Anonymous hacks MIT in honor of info activist Aaron Swartz

 

Members of the hacktivist movement Anonymous gained access to MIT’s website over the weekend and published a statement celebrating recently deceased info activist Aaron Swartz while attacking the justice system that stood to imprison him for decades.

Swartz, who co-founded both the website Reddit and the activism organization Demand Progress, passed away Friday of a reported suicide. And while he openly discussed his bouts with depression in the past, Swartz’ parents and advocates alike have suggested that a serious legal fight that has dominated the activist’s life in recent years played a role in his passing.

The 26-year-old Harvard fellow was slated to appear in federal court during the coming weeks because the United States says he illegally download millions of academic papers from the website JSTOR, presumably for public distribution, while logged onto the computer network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David Segal, the executive director of Demand Progress, originally equated it to “checking too many books out of