Unions in France say more than two million people have joined a series of nationwide protests against plans to increase the retirement age - but many believe the strikes will not change anything, as Lindsey Hilsum discovers. The 24-hour walk-out has caused chaos for rail and air passengers, schools, hospitals and the postal service. Flights in and out of Paris have been hit by 25 per cent, half of rail and underground services were cancelled. Union leaders said more people turned out than the previous protest in June, when two million people turned out on the streets. It was biggest series of demonstrations since President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power in 2007. Dozens of rallies have already been taking place in many cities across France.

Three US drone attacks on a single day have killed at least 18 people, injured several others in Pakistan's tribal district of North Waziristan. Pakistani security officials say the latest attack has killed four people, adding that 14 others had been killed in the other two US drone attacks in the same volatile tribal district. The last drone attack targeted a building in a village five kilometers northwest of Miranshah town.

A small US church says it will defy international condemnation and go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Koran on the 9/11 anniversary. The top US commander in Afghanistan warned troops' lives would be in danger if the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida went ahead. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the church's plan was "disrespectful and disgraceful". Muslim countries and Nato have also hit out at the move.

A senior Iranian commander says burning the holy Quran is part of a US scenario to distract global attention from its crimes. "By creating secondary issues and drawing public attention to marginal issues, the US government is trying to cover up its crimes and burning the Quran on September 11 by a Christian pastor is part of this movement," said deputy head of Iran's Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff Brigadier General Seyyed Masoud Jazayeri on Wednesday. He went on to add there is strong evidence that the September 11 incident was staged by the then US government and their Israeli agents.

A police sergeant caught on CCTV brutalising a middle-aged woman in a police station has been sentenced to six months in jail following an assault conviction. Sgt Mark Andrews, who was caught on CCTV dragging Pamela Somerville, 59, across the lobby of Melksham police station in Wiltshire before throwing her face first into a cell and leaving her bleeding with an open wound on her head, has been sentenced to six months in jail by Deputy District Judge Peter Greenfield at an Oxford Magistrates Court, AFP reported. Judge Greenfield told Andrews, "I consider that right thinking members of the public will be appalled and totally saddened by your actions as a police officer."

A British rabbi says Jews should avoid visiting the Israeli-occupied Palestine territories, since it would contribute to further occupation of the region. "Jews who realize the human rights deprived of the Palestinians, would not want to visit any place in occupied territories," British rabbi Yacov Weisz told Press TV on Saturday. "They would boycott visiting the Western Wall and Hevron and a few other places and places of worship. Because if I were to go there, I would contribute to the occupation," he said. Weisz, who is a member of Rabbis for Palestine, a self-described orthodox Jewish human rights organization based in London, opposes 'Zionism' and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the Israeli regime.

A French periodical has revealed the location of a secret Israeli espionage center, which ranks among the world's largest and most significant. The base, which intercepts information for the Israeli Spy Agency (Mossad) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is placed near Kibbutz Urim not far from Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev desert, which is in the south of Israel, Israeli website Ynetnews said on Sunday, detailing the report by the monthly newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique. The French publication said the Israel Army's intelligence Unit 8200, which is accommodated in the base, cracks into email boxes and taps the phone conversations of "governments, international organizations, foreign companies, political groups and individuals" in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.

A multi-part TheRealNews segment with host, Paul Jay, and author and investigative journalist, Chris Hedges, who discusses the collapse of the liberal class in the US, the destruction of the environment and the dominance of "inverted totalitarianism" in US society; Part One:

Date-Time: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 at 11:37:38 UTC Wednesday, September 08, 2010 at 10:37:38 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones Location: 20.699°S, 169.810°E Depth: 54.1 km (33.6 miles) Region: VANUATU Distances: 140 km (85 miles) SSE of Isangel, Tanna, Vanuatu 220 km (135 miles) ENE of Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia 365 km (225 miles) SSE of PORT-VILA, Efate, Vanuatu 1860 km (1160 miles) ENE of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia

Is your city making you overspend? High housing prices, exorbitant living costs, and cultures of spending mean residents in some areas tend to rack up much more debt than others. Denver, Seattle, Dallas, and Phoenix rank among the most indebted cities, with average debt levels of $26,100 and higher, according to an analysis by the credit reporting agency Experian. [In Pictures: Top 10 Cities With the Most Debt.] "The decrease in home values has changed people's behavior," says Michele Raneri, senior director of analytics at Experian. Some people have had to use personal loans for items they haven't in the past, for example, while many consumers are trying to pay down their credit card debt. The ability to successfully unload debt varies by location. In Detroit, where residents have been hit hard by layoffs in the auto industry, total debt, which includes credit cards, auto loans, and personal loans but excludes mortgages, increased 6 percent to about $25,000 between 2007 and 2010. In San Diego, on the other hand, residents reduced their overall debt load by 10 percent, bringing it down to an average of $23,822.

