumed responsibility for the company assets, and after Jürgen Todenhöfer's departure, also for direct marketing, foreign operations, print and finances.
For the first time, a person who is not a family member is thus at the helm of the publishing house.
Burda's children are 19 and 17; his son Felix, who would be 42 today, died a couple of years ago.
The appointment of Kallen is designed to "bridge 10, 15 years", says Burda.
The holding is to remain to 100 per cent in family ownership, said Burda.
In light of the cases of Schickedanz and Schaeffler, Burda stated that family-owned companies are not safe from going under either: "That always affected families who were infected with a capital addiction, who speculated wrongly and through they could advance to become a really big player.
That never was my strategy.
He never had "dreams of world power", says Burda.
I do not see myself as a political preceptor of the country, as Springer was, and I do not want to participate in the world league with Time magazine, these companies have become too big.
Comprehensive Beauty
Everything you could want in terms of beauty and comfort -at your fingertips.
This is what El Corte Inglés, which has just opened a multidisciplinary space of more than 1,000m2 dedicated to bodycare and pampering in the Callao (Madrid) shopping center, seems to be aiming for.
The spa, located on the eighth floor, houses prestigious firms like Hedonai, offering laser hair removal ; Spaxión, with relaxation and rooms for beauty treatment;hairdressers Luis & Tachi; Marina d'Or, which has a gym; and L'Occitane and their natural cosemtics, among others.
There is also a food section, which features a teashop with more than 130 different kinds of tea.
Enjoying a relaxing masage with your partner while you look out over the unbeatable views of the capital, or renting out the relax area for 2 hours to throw your own 'beauty party' with eight of your friends and relaxing with a jacuzzi session, massages, and drinking a glass of champagne are just some of the possibilities Spaxión offers.
A total of 250 m2 are distributed amongst 12 rooms to carry out the latest and most innovative facial, body and hydrotherapy treatments.
Such as, for example, cavitation to combat cellulite, or vibration platforms.
The gym has these machines, in addition to virtual trainers which guide the steps of the clients, offering them a totally personalized treatment.
Everything starts by entering your personal key on the touch screen situated in front of the machine.
Then, various videos show us how to properly perform our workout plan.
Its director guarantees that 15 minutes (including warm up and stretching) are enough to exercise all of the muscles in the body.
And, if after our workout we want to drop by the hairdresser's,Luis & Tachi provides a salon where they offer personal hair services to restore its brilliance and nutrition.
Innovation and exclusivity seem to be the premise of this urban spa, which will be open every day of the year, from 10:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night.
Varied necklines
Christmas is approaching, and it never hurts to revisit the looks of the stars to suit our holiday wardrobe.
The neckline, very important for enhancing the silhoutte, is one of the facts we should take into account.
Here are a few suggestions.
The singer Fergie chose an exaggerated and very complicated neck line.This is not recommended.
Endesa and Barcelona with the electric car
The electric company Endesa, together with Barcelona City Council, has created 'Office LIVE.'
This is a project to develop and promote the electric car in the Catalan capital.
Office LIVE' (Logistics for the Implementation of the Electric Vehicle) will define and coordinate the roadmap for the implementation of the electric car in the city, and will define the conditions for mobility, management, coordination, present subsidies, etc.
Moreover, MOVELE will develop the project, promote the electric car, review public opinion and work from the sectors involved.
In short, it hopes to promote what will be the transportation of the future.
3 'electric cities'
But Barcelona is not the only city that is going to be involved in the implementation of the electric car in Spain.
Madrid and Seville are joining the project.
They are the three cities chosen by the Government to promote the implementation of the electric vehicle within the MOVELE plan.
The electric company Endesa has already signed a framework agreement with the Generalitat of Catalonia.
With that, it hopes to promote the activities of the Research and Technological Development in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia.
These include activities linked to energy and, in particular, energy efficiency.
It is not the only initiative Endesa is involved in regarding the promotion of the electric vehicle.
The company participates in standardization groups at the European level and has a series of active complementary projects, such as G4V, ELVIRE and CENIT VERDE.
Zapatero sees 'a horizon of peace' for the automotive sector.
The Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, catches a glimpse of 'a horizon of peace' for the Spanish automotive industry, which, he pointed out, is the principal export sector in the country.
In the Prime Minister's presentation of the Economic Report for 2009, Zapatero reviewed the measures the government had launched throughout the fiscal year to support the automotive sector.
"Without the Automotive Competitiveness Plan, today we would have a panorama of neglect and the closure of some of our major production plants," the Prime Minister explained.
"Through this plan and the arrangement of the brands to continue in this highly competitive sector in Spain, we can have a horizon of peace for the future of this industry, which is our principal export sector," he added.
In this regard, he recalled that theCompetitiveness Plan, included in the Comprehensive Plan of the Automobile Industry (PIA), allocated 800 million to projects of 19 manufacturers and 137 auxiliary companies, which mobilized an investment of more than 3 billion euros.
The head of the Executive Branch explained that this investment was committed as much to the development of new models as it was to upgrading already existing products and processes.
Zapatero also stressed the government's measures to support the demand, alluding to Plan 2000E, implemented in collaboration with the Autonomous Communities and automotive brand.
According to the Prime Minister, this plan has reduced emissions by 6% in new vehicles sold on the Spanish market and has brought about a "sharp increase" in enrollment, which rose by "40 percent" in November..
20,000 square meters of classic vehicles.
The first year of the International Classic Car Showroom will be celebrated in Madrid, a meeting place for professionals and amateurs of the motor world.
This initiative will take place from the 5th to the 7th of February, 2010 in the Glass Pavilion of the Casa de Campo in Madrid.
This is a 20,000 square meter exhibition area, and more than 200 national and international exhibitors will be there.
Not only will you find classic motorcycles and cars at ClassicAuto Madrid, there will also be all kinds of products related to the motor world.
So you will find the exhibitors at the pavilion displaying accessories, parts, components, textile accessories, complements, publications, miniatures, etc.
Hundreds of items related to the world of classic motors will delight collectors and the curious.
Participating companies will include Clásicos de Mos and Good Old Times, automobile sales; Juan Lumbreras, restoration; Coupe-Francisco Pueche, automobile sales and restoration, and Cocher Clásicos, Mercedes Benz specialists.
Outdoor tests of skill.
The business of this Showroom will also feature parallel activities: rallies, sports exhibitions, tests of skill, presentations and competitions.
Tests of skill in classic cars and motorcycles will also take place on an authorized track outside the exhibition site.
Mazda3 i-Stop: Sustainable sportsmanship
Mazda wants to show that sportsmanship is not incompatible with the environment.
Therefore, Mazda3 has just added an engine stopping and starting system - dubbed as the i-Stop -, a mechanism which is, for the moment at least, only available with the 150-horse power 2.0 petrol engine.
This second generation of the Mazda3 stands out for its overall high ratings.
The finishes, features, comfort, performance, mechanics, the i-Stop system…
All of these aspects are outstanding in the new Mazda3.
