Weekend News Digest: 43 Stories

From costume parades in the Philippines to a cyclist’s protest in London, marches were held in more than 50 cities around the world to coincide with the two-week U.N. Climate Change Conference, which runs through Friday in Bali, Indonesia.

Hundreds of people rallied in the Philippine capital, Manila, wearing miniature windmills atop hats, or framing their faces in cardboard cutouts of the sun.

“We’re puzzled and disheartened by an ongoing WGA (Writers Guild of America) negotiating strategy that seems designed to delay or derail talks rather than facilitate an end to this strike,” the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement.

In response, the guild said the chief alliance negotiator, Nick Counter, slammed the door on bargaining after presenting an ultimatum and before the union could respond to his latest proposal regarding crucial new-media compensation issues.

U.S. law protects endangered iguanas on the naval base, but the Supreme Court is struggling to determine whether it also applies to the 305 men imprisoned there.

In the balance hangs America’s traditional reputation for justice for all.

Leased by Cuba to the United States 104 years ago under an agreement that can be broken only by mutual consent, the base is firmly in Washington’s hands, much to Fidel Castro’s annoyance. Washington pays $4,085 a year in rent for the 29,000 acres of cactus-studded hills and pristine deepwater bay, but Castro refuses to cash the checks and recently said the U.S. is illegally occupying the base and using it for “dirty work.”

The charges come after a week of revelations that began with John Darwin, 57, walking into a London police station claiming amnesia and ended with his wife Anne telling newspapers she had hidden him at the family home during the missing years.

Anne Darwin described how her husband had avoided discovery by using a small passage to an apartment in an adjoining house owned by the couple.

Clergy and lay representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno in central California, voted to leave the church, which has been in significant upheaval since 2003 when U.S. Episcopals consecrated their first openly gay bishop.

The vote on the key secession amendment was 173 delegates in favor, with 22 against, far more than the two-thirds majority needed. After later voting to align itself with the conservative Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America, delegates rose and applauded enthusiastically.

In a speech to the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain, the Pentagon chief argued Iran still has the capability to restart its weapons program and continues to enrich uranium, an essential part of atomic weapons development.

He also accused Iran of actively supporting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Islamist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and that its missile program poses a wider threat throughout the region.

Der Spiegel magazine quoted Bolton Saturday as saying the aim of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), contradicting his and President George W. Bush’s own oft-stated position, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran.

“This is politics disguised as intelligence,” Bolton was quoted as saying in an article appearing in next week’s edition.

Bolton described the NIE, released Monday, as a “quasi-putsch” by the agencies, Der Spiegel said.

The United States has been widely criticized by European allies and human rights groups for methods like “waterboarding” in which prisoners are made to fear that they are drowning.

President George W. Bush, who has repeatedly said the United States does not torture, had no recollection of being told about the tapes or their destruction, the White House said.

Ground troops were approaching Musa Qala from three directions, the ministry said, after deploying from helicopters Friday to kick-off a long-awaited assault to eject Taliban rebels who stormed in 10 months ago.

The two children were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in was caught up in a firefight, ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters, adding five civilians were also wounded.

The celebrations, coinciding with the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a key date in the Catholic calendar, began with a mass celebrated by Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias before some 20,000 faithful, including 400 priests, bishops and other cardinals.

It was followed by the solemn opening of the gates leading to the pilgrim trail to the holy places where Bernadette Soubirous lived and experienced 18 apparitions of the mother of Jesus Christ between February and July 1858.

Virtual worlds like Second Life and There appeared where residents used 3-D versions of themselves to do, well, pretty much what they’d do in real life, like get ice cream or shop for clothes. Soon real-world retailers, corporate training firms, even banks opened branches in virtual worlds to market real goods and services.

There’s just one problem for these virtual wannabes: They can only set up shop one world at a time. Each new virtual space means building a storefront, the equivalent of making a new Web page for every brand of Web browser.

That’s why President Bush announced Thursday a voluntary private-sector plan to freeze interest rates for many borrowers at risk of losing their homes.

The problem: Economists say the freeze is only a partial answer to the challenge.

Without delving into the specifics of Mormon doctrine, Mr. Romney invoked the Founding Fathers in asserting the nation’s religious underpinnings, called for religious tolerance, and highlighted the “common creed of moral convictions” within the varied theologies of American churches.

And, just as the future President Kennedy promised in 1960 that he would not accept instruction from the pope, Romney promised that as president he would answer to “no one religion.”

When he arrives, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is greeted like a rock star: with a collective inhale the crowd jumps up to catch a glimpse of the firebrand populist. “Sit down! Sit down!” a cleric implores, as laudatory whistling intensifies. “The friend of the Imam [Mahdi] has come!”

