Chinese imports fell sharply in January, a sign of sluggish domestic demand that will fuel concerns about whether the fragile global economy can count on China as a bastion of growth.
Adding to the grim picture, China’s exports also dipped last month as its companies felt a chill wind from Europe’s debt troubles. Exports fell 0.5 per cent year on year, the first decline since late 2009.

Britain's economic recovery is being held back by a lack of women in the boardroom, Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to say.

At a summit in Sweden with Nordic-Baltic leaders, Mr Cameron will say the current shortage of women is failing them and "failing our whole economy".

Nordic and Baltic countries are "leading the way in Europe" on this issue, he will say.

Women hold a quarter of boardroom posts in Sweden, compared with 12% in the UK.

n a Saturday speech to a group of right-leaning French students at the National Assembly, interior minister Claude Guéant caused a political uproar for saying that, “contrary to what the left’s relativist ideology says, for us, all civilisations are not of the same value”.
“Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those who accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred,” he added in his speech, a copy of which was provided to the French press agency, AFP.
Joining a general outcry on the French left, former presidential candidate and socialist, Ségolène Royal called the minister’s comments, “obscurantist and dangerous,” on France 3 television on Sunday.
The Movement for young socialists (MJS) condemned the speech as “xenophobic” and a sign of “cultural racism,” in a statement, while others claimed the minister was baiting extremist right-wing, National Front party voters ahead of the spring presidential election.

Nato has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 10 years trying to raise a modern army for Afghanistan and to rebuild the country's infrastructure.

But if a leaked classified report prepared by the alliance is to believed, all this will go to waste soon after foreign combat forces withdraw in 2014.

The latest in a series of leaks suggests that Nato is much more worried about the course of the war than it lets on in public.

Nato has tried to play down the importance of the report by calling it a "compilation of opinions expressed by Taliban detainees", but it highlights many failures in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

"Senior Taliban representatives... maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters”

The harsh reality is that an increasing number of Afghans are turning to the Taliban, having grown mistrustful of Nato and Afghan forces

The Times newspaper is being investigated by the Met police over email hacking claims, the BBC understands.

It comes after the Leveson inquiry heard that a Times journalist hacked a police blogger's email.

Labour MP Tom Watson says he has received confirmation from the Met that the Times, owned by News International, is being investigated.

The Met said officers from Operation Tuleta have contacted Mr Watson.

Operation Tuleta is the Met's investigation into computer hacking.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer has withdrawn an award from a far-right leader who allegedly likened his supporters to Jews under the Nazis.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was said to have made the remarks after protesters picketed a controversial far-right Vienna ball.

The event was widely criticised as it was held on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters that he was "profoundly disgusted" by Mr Strache's words.

New evidence has emerged that supporters of the former Libyan leader, Col Gaddafi, have been tortured while in detention

Chinese security forces have opened fire on ethnic Tibetan protesters in the province of Sichuan, killing at least one man, Tibetan activists say.

Rights groups and the self-declared Tibetan parliament-in-exile quote eyewitnesses as saying scores of people were injured, many of them by gunfire.

The activists say the demonstrators demanded freedom for Tibet.

The official Xinhua news agency confirmed that one protester was killed and five police officers were injured.

THE Queensland Government aims to wipe out puppy farms under proposed new registration requirements for dog breeders.
Agriculture Minister Tim Mulherin says unscrupulous breeders who usually run large-scale operations in isolated areas will be squeezed out under a proposed two-tiered breeder registration system.

"These notorious operations generally have very poor conditions - sometimes with hundreds of dogs - and fail to meet any of the dogs' behavioural, social and physiological needs," Mr Mulherin said in a statement.

The registration system will be mandatory for intensive dog breeders with regular monitoring and voluntary registration for smaller scale breeders.

As thousands of Nigerians flee to their home regions following a spate of Islamist killings of southerners and revenge attacks on mosques and northerners, the BBC's Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar considers whether the situation has parallels to the 1967 civil war, which left some one million people dead in Africa's biggest oil producer.

