Australia's Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don't vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party's position on AGW is COMPLETELY OUT OF KILTER WITH THE PUBLIC MOOD AND ECONOMIC REALITY. Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls "A $114 BILLION GREEN TAX ON EVERYTHING" – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That's why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.

DANES CAUGHT FIDDLING THEIR CARBON CREDITS. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor's New Clothes of international finance. IT WAS INVENTED BY NONE OTHER THAN KEN LAY, WHOSE ENRON WOULD CURRENTLY BE ONE OF THE PRIME BENEFICIARIES in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn't been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. IT IS A LICENCE TO FLEECE, CHEAT AND ROB. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world's leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

LEGAL ACTIONS AHOY! Over the next few weeks, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is concerted efforts by the rich, powerful and influential AGW lobby to squash the Climategate story. We've seen this already in the "nothing to see here" response of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the jet-setting, troll-impersonating railway engineer who runs the IPCC and wants to stop ice being served with water in restaurants. This is why those of us who oppose his SCHEME TO CARBON-TAX THE GLOBAL ECONOMY BACK TO THE DARK AGES must do everything in our power to bring the scandal to a wider audience. One way to do this is law suits.

At Ian Plimer's lunch talk yesterday, Viscount Monckton talked of at least two in the offing – both by scientists, one British, one Canadian, who intend to pursue the CRU for criminal fraud. Their case, quite simply, is that THE SCIENTISTS IMPLICATED IN CLIMATEGATE HAVE GAINED FUNDING AND CAREER ADVANCEMENT BY TWISTING DATA, HIDING EVIDENCE, AND SHUTTING OUT DISSENTERS BY CORRUPTING THE PEER-REVIEW PROCESS.

Robert Watson, one of the government's chief scientific advisors, has called for all the raw data to be published. Norfolk police are investigating whether computers were hacked. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading body for assessing climate change science. The organisation's chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri told BBC Radio 4's The Report programme the claims were serious and he wants them investigated.

"We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," he said. "We certainly don't want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail." Last week, the IPCC defended its procedures in the wake of the row. One of the leaked e-mails suggested CRU head Dr Phil Jones wanted certain papers excluded from the UN's next major assessment of climate science.

Dr Jones, who has stood aside from his job pending the results of an internal review, strenuously denies this was his intention and says other e-mails have been taken out of context. The row broke out two weeks ago when hundreds of messages between scientists at the CRU and their peers around the world were put on the internet along with other documents. Climate "sceptics" have claimed that the e-mails undermine the scientific case for climate change being caused by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions, dubbing the issue "ClimateGate".

RBS reportedly wants to pay a total of £1.5bn in bonuses to investment banking staff, and the board has threatened to quit if the government blocks the move. The Treasury said it would intervene if it was in the interest of taxpayers. Meanwhile, Barclays is planning on increasing the non-variable element of staff pay at Barclays Capital, its investment bank, the BBC's business editor Robert Peston says.

Barclays maintains that by pushing up salaries, it is only doing what G20 governments have asked it to do, by shifting the weight of pay from the variable portion - ie bonuses - to fixed. Lord Myners has estimated that AT LEAST 5,000 BANKERS IN THE UK WILL EARN MORE THAN £1M THIS YEAR. He told the BBC that the median wage in the UK was just over £20,000 a year, and yet some bankers expected as a matter of course to receive bonuses, in addition to their salaries, of millions of pounds.

He also said banks needed to be mindful of the fact that much of the profit they were now making was due to "the benign conditions" created by the government pumping billions of pounds into the economy to stimulate demand. RBS directors say it is their legal duty to act in the interests of shareholders, and that if they do not pay competitive bonuses, top talent will leave the bank. This would have an adverse impact on profitability, and therefore the bank's ability to repay the taxpayer, they argue.

Asked whether the new EU External Action Service, which he has previously described as "the world's biggest diplomatic service", will be complicated by rivalries between the Commission, the Parliament and the member states, Solana replies: "The service will be a new institution situated between the Commission and the Council. IT WILL BE MADE UP OF CIVIL AND MILITARY PERSONNEL." Asked about the priorities of the service, he says it will be interested first and foremost in neighbouring regions, in the Mediterranean, the East and Russia.

