The move to abolish RIA Novosti and create a news agency to be known as Rossiya Segodnya is the second in two weeks strengthening Putin’s hold on the media as he tries to reassert his authority after protests against his rule. Most Russian media outlets are already loyal to Putin, and opponents get little air time, but the shake-up underlined their importance to Putin keeping power and the Kremlin’s concern about the president’s ratings and image.

The head of the new agency, to be built from the ashes of RIA Novosti, is a conservative news anchor, Dmitry Kiselyov, who once caused outrage by saying the organs of homosexuals should not be used in transplants. “The main focus of … Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) is to highlight abroad the state policy and public life of the Russian Federation,” said a decree signed by Putin.

Sergei Ivanov, the head of the presidential administration, told reporters that the changes were intended to save money and improve the state media. But the new organization has strong similarities to APN, a Soviet-era news agency whose role included writing articles about “the social-economic and cultural life of the Soviet people and items reflecting Soviet society’s point of view on important internal and international events”.

However, what is worse that the red-flashing-headlines of record youth (and total) unemployment is, as Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, 125 million people in the EU are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. According to Eurostat, that is 24.8% of the population. Almost half of Bulgarians faced economic hardship and Greece had the highest poverty rate in the euro area at 34.6%.

Under the agreement, which is to be signed at the World Bank in Washington, AFP reports that water will be drawn from the Gulf of Aqaba off of Eilat in Israel's south, with some desalinated and distributed to all three members of the agreement, and the rest transferred in 4 pipes to the Dead Sea.

While estimates say the Dead Sea is on pace to dry out by 2050, environmental groups have warned that the Dead Sea's delicate ecosystem could be damaged by a large influx of Red Sea water. In August, Jordan announced a $980 million project to transfer water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, which appears to have been a recent impetus to the deal. After the deal is signed, Shalom said "an international tender will be issued for the entire project - building the desalination plant in Aqaba and laying the first of the four pipes."

Shalom praised the announcement as "a breakthrough after many years of efforts. It is nothing less than a historic move." He particularly noted the economic aspects of obtaining cheap water, the environmental aspect of "saving the Dead Sea," and diplomatic aspects of signing a deal as peace talks with the PA are failing by many accounts.

But the judge, who is retiring from the bench next year after decades as a family lawyer and judge, said those who did not feel ready for children should not have them. He said couples had no right to have children, “you only have responsibilities if you have them”.

Sir Paul criticised warring parents’ obsessions with their own “rights” instead of their responsibilities to do the best for their children. His comments came after his Marriage Foundation think-tank published research suggesting children whose parents were not married were twice as likely to suffer a family break-up as those whose parents were married.

The Office for National Statistics reported earlier this year that the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers in England and Wales reached a record 47.5 per cent last year. This means that as many as 346,595 babies were born outside marriage or civil partnerships in England and Wales.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the family division judge, will warn of “yawning public ignorance” about the damaging mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. It emerged last week that Sir Paul, who is retiring next year, decided to step down because of opposition from within the judiciary to his support for traditional marriage.

He has been placed under investigation and could be officially censured over comments last year criticising the Government for pushing through same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a “crisis of family breakdown”. Speaking in London he will call for a new approach to tackling family breakdown with a greater emphasis on helping prevent relationships running into trouble in the first place.

Unfortunately, say critics, what the deal is certain to "deliver" is more pain and suffering for the world's poorest people and farmers at the expense of the world's largest and most powerful nations and corporations.

Anti-poverty groups and food sovereignty advocates across the world were pushing off pronouncements like Azevedo's, saying that the agreement is a failure when it comes to fairness, poverty reduction, environmental protections, and the alleviation of hunger across the globe.

Among those slamming the final deal, director of the World Development Movement (WDM) Nick Dearden said the Bali agreement is designed to serve the interests of "transnational corporations not the world's poor."

John Hilary from‘War on Want’ stated: "There is a rank hypocrisy at the heart of the WTO that cannot be glossed over. The USA and EU continue to channel billions in subsidies to their richest farmers, yet seek to destroy other countries’ right to protect their poorest citizens from starvation. The WTO is an institution that has lost any claim to legitimacy. No amount of spin from Bali can disguise that fact."

Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI's Operational Technology Division, told the Post that that sort of creepy spy laptop recording is "mainly" used in terrorism cases or the "most serious" of criminal investigations. That doesn't really make it less crazy (or any better) since the very idea of the FBI being able to watch you through your computer is absolutely disturbing.

The whole Post piece about the FBI's search for a bomb threat suspect is worth reading. Good to know these completely competent folks are watching over us by any means necessary.

They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over."

But is that actually the truth? If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the US is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.

And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in US history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy.

Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the US economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth.