Old age officially begins when people reach the age of 54 and youth ends when people turn 32, a Government survey has found. ...

Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister, said that attitudes towards age must change due to Britain’s rapidly ageing population.

With the retirement age for men and women reaching 66 by 2020, the minister said that people must alter their perceptions of when people become ‘old’.

“The idea that we are ‘old’ at 59 belongs in the era of Downton Abbey – not in 2012,” said Mr Webb.

 

The price of Afghan opium rose dramatically in 2011, the UN has said.

Opium poppy farmers in Afghanistan probably earned more than $1.4bn (£910m) last year - equivalent to 9% of the country's GDP, it estimates.

Prices started to rise in 2010 after the poppy crop was hit by a fungal disease.

The head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime said opium helped fund the Taliban insurgency and fuelled corruption in Afghanistan.

Greece's financial crisis has made some families so desperate they are giving up the most precious thing of all - their children.

A wave of terrorist violence across Nigeria has raised fears of an alliance between the Islamist Boko Haram movement and al-Qaeda's franchise in the Sahara.

A CONTROVERSIAL neo-Nazi music festival will be held in Brisbane this year, drawing white supremacists from around the world.
The yearly Hammered Music Festival, already being advertised through white pride websites, will take place in a secret Brisbane location and feature race hate music from international and local bands,

China has uncovered 531bn yuan ($84bn; £54bn) of irregularities in local government debts.

The National Audit Office said breaches included "irregular credit guarantees", "irregular collateral" and "fraudulent and underpayment of registered capital".

There are growing concerns about the amount of bad loans being held by local governments.

Official figures show they held debt of 10.7tn yuan ($1.7tn; £1.1tn) in 2010.

"The State Council is studying proposals to enhance local government debt management and to address fiscal and financial risks," the audit office said in the report.

Greece may have to leave the eurozone if it fails to secure its latest bailout from the EU, IMF and banks, a government spokesperson has warned.

"The bailout agreement needs to be signed otherwise we will be out of the markets, out of the euro," spokesman Pantelis Kapsis told Skai TV.

The government is struggling with public opposition to new austerity measures, demanded by lenders.

Analysts suggest the warning is designed to win support for the moves.

Karnataka's women and child welfare minister C C Patil assumed tones of a moral policeman on Sunday saying, "I personally don't favour women wearing provocative clothes and always feel they need to be dignified in whatever they wear." He also said women should know how much skin they should cover.

Patil was speaking to TOI on Andhra Pradesh director general of police Dinesh Reddy attributing the rise in rape cases to women dressing provocatively by wearing "flimsy and fashionable" dresses. Patil said incidents like rape and sexual harassment occur when moral values among men decline - the subtext being women dressing "provocatively" cause men's morals to nosedive.

Since its inception, the euro zone has been built on lies, the most grievous of which is the idea that the common currency could work without political union. But Europe's politicians are currently suffering under a different but equally fatal delusion -- that they have all the time in the world to fix the crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of jobless Hungarians could soon be told to dig ditches and sweep the streets under new government plans to tackle unemployment.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday ordered the country's military rulers to stop the use of "virginity tests" on female detainees, a practice that has caused an uproar among activists and rights groups.

The virginity test allegations first surfaced after a March 9 rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square that turned violent when men in plainclothes attacked protesters, and the army cleared the square by force. The rights group Human Rights Watch said seven women were subjected to the tests.

Just one criminal goes to prison for almost every 100 crimes that are committed sparking fears millions of offenders are escaping tough punishment.

Those jailed last year made up just eight per cent of all offenders convicted in the courts while hundreds of thousands more never appeared before a judge and were handed a caution, fine or other out-of-court punishment.

Many more criminals are never caught and brought to justice.

It comes at a time when there is growing concern that the criminal justice system is fuelling a “revolving door” of offending

 

Imran Khan is gaining momentum in Pakistan. On Christmas day more than 100,000 people gathered to hear him in Karachi.