However he adds: "IT MUST ALSO HAVE IN MIND GLOBAL ACTION. WE ARE NOT ONLY AN ECONOMIC OR TRADE ORGANISATION. I want, I hope, to put forward a political will to play a role in international affairs."

Asked if there is a growing gap between Europe and America over Afghanistan, Solana says: "I don't think that one can talk of a big gap with the United Sates: there are 30,000 Europeans deployed over there under the NATO umbrella. It is unfair to say that Europe's involvement is too modest."

It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those — Britain and France — who have built their own weapons. NUCLEAR BOMBS ARE STORED ON AIR-FORCE BASES IN ITALY, BELGIUM, GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS — AND PLANES FROM EACH OF THOSE COUNTRIES ARE CAPABLE OF DELIVERING THEM. The Federation of American Scientists believes that there are some 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs scattered across these four countries.

Under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War, THE BOMBS, WHICH ARE TECHNICALLY OWNED BY THE US, CAN BE TRANSFERRED TO THE CONTROL OF A HOST NATION'S AIR FORCE IN TIMES OF CONFLICT. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German pilots remain ready to engage in nuclear war.

The US and NATO military leaderships remain protective of the weapons. As recently as December 2008, the Secretary of Defense Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management, chaired by former US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, said the weapons were an important guarantee of NATO security and also supported nonproliferation efforts by preventing allied states from developing their own weapons programs. The report concluded that the presence of B61s in Europe "remains an essential political and military link between European and North American members of the alliance."

Many visitors to Germany can find themselves standing outside a closed department store, perplexed to find that they cannot do a bit of shopping during their weekend trip. This is a result of Germany's long-held resistance to Sunday shopping even in the face of growing consumerism. Yet many of Germany's 16 states have already made some exceptions, allowing stores to open a few Sundays a year. And in Berlin the city government had gone the furthest in chipping away at the ban on Sunday trading.

In 2006 the German capital gave the green light for retailers to open on 10 Sundays a year, including the four Advent Sundays preceding Christmas. However, Germany's Constitutional Court has now upheld a complaint made BY THE COUNTRY'S CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CHURCHES, based on a clause in the German constitution that Sunday should be a day of rest and "spiritual elevation."

"If the state does not use some of its REGULATORY POWER TO GIVE A DEPENDABLE RHYTHM TO AT LEAST ONE FREE DAY - AND THAT IS STILL SUNDAY - then the family faces the threat of being pulled further apart. If they have no time with each other and for each other, then the formal notion of belonging together loses value. This danger faces many families in society... The fact that in the face of growing commercialization and fewer jobs HARDLY ANY EMPLOYEE EVER DARES TO ASK FOR A FREE SATURDAY, led the labor unions to join the churches in their campaign - with noticeable success."

"It may sound old fashioned but it is still correct: SUNDAY IS SUNDAY BECAUSE IT IS UNLIKE OTHER DAYS. This is not about tradition or religion or a social heritage. Sunday is more than just a day off for individuals. It that were so, then it wouldn't matter if someone took a day off on Tuesday or Thursday. IT IS A DAY TO SYNCHRONIZE SOCIETY, THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT SO IMPORTANT. Without Sunday, every day would be a working day and a fixed point in the week would disappear."

With the media business in a state of economic distress as audiences and advertisers migrate online, the Federal Trade Commission began a two-day workshop Tuesday to examine the profound challenges facing media companies and explore ways the government can help them survive.

Media executives taking part are looking for a new business model for an industry that is watching traditional advertising revenue dry up, without online revenue growing quickly enough to replace it. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WANT TO PROTECT A CRITICAL PILLAR OF DEMOCRACY—A FREE PRESS. "News is a public good," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said. "We should be willing to take action if necessary to preserve the news that is vital to democracy."

Among the options being discussed: tax law changes that would allow media companies to earn tax credits or become tax-exempt entities, and copyright law changes that would force search engines and other online aggregrators to compensate media companies for the content they produce.