Posted on 2010/08/04 by Alcanaanite In an earlier message, I asked: "Have you seen a beautiful Jew lately?" I then asserted that "They are everywhere; and they are just as beautiful as Christians and Muslims." What I did not mention was the fact that sometimes, they are more beautiful. Here is one: Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a Jewish Israeli, an education professor at Tel Aviv University, a wonderful human being, and a mother who lost her daughter in a horrible carnage caused by a suicide bomber. In her unimaginable grief, Nurit searched for the root cause of her tragedy and found it in the dispossession, oppression, and injustice imposed by the state of Israel on the Palestinian people. Here is this superb human being talking about the reality of the state of Israel and its so-called "Jewish Democracy":

Wind-whipped flames swept through at least three Detroit neighborhoods, destroying dozens of homes, including many that were vacant, and even sending waves of searing heat blocks away, officials said. A thick odor of smoke filled the air Wednesday after the roaring fires, fanned by winds of up to 50 mph, jumped from house to house Tuesday night. No injuries were reported. There were about 85 fires at homes and garages over a four-hour period, said Dan Lijana, spokesman for Mayor Dave Bing. "It was a freakish day - the wind was tremendous," said City Council President Charles Pugh. Residents complained of a slow response by the city's emergency responders, but Pugh said the fire department did its best with the resources available. Detroit fire Capt. Steve Varnas told the Detroit Free Press that some fires may have been caused by dead tree limbs being blown onto power lines. At least one electric company launched an investigation into possible ties between the blazes and its lines.

Why do Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and other Zionist leaders insist that "without Palestinian recognition that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, there will not be peace"? They have declared themselves as such. They enjoy the support of most European nations, United States of America, Canada, Australia, and many other countries in the world that have no problem whatsoever in describing the state of Israel as such. Many Arab countries - with leaders suffering from near-sighted vision - would have no problem going along with that concept. Almost every country with significant military, economic, or diplomatic power and influence either fully agrees with the description of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people or has no real problem with it. So, why does the Israeli leadership insist on demanding that recognition from the powerless, penniless Palestinian leadership? Here are some thoughts in that regard: Some say that the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman enjoy humiliating Palestinians. Insisting on that demand gives the Israeli leadership the opportunity to further add the insult of surrender to the 62-year old injury of the open wound of the Palestinian people. Gaining such recognition or not is of little relevance. Continuing to insult the Palestinian people and to humiliate its leadership is what matters to those Israeli leaders; for that is their aphrodisiac. Some say that the Israeli leadership does not see peace to be in the best interest of their Zionist experiment in Palestine, for peace would bring the Zionist expansionist project to an end. Therefore, in order to eliminate any chance for peace, Israeli leaders demand that which they know would be impossible for any Palestinian leader to accept, even if he/she were sympathetic to it. No Palestinian leader would dare even to ask the question, let alone make the decision to grant such recognition. Therefore, the Zionist leaders would use Palestinian rejection of Israel as the state of the Jewish people to not have peace, blame it on the Palestinians, and continue with their expansionist Zionist project with the strongest military in the Middle East backed by the unconditional support of the United States of America.

Police Chief Charlie Beck pleaded for calm and vowed his department would conduct an exhaustive investigation into a bicycle officer's fatal shooting of a drunken day laborer with a knife. But his words did little to dissuade demonstrators, who spilled into the streets for a second straight night Tuesday - some to pray and light candles and others to pelt a police station near downtown Los Angeles with eggs, rocks and bottles. Police reported 22 arrests on Tuesday night, mainly for failure to disperse and unlawful assembly, Officer Karen Rayner said. Officers fired at least two rounds of nonlethal foam projectiles at demonstrators, Rayner said.

Two newborn pandas are the latest additions to the Madrid Zoo. The hairless, pink twins were born to a giant panda Tuesday after being conceived through artificial insemination, and each weigh 150 grams (5 ounces), the zoo said. It will be a few days before veterinarians can determine their gender. They are the first pandas born in the Madrid Zoo since it unveiled one named Chu-Lin in 1982 - the first panda born in captivity in Europe. That one became wildly popular and a symbol of the Spanish capital. Spain's National Research Council, which took part in the recent insemination along with scientists from China, said pandas have been born in Europe four times - twice in Madrid and two other times in the Vienna zoo. The council said there are only an estimated 1,600 pandas left living in the wild in China, their numbers depleted by destruction of their habitat. The Madrid Zoo has four of the endangered animals: the newborns and their parents, mother Hua Zui Ba and father Bing Xing.