A prince who claims to be heir to the throne of Libya has set foot on his country's soil for the first time since the monarchy was overthrown in 1969.

As part of the Greek government's sweeping austerity measures, property owners are facing a tax which, if not paid within 80 days, means their electricity will be cut off. ...

Such is the resentment towards the austerity levy that groups of activists have promised civil disobedience, including by-passing the electricity company to re-connect those who have been cut off.

Cambodia and Thailand have agreed to withdraw their troops from a disputed border area near the ancient temple of Preah Vihear.

The deal was reached after Thai Defence Minister Yuthasak Sasiprapha met his Cambodian counterpart, Tea Banh, in Phnom Penh.

A territorial dispute over a patch of land around the temple has sparked deadly clashes between the two nations.

In April, fighting left 18 people dead and tens of thousands displaced.

North Korea will shift to collective rule from a strongman dictatorship after last week's death of Kim Jong-il, although his untested young son will be at the head of the ruling coterie, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said.

The source added that the military, which is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, has pledged allegiance to the untested Kim Jong-un, who takes over the family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since it was founded after World War Two.

The source declined to be identified but has correctly predicted events in the past, telling Reuters about the North's first nuclear test in 2006 before it took place.

The suppression of breakthrough research into deadly bird flu strains has been labelled scientific censorship by some, but others say it is a necessary step to prevent a possible biological attack.

Last month researchers in the Netherlands discovered that the H5N1 influenza virus, or bird flu, could develop into a dangerous virus that can spread between humans.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is fatal in 60 per cent of human cases but only 350 people have so far died from the disease largely because it cannot be spread by sneezing or coughing.

But by using ferrets in a lab, the researchers proved it was possible to change H5N1 into an aerosol-transmissible virus that can be easily spread rapidly through the air.

After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.

As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.

Uganda's president has rejected Western attempts to link international aid with progress on gay rights, saying building infrastructure was more important.

Yoweri Museveni said homosexuals need electricity, roads and trains too.

President Barack Obama has ordered US government agencies to put gay rights at the heart of foreign policy.

"Before anyone gives me a lecture about homosexuals and their rights, first talk about railways," Mr Museveni told delegates at a meeting in Kampala.

JULIA Gillard faces an almost certain leadership challenge by March next year, with deep divisions emerging in her new cabinet.
Senior cabinet minister Martin Ferguson yesterday dropped a potential bombshell by refusing to publicly back the Prime Minister, claiming his first allegiance was to the Labor Party

The biggest strategic risk facing the UK is economic not military, the head of the British armed forces has said.

General Sir David Richards said the UK's main effort must be the economy, as "no country can defend itself if bankrupt".

The eurozone crisis was of "huge importance" to military planners as well as the City, he said.

Despite defence cuts, Britain would remain "powerful relative to our allies", he added.

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, went to Dubai for hospital treatment because of threats to his life, according to Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister

News Corp. (NWSA) Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch has an explanation for why he failed in 2008 to properly read an e-mail that then triggered a phone- hacking scandal: It was a Saturday.
Murdoch said he didn’t read the full e-mail from former News of the World editor Colin Myler showing that voice-mail interception went beyond a single reporter at the tabloid because he wasn’t in the office that day, documents released by the U.K. Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee show. Murdoch, who turned 39 yesterday, said he doesn’t recall any conversation with the editor that weekend.
The release of the e-mail renews pressure on Murdoch, son of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and chairman of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY), after shareholders of both companies lodged a protest vote against him. James Murdoch last month told the same U.K. committee he was kept in the dark by Myler and other executives. Both Myler and the tabloid’s lawyer Tom Crone insisted Murdoch was told about the message in 2008.

... The documents released yesterday are “pretty persuasive evidence of direct knowledge,” Edward Wasserman, the Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University, said in an interview. “This is a fairly damning document that undermines the claim James didn’t know about the hacking till later.”