Starting with the driver's seat, we see that the front seats offer excellent ergonomics and support.
The feel of the steering wheel is also exquisite.
Moving on to thecombination of the dashboard and console, we see how Mazda has continued the Japanese tendency to create a futuristic interior design with a great deal of buttons, knobs and striking red and blue colors.
This style reminds us, in part, of the Honda Civic.
So, we can say that the Mazda3 and the Civic, both Japanese, contrast with the sobriety of the German products, more specifically, the Volkswagen Golf, which everyone wants to beat.
Continuing with the interior, this Japanese compact is easily roomy enough for four adults to travel in great comfort.
All of this comes with a spacious trunk and standard dimensions.
The engine's automatic stopping and starting system, at least for now, is only available with the two-liter, 150-horse-power, manual, six-gear, petrol engine.
This engine is a real delight.What makes it outstanding are its subtlety, reduced noise levels, features and fuel consumption.
And even though the diesel versions of the Madzda3 will be in higher demand, those who don't do too much mileage a year should not dismiss this i-Stop petrol engine system, both for its elevated driving comfort and its fuel consumption.
As regards the level of the equipment, the version chosen for the test is called the Sportive, meaningit incorporates a high number of standard elements.
The standard equipment is excellent, especially the lane changing assistant (RVM) which eliminates the blind spot, the traction and stability controls, the speed control, the interior photosensitive mirror, the large-screen onboard computer, the parking sensors, independent climate control, rain and lights sensor, Bluetooth and Bluetooth audio, and 17" alloy wheels.
Additionally, with less equipment, this version comes with the Premium Pack, which, for 1,500 euros, also features: bi-xenon adaptive headlights and a BOSE sound system with CD changer, among other things.
Conclusion
The Mazda3 2.0 i-Stop is one of the best compacts in its category.
It is particularly outstanding in terms of the quality of the materials used, its performance, and the high standard of its equipment.
Additionally, those who do less yearly mileage can opt for this version of the i-Stop, associated only with the 150-horse-power 2.0 engine.
The only drawback of this model is its high price, which ranges from 21,770 euros for the Luxury pack to 23,270 euros for the Sportive version, tested here.
In exchange for the high price, the Mazda3 will offer a large daily dose of satisfaction.
Deluxe 'Premiere'
L. A. covers the red carpet of sensuality by the hand of Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Fergie.
The stars were more dazzling than ever, wrapped in designer dresses, as elegant as they were sexy, at the premiere of 'Nine'.(Photos: Gtresonline)
Our own 'Pe', as sophisticated as ever, decided on a dark 'lady.'
The promise of FonPeek
Peek is extremely limited, a device that's only used for checking email, without no feature for viewing certain kinds of attachments or surfing the web.
It enjoyed its 5 minutes of fame in the U.S. when Times Magazine named it one of the products of the year.
Seeing it on the street is more difficult, to be honest, but the idea can be interesting, especially for children.
Unlike smartphones, the Peek is very cheap and has a very low monthly fee, less than half, for example, of the iPhone's data plan.
Given its success, the company has released two new devices: one exclusively for Twitter, the other with a free data service for life in exchange for paying six times more for the Peek.
FonPeek, presented at the La Web event yesterday, is the European version of the invention and its third incarnation.
It is just as limited as its U.S. counterpart, but comes with a surprise.
The monthly service price, around 12 euros a month, includes roaming throughout Europe.
Those who travel with a smartphone already know what it's like to have to give up data when they cross the border or desperately search for a cafe with WiFi (or a Fon connection)to check their mail.
The idea of fixed-price roaming is incredibly attractive and long awaited.
Yes, some operators have special arrangements and travel plans, but in my experience it takes a doctorate in physics to understand them and good glasses to read the fine print.
The repeated twisting of the European Commission's arm to get affordable roaming rates across Europe has had almost no noticeable effect.
There's a fear of using data outside one's home country, and rightly so.
For a gadget like the FonPeek (it no longer seems strange that it is called Fon since it lacks WiFi) to get this kind of fee, it means that the operators are starting the think differently and study different means of recouping the cost of their data networks.
The Kindle is another good example, including a book downloading feature and other internet queries.
No contracts, no bother.
It's a connected device and is paid for when it's purchased, not month by month.
And that is what I hope to see one day with FonPeek, a call option with life-time access, which the Peek already has in the U.S.
Not because I'm going to buy it.
I check my mail on my phone, thank you.
I hope so because I think it's an unfair model for the consumer.
It would be interesting to see a computer with the same system.
Michelle's color fetish
Yellow is, without a doubt, the U.S. First Lady's favorite color.
She already attended Barak Obama's inauguration as U.S. president in a yellow dress and coat; she chose the same to accompany him to what was undoubtedly the second most important moment of his life: the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo.
Michelle Obama wore a very similar dress on both occasions:apart from being a similar yellow-green color with bright highlights-, both times the outfit consisted of three pieces, a dress, jacket and coat of the same material, and was adorned with a large embroidery or necklace.
So much so that, at first glance, it seemed the first lady of the U.S. has been following the Princess of Asturias' lead and has opted to repeat her wardrobe.
But the material the two suits are made of make them very different.
If the inauguration was about thick lace, in Oslo it was patterned velvet.
The accessories have also varied: green medium-heeled shoes the other time, and now a similar design, but in gold.
And equally different is the hair style: on this occasion, hair tied back; previously she wore her hair down.
75% of working mothers have had work problems during maternity.
Discrimination at work has increased in recent years, especially for women of younger generations who want to be mothers.
This has been revealed by a study entitled 'Fertility and work history of women in Spain', developed by the CSIC in collaboration with the Women's Institute.
The survey of 9,737 women from 15 to 75 years old leaves no doubt about it: 75% of working mothers have seen their opportunities in the workplace limited due to maternity.
The study notes that there are many differences in when couples start cohabiting, in the number of children, depending on whether they work or not and the type of work they do.
Those that don't have an activity outside of the home, work part time, or don't have a stable job start living with their partner sooner, expect their first child, and have more children.
By contrast, women with a stable job, especially in the public sector, put off cohabitation and motherhood and have fewer offspring.
"Women between 35 and 49 years old with steady work have the first child, on average, 3.7 years after starting to live together,a figure which increases to 4.1; women with steady jobs need more time to achieve their lifelong goals, which has led them to postpone getting married and having children.
Additionally, the type of job held has a great influence over maternity, but less over the mating schedule," explains CSIC researcher, Margarita Delgado.
Level of education is another factor whichdifferentiates the age of women marrying and having their first child.
According to the survey, the higher the level of education, the older the age at which they get married and have their first child.
There was also a difference among women from the same generation.
For example, in a group of 35- to 49-year-olds, those who had elementary and those who and higher education had become mothers for the first time, on average, at 25.1 and 32.1 respectively.
Their level of education provides yet another division among women.