While Mr. Ahmadinejad is under attack across Iran’s political spectrum for his economic policies and unyielding nuclear rhetoric, even his detractors say these frequent visits to Iran’s provinces are shrewd politics that give him a serious shot at reelection in 2009.

A State Department official said that Krongard had become a political liability, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , through aides, asked him this week to leave. The official insisted on anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak about personnel matters.

An abrasive attorney who once reportedly referred to himself as an “equal-opportunity abuser,” Krongard came under fire from his own investigators and from a congressional panel for allegedly blocking probes into serious claims of wrongdoing in Iraq.

The four-page draft, written by delegates from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa as an unofficial guide for delegates from 190 nations at the December 3-14 talks, said developing nations should at least brake rising emissions as part of a new pact.

It said there was “unequivocal scientific evidence” that “preventing the worst impacts of climate change will require (developed nations) to reduce emissions in a range of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.”

Vancouver-based Mountain Equipment Co-op became the first major Canadian retailer to stop selling products that contain bisphenol A over fears the chemical can leach from plastic food and water containers.

“Inconclusive science and regulatory uncertainty presently surrounds bisphenol-A (BPA),” the company said in a statement.

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.

WildlifeDirect said the cobras were the world’s largest and had been identified as unique. The species has been named Naja Ashei after James Ashe, who founded Bio-Ken snake farm on Kenya’s tropical coast where the gigantic serpents are found.

“A new species of giant spitting cobra is exciting and reinforces the obvious — that there have to be many other unreported species but hundreds are being lost as their habitats disappear under the continued mismanagement of our planet,” said the group’s chairman, Kenyan environmentalist Richard Leakey.

Here is what astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg have written of the annual Geminid Meteor Shower: “If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor.”

The Geminids get their name from the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, because the meteors appear to emanate from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.

The truck was allowed through the main gate of the complex in Beiji, the site of Iraq’s largest refinery, after the driver told the guards he was delivering the sand to a construction site inside. The driver detonated his payload when two policemen approached him as he tried to enter a parking lot, police said.

The blast, which damaged nearby homes and sent shards of glass flying through the air, killed eight people and wounded 16, police said. It occurred in a neighborhood that is home to many refinery workers and engineers, but apparently was targeting the station.

The militants, followers of firebrand preacher Maulana Fazlullah, had taken control of at least eight towns in the Swat valley since July, scattering outgunned police and erecting “Taliban station” signboards outside former police stations.

Officials accuse them of imposing a reign of terror, shuttering schools for girls and beheading locals who opposed them. Their seizure of the region demonstrated the government’s feeble control in Pakistan’s remote areas.

Two decades later, the dire predictions have not come to pass. Around 80 percent of the world’s largest remaining tropical wilderness is still standing – a vast carpet of green crisscrossed by the Amazon river and its 1,100 tributaries.

But scientists warn that the destruction only has slowed, and a Connecticut-sized chunk disappears every year for ranching, farming, and logging.

“There’s tension in the air – especially at night,” said Dragan Jovanovic, 41, who lives in Sainovica, a Serb village in western Kosovo that is surrounded by ethnic Albanian settlements in a valley lined by a rugged range of snowcapped peaks known as the Cursed Mountains.

With some Serbian officials threatening violence if Kosovo declares statehood early next year, there are fears that things could go badly again in the Balkans. And if there is trouble, it is likely to happen here first, along northern Kosovo’s desolate border with the rest of Serbia.

He proposed new talks be held in Kosovo and Serbia instead of abroad. Almost 18 months of mediated talks, mostly in Vienna but also Brussels and London, have failed to reach an accord.

“Serbia wants to negotiate and it’s essential that a political and democratic settlement … is found through talks,” Kostunica told Serbian state news agency Tanjug.

Parts of about 17 kms (11 miles) of coastline about 100 km southwest of Seoul have already been blackened by oil, the coast guard said. More of the spill is expected on Sunday to hit the area that has marine farms and oyster beds.

“We are taking all measures to prevent that from happening,” said Song Myeong-dal, head of the maritime ministry’s Information and Policy Monitoring team.

The inquiry will be carried out jointly with the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal watchdog and would determine whether a full-blown investigation was needed, the Justice Department said in a statement.

“The Department of Justice and the CIA announced today that the Justice Department’s National Security Division initiated a preliminary inquiry in conjunction with the CIA’s Office of Inspector General regarding the destruction of the interrogation videos” described two days ago by the CIA director, it said.

“It is useless to hope that Serbia will accept an independent Kosovo, so our leaders have to act on their own and declare independence by the end of the year,” said 64-year pensioner Beqir Hajrullahu.

The troika of international mediators in the conflict between Serbia and Kosovo said in their report to the United Nations Friday that 120 days of talks between Belgrade and Pristina officials failed to solve the issue of Kosovo’s future status of Kosovo.

