Latvia and Finland are theoretically prepared to support Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves for the President of the European Union, Estonian media reports.
Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said that Ilves is an honourable candidate for the unelected EU presidency.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said today that Finland is ready to support Ilves as the EU President.

British Airways are likely to merge with Spanish airline Iberia that today approved the merger, the financial headquarters of the new airline will be located in London.
The merged BA-Iberia carrier will be chaired by Antonio Vazquez, the current chairman of Iberia and it is also expected that Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, will retain his role at the merged group, The Times reports.
It is not clear what position Martin Broughton, BA’s chairman since 2004, will …

The election of Arab leadership in Judea and Samaria that was supposed to take place on 20th January will be postponed.
The independent Central Election Commission, responsible for organizing elections, confirmed today that they had recommended postponing the vote, Ha’aretz reports. “We met today and we decided to tell the president, who called these elections, that we cannot have elections at the time he scheduled them,” Hana Nasir, the head of the Central …

Ending the computer industry’s most bitter legal war, the chipmaker Intel agreed today to pay a rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) $1.25 billion (£755 million) to settle all antitrust and patent disputes, the New York Times reports.
The settlement will resolve a private antitrust case pending in Federal District Court in Delaware and two in Japan. In addition, AMD will withdraw all regulatory complaints worldwide. AMD have been the driving force behind charges that Intel used …

Vodafone users were unable to use their phones for more than two hours this morning after the operator suffered a network glitch, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Vodafone said that the network crash first came to light at 7am this morning, and affected a “small number of users”. It left some Vodafone customers unable to make or receive calls, send emails or text messages, or surf the internet.
Although the company did not give an exact reason for …

A mother was fined £75 for feeding ducks in a park with her toddler son, the Daily Mail reports.
Vanessa Kelly had taken 17-month-old Harry on his weekly visit to the to feed ducks when she was approached by a council warden.
She put away the bread as soon as the warden told her duck feeding was not allowed in the park, in Smethwick, Birmingham, but the warden pulled out a hand-held computer and issued her with …

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office denied a report in the Arabic-language newspaper al-Arabiya that Israel would agree to surrender the strategic Golan Heights in return for a peace treaty, Arutz 7 reports.
The platform of the Prime Minister’s Likud party specifically states that his Government will not withdraw from the area.
“The subject of the negotiations with Syria came up during a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy,” Netanyahu’s office said. “The Prime Minister said he …

The wife of the Commons Speaker, Tory MP John Bercow, is running for office as a Labour candidate, the Daily Mail reports.
Sally Bercow was this week selected to battle for a place on Westminster City Council at next May’s local elections.
Bercow, 39, is one of three candidates picked to fight for St James’s Ward which is currently held by the Tories.
She was a Tory activist as a student but switched to back Labour shortly before …

A 700-year-old Torah scroll adorned with mystical kabbalist designs will be put up for sale by Sotheby’s on 24th November, Ha’aretz reports.
The scroll, which experts think is the oldest surviving Torah from the Golden Age of Spain, will be offered for purchase based on an appraised value of $300,000 to $500,000. It is one of several items of Judaica that will be on offer.
The scroll’s importance was first identified by Rabbi Yitzchok Reisman, a New …

Cornwall will officially become yet another bi-lingual part of the United Kingdom – all street signs and leaflets will appear in two languages – English and Cornish.
So far there are bi-lingual signs in Wales and in some places in Scotland.
Cornwall’s welcome sign will after the change therefore also bear the text of “Kernow a’gas dynnergh”.
However not everyone is happy with the move, with some members of Cornwall Council branding the draft policy ridiculous, …

Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev called on Russia today to refocus its economy away from Soviet-era energy and heavy industry toward information technology, telecommunications and space, Reuters reports.
“We haven’t managed to get rid of the primitive structure of our economy,” Medvedev said at the start of his second annual address to parliament. “The competitiveness of our production is shamefully low.”
Noting that Russia’s economy had been much harder hit by the global crisis than other key nation, …

The number of people who do not have a job – and are not bothering to look for one – has soared to its highest since records began in 1971: 7.9million – one in five people of working age – are “economically inactive”, the Daily Mail reports.
That is more than the entire population of Greater London.
Tories called the figures from the Office for National Statistics shocking and said they exposed an alarming trend. “A culture …

NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that NATO wants more troops in Afghanistan, despite the objections of the US Ambassador in Kabul.
Rasmussen met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Downing Street as it emerged that the US envoy in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, had advised President Barack Obama against a military surge, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Eikenberry, who previously commanded troops in Afghanistan, urged caution until more evidence was seen that the new Afghan Government had …

A Chinese Government spokesman said that US President Barack Obama should be especially sympathetic to China’s opposition to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan independence, as a black president who lauded Abraham Lincoln for helping abolish slavery, Reuters reports.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the comments at a news conference today, four days before Obama arrives in China for a summit that will cover the two big powers’ vast and sometimes tense economic, diplomatic and …

A Royal Mail sorting office manager ripped open envelopes to steal money from children’s birthday cards, the Daily Mail reports.
David Baker, 47, selected colourful envelopes which he thought were being sent to youngsters and removed cash from inside. Baker – a senior member of postal staff – then threw the greeting cards away in a bin, a jury was told.
He would even start his shift early and help with sorting of the post – which …

Obama-mania is still here and there aren’t even any signs of its decline. Not only did US President Barack Obama score this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing, now Forbes claim that he is the most powerful man in the world.
Forbes say of their this year’s number 1:
How powerful is he? Let’s count the ways: Presides over world’s largest, most innovative, most dynamic economy; commander-in-chief of planet’s richest, deadliest military; finger on …