Household energy bills will increase by £800 during the next decade under proposals to introduce a green tax to cut carbon emissions, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Plans put forward by the Government-supported think tank, the Green Fiscal Commission, would see tax on gas and electricity rise every year. By 2020, the new tax would reach 80 per cent of the cost of the average gas bill and 30 per cent of the average electricity bill.
The price of …

For the first time since 2004, conservatives in the United States outnumber moderates, NewsMax reports.
A new Gallup poll shows that 40 per cent of Americans call their political views conservative, 36 per cent moderate and 20 per cent liberal. Last year, conservatives were tied with moderates at 37%.
35% of independents are now self-proclaimed conservatives, up from 29% last year. Meanwhile, the portion of independents who call themselves moderate dipped to 43 per cent from 46.
Among …

The Met Office said there will be “massive amounts of dry weather” around for much of the UK this week, and confirmed conditions are those expected from “an Indian summer”, the Guardian reports.
Tomorrow will start off damp, but improve steadily and we’ll see sunny spells breaking out across mid-morning, and probably find some sunny spells everywhere by early afternoon. The rest of week will continue similarily – the mornings may start off a bit misty, and …

The value added tax (VAT) will go back up to 17.5 per cent on 31st December, Tory Politico reports.
According to the blog, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms said that it “will be confirmed in the pre-budget report in a few weeks time”.
Chancellor Alistair Darling said in July that VAT will go back to its original level by the New Year. Darling insisted at a private meeting with business leaders that there was …

European energy companies, faced with weakening demand and plentiful lower-cost fuel supplies, have bought far less natural gas from Russia’s OAO Gazprom this year than they are obliged to under long-term contracts, but Gazprom expect the European customers to pay for the unused gas anyway, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A person close to Gazprom’s export arm said purchases by the company’s largest European customers had fallen short of the minimum specified in their “take-or-pay” contracts …

Former US President George W. Bush was often accused of neglecting the state business and playing golf instead. The whole mainstream media jumped on him constantly and made big stories of how the President is having a golf holiday etc.
However, now that there’s a President in the White House that the mainstream media absolutely adores and worships, no one gives a flying hoot what he does and how much golf he plays. But in fact, …

Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s younger sister says she collaborated with the CIA in 1964 following the Cuban revolution, the AP reports.
Juanita Castro, 76, said that she initially supported her brother’s 1959 revolution and overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista’s presidency, but quickly became disillusioned by the revolution’s vast number of executions and rampant expropriation of private property.
Her home became a sanctuary for anti-Communists before she fled the island in 1964. Juanita Castro said she was approached …

France is to launch a hard-hitting campaign aimed at reaffirming pride in the country and combating Islamic fundamentalism, the Daily Mail reports.
As well as providing civic lessons for adults – including classes about the country’s Christian history and liberal political institutions – the Government will encourage school children to sing the national anthem at least once a year.
Immigration Minister Eric Besson also suggested that foreigners should learn to speak better French.
His proposed measures contrast sharply …

German researches have developed an iPhone app that allows motorists to drive a car using their mobile phone, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The iDriver app converts the iPhone into a the real-life equivalent of a video game controller, capable of directing the progress of a two ton minivan. The app has separate buttons for accelerate and brake, along with a steering wheel that exploits the iPhone’s motion-sensitive capabilities.
Its instructions are sent to the specially-rigged car over Wi-Fi, …

The United Kingdom is 12th in this year’s Prosperity Index, measured by wealth and happiness, dragged down by low scores for education, health, domestic security and levels of personal freedom.
The Legatum Prosperity Index ranks 104 countries, covering 90 per cent of the world’s population. The table is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with detailed measures of happiness and quality of life.
The UK came second in the world for entrepreneurship and innovation …

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) are likely to approve domain names written in non-Latin characters.
ICANN’s members are meeting in Seoul and they could confirm the change by Friday, which will see the potential for web addresses in Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic become available for use, thenextweb.com reports.
If the change is approved, ICANN would begin accepting applications for non-Latin domain names and that the first entries into the …

A Guardian-owned jobs website, which has two million active monthly users, has been fallen victim to “a sophisticated and deliberate hack” that has reportedly compromised sensitive information of its several users, the ITProPortal reports.
The hacking attack was related to the information submitted by job-seekers on the website, and the offenders might have obtained access to the personal details given in the job applications. However, the situation has been brought back to normalcy in quick time after …

Fourteen Americans were killed in Afghanistan on Monday in two separate incidents involving helicopters, the New York Times reports.
Seven American soldiers and three civilians were killed in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan, and in southern Afghanistan, the midair collision of two coalition helicopters resulted in the deaths of four US soldiers.
Military spokeswoman, Captain Elizabeth Mathias said that gunfire from insurgents was not to blame for the collision. She would not specify an exact location for …

Yesterday morning we again had to turn back clocks as British Summer Time ended and we got back into our natural time zone, the GMT. Which effectively means that everything is totally messed up again and people who sense the time change are feeling miserable, or even ill.
I am one of those people. My biological clock is totally screwed up again, as it is in every spring and autumn when the idiotic jumping between times …

The 2011 census will be snooping into people’s private lives, demanding to know how many bedrooms there are in homes and also detailed information about any overnight visitors – it’s the most intrusive national census ever carried out.
Other new questions include how well respondents can speak English, what kind of central heating they have installed, whether they have a second home, how they define their national identity and whether they are in civil partnerships, the …

Postal workers’ refusal to do their jobs has cost London’s businesses more than £500 million since the start of the summer, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Last week’s strikes alone cost firms in the capital an estimated £200 million, according to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Postal workers staged two days of national strikes last week, with talks planned for tomorrow in a bid to avert a further three days of industrial action at the end …