Serbian war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic will have a defence lawyer imposed on him after United Nations judges ruled that he had”’substantially and persistently obstructed” his trial for genocide and war crimes, but proceedings against him will now be delayed until March 2010 to give the court-appointed counsel time to study the case, the Daily Telegraph reports.
“The trial chamber hereby determines that the overall interests of justice are best met by the appointment of counsel,” …

More than half of British children can’t identify a crocodile while just one in five can name four basic wild animals, the Daily Mail reports.
A shocking survey found that when asked to name a series of animals, more than half of children aged between four and 12 struggled to recognise a crocodile while 44 per cent were unable to identify a leopard.
Many children also had difficulty recognising gorillas and chimpanzees while others could not tell …

Looking ahead to the 2012 American presidential election, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin are definite frontrunners in the Republican Party.
According to Gallup, 71% of Republicans say they would seriously consider voting for Huckabee. This gives him a slight edge over Mitt Romney (65%) and Sarah Palin (65%) in this early test of the strength of several potential Republican contenders. A majority of Republicans also say they would seriously consider voting for Newt Gingrich, …

According to officials of the “Palestine Liberation Organisation”, Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas “insists on not running in upcoming election”, Ynet reports.
Abbas said on today that he would not seek re-election in a 24th January ballot, Arab officials said. “The president insists on not running in the upcoming election,” one official said.
Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina confirmed that Abbas is seriously considering not submitting his candidacy due to the dead end reached in the peace process …

New bandings in aviation tax which make it more expensive to fly to the Caribbean than Hawaii would be scrapped by a Conservative government, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Shadow Transport Minister Julian Brazier made the pledge to overhaul Air Passenger Duty following a plea from the head of Europe’s largest travel group, TUI Travel.
The new banding system (based on the distance from London to the destination’s capital city) came into force on 1st November to coincide …

Parents are to lose the right to withdraw their child from sex education classes when the youngster reaches 15, the Daily Mail reports.
The move means all teenagers will receive at least one year’s worth of lessons covering sex, contraception and relationships before the age of consent.
Faith schools will not be able to opt out of any part of the new statutory curriculum, Schools Secretary Ed Balls also confirmed today, although they will be able to …

Software producer Microsoft are cutting 800 more jobs in addition to the 5,000 lay-offs they announced in January, the Independent reports.
The cuts are being made in offices around the globe.
Microsoft said that in January they would continue to hire in key areas such as web search.
At the end of September, about 91,000 people worked for Microsoft.

A council in Austria are attempting to block the sale of the house where Adolf Hitler was born over fears it could fall into the hands of neo-Nazis who would turn it into a shrine to his memory, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The owner of the house in Braunau-am-Inn wants to put it on the market with a likely asking price of over £2million, but the local authority has vowed to try to find a way …

The Bank of England’s rate-setters have decided to pump an extra £25bn into the economy in their quantitative easing (QE) programme, the BBC reports.
They also kept interest rates unchanged at 0.5% for an eighth month.
The Bank have already spent £175bn on QE, which involves printing money to buy assets from banks and other companies to stimulate the economy.
The Bank of England said they would spend the extra £25bn over the next three months. This represents a …

The United Nations today temporarily pulled half of their international staff out of Afghanistan and threatened that a complete and permanent withdrawal could follow, The Times reports.
Amid an atmosphere of increasing gloom in Afghanistan, the UN Special Representative in Kabul, Kai Eide delivered a pointed warning to the government of President Hamid Karzai.
“There is a belief among some that the international community (presence) will continue whatever happens because of the strategic importance of Afghanistan,” he …

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims that Israeli Government offered to end all settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, Arutz 7 reports.
Clinton claimed that Binyamin Netanyahu’s Government “would end permits, it would end approvals, it would end expropriation of land”.
“It is not at all everything we would want, but for that Government to do anything is unprecedented,” Clinton said.
Clinton repeated her call for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resume talks with no pre-conditions …

Despite widespread rumours that the Renault F1 team could withdraw from Formula One, the team’s managing director Jean-Francois Caubet insisted that a working budget for 2010 has been approved and the team will race in F1 next year.
“We have already contracted our drivers, had our budget approved and are enrolled in the world championship. Season 2010 has begun already,” Caubet said, according to F1-live.com.
He added that Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn has also laid out his …

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has accepted the European foreign policy minister role he was tipped for, a Labour source told politics.co.uk.
Miliband could announce his new position within the next fortnight, triggering a by-election in his South Shields constituency seat which might be contested by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who could even take over leadership of the party after what is widely anticipated to be a dire election result for Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Labour.
Now the …

France accused the Tories of “castrating” Britain’s position in Europe and threatening to turn the country into a backwater which would “disappear off the radar”, the Daily Mail reports.
In an extraordinary attack on David Cameron’s party, a leading member of France’s centre-right government said that their approach to the future of the EU was both “autistic” and “pathetic”.
“It’s pathetic. It’s just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from …

Italian court yesterday found 23 American CIA agents guilty of kidnapping at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme for abducting terrorist suspects, the Guardian reports.
The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady’s superior, …

A nanotechnology therapy that targets cancer with a “stealth smart bomb” is to begin patient trials next year in the first clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine, The Times reports.
The nanoparticle, which targets tumour cells while evading the body’s immune system, promises to deliver larger and more effective doses of drugs to cancers, while simultaneously sparing patients many of the distressing side-effects of chemotherapy.
Animal studies have indicated that the treatment can shrink tumours …