Iranian authorities have suspended the execution by stoning of a woman convicted of adultery, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after weeks of condemnation from around the world. "The verdict regarding the extramarital affairs has stopped and it's being reviewed," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran's state-run English-language Press TV. The statement came a day after European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the stoning sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani "barbaric beyond words," the latest in a string of criticisms by foreign powers. She was convicted of adultery -- a capital crime in the Islamic Republic -- in 2006. She also has been charged with involvement in her husband's murder. In a live telephone interview, Mehmanparast said the murder charge was "being investigated for the final verdict to be issued." Adultery is the only crime which carries the penalty of death by stoning under the sharia law which Iran adopted after the 1979 Islamic revolution, a lawyer told Reuters. The death penalty for murder in Iran is by hanging. The lawyer said Ashtiani might receive 15 years' jail if convicted of being an accomplice to murder.

Daniel Millis, a volunteer with the faith-based organization No More Deaths, was arrested in 2008 for littering. His crime: leaving bottles of drinking water on trails near the Arizona-Mexico border so immigrants walking through the desert would not die of thirst. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned Millis' conviction, by a 2-1 vote. It was an important ruling. However the immigration debate works itself out, we do not want to be a country that puts humanitarians in prison for giving water to people dying of thirst. (See pictures of immigration detention in Arizona.) What is disturbing, however, is how limited the court's decision was. As a result, people can still be arrested for doing exactly what Millis did. On Feb. 22, 2008, Millis and three colleagues were driving through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in a Toyota 4Runner. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officers stopped them and spotted gallon-sized bottles of water. When the officers questioned him, Millis admitted that he and his friends had been placing plastic bottles of water along the refuge's trails, adding that they were picking up discarded water bottles as well. Millis was doing his work as a volunteer for the group No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson.

A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania's pro-Nazi wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from France. Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told The Associated Press that Gypsies - also known as Roma - are being unfairly expelled from France. Dressed in a gray suit and sitting inside a white marquee tent, Radulescu said that hundreds of Gypsies are paying the price "for the crimes of the few." "It is not right to be expelled if you are a law-abiding citizen," the 71-year-old Radulescu said. France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria in recent weeks as part of its crime fighting measures. Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, calling the camps in which some of them live, sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution. There are between 10 million and 12 million Gypsies in the EU, most living in dire circumstances, victims of poverty, discrimination, violence, unemployment and bad housing. An estimated 1.5 million of them live in Romania, a country of 22 million, which has the largest population of Gypsies in Europe.

Boulder - Authorities are searching for eight people who have not been accounted for as a wildfire tore through their neighborhoods this week. Sheriff's Cmdr. Rich Brough said Wednesday that 20 people were initially reported missing and 12 of them have been accounted for. It's unclear whether the remaining eight were in some of the 53 homes that have been reported destroyed. Authorities are following up with family members of the missing people and checking homes in the area, and it's still possible they will be located once the checks are complete. About 3,500 people have been evacuated from about 1,000 homes since the fire broke out Monday. Firefighters say mapping now shows the blaze is burning on 6,168 acres, or about 9 1/2 square miles. That's about a thousand acres smaller than they had thought. The new reports about eight people missing and the ever-changing acreage estimates have occurred as people are complaining about a lack of information from authorities about the blaze. Laura McConnell, a spokeswoman for the fire management team, said as many as 300 firefighters are at the fire and more are on the way. She said they're dealing with downed power lines, debris, poison ivy and rattlesnakes. They also have to be watchful for propane tanks in the area.

The Ultimatum Game works like this: You are given $100 and asked to share it with someone else. You can offer that person any amount and if he accepts the offer, you each get to keep your share. If he rejects your offer, you both walk away empty-handed. How much would you offer? If it's close to half the loot, you're a typical North American. Studies show educated Americans will make an average offer of $48, whether in the interest of fairness or in the knowledge that too low an offer to their counterpart could be rejected as unfair. If you're on the other side of the table, you're likely to reject offers right up to $40. It seems most of humanity would play the game differently. Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia took the Ultimatum Game into the Peruvian Amazon as part of his work on understanding human co-operation in the mid-1990s and found that the Machiguenga considered the idea of offering half your money downright weird - and rejecting an insultingly low offer even weirder. "I was inclined to believe that rejection in the Ultimatum Game would be widespread. With the Machiguenga, they felt rejecting was absurd, which is really what economists think about rejection," Dr. Henrich says. "It's completely irrational to turn down free money. Why would you do that?"