While those who have an elementary education marry and have their first child before finding a stable job, those who have secondary or higher levels of education reverse the sequence and give priority to securing a stable job as a precondition to marriage and having a child," Delgado specifies.
Diane Kruger is also worth it
L'Oréal Paris has just added a new name to its enviable list of ambassadors: Diane Kruger.
Starting next year, the German actress will become the image of the brand's different products, singing the universal slogan 'Because I'm worth it.'
The star of 'Joyeux Noël', one of the finest actresses on the international scene, joins other celebrities signed to L'Oreal Paris, like Linda Evangelista, Jane Fonda, Andie MacDowell, Eva Longoria and the Spaniard Penelope Cruz.
Before her, the last ones to enter such an elite club were the actresses Evangeline Lilly ('Lost') and Freida Pinto ('Slumdog Millionaire').
For the men's line, the cosmetic brand also includes deluxe ambassadors: Patrick Dempsey ('Grey's Anatomy') and Matthew Fox (Evangeline's co-star on 'Lost').
The British Fashion Awards
The British have a lot to say in the world of fashion.
Top representatives - designers and models, past and present -gathered at the annual awards presentation, which took place in London at the Royal Court of Justice.
Nobody missed the date.
The former model Jerry Hall'sdaughter, Georgia May Jagger, was chosen as Model of the Year.
Poker by Manuel Vicent
In 'Four Aces' (Alfaguara, illustrations by Fernando Vicente) Manuel Vicent gives us thirty profiles of writers who have passed through their literary life (and, in some cases, the other one too).
He does not do it in predictable or terrible ways (biographical sketch, life and work),rather by looking for something that sparked the creation of the character.
The trip has its excitements, and Vincent us spares no scares or illuminations.
In addition to being an exquisite pleasure, the book is a touching invitation to be read and reread.
Here are some snippets.
On Albert Camus: "In his pages I discovered that the Mediterranean wasn't a sea, rather a spiritual instinct, almost physical, the same one I felt without giving it a name: the pleasure against the ill-fated, morality without guilt, and innocence without any god."
On Samuel Beckett: "Nihilistic, allegorical Christian, he wrote what was in his blood, not in his intellect, between impotence and ignorance, with a dazzling poetic humor, meaningless, like the blade of the knife that was about to kill him."
On Graham Greene: "Our man was abducted by this woman with a passion that lasted for thirteen years, in which flesh combined the excitement of adultery with the pleasure of remorse, a spiritual privilege which consisted of reaching heaven through the road of perdition."
On James Joyce: "'Ulysses' was published in Paris in 1922 by Sylvia Beach.This is one of the eight-thousand-meter peaks of world literature which must be scaled by the north face, which the best mountain climbers hurl themselves off time and time again."
On William Faulkner: "He was a weird guy."
Of himself, he sometimes said that he was the heir to a landowner in the county, and other times that he was the son of a black woman and a crocodile.
"They were both dreams of grandeur."
On Louis-Ferdinand Celine: "This writer took the deranged scream cried from a bridge by that character from Munich in order to carry his eco, under his literary form, into the depths of the night of the 20th century, and made it a journey, hiding from himself and calling on the past with a violent discourse to the worms."
On Dorothy Parker: "One day, she kneeled and prayed: ' Dear God, I beg you to make me stop writing like a woman'."
On Joseph Conrad: "On his tomb were engraved these verses from Spencer: 'Sleep after toil,/port after stormy seas,/ease after war,/ death after life does greatly please.'"
On Virginia Wolf: "She also carried her depressions in her luggage.
The husband accepted it as normal when she told him that Edward VII spied on her from the azaleas and that the birds sang in Greek.
There has never been a man so patient and in love with a neurotic woman whose literary talent came before her madness."
On Pio Baroja: "What did Martin-Santos do but try to inoculate Joyce in Baroja?
What did Benet try but to pass Baroja through the weapons of Faulkner?
What did Cela do but abduct the glory of that man so that it would serve his own pedestal?
Cowardly Aggression
Last week, my 70-year-old mother was walking through our neighborhood in the town of Fuenlabrada when a group of kids between 15 and 18 years old passed alongside her and our dog, a mixed-breed, rescued from the pound and weighing no more than six kilos, and, without saying a word, kicked the dog twice, leaving the dog badly injured.
Our indignation knew no bounds because we don't see the fun in gratuitous aggression towards a small and defenseless animal, which by the way, was on a leash.
It must be added that it distressed the woman who was calmly taking a walk and who, when she reprimanded those individuals, came to fear for her safety, because a lunatic who attacks an animal is capable of doing the same to a woman, a child, an elderly person, and, certainly, to anyone weaker than himself.
The incident took place on aTuesday at five o'clock in the afternoon in what is usually a quiet neighborhood.
The dog was crying all day.
By the way, we filed a complaint at a nearby police station which we doubt means much, notto stir up trouble, just to clarify that the cowardly murderers were Spanish.
The outrage has led us to denounce this fact.
We don't understand what is happening when young people consider it fun to gratuitously mistreat a defenseless animal which gives us love, companionship and friendship.
We don't know if there is any politeness and respect for animals and people left.
Michelin and Fesvial united on the use of helmets
The tire manufacturer Michelin, in collaboration with the Spanish Foundation for Road Safety (Fesvial), has launched a campaign to promote the use of helmets, especially among younger motorists, both organizations reported today.
This initiative aims to raise awareness of the importance of wearing a helmet, because it is the only means of protection capable of preventing head injuries and even death in the event of an accident while riding a motorcycle.
Michelin indicated that this campaign is part of their commitment to road safety which "goes beyond designing and manufacturing safer products every day," and added that it also contributes towards this goal by means of other educational and informative measures.
This new campaign promoting helmet use in motorcycles, under the motto 'To be or not to be,' will initially distribute posters to more than 500 motorcycle shops to spread the message as widely as possible.
Finally, Michelin stressed that road safety "is a constant concern" for the company, as being a manufacturer of tires for two-wheeled vehicles, one of its main goals is to develop ever safer products.
Sales of light commercial vehicles on the increase
Almost two years later, the light commercial vehicle market begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The 9,425 vehicles registered in November in Spain represent a rise of 12.6% from 2008, and, more importantly, indicates the first increase after 22 consecutive months of decline, according to figures from the manufacturers association(ANFAC) and the vendors association (GANVAM).
However, it's not time to start celebrating since the reference the comparison was made to -November 2008- was particularly bad, with a 60% decrease from the previous year.
The outcome is that, regardless of last month's upturn, the total number of registrations during those 11 months is 40% below last year's.
Since January, 95,853 units of all the vehicle classes which make up the hotchpotch of light commercial vehicles were sold: derived vans, pick ups, vans, light vans and light-chassis trucks.
At the same time, the storm clouds affecting demand have not completely cleared, so even though they are also purchased by individuals, most purchases are made by small and medium-sized enterprises, almost all of which pay through external funding.
As a result of the restrictions caused by closed tap bank loans, it is necessary to add other factors like increasing unemployment and the persistent economic decline.