Israeli government ministers have reacted with fury to comments made by Hillary Clinton expressing her concern for the state of democracy in Israel and the status of Israeli women.

The divide between the wages of the rich and the poor is growing in nearly all of the world's leading economies, according to think tank the OECD.

Researchers examined 22 countries and found that inequality grew in 17 of them between the 1980s and the financial crisis of 2008.

Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States were the most unequal nations.

Inequality rose fastest in the the UK - it peaked in 2000, then fell, but is now rising again.

Even traditionally egalitarian countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden have experienced a growing wealth gap in recent decades.

The OECD found that globally, the richest 10% of the population earns nine times more than the poorest 10%.

What happens when US forces pull out of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan? The BBC's Bilal Sarwary, the first journalist to visit one of the areas the US left in Kunar province, uncovers a disturbing situation.

Beijing's public security bureau has launched a six-month crackdown on so-called black jails operated by private security firms in the Chinese capital.

Local governments hire the firms to stop people who travel to Beijing to voice grievances about perceived injustices in their areas.

The police say the firms are involved in illegal detention, violence and running underground jails.

The government usually prefers not to admit these kind of operations exist.

Hillary Clinton's arrival in Burma has worried many in Beijing that a new Great Game is under way in Asia, with editorials in the state-run media asking whether the United States is trying to "encircle" China.

QUEENSLAND MPs have voted in favour of legalising same-sex civil unions during an historic night in Parliament.

China has ordered a ban on advertisements during TV dramas as part of its reform of cultural activities.

Adverts will not be allowed in the middle of programmes lasting for 45 minutes from 1 January next year.

The authorities said this was in line with the "spirit" of a recent Communist Party meeting.

Senior leaders said then that they wanted to develop a "socialist culture", although they did not elaborate on exactly what that means.

Venezuela has received its first shipment of gold bars, after President Hugo Chavez ordered the repatriation of 85% of the country's bullion reserves.

The gold was unloaded from a plane and taken under heavy guard to the Central Bank in the capital, Caracas.

President Chavez has explained the move as an act of sovereignty that will protect Venezuela's reserves from global economic turbulence.

However critics say it is expensive and unnecessary.

A GIPPSLAND abattoir has been shut by state authorities following a shocking video of alleged animal cruelty.
PrimeSafe ordered the immediate closure of LE Giles abattoir in Trafalgar after a video of the alleged cruelty to pigs being processed in the facility was provided to them by Animals Australia.

It is understood the video shows abattoir workers sticking electric stun prods used to stun animals before they are slaughtered into the eyes and noses of the animals.

PrimeSafe chief executive Brian Casey told the Herald Sun it was his intention to close the abattoir permanently

PARENTS who force their adult children into marriage could be jailed, under draft laws the Federal Government plans to bring before Parliament next year.
The Government today released an exposure draft of a new bill aimed at toughening Australia's laws against forced marriage, forced labour and other slavery-like practices.

The bill will explicitly outlaw coercing, threatening or deceiving anyone - underage or adult - into a marriage they don't want.
Until now, prosecutions have been mounted only against people for forcing minors into marriage.

Pakistan's Taliban movement, a major security threat to the country, is holding exploratory peace talks with the U.S.-backed government, a senior Taliban commander and mediators told Reuters on Monday.

The discussions are focused on the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border and could be expanded to try to reach a comprehensive deal.

Taxpayers will underwrite mortgages totalling hundreds of millions of pounds under plans to “unblock” the housing market and revive the flagging economy.

The Prime Minister and his deputy, Nick Clegg, will unveil proposals to help first-time buyers of new homes by carrying part of the risk of their mortgages.

They also propose subsidising the construction of 16,000 homes by giving £400 million of taxpayers’ money to property developers.

In a further move, ministers are working on a scheme under which billions of pounds of money in pension funds will be used to finance the construction of power stations, wind turbines and roads.

 

Marijuana could soon be legalised in Copenhagen, after the city voted overwhelmingly in favour of a scheme that would see the drug sold through a network of state-run shops and cafes.