"The newspapers my generation has taken for granted are facing a structural threat to the business model that has sustained them," said Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California. "The loss of revenue has spurred a vicious cycle with thousands of journalists losing their jobs," he told a meeting on journalism in the Internet age hosted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Waxman, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over the FTC, said the "depression in the media sector is not cyclical, it is structural. While this has implications for the media it also has implications for democracy," he added. "A VIGOROUS FREE PRESS AND VIGOROUS DEMOCRACY HAVE BEEN INEXTRICABLY LINKED. We cannot risk the loss of an informed public and all that means because of this market failure," he said.

US newspapers are grappling with declining print advertising revenue, falling circulation and the migration of readers to free news online, while several major US publishers have declared bankruptcy.

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat for Nebraska, plans to unveil an anti-abortion amendment as early as Thursday that abortions rights supporters inside the Senate and out say they can't support. Nelson says he won't vote for the underlying bill without his strong abortion language. But opponents say his amendment doesn't have the votes to pass. The outcome could be critical in determining the fate of President Barack Obama's signature health overhaul agenda.

At issue is how abortions would be handled in the health care bills. In the House, a bloc of anti-abortion Democrats forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat for California, to accept restrictions that outraged liberals as the price for passing the Democratic health care bill last month. The language passed by the House would forbid any health plan that receives federal subsidies from paying for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother's life.

A new government insurance plan couldn't offer abortions, and women would have to purchase separate coverage for abortion services. Behind the scenes, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat for Pennsylvania, who opposes abortions but wants to vote for the overall health care bill, has been working to find language that could satisfy both sides. Senator Barbara Boxer told activists at the rally that the anti-abortion amendment adopted by the House amounted to "the biggest rollback in a woman's right to choose in three decades."

The move comes after President Barack Obama eased restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. Another 96 lines could soon be approved if they meet the ethical guidelines unveiled in July, US scientists said. Scientists hope to harness the cells to treat a variety of diseases, including injuries, cancer and diabetes.

Embryonic stem cells come from days-old embryos and can morph into any type of cell in the body. Each embryo yields one stem cell line - a family of cells which can be replicated indefinitely in a laboratory. But their use in scientific research is controversial. Opponents say culling the cells is unethical, as it destroys the human embryo. Under former President George W Bush, federal funding was limited to about 60 stem cell lines created from embryos destroyed prior to August 2001.

Scientists say the new lines were created in ways that made them far better candidates for successful research. The US government unveiled ethical guidelines for the research in July, requiring full parental consent and limiting scientists to using existing embryos that would otherwise be destroyed. In keeping with the guidelines, the 13 newly-approved lines were created using private money from leftover embryos at fertility clinics.

NOW ONE RESEARCH SHOP IS PREDICTING THOSE LOSSES WILL GET A LOT WORSE. Real Estate Econometrics, a New York-based consulting and analytics firm, predicted Tuesday that delinquencies among commercial real estate mortgages held by banks will surge to 4% by the end of this year. That's after doubling to 3.4% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2008, the firm said in a report.

THAT COULD PUSH EVEN MORE BANKS TO, OR OVER, THE BRINK. The FDIC disclosed last week that there are 552 lenders on its confidential list of troubled banks, and many of them are there because they're being ravaged by losses on loans to builders that can't fill, or even complete, big commercial real estate (CRE) projects. And here's Bair describing the threat in testimony before Congress in October: "The most prominent area of risk for rising credit losses at FDIC-insured institutions during the next several quarters is in CRE lending." Indeed, she said, at community banks, CRE MORTGAGES ACCOUNT FOR 43% OF ALL LOANS ON AVERAGE.

UNSURPRISINGLY, IT'S THE MORTGAGES THAT ORIGINATED IN 2006 AND 2007, JUST AS THE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE was beginning to deflate, that are showing the greatest signs of stress, Real Estate Econometrics' report said. But if the firm's snapshot of present conditions in the CRE world is sobering for financial executives, investors and customers, the outlook over the next couple of years must be like a bucket of ice water in the face. REAL ESTATE ECONOMETRICS PREDICTS CRE DELINQUENCIES WON'T PEAK UNTIL 2011, meaning Bair and Bernanke's top threat to banks won't be going away anytime soon. And that could be the catalyst that PUSHES REGULATORS TO SEIZE MORE OF THOSE 552 BANKS ON THE BRINK - or push that number even higher.