In light of this, unlike cars, the aid of the 2000Epurchase has done little.
Aside from individuals, provisions are made for the self-employed and SMEs that are going to purchase a light commercial vehicle of up to 3.5 tons with a CO2 emission level not exceeding 160 grams per kilometer, but the number of transactions has been insignificant.
Just yesterday, the need for the Administration to devote special attention to these vehicles, and also to commercial verhicles (trucks and buses), was brought to mind by GANVAM.
The sellers' association predicts that 2010 will be similar to the year coming to a close, which estimates a 19% drop in sales (passenger cars and 4x4s).
Support for emergency braking is already obligatory
Support systems to emergency brakes will have to be a mandatory feature in European cars, just as it happened with anti-lock breaks (ABS) and will happen with stability control (ESP)
In fact, they are already in all newly registered passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, while the rest have a grace period until the end of February 2011.
The measure, imposed by the European Union, aims to increase pedestrian safety; however, how they work can also help prevent many rear-end collisions.
What the emergency brake assistant does is increase the pressure on the brakes in the event of an emergency, which the system detects through the driver's pressure on the pedal.
But this doesn't always maintain that pressure through to the end.
According to a study conducted by the car components manufacturer, Bosch, a third of drivers involved in an accident had not stepped on the brake before a collision and half of them didn't apply the full force.
Up to 1,100 accidents
The intervention of the aid, however, calls for the full braking system, reducing the distance the car needs to stop.
According to an EU study, if all cars were equipped with this feature, 1,100 fatal accidents involving pedestrians could be avoided a year.
The reduction will be even bigger -it estimates that one in four accidents injuring people would be avoided - when the so-called smart emergency braking systems become popular.
In this case, the vehicle is equipped with a system which (via radar or a camera) detects obstacles and warns the driver, in addition to lightly applying the brakes.
If the driver reacts, he helps it by increasing the pressure on the pedal if it is necessary.
If he does not react, and even though the collision is unavoidable, the device exerts the maximum force to the brakes to minimize damage.
General Motors delays Opel plan until January
While workers at the Opel plant in Figueruelas (Zaragoza) have already been informed by Nick Reilly, the new president of General Motors (GM) Europe, that the production of the new Meriva will begin in the first week of April -probably the 8th- as reported by Javier Ortega, the U.S. manufacturer is cautioning that more time is needed to conclude the recovery plan for Opel.
Nick Reilly, the new president of GM Europe, wants each of the points of the new plan to have the prior approval of the affected party.
And this may make the final document, which will be submitted first to the workers and then to the governments of the countries where there are factories, be delayed until the beginning of 2010.
On the other hand, GM is making sure that a decision regarding the sale of Saab should be made in the next few days.
It is not strange that the Swedish government has increased the pressure on the U.S. manufacturer to make a decision as soon as possible.
GM admits to having had contact with some potential new buyers.
One of them could be Geely, which aims to acquire Volvo, but the option of the Dutch sports car manufacturer Skyper, which is funded by the Russian group Converg, is gaining momentum.
In the event that none of them come to an agreement, GM would be able to sell some Saab assets to the Chinese Baic.
The decision to close Saab at the end of the year if it is not sold still stands.
Driving the Porsche Boxster Spyder
To develop their latest and most precious gem, the Porsche engineers took the Boxster S as a base and succeeded in trimming it by no less than 80 kilos,making the total weight a mere 1,275 kilos.
This led them to, first, cutting out the automatic roof, which has been substituted by a manually-operated canvas one, saving 21 kilos; using aluminum doors, like those on the GT3, 'dropping' another 15, removing the climate control, 13; reducing the gas tank from 64 to 54 liters, earning 7 more kilos ; mounting sporty bucket seats, another 12, and with the 19-inch lightweight wheels, five.
Finally, foregoing the CDR-30 sound system brought it down another 6 kilograms, and changing the door handles to fabric ones cut the remaining kilo.
Even though it is also available with the PDK dual-clutch shift, the test was conducted on a unit with the six-speed manual transmission, mainly on the back roads of California and along stretches of really windy mountain roads.
Its performance can only be described as flawless.
The reduction in weight does not imply that the car doesn't grip the asphalt.
Rather the complete opposite: it has been some time since we tested a model so small and light, which, in turn, transmitted so much confidence when cornering, even at high speeds.
It is a small athlete, able to warm up its muscles in a low gear for as long as we need, until ordered to sprint, to brake, to recover and go back to exploiting its engine...
Just what we asked for. Thanks to its steering, as communicative as it is precise, what we tell it with our hands on the wheel is what the car will do.
And it will do it with surgical precision.
Optional engine noise
The sound of its V6 boxer with 320 horse power (10 more than the Boxster S) is well made and can be enhancedwith the 'sport' option and through a system that modifies the roar of the engine, which debuted earlier in the Panamera.
The acceleration is brutal, either from a standstill or recovering.
The suspension is firm but not harsh or uncomfortable.
The asphalt of the highways we crossed with the Boxster Spyder was fairly beaten up, but the car handled the potholes well.
The electronic aids hardly showed up on the course; that is because, well into the morning, we found early morning ice and gravel on some curves.
In short, it is an ultra lightweight car, one of the most fun to drive on the market, andis a bit more than just a simple modification of the Boxster S.
The car will go on sale in February 2010, priced at 70,931 euros.
'Bag Girl'
Close to Karl Lagerfeld, the image of the Coco Cocoon line and occasional 'starlet' of the catwalk,the singer lavishes her bad-girl image with as much contempt as she has Chanel bags.
More than a 'Bad Girl' or 'It Girl', she is a'Bag Girl'.
Baskonia gives away a victory in Israel
Caja Laboral achieved a stunning 82-91 victory on their visit to the Maccabee Electra court despite Dusko Ivanovic's team's heavy losses, and after the great performance by Mizra Teltovic, who was the best on his team with eight three-pointers scored (29 points), they now at the top of their group.
The Vitorian team knew to make up for the significant absences of Herrmann, Oleson, Huertas and Micov with a big dose of involvement and team work, even though it had to hold out until the end to take the victory.
Additionally, their huge success from the sidelines, with 16 three pointers scored, had a lot to do with the final triumph.
The game started out in favor of the Azulgranas, who put themselves ahead on the scoreboard from the start.
As Vitora's first four baskets were from the perimeter, the speculation was already that they had jumped into the Israeli net with hot wrists.
English and Teletovic were the main scorers of the 18-20 at the end of the first period.
The second quarter was more of the same, but the Alavan team opted for the inside game of Barac and the work of Eliyahu, who was greeted with whistles and applause at his return home, to continue increasing their lead by half-time (34-43).
Teletovic had already begun to stand out as the best on his team with 13 points, even though Splitter's "six fewer" points already signaled that it wasn't going to be the best night for the Brazilian.