U.S. officers in the neighborhood said that the Shiite Muslim-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is undermining American efforts to bolster the volunteers, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims. At the same time, U.S. soldiers acknowledged that some of the volunteers could be sympathizers of al Qaida in Iraq and other anti-government organizations.

Saidiyah, in southwest Baghdad , remains a battle zone between Sunni and Shiite forces in a capital where sectarian cleansing has turned most formerly mixed neighborhoods into either Sunni or Shiite enclaves.

The town, where some 2,000 Taliban fighters are believed to be holed up, was surrounded on Friday by British and Afghan forces, in preparation for an airborne assault by U.S. troops expected overnight in a drive to recapture the town. Musa Qala was captured by the Taliban in February of this year, without a shot being fired – they simply rolled into town and planted their flag after British forces withdrew, having brokered an agreement with local tribal elders to keep the peace. And the radical movement fighting to expel foreign forces from Afghanistan and reimpose its harsh brand of Islamic rule has held the town ever since.

Laywer Clive Stafford Smith confirmed a report by the BBC that all but one of five inmates who were previously resident in Britain are set to be freed, although he would not forecast when.

“There’s no doubt that the agreement has been struck, that they will return home, the question is, when?” he said. “There’s no reason why they couldn’t come home tomorrow, but the US are insisting on a lot of red tape.”

More than a dozen state-run cash pools that manage money for local governments have some exposure to mortgage-related and other high-risk holdings that roiled credit markets this past summer, according to rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

The fear now is that the same subprime-mortgage turmoil that triggered multi-billion-dollar writedowns for Wall Street’s biggest banks might trickle down to teachers, civil servants and even the vendors delivering supplies to schools because of the way public funds were invested.

Strong willed, possessed of a powerful ego and given to dizzying flights of rhetoric, the 63-year-old British baron known as Lord Black of Crossharbour is expected to be sentenced Monday. Federal prosecutors say the sentence could be as much as 24 to 30 years, though a recent court filing suggested he could get a more lenient term.

Any stay in the pen will be an inglorious next step for a man who famously brushed aside questions about his expenses as boss of the Hollinger International Inc. newspaper holding company.

The Labor Department reported 94,000 jobs were added to payrolls in November and that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.7 percent. Thomson/IFR analysts had set a median projection of 100,000 new jobs. The report also showed that average hourly earnings increased 0.5 percent in November, compared with forecasts for a more-modest 0.3 percent.

The report at least temporarily chilled a rally that has left the Dow only 538 points, or 3.8 percent, below the record close it reached on Oct. 9.

Murdoch, 34, will become chairman and chief executive of Europe and Asia at News Corporation, taking charge of its broadcasting, print and Internet divisions including Hong Kong-based Star TV, Britain’s Sun newspaper and Sky Italia.

He will rejoin the News Corp board and step down as chief executive of Britain’s pay-TV firm BSkyB (BSY.L), but remain with BSkyB as non-executive chairman, replacing his 76-year-old father Rupert. BSkyB Finance Director Jeremy Darroch will become CEO.

A spokesman for the General Labour Confederation (CGT), the largest union representing workers at the French state rail company SNCF, said the grass-roots momentum for a new strike could not be resisted.

The strike from 1900 GMT Wednesday to 1900 GMT Thursday will follow on from a similar 24-hour walkout for the previous day called by the CGT on the Paris transport system of metro trains, buses and trams known as the RATP.

The People’s Bank of China made the move “in order to strengthen the management of liquidity in the banking system and curb the excessive growth of credit,” it said in a statement on its website.

State-run Xinhua news agency called the new rate an all-time high.

The rise in the requirement, the 10th this year, had been widely expected following exceptionally strong recent economic growth and inflation data and a government vow last week to adopt “tight” fiscal policies.

The Idaho National Laboratory’s Advanced Test Reactor earlier this week issued a call for proposals from universities to conduct irradiation experiments.

“There has been a resurgence of interest in commercial nuclear power,” Ivonne Couret, public affairs officer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “The NRC has been very busy and has had an increase of applications received and expects to receive more in 2008.”

The minarets, standing at more than 100 feet, are all that remain of what was once a brilliantly decorated complex for Islamic learning and devotion along the Silk Road on the outskirts of the western city of Herat.

Just over a century ago, more than a dozen minarets stood in Herat, part of a madrasa-mosque complex built in the 15th century.

Six Southeast Asian and Pacific nations have launched a joint initiative to save the ‘coral triangle’ which contains more than half the world’s reefs, considered building blocks for marine life.

“I regret to say that marine resources of our countries and our regions are threatened by climate change, destructive fishing and pollution,” said Freddy Numberi, Indonesia’s Minister of Maritime Affairs.