It's not just Detroit retirees who are worried about their pensions. Financially troubled cities in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania will soon face decisions on what to do with chronically underfunded pension funds, and experts say the Detroit ruling has made it easier for cities to argue that pensions must be cut.

"If I were a retired public-sector pensioner, I'd be worried today," said Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and the director of the Pension Research Council.

For decades, representatives of public-sector pensions have depended on constitutional provisions in various states, including Michigan and Illinois, that protected pensions. Now, US Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes' ruling has shown that federal bankruptcy laws preempt those state provisions. Any city that has underfunded pensions and troubled finances could soon look to bankruptcy as a way out of paying pensions, experts say, as long as their state allows them to file for Chapter 9 protection.

"This is really the first time that there's been a clear decision by a judge that, yes, pension promises are on the cutting board too," Mitchell said.

"Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it," the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill. He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

During that hearing, Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat for Oregon) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does "not wittingly" — collect information on Americans in bulk. After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all US phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment.

The intelligence director said he tried to give the "least untruthful" answer he could without revealing classified information. Sensenbrenner said that explanation doesn’t hold water and argued the courts and Congress depend on accurate testimony to do their jobs. "The only way laws are effective is if they're enforced," Sensenbrenner said. "If it's a criminal offense — and I believe Mr Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job."

Germany’s Social Democrat party will announce next week (14 December) the results of a ballot of its members on whether to accept a coalition with the Christian Democrats under the leadership of Angela Merkel, but the details of the agreement struck on 27 November by the two parties will not be changed.

That agreement commits the coalition “to take new political initiatives to strengthen and deepen the [European Union’s] common foreign and security policy” and argues that EU leaders “should as a rule once a year deal with foreign, security and defence policy”.

The leaders will discuss EU security missions abroad, strengthening the European defence industry, and co-operation to develop defence equipment.

Netanyahu quoted incendiary statements by Iran's leaders, who called Israel "a rabid dog," among other things. The Iranian regime, he said, "is committed to our annihilation and I believe that there must be an uncompromising demand at the Geneva talks, for a change in Iran's policy."

"In other words, there needs to be not just a change in the capability of Iran to arm itself, but also a change in its policy of genocide. I do not think that I or anyone can exaggerate the threat that Iran poses to the Middle East."

One thing that budget hasn’t bought, however, is subtlety. The US National Reconnaissance Office launched a top-secret surveillance satellite into space Thursday evening, and the official emblem for the spy agency’s latest mission is, well, certainly accurate, to say the least.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence live-tweeted Thursday’s launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and throughout the course of the ordeal made no effort to ignore the logo for the NROL-39 mission.

The latest spy satellite to be sent into orbit by the NRO can be recognized by its seal: a malevolent octopus with furrowed brows that also happens to be wrapping its tentacles around all corners of the Earth.

Juan Carlos Lentijo, head of IAEA’s mission to Fukushima Daiichi, December 4, 2013: “Controlled discharge is a regular practice in all the nuclear facilities in the world. And what we are trying to say here is to consider this as one of the options to contribute to a good balance of risks and to stabilize the facility for the long term.”

Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, December 4, 2013: “You cannot keep storing the water forever. We have to make choice comparing all risks involved.”

Tepco – with no financial incentive to actually fix things – has been insanely irresponsible and has only been pretending to contain Fukushima. So instead of doing something to contain the radiation, they’re going to dump it.

Mutation breeding, after booming in the 1950s with the dawn of the Nuclear Age, is still used by seed developers from BASF SE to Dupont Corporation to create crops for markets that reject genetic engineering. Regulators don't demand proof that new varieties are harmless. The US National Academies of Science warned in 1989 and again in 2004 that regulating genetically modified crops while giving a pass to products of mutation breeding isn't scientifically justified.

Mutant breeding was developed during the Second World War and promoted during the Cold War as a peaceful use of nuclear technology. It created thousands of new plant varieties by knocking out genes with X-rays and gamma rays as well as chemicals. Atomic gardens, built around gamma-ray emitters, were popular among breeders in the 1960s and Japan still operates one. China began launching seeds into space in 1987 to take advantage of cosmic radiation and low gravity, developing more than 40 mutant crops with higher yields and better disease resistance.

Most of the world's wheat, rice and barley are descendants of mutant varieties, according to [program head Pierre] Lagoda. Mutagenesis is used to give fruits and vegetables a new colour and to make grains shorter and easier to harvest. In the US, mutagenesis was used to develop Star Ruby grapefruit and varieties of lettuce, beans, oats, rice and wheat. In the US, where only GMOs are required to pass through an approval process, the Department of Agriculture issued a memo this year verifying crops created through mutagenesis as acceptable even for organic farming.