But the game, despite being headed for half time, was not more decidedand the Maccabees tried to remind the Vitorians that not just anybody wins on their court, and with the 'hand of Elias' putting the pressure on, they managed to get involved in the game.
Eidson and Pnini played a decisive role in the "yellows'" return to the light.
More disadvantages
Ivanovic's players, injured but far from dead, needed to run a couple of plays correctly before they could breathe, and that's when the machine gun Marza Teletovic arrived, with three almost consecutive three-pointers and the help of English and Ribas, he brought the scoreboard back to a reassuring lead (54-67), which the home team managed to narrow down at the end of the third quarter (57-67).
The Alavas worked themselves to the bone in the last period, and English and San Emeterio (65-75) had already made it clear that they were not going to let anyone take away what they had earned during the first thirty minutes.
However, Pnini and Eidson, the best on their team, did not give up and tried to keep their team alive from the three-point line (70-77).
In spite of this, and with Splitter fouling out, Ivonic's team didn't rush, defended well, and, even though the Israelis came close at the last minute, the game ws already won and victory escaped Tel Aviv for the first time in the season.
Injuries impede Unicaja's fight
Unicaja lost miserably in Greece against the Olympiacos and gave them the lead in Group B of the Euroleague in a game marked by the loss of the cajistas, especially in the inside game (Freeland, Lima and Archibald) which facilitated the Greek victory.
The Malaga team was not cowed by the atmosphere in the Peace and Friendship Stadium, nor by the excellence of its rival, maybe the most powerful in Europe and with a big budget.
The playing exhibited in the first quarter allowed the Andalusians to take it easy.An aggressive defense and three consecutive three-pointers, two from the point guard Omar Cook, and one from Guillem Gubio, baffled the home team 12-18, minute 9.
The Olympiacos were obviously surprised by Unicaja's intensity, even though the home team's arsenal in the inside game with Bourousis, Vujcic and Schortsanitis brought them back to 22-20, in the 13th minute, at which point an attempted fight between the two U.S. point guards, Beverley and Williams, resulted in the disqualification of both players.
The Greek team started showing their superiority inside both zones, where the loss of English center Joel Freeland to injury and three personal fouls by Carlos Jimenez hampered the cajistas.
Between them the inside players and the Lithuanian forward, Linas Leizas, with their three-pointers, increased the lead to 44-32 in the 19th minute.
An impossible comeback
The third period was very offensive for the Olympiacos, who, despite 19 losses, proved superior and began to even out the difference in the game in Malaga, making it 66-48 in the 27th minute, which shook the group leader.
Unicaja tried to overcome their absences and the latest withdrawal of the Scottish center, Robert Archibald, who was injured during the game.
Despite all the problems, because of Cook's control and three-pointers, and Lewis' assists, Unicaja had some hope left with the score at 66-57 in the 31st minute.
But it was practically impossible because the Olympiacos, when pressed and given their superiority, seemed unstoppable once centimeters inside the zone.
The Croatian center, Nikola Vujcic, managed to bring back the basket average to 81-62 in the 37th minute and Unicaja gave up, handing the top-seed over to the Olympiacos.
How much should you charge for your Facebook profile?
Facebook users can know the salary they deserve according to their profile, thanks to a new application Trovit, the search engine with the largest number of real-estate, employment and car classifieds in Spain.
The tool "How much should you charge?" estimates wages of users from more than 140,000 employment offers in Spain on Trovit, based on a form available on Facebook, where you must enter your profession, years of experience, your age and the city where you want to work.
In the week that the application was launched, the search engine had detected that in general, the Spanish worker "feels underpaid," said the Trovit Product Manager, Albert Ribera.
According to the data Trovit uses from its search engines in the United Kingdom and France, the Spanish are the lowest paid.
A British programmer charges 45,226 euros gross per year, and a French one 31,059, as opposed to the 24,000 a Spaniard receives.
Similarly, a driver receives an annual net pay of 34,247 euros in England, 25,751 in France, and 16,420 in Spain.
According to Trovit, the lowest paid job in Spain is waiter, with annual net earnings of 11,592 euros; followed by salesperson, with 14,725 euros, and operator, with 15,667 euros.
The most searched-for jobs on the net in the past three months are drivers, part-time jobs and social worker.
Brazil sets a release date for Zelaya
The Brazilian Government has put a deadline on Manuel Zelaya's stay in the embassy in Tegucigalpa.
The deposed president must leave the embassy by the 27th of January, 2010 at the latest, when his mandate officially ends.
Francisco Catunda, the chargé d’affaires of the Brazilian Embassy in the Honduran capital, told TV Globo that "Mel" knows that he must leave the embassy,where he has been a refugee since 21st September, before that date.
"He is aware that he has to leave on January 27th, the end of his term; he has to look for another occupation."
The station also quoted the former president, who confirmed his intention to leave the embassy before the deadline: "My plan is to leave as soon as possible, obviously with the support of the Brazilian government," Zelaya said via telephone.
Following the November 29th elections (in which Profiro Lobo was elected), Zelaya said that he would remain in the embassy until January.
However, this very week, he tried to find refuge in Brazil.
The operation finally ended unsuccessfully with the rejection of Zelaya's political refugee status, which the Government headed by Roberto Micheletti tried to impose "de facto".
Thanks a lot
After days of wine and roses from last spring, when inflation was the prevailing trend on the markets, uncertainty again rears its ugly head, which is not surprising since it is their natural state, in an environment in which agents make decisions about the naturally uncertain future.
The cure prescribed by the central banks to stabilize the markets was to monetize debt with the direct purchase of assets and indirectly give an open bar liquidity at close-to-zero rates so that the financial institutions would buy deductible assets.
The central banks have already confirmed that direct purchases of assets have practically ended and, without questioning their unorthodox liquidity policy, are beginning to throw a spanner in the works as the ECB makes its yearly auction next week.
Therefore, investors doubt the ability of the global economy to sustain economic recovery without such unorthodox measures, and we are seeing a reversal of the reduction in risk premiums.
The volatility of the stock markets and the corporate bond spreads have swiftly picked up again, even though they are far behind the extreme levels that they reached at the beginning of the year.
The states were obligated to socialize private risk, and again public debt is going to be affected.
Again there is a flight for quality and the U.S., Japan and Germany have been the refuge of choice for investors, causing awider spread of the Eurozone countries in respect to Germany.
Spain hardly seems to have been affected by this period of instability, but that's when Standard and Poor's arrived and threatened a new revision, downgrading the Kingdom of Spain.
Furthermore, some uncertainty doesn't hurt to silence defenders of moral hazard, who again tried to raise awareness of those responsible for the global economic policy by having stopped the destructive effects derived from credit restrictions on the loss of jobs, when what should be done is to declare a new Thanksgiving Day.
However, Dubai's paints with a tribal fight between the emirs to restore power in the emirates,and we've already seen it before in Greece.
A Government which hides the public deficit, elections and a new Government that pulls up the rug.
Prodi did it in Italy after Berlusconi, and Socrates in Portugal after Barroso.