The registered nurse charged with four counts of murder after a fatal fire at a nursing home in Sydney's west is believed to have worked there for only a short time, police say.

Police said it was expected to take some time to piece together what happened after two fires are believed to have broken out in separate wings of the Quakers Hill nursing home in the early hours of Friday morning.

Three elderly residents died in the blaze, while another died late Friday afternoon in hospital.

Dozens of Kuwaiti protesters stormed parliament late on Wednesday, as hundreds more demonstrated outside.

Eyewitnesses said they were demanding that Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah step down.

Hundreds of people, including opposition lawmakers, have been protesting weekly outside parliament over alleged corruption.

MELBOURNE City Council officers have told Occupy Melbourne protesters at Treasury Gardens to pack up their tents or face having them confiscated.
The order was issued about 7am, just minutes after six police officers arrived.

About 12 tents have been set up in the park just near 1 Treasury Place.

Yields on Italy's 10-year bonds jumped back up to 6.7pc after Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann dashed hopes for muscular intervention by the European Central Bank to stabilise bond markets and buy time for the new government of Mario Monti.
"Monetary policy cannot and must not solve solvency problems of states and banks," he told a Frankfurt forum, calling for a halt to incessant pressure from the rest of the world for the ECB to violate its own legal mandate with debt monetisation.
Hours later, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a "breakthrough to a new Europe, and political union" but ruled out Eurobonds, debt-pooling or any form of fiscal transfers to weaker EMU states in a speech to the Christian Democrat (CDU) party conference in Leipzig.
The body language from Germany has washed away any alleged benefits from installing EU technocrats in power in Rome and Athens. Spanish yields have once again crossed the danger line of 6pc.

Prosecutors in Germany say they have found evidence to link the murders of 10 people over seven years to far-right extremists.

Eight of the victims were of Turkish origin, one was Greek and one was a German policewoman.

Nine were small businessmen - mainly kebab stall owners - who were shot in the face in broad daylight at their places of work.

The murders were committed in several German cities between 2000 and 2007.

Spain is likely to miss its deficit reduction targets, it has emerged, increasing speculation that it may also fall victim to the eurozone debt crisis unless drastic corrective measures are introduced.

A group of armed men have stoned and shot dead a woman and her daughter in Afghanistan's Ghazni province, security officials have told the BBC.

The officials blamed the Taliban, who they said had accused the women of "moral deviation and adultery".

The police said two men had been arrested in connection with the murder.

The attack was only 300m from the governor's office in Ghazni city, which is on a list of places to be transferred to Afghan security control.

Global chocolate companies have been told they have a moral responsibility to do more to stop children working on cocoa farms in West Africa.

A recent report commissioned by the US government found that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa were involved in growing cocoa.

Many were at risk of being injured by machetes, pesticides or through other hazards.

A former News International lawyer has accused company chairman James Murdoch of giving "disingenuous" evidence to an MPs' inquiry into phone hacking.

Mr Murdoch insisted he did not know until recently that the illegal practice went beyond a lone reporter at the News of the World.

But Tom Crone said he had made Mr Murdoch aware of the paper's wider involvement in hacking three years ago.

The underwater volcano on the island of El Hierro has killed wildlife and led to the closing of some coastal areas.

North America’s super rich will outnumber Asians with a net worth of at least $30 million for the next 20 years, according to a report from Wealth-X.
There are 62,960 so-called ultra-high-net-worth individuals in North America compared with 54,325 in Europe, Wealth-X, a Singapore-based research and advisory firm said in a report published today. The Asia-Pacific region, which has 42,525, will leapfrog North America in 2032 and Europe in 2024, it said.

German and French officials have discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve setting up a more integrated and potentially smaller euro zone, EU sources say.

Italy's cost of borrowing has touched a new record, approaching 7%, a day after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would resign once budget reforms are passed.