Israeli daily Haaretz on Tuesday (1 December) published a leaked copy of a draft statement on Israel to be adopted by EU foreign ministers next week. The text - which is likely to undergo changes during internal EU discussions in the run-up to the ministerial meeting - said that peace talks should lead to: "an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine, comprising the West Bank and Gaza AND WITH EAST JERUSALEM AS ITS CAPITAL."

"THE EUROPEAN UNION WILL NOT RECOGNISE ANY CHANGES TO THE PRE-1967 BORDERS," it added, in reference to Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank following the so-called Six Day War.

The draft statement comes amid ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land under the current right-wing government of Benjamin Nentanyahu, in a process creating facts on the ground which are likely to complicate a two-state solution.

Open Europe's Lorraine Mullally is quoted in the Express saying, "As of today, there is virtually no area of policy the EU cannot now touch. UNACCOUNTABLE, UNELECTED EU POLITICIANS AND JUDGES HAVE SWEEPING NEW ­POWERS over everything from our criminal justice systems to asylum ­policy."

Jo Leinen, a senior German Social Democrat MEP said the day was a "DAY OF JOY" FOR THOSE WHO WANTED TO BUILD A FEDERAL UNITED STATES OF EUROPE. "The Lisbon Treaty is better than reported, with it Europe is going forward towards political union," he said. However, German daily Die Welt questions whether the Treaty will make the EU more democratic and efficient. The text of the Treaty is described as being: "cold, technical, curt and only comprehensible to experts". The article notes that the increase in qualified majority voting will mean that member states have less opportunity to block measures they do not want.

El Mundo's Brussels correspondent María Ramírez reports that the introduction of the Treaty saw the staff of the EU institutions react with "disenchantment, discretion and a certain confusion." In an opinion piece in El País columnist Andreu Missé notes that the Lisbon Treaty includes about 95% of the content of the original Constitution rejected in 2005. THE MAIN DIFFERENCE IS THAT THE TEXT OF THE LISBON TREATY IS "PRACTICALLY UNINTELLIGIBLE."

Comments made yesterday by Nicolas Sarkozy have added to fears that the proposed architecture, in combination with the appointment of French protectionist Michel Barnier as the next Internal Market Commissioner, will damage the City of London. Sarkozy said yesterday: "Do you know what it means for me to see for the first time in 50 years A FRENCH EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER IN CHARGE OF THE INTERNAL MARKET, including financial services, INCLUDING THE CITY [OF LONDON]? I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism".

Dutch daily NRC reports that "the British are so angry about Sarkozy's triumphalism that they are blocking negotiations on EU banking supervision... The atmosphere has been so poisoned that the British, who think that supervision damages their City, have stormed out of the negotiations, according to an eye witness".

Writing in the Times, Alistair Darling argues, "We must resist measures, however superficially alluring, that could undermine the effective functioning of our cherished single market. National supervisors, such as the FSA, must remain responsible for supervising individual companies. Making companies directly accountable to more than one authority is a recipe for confusion."

Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force today, (1st December) it acquires "legal personality", which GIVES IT THE RIGHT TO SIGN ACCORDS AND TREAT WITH OTHER STATES. Nor is this right simply theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps (the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.

The EU could not annex additional policy areas without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called "passerelle" clause, or self-amending mechanism. PARLIAMENT, IN OTHER WORDS, NO LONGER HAS THE FINAL SAY ON EXTENSIONS OF EU JURISDICTION. The EU derives its authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational texts.

UNTIL THE END OF NOVEMBER, BRITAIN COULD SIMPLY HAVE WALKED OUT of the EU by abrogating the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid down in Lisbon. In other words – in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any rate, if not of British constitutionalists – the EU gets to settle the terms on which its members are allowed to leave. FORMAL SOVEREIGNTY HAS BEEN SHIFTED FROM THE NATIONAL CAPITALS TO BRUSSELS.

It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have been done WITHOUT POPULAR CONSENT, AND IN THE ABSENCE OF THE REFERENDUM that all three parties had promised.