It doesn't make sense that Ecofin saved Hungry from a breach of its external payments at the beginning of the year, and thatit is going to let a euro member-country fail to fulfill its commitments.
What is logical is that Ecofin has forced the Greek government to be transparent, and make its citizens jointly responsible for the need for extraordinary measures to maintain the stability of its public finances.
If, as we hope, we find ourselves before a standardized period of transient risk premiums, after some excess of leveraged positions, it would be within our expectations.
In the case of Spain, since our public debt is spreading like the European corporate bonds, we should not be worried.
If the European spreads decrease and ours continue to expand, then it would be an idiosyncratic risk for Spain.
That of Standard & Poor's is an anecdote. When our leading indicators are forcing the majority of research services to anticipate its recovery scenarios and to revise up its scenario for 2011, including the OECD and the European Commission, they return to the fray with a Japanese scenario for the Spanish economy,and long life expectancy does not portend its warning.
Again, it has all the earmarks to be an excellent opportunity to buy Spanish assets, but for now, "prudence, my driver."
Related sectors
The Iberdrola Chairman, Ignacio Sanchez Galan, was the first to speak yesterday before the subcommittee of the House of Representatives, where Spain's energy strategy for the next two decades is currently being debated.
After his speech, which was followed by the president of Gas Natural-Fenosa, Rafael Villaseca, Galan gave the press a few glimpses of what was planned in the subcommittee behind closed doors.
For the president of Iberdrola, Spain needs to invest 50 billion euros by 2020 and another 60 billion between that date and 2030, while they keep operating the nuclear power plants which are presently open.
Otherwise, the investments required will not be 60 billion, but up to 95 billion.
Yes, Iberdrola believes that in the next decade investments should not be spent on increasing its generating capacity, but on distribution networks and on international interconnections.
From 2020 on, the matter changes and the power will have to increase.
His bet is in both coal plants withcarbon dioxide catchers and, especially, renewable sources of energy.
In this case, he considers that it takes 18,000 new MW, and that is with "support energy."
Though he believes that the Sustainable Economy Act, which the government has just approved, is in line with what his company has been calling for, Galan would not draw blood with a royal decree to promote the consumption of domestic coal, which contradicts the policies to combat climate change.
In his opinion, there is "a clear, long-term gamble" in this sense, despite the "sure" measures, as the Chairman of Iberdrola calls them.
As it is, Galan believes that the decisions to invest, even though they are long-term, should start to be made since it has already taken a long time to think them through, and a stable framework for addressing remuneration is necessary.
Ferrovial wins the 'handling' of Aer Lingus in ten airports
Ferrovial's airport ground services subsidiary, Swiss Swissport, is going to be the Irish airline Aer Lingus' preferred partner for cargo services in ten of the European airports where it operates.
Paris, London, Frankfurt and Brussels are among the most prominent.
The agreement, which has not transcended economic terms, will last for five years.
Moreover, Ferrovial, the autonomous government of Castile-La Mancha, and the University of Alcala de Henares signed a protocol of cooperation yesterday to create a Center for the Innovation of Intelligent Infrastructure.
The alliance includes an investment of 20 million by 2012, 50% of which comes from Ferrovial.
One of the center'stasks will be to research energy efficiency on highways and in airports.
Acciona disputes its first highway in Australia with Hotchief and Bouygues.
Acciona is struggling for its first highway concession in Australia, a market where it already operates as a an energy and water company.
The construction involves a 1.7 billion Australian dollar tunnel (about 1.047 billion euros).
The French Bouygues and German Hotchief are its rivals.
A 5-km tunnel in the Australian city of Brisbane, on the east coast, has become the closest chance for Accionato settle in the countryas a construction and motorway company.
The city council wants to have it completed by the end of 2014.
After opting for the public-private partnership (the acronym PPP in English) to move the project forward, in a business plan under the tutelage of Ernst & Young, the administration already has a final list of candidates to take over the work and exploit the toll.
Depending on the bids submitted by next May, the planned investment comes to 1.7 billion Australian dollars (1.047 billion euros) and three consortia, with a remarkable predominance of European construction firms, are competing in the final stage.
The group known as Transcity, is headed by Acciona, the only Spanish one in the competition, and its partners are BMD and Ghella.
The first is a major Australian construction company, while the second, based in Italy, is one of Europe's leading specialists in undergroundconstructions.
The Northern District consortium is pitted against Acciona's team, with the presence of Britain's Laing O'Rourke, the Australian infrastructure group Transfield, and the French construction group Bouygues.
The third and final consortium to make it through the selection process is called LBRJV, where Australia's Leighton (a subsidiary of the German construction company Hochtief, owned in turn by ACS), domestic Baulderstone (owned by the German group Bilfinger Berger) and Razel, the Gallic firm specializing in civil construction, split the capital.
The Australian infrastructures market promises big jobs and privatization, but it carries a clear start-up difficulty if it's not leaning towards hiring a local construction company.
It is one strategy that the aforementioned Hochtief and Bilfinger, in addition to Asian shareholders, have pursued, and one that remains unresolved for the Spanish giants in the industry.
ACS barely acquired a position in that market through its 30% stake in Hochtief, theproprietor of the aforementioned Leighton.
Asset millionaires
Acciona is bidding on a geographical location of the utmost importance for the sector, which already has a strong presence from its activity as an energy provider and the desalination business.
Among other assets, it has the largest wind farm, Waubra Wind Farm (192 MW) in Victoria, and leads the corporate groupresponsible for building and managing the desalination plant in Adelaida with a budget of 700 million.
Now it intends to consolidate these two areas and exploit synergies in the fields of construction and infrastructure operations.
The underground toll road, sponsored by the Brisbane Department of Infrastructure and the Northern Link, is calledupon to connect the Toowong Western Highway with the bypass in Kelvin Grove (see map) through the 5-kilometer tunnel.It is a major endeavor to reduce the traffic in Brisbane.
The timetable set by the administration sets the deadline for the decision in the summer of 2010 and for the work to start in December of next year.
Although this toll road would be open for traffic in the closing months of 2014, the work is not anticipated to be completed until 2016.
The tunnel began to take shape in 2005.
It will include two lanes in each direction, an electric toll system and a sophisticated ventilation system.
The Queensland government will provide 500 million dollars (308 million euros) for funding.
Brisbane is already offering business to Hochtief.
Australia continues to provide remarkable commodities to Hochtief, which announced its receipt of a Government contract worth 154 million yesterday.
The firm, owned in-part by ACS,will set up the national broadband infrastructure with fiber optic cables through its local subsidiary, Leighton.
This will provide high-speed internet access to 400,000 people and will provide work for the German firm for 18 months.
Moreover, the company has transferred the project to build the 27-story high King George Tower in the Australian city of Brisbane.The work has yet to begin, and Hochtief has closed the sale for 129 million.
Presently, in the U.K., more specifically in Manchester, Laing O'Rourke will partake in the construction and operation of two schools over 25 years.