The yield on Italian 10-year government bonds reached 6.98%, the highest since the euro was founded in 1999.

Investors fear that the eurozone's third-biggest economy could become the next victim of the debt crisis.

A REGISTER for sex offenders would protect children from danger, the West Australian Premier says.

...

The State Government has introduced to Parliament legislation to create a three-tiered register of sex offenders.

The first tier would allow the public to see the names, photographs and personal details of sex offenders who have gone underground by failing to comply with their reporting conditions.

Tier two would allow the public to access photographs of repeat or highly dangerous offenders living in the same postcode and adjoining postcodes.

Tier three would allow guardians to make a request regarding a specific person who has regular unsupervised contact with their child.

The inordinate delay on the part of the Congress-led UPA government in enacting laws to prevent sexual assault on women is taking a heavy toll and exposing them to various forms of violence, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member and MP Brinda Karat said.

Ms. Karat was here to participate in the 12th State conference of the All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) which concluded on Wednesday. Later, speaking to journalists she alleged that legislation intended to protect women and girls from sexual assault and abuse were pending for several years due to the government's apathy.

Hours after a creditor and his gang of tattooed thugs hustled Zhong Maojin into a coffee shop in Wenzhou, he says he wouldn’t yield to their demands.
They wanted to take over one of the pharmacies in a chain he’d built by borrowing from private lenders. Instead, he made an offer of traditional retribution in this eastern Chinese city, known for loan sharks who have sometimes meted out violence to bad debtors.
“If you like, you can cut off one of my fingers instead,” Zhong, 42, says he told them.
Giving up the store would have made it impossible to pay back another 130 creditors, Zhong said. He’d borrowed 30 million yuan ($4.7 million) at interest rates as high as 7 percent a month to expand the business. Many of the lenders were elderly neighbors who’d mortgaged their homes.
At least 90 bosses in similar situations to Zhong have fled the city since April, and two killed themselves, according to Zhou Dewen, head of a small business association in Wenzhou.

Nestled among the valleys of Pakistan’s mountainous northwest, a tiny religious community that claims descent from Alexander the Great’s army is under increasing pressure from radicals bent on converting them to Islam.

Malnourished children arriving from Somalia have been forced to wait unsheltered in the desert for an average of 12 days to be given food, medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said in the report No Way In: The Biggest Refugee Camp in the World is Full.
The Kenyan government closed its border to refugees fleeing war in neighbouring Somalia in 2007, citing security concerns, and the United Nations (U.N.) announced in 2008 it had no more room for new arrivals.
But conflict and the worst drought in years have forced 44,000 Somalis to seek admittance into Dadaab camp since the start of this year.
"The camps are completely full. People are arriving and they do not find any space anymore, meaning they don't have access to water and other facilities," Joke van Peteghem, MSF's head of mission in Kenya, told AlertNet.

Britain's deployment of its most sophisticated helicopters only goes to show how a 90-day jab to unseat Col Gaddafi has become a war of attrition

A French minister from President Nicolas Sarkozy's government has resigned over claims his "foot fetish" led him to sexually molest two female employees.

For a while there I thought the United States was preparing itself for a lecture from the Chinese about the atrocious disregard for human rights shown at Guantanamo Bay. "Discussions," said the official statement, "will focus on human rights developments, including the recent negative trend of forced disappearances, extralegal detentions, and arrests and convictions, as well as rule of law, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, labor rights, minority rights and other human rights issues of concern."

It certainly seemed to fit in with the latest Wikileaks disclosures of men wasting years of their lives in Guantanamo, long after the Americans realized they were no threat, were not “enemy combatants”and should never have been picked up in the first place.

But no. These annual talks were to have no mea culpa from a United States official. With perfectly straight faces the Americans were in Beijing to reprimand the Chinese. They must have no shame.

France has threatened to abandon European Union freedom of movement by "suspending" Europe's Schengen Treaty due to an influx of Tunisian and Libyan migrants from Italy.

