Czech President Vaclav Klaus signed the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty today, Reuters reports.
Klaus was the last EU leader to ratify the treaty and his signature, coming after the top Czech court cleared the pact, means the bloc of nearly half a billion people can pick its first-ever long-time president and a more powerful foreign representative.
“I signed the Lisbon Treaty today at 15:00 (local time, 2pm GMT),” Klaus said.
Earlier today, the Czech constitutional court ruled that …

Americans are today voting for governors, mayors and congressmen and many of the races are seen as an early test of US President Barack Obama’s political influence.
Obama has spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to ensure that Democrats win governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, and pick up a Republican-held congressional seat in upstate New York, the AP reports.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds was trailing Republican Bob McDonnell in polls …

UK’s largest bank HSBC are to cut 1,700 jobs in the UK, the biggest cuts will come in their credit card and collections operations, which will be reduced from nine regional offices to two sites in Birmingham, Press Association reports.
Further losses will occur among branch network back office staff in the UK.
HSBC declined to provide location details for those offices set to close, but they said that a number of additional jobs would be created …

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made his first appearance at his trial in The Hague today for genocide and war crimes, the BBC reports.
He boycotted the start of the trial last week, saying he needed more time to prepare his defence, but, in a letter to the judge yesterday, he agreed to attend a special procedural hearing.
Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon will decide how to proceed if Karadzic continues to refuse to attend the hearings. …

October was an incredibly good month for The Empire Chronicles as our daily average unique visitor count was 2,061 – which is over 800 more than in September (1,252) and over 1,000 more than in August (1,002).
September was so far the best month for The Empire Chronicles and nothing makes me more happy than seeing that it actually wasn’t the peak. 2,061 unique visitors a day for a one-man blog is, I think, quite a …

A Muslim father ran over her daughter in Arizona, US, because she became “too westernised”, the 20-year-old woman died in hospital.
Noor Faleh Almaleki underwent spinal surgery and was in a coma for nearly two weeks before she finally succumbed to her horrific injuries, the Daily Mail reports.
Police said that her father mowed down her and her boyfriend’s mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a car park in the west Phoenix suburb …

Can e-cigarettes be really more effective against the H1N1 flu strain – commonly known as swine flu – than vaccine that many governments want to force on people? According to some researches, they actually can.
It turns out that propylene glycol, the primary ingredient in the e-cigarette cartridge, may be a powerful deterrent against pneumonia, influence and other respiratory diseases, when vaporised and inhaled. A certain doctor called Oswald Hope Robertson tested vaporised propylene glycol on …

North Korea has completed reprocessing thousands of spent fuel rods, producing plutonium which could be used in nuclear weapons, CNN reports.
North Korea “successfully completed the reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods by the end of August as part of the measure taken to restore the nuclear facilities … to their original state,” according to the official KCNA news agency. ”Noticeable successes have been made in turning the extracted plutonium weapon-grade for the purpose of bolstering up …

Israel’s Military Intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin says that terror organizations in Gaza have significantly improved their ability to attack Israeli population centres, and in recent days, several successful tests of Iranian-made rockets have been carried out, adding that the rockets have a range of up to 40 miles, which means that the Tel Aviv area is under threat of rocket fire from the Strip, Jerusalem Post reports.
Yadlin warned that Iran was continuing to …

Simon Mann, the former SAS officer jailed for 34 years for plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea, has been pardoned on health grounds, The Times reports.
Mann was released after 18 months by a presidential degree and “granted on humanitarian grounds”, according to the country’s Ministry of Information, citing Mann’s need for medical treatment and to be with his family.
The Ministry added that Mann, 57, had “shown sufficient and credible signs of repentance and a desire …

Irish accent was voted the sexiest language in the world, knocking down French from the top they’ve held for decades, the Daily Mail reports.
Men speaking with Irish accent came top in a poll of 5,000 women worldwide. The Italian was deemed to be second most sexy followed by Scottish. The French only managed to limp into fourth place, just ahead of Australian, and English was sixth.
Here’s the top 10:
1 Irish; 2 Italian; 3 Scottish; 4 French; …

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson once said that “we don’t live in a free country”. Well, it’s true. But a recent development that concerns the Conservative Party – the party which we have hoped to bring change into the matter – makes it quite clear: this will not change.
Is the fact that our personal liberties don’t exist anymore really beyond the point of no return? Apparently so. Because nothing else can explain the story of …

The Czech constitutional court has ruled that the Lisbon Treaty is in line with the constitution, clearing the way for President Vaclav Klaus to sign it, the BBC reports.
The Czech Republic is the only EU member yet to ratify the treaty, and the decision removes one of the last hurdles for its passage.
The eurosceptic Klaus, who was awaiting the court’s decision, has said he will not further oppose the treaty. If he signs, that would pave the way for the treaty to come into effect throughout the EU on 1st December.

Scientists backed the sacking of Government’s drug czar David Nutt, saying that he was “politically naive” and should have kept his controversial views on cannabis and ecstasy to himself, the Daily Mail reports.
“I have always been worried about how we are portraying cannabis as some sort of safe, harmless and benign substance and it isn’t,” Dr Clare Gerada, a south London GP and former member of the council, said.
Nutt was sacked for criticising Home Office …

Both US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown have welcomed Hamid Karzai’s election to the second term of Afghanistan’s President, ITN reports.
The White House declared that Karzai is the legitimate president of Afghanistan. Obama said he spoke to Karzai and pressed him on better governance and corruption after a “messy” election, adding that he would monitor the situation to ensure there is progress in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed Karzai’s election to a …

The state pays the rent for one in five homes in Britain, and in some parts of the country, four in ten households have their rent paid for by the state, the Daily Mail reports.
In London, the figures revealed nearly a quarter of households are now reliant on the benefit.
The figures, disclosed in the Department of Work and Pensions’ spending tables, also show that in the North-East, the North-West and Scotland around one in four …