The initial investment will total 75 million euros.
FCC awarded a tunnel in Slovenia for 64 million
FCC, through its subsidiary Alpine, has been awarded the construction of a 2.1-kilometer-long tunnel for a highway in Slovenia for 64.5 million euros.
The firm received this contract days after getting Bosruck's (Austria) tunnel expansion job.
By doing this, Alpine is strengthening its expertise in tunnel construction.
The construction is planned to start in the beginning of 2010, and the project timeframe will span 32 months.
Sra. Rushmore is awarded Renfe's advertising
Renfe has appropriated approximately three million euros annually for the advertising and marketing services of the Sra. Rushmore agency for the next two years, the railway operator reported.
The contract covers the possibility of two 12-month extensions.Sra. Rushmore has been chosen from the 16 agencies that entered the tender launched by Renfe, of which there were four finalists; among them was TBWA, which was in charge of creatives for the past 3 years.
From this point forward, Sra. Rushmore will be in charge of campaign design and production.
France Telecom fined 63 million for blocking competitors
The competition regulator in France has imposed a fine of 63 million euros on France Telecom for anti-competitive behavior in the country's Caribbean regions.
According to the institution, the operator limited landline and mobile phone competition by signing exclusive agreements, service plans, and loyalty programs with consumers outsideof regulation.
With this sanction, the former French monopoly and state-owned company has accumulated more than 560 million euros in fines since hindering its competitors in 1994.
The penalty imposed yesterday has, in fact, increased because the authority that oversees the competition believes France Telecom has committed similar violations in the past and, therefore, is a repeat offender.
Application shop
On the other hand, the mobile subsidiary of the French company has followed in the footsteps of other operators, and has opened an on-line application shop, with the aim of increasing revenues outside of telecommunications.
At first, the Orange Application Shop will be active in France and the U.K.
It will not reach other countries, including Spain, until 2010.
Playing the Champions League has yielded 476.4 million to Madrid and Barcelona since it was first established
The Champions League has become a source of income for clubs since it started in 1992.
So much so that Real Madrid and Barcelona have collected 476.4 million, making them the third and fifth club to have won the most money in the competition.
The head of the list is Manchester United.
The head of the list is Manchester United.
Winning the UEFA Champions League doesn't just earn you glory.It is also a major source of income for the big clubs.
So much so that UEFA figures show that the competition has dealt out 5,362.5 million euros to the 105 teams (12 of them from Spain) who have participated in the event since the tournament was founded in the 1992/1993 season.
Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona have fared well in this distribution.
The white club has been the third on the continent to have pocketed more money from participating, and the only one, after AC Milan, to have won the trophy three times.
The Catalan team, the defending champion and last winner of the defunct European Cup in 1992, is fifth in the rankings.
At the top of the list are Manchester United and Bayern Much, two teams that have also made more money by participating in the Champions League.
And that is in spite of both of them losing against Barcelona.
What more, Spain is only the third country to have made more money through the Champions League despite having earned more titles than any other country (five, compared to Italy's four, England's three, and Germany's two).
Distribution
This apparent paradox is explained by the complicated payment system the UEFA uses.
For this fiscal year the body chaired by Michel Platini expects to collect 1.090 billion for the Champions League.
The UEFA dedicates 413.1 million of that money to pay fixed rates: each of the 20 clubs participating in the prequalifying round (including Atletico Madrid) receives 2.1 million.
Additionally, those who managed to participate received 3.8 million just for being there, in addition to another 550,000 euros for every game they play.
There are also bonuses for winning (800,000 euros) and for ties (400,000 for each team).The octa-finalists receive three million each; the eight quarterfinalists, 3.3 million.
The last four will pocket 4 million each.
The champion will win 9 million, versus the 5.2 million for the runner-up.
So, with the idea of the fixed rates, a club takes home at least 7.1 million, and at most 31.2 million.
Barcelona on the other hand pocketed 2.5 million for winning the European Super Cup in August.
But there are other varying payments to which 337.8 million are allocated.
This money is distributed according to the proportionate value of each television market.
Spain is the leader with four places allocated.
Last year's champion got 40% of the allocated money, 30% for second place, 20% for third, 10% for fourth.
The other part will be paid according to the number of games played this year.
Nueva Rumasa offers 61 million euros for 29.9% of Sos
Yesterday, the Nueva Rumasa holding company sifted through the details of the bid on shares which led to the acquisition of a stake of between 25% and 29.9% in Sos.
It is a percentage which doesn't require them to launch a takeover bid (OPA) for all of the securities.
Specifically, Nueva Rumasa is offering 1.5025 eurosper share, to be distributed over 10 years, and with a 1% annual interest rate.
Sos shares closed yesterday at 1.85 euros; so, Nueva Rumasa's offer undervalued the company 18% below the market value.
According to Nueva Rumasa, the price of 1.50 euros reflects the real value of Sos.
The offer is subject to the decision of eight of the 15 advisers.
The Jerezano group is giving a period of 15 days for shareholders to express their interest in selling securities.
The CNMV assured that it had not been informed of the offer, despite Ruiz Mateos' company saying that it had contacted a regulator.
If this comes to fruition, the payout would reach 611.7 million when the capitalization of Sos is at 254.27 million.
Meanwhile, Sos is restructuring its management.
In an attempt to stay out of possible takeover bids and the legal vagaries of its former managers, the brothers Jesus and Jaime Salazar, it announced the election of Maria Luisa Jordana as the director of the internal audit.
It is a decision which makes her the first woman to hold a senior position in the food company.
This is a newly created position which reports directly to the president of the group.
And not without controversy, as the company is still immersed in the legal battle for the alleged diversion of over 230 million from Sos to the Salazar brothers' holding company.
In fact, it's possible that Sos will reveal further diversions of funds in the next few months.
In regards to the Salazars' credit, the former advisers Ildefonso Ortega and Angel Fernandez Noriega (representatives of CCM and Unicaja) testified and affirmed that they approved of the diversion of 212 million without knowing where the money was going.
CNMV authorized the exclusion take-over bid submitted by Inversora Mer
Yesterday, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) approved of the exclusion take-over bid of Federico Paternina by Inversora Mer, which was presented last October 9th.
The supervisory agency explained that this operation is authorized after it is understood that its terms adjust to existing standards and that the information packet's contents, submitted after the amendments introduced last December 2nd, are considered sufficient.
The CNMV has stated that the offer addresses the purchase of 550,008 shares of Federico Paternina at 7.65 euros a share, representing 8.95% of its share capital, which consists of 6,142,786 shares that are traded on the stock exchanges in Madrid and Bilbao.
It also explained that it has frozen 5,592,778 million shares, which will not be traded in any way until the completion of the offer, which specified the price determined by Frederico Paternina in accordance with current regulations.
New tools for inspecting cars
In these days of storms and accidents, it is not only garages that are making a profit.
Every day, thousands of cars that have been in accidents are towed to a garage, where a technician must evaluate the damage and what the repair will cost.