Authorities in France temporarily blocked trains from Italy in an attempt to stop north African migrants from entering the country.

Trains were stopped at the border for hours - prompting Italy to launch an official complaint with France. Services were later resumed.

Italy has angered France by giving temporary resident permits to thousands of Tunisian migrants.

The permits allow them to travel freely in many European countries.

The number of unemployed in Spain, which has the highest jobless rate among developed countries, could reach a record of more than 5m, the labour minister has warned.

That's about 20% of the work force without a job!

The West's political and financial elite is still a very long way from grasping the extent to which the global centre of economic gravity is now shifting – and the implications in terms of relative and absolute living standards.

The remains of Salvador Allende, the former president of Chile, are to be exhumed nearly 40 years after his death to establish whether he committed suicide or was killed as General Augusto Pinochet seized power.

France is to consider making it a criminal offence to pay for sex, in a shift in prostitution laws that places the onus on the customer.

China has told the US to stop preaching on human rights, after the state department's annual report on the issue criticised China.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the US should concentrate on its own rights issues and stop interfering.

Chinese authorities have launched a major crackdown on dissent recently.

Unveiling the report, US officials expressed particular concern over the recent arrest of the artist Ai Weiwei, an outspoken critic of the government.

The deaths of 25 Afghans after nearly a week of anti-American rioting in a dozen cities across the country - coupled with a steady stream of anti-American demonstrations across Pakistan over several issues - signal new challenges for the US-led Western alliance as it tries to stabilise the region and pull its forces out of Afghanistan.

Crouching over tiny fires and hunched beneath makeshift plastic shelters, they are the start of what threatens to become a huge exodus of desperate migrants fleeing the turmoil sweeping across North Africa.

Family incomes after tax and adjusted for inflation fell by 0.8 per cent during 2010, the biggest fall since 1977 and the first reduction for 30 years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported yesterday.
Millions of workers have had their salaries frozen but are paying more for essentials, such as food and fuel. Official forecasts have warned that the squeeze on living standards is likely to last until 2013.

An eminent French professor has launched a website dedicated solely to optimism in an attempt to end French pessimism fuelled by a group of "declinologists" who lament the demise of the "French model".

There have been some positive developments in the last 24 hours, but the overall situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious. ...
Radiation levels in major Japanese cities have not changed significantly since yesterday and remain below those which are dangerous to human health.

The German parliament approved a law on Thursday which calls for up to five years in prison for anyone forcing a girl or woman into marriage. The new law would also give non-German citizens who are forced by their husbands or families to leave the country after their marriage a legal right to return to Germany.

During a state of emergency it is not unusual to hear about looting, so why have there been very few reports of this in Japan? Commentators from across the media have their say.

Cumberland sausage has been successful in its bid to be made only in Cumbria.

It now ranks alongside the likes of Champagne, Parma ham and Greek feta cheese in having Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status under EU law.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the move would guarantee its heritage and be a major boost for Cumbria's butchers.

Other protected UK food and drink products include Cornish clotted cream and Stilton cheese.

By Thursday morning the last line of defense came down to this: a police water cannon, a helicopter maneuver designed for wildfires and a race against time to get the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rewired to the grid.

iThe body of a soldier who died along with his record breaking sniffer dog in Afghanistan last week will be returned home to the UK.

Lance Corporal Liam Tasker, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, was shot dead while on patrol in Helmand province.

The ashes of the 26-year-old's dog Theo will be flown home on the same plane.

L/Cpl Tasker, who was called a "rising star" by Army chiefs, was shot by Taliban snipers and Theo died of a seizure shortly after his master.

Pakistan is being swamped by a rising tide of religious hatred, while its political leaders remain silent, writes Praveen Swami.
... Pakistan's political establishment, though, has been silent in the face of a rising tide of religious hatred. The battle over the blasphemy laws is just one part of a larger war over religion and identity that is threatening the foundations of the nuclear-armed state – but its leaders seem to have neither the will nor the ability to drag it away from disaster.