No claim is the same, and calculating the cost of parts and labor can be a long and complicated task.
Manually calculating the cost of a repair between 20,000 and 30,000 euros, including parts and labor, may take two or three hours.
However, with the help of the most recent computer tools, it would take a matter of minutes.
This is why almost 100% of technicians are using this kind of system.
Providers of services, claims solutions, and maintenance are working to compile data supplied by manufacturers, and then process it and offer it to customers as a useful tool.
In Spain, Audatex, of the North American Groupo Solera, is the industry leader;80% of assessments are done using their products.
The other firms in the sector, competing in the field of data assessment and processing, are GtMotive and Eurotax.
Working with data supplied by manufacturers is far from simple.
According to Eduardo Velazquez, the Audatex business manager, 63 manufacturers and importers are working in Spain, and each of them submits data in a different format.
Furthermore, the amount of data to process is increasing to the point where they have released more versions, variants and engines in the last five years than in the previous 15.
When a new car hits the market, these companies get to work.
It's very arduous work because you have to catalog each of the thousands of vehicle parts andenter in your price.
In addition, a "smart" graphic is made for each model, where you can "click" on different parts of the car.
If it is a mass-market model, the work can be ready in a week, provided the process goes quickly.
If it's an uncommon car, it can take up to three or four months.Currently, Audatex provides comprehensive data for 99.2% of the cars sold in Spain.
Among the most exclusive models, information is available for a Porsche, but not a Ferrari or Lamborghini for example.
As for the number of cars in circulation, it is over 99%.
In order to document and develop the databases, Audatex has eight centers scattered around the world (Spain, France, Germany, USA, Brazil, Mexico, China and Japan), and each of these specializes in a specific brand.
Its national headquarters is in Alcobendas (Madrid).
There, over a hundred technicians (usually expert mechanics) work with three computer screens at the same time.
Audatex invests 90 million euros a year in developing these databases.
Every month, 2.5 million pieces of information are added, and clients receive updates every two days.
Developing that huge flow of information lets them give these companies different applications and varied products.
The most common use focuses on maintenance and repair, but depending on the country, there are also tools to manage scrap pieces and to calculate the market and residual value of a car.
The only company with a used car guide available in Spain is Eurotax.
Audatex doesn't offer one in our country, but it does in the United States.
In view of the products that Audatex offers, it is easy to get an idea of the kind of support available to professionals in this sector.
This company offers 10 different tools; AudaPlus, being the flagship product, is the standard solution, designed to allow technicians to assess claims.
It includes cars, motorcycles, and light and heavy industrial vehicles.
Besides the cost of parts, it includes manufacturer estimates of repair times and paint charts.
This tool charges according to the use, for each appraisal.
The highest cost is 5.75 euros for customers who rarely use it, 10 times a month at most.
Then, every insurance company that makes thousands of assessments negotiates their price with Audatex.
Other products, like AudaVIN, facilitate the complete identification of a vehicle and the equipment that it left the assembly line with, just from its vehicle identification number.
AudaGlass focuses on the glass parts of a car, and AudaSubastas is an on-line service open to the professional sector which facilitates the bidding on vehicles calssed as write-offs.
Their statistics service is very useful for identifying trends, geo-demographic analysis and knowing standard deviations of makes and models.
You can study, for example, how many models of a particular make have gone to a shop because of malfunctions or how many have been in serious accidents in a certain period.
Gt Motive is the only Spanish company working to develop these kinds of tools.
It sells, among others, the GT Estimate, which is again designed for technicians and also provides digital images, access to parts and the manufacturer's official prices and times.
GT Motive is a Grupo EINSA company, which was founded in 1971 as a provider of automotive services and solutions for assessing damage, malfunctions and maintenance.
The GT Appraisal Guide is its historical reference product on the market.
They work with 24,000 users in garages, 3,100 technicians and 53 insurance companies.
Its turnover has grown by 20% per year over the past three years, and it brought in 10.8 million euros in 2008.
Early last year, the globalization process started with the installation of an office in Paris.
Meanwhile, Audatex was founded in Germany in 1966 and set up shop in Spain in 1979.
According to company sources, 62% of its business is generated in Europe and the rest of the world, and the remaining 37% in North and South America.They work with more than 900 insurance companies and 33,000 shops, 3,000 of which are in Spain.
Grupo Solera's (Audatex, Sidexa, Informex ABZ, Hollander and IMS) worldwide turnover will total 557 million dollars, 3.3% more than 2008.
In our country, the company brought in 19.1 million euros, 7.2% more than last year.
In 2005, Grupo Solera was valued at 1 billion dollars on the stock exchange, and its shares are now listed for a total of 2.4 billion dollars.
It is been listed on the NYSE since 2007 and is included in Standard & Poor's reference index.
Damaged car on-line auctions
Last October, Grupo Solera bought Autoonline, an internet platform for selling cars, motorcycles, and especially damaged vehicles.
The endeavor entailed an outlay of 59.5 million euros for 85% of the company's capital, which would increase in the upcoming year by the remaining 15%.
The aim of the acquisition was to offer more value-added services to its customers, with the possibility of reaching an immense international market.
This appraisal and buying and selling service is directed exclusively at professionals in the sector, such as insurance companies, technicians, renting agencies, shops, scrap yards, and professional sellers who must register before using it.
This platform was created in Germany in 1996, and it manages more than 650,000 transactions throughout Europe, 500,000 of them in Germany.
Its major markets include Spain, Greece, Poland and Turkey.
The site currently has more than 1,500 registered sellers and 4,000 technicians.
It oversees 3,000 listings a day, and around 100 new listings are added every day on the Spanish market.
Under Spanish law, a car whose vehicle identification number has been unregistered cannot be put back into circulation but can be used for undamaged spare parts.
Cars with historical value can be registered, even though they have been unregistered, after a lengthy registration process.
A shop's estimate in four steps
With the AudaTaller tool, Audatex guarantees that the user gets an estimate in only 4 steps: identify the vehicle, look for the spare part, create an estimate and generate an estimate.
User friendliness is an essential condition for these systems, especially to convincing older technicians, who, to varying degrees, are usually more reluctant to use new management techniques.
The database includes 1,034 vehicles, 666 of which are cars, 109 sport-utility vehicles, 137 motorcycles, 78 vans and 44 trucks.
Naturally, a computer with an internet connection is needed to use it.
After identifying the model to be repaired by its vehicle identification number, an effective graphic image of the model appears, and then the necessary part is selected.
The user can include variables such as the price of labor, surcharges and discounts, and can then print the estimate for the client.
AudaTaller is not an appraisal tool like AudaPlus, but rather a reference catalog.
The main difference is that the system aimed at garages does not include labor time estimates.
The cost of using this tool in a shop is 350 euros a year, which the customer can finance.
Presently, Audatex is working to make these images three-dimensional.
This is an innovation mechanics are approving of because it will enable you, for example, to select a door and turn it around to see the inside.