AUSTRALIA'S bruising political landscape has taken a violent turn after the Wikipedia site of Independent MP Tony Windsor was hacked to report he'd been assassinated.

Federal police will be called in to investigate the latest threat against the rural MP. Earlier this week, Mr Windsor revealed he'd received death threats in the wake of his support for Labor's climate change policies, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Mr Windsor was unaware that his unauthorised Wikipedia site had been changed by some twisted individual when contacted yesterday.

A snapshot of Mr Windsor's Wikipedia site said the Member for New England "became the first political (sic) to be assasinated (sic) in Australian history''.

There are warnings of a catastrophic humanitarian emergency as thousands of Libyan asylum seekers fleeing a violent uprising make their way to Europe.

Several thousand would-be immigrants crossed the waters from Tunisia last month to the Italian island of Lampedusa, south-east of Sicily.

On Thursday around 500 asylum seekers alone landed on the island, which has long been the first port of call for refugees trying to get into Europe from North Africa.

Italy's interior minister Roberto Maroni has warned the numbers could go over one million, and he is calling for help from the rest of the EU.

A Kenyan lawmaker has been kicked out of parliament for wearing ear studs adorned with precious stones.

Gidion Mbuvi, who also had sunglasses, was excluded from a session after other MPs decided that the way he dressed offended the dignity of the assembly.

Deputy Speaker Farah Maalim said the house had never before been entered by a male lawmaker wearing earrings.

But supporters of the 35-year-old Mr Mbuvi, who is nicknamed "rich man", accused Mr Maalim of intolerance.

Up to 1.5 million refugees from North Africa could try to flee across the Mediterranean, Italy warned on Thursday as the government begged for help from the EU in dealing with the potential exodus.

he security situation in Afghanistan has worsened to its lowest point since the toppling of the Taliban a decade ago and attacks on aid workers are at unprecedented levels, a United Nations envoy said.

The shameless courting of the Libyan dictator by Tony Blair and key Labour ministers, despite his track record in financing terrorism, has come back to haunt the party.

Britain and the US have contributed to instability in the Middle East by supporting autocratic regimes that suppress human rights, British PM David Cameron has said

The spectre of full civil war in oil-rich Libya and reports of the creation of an Islamic emirate in country's "Barqa" region has moved the Mid-East crisis into a more dangerous phase, setting off an explosive rise in US crude prices.

His reputation for generosity and lavishing gifts upon a deserving few are long established.

Details of a cache of 24 presents totalling nearly £200,000 and allegedly given by Silvio Berlusconi to the teenage dancer at the centre of the under age prostitution charge against him emerged from prosecutors details of the case against him.

Islamic fundamentalists attempted a show of force in Tunis on Friday by burning down a street of brothels.

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw cocoa are trapped in Ivory Coast and pressures on supplies could affect prices of Easter eggs if the country's political crisis is not resolved.

Karima El Mahroug, who has become known as Ruby 'the heart stealer', has appeared in an advert promoting a book by former MEP Alfonso Luigi Marra called 'The Female Labyrinth'.
In the advert posted on YouTube, the 18 year-old's clothes are ripped off by a man dressed as The Phantom of the Opera as she describes the book as a "guide to love, unemployment, the economy, etiquette, reform of the EU" in a world "stripped bare" by the government.
The Moroccan model was paid in the region of 100,000 euros (£83,700) for the advert, according to reports in the Italian media.

THE Gillard Government will beef up a campaign supporting multiculturalism in the face of what is seen as growing resistance to new arrivals.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen tonight revealed the campaign would salute what he called "the genius of Australian multiculturalism".

The Government will create a new independent organisation, the Australian Multicultural Council, and ACT senator Kate Lundy will be made parliamentary secretary in charge of managing multicultural programs.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has been indicted to stand trial on charges of paying for sex with an underage girl and abuse of power.

Examining judge Cristina Di Censo said the process would start on 6 April, after prosecutors in Milan asked for an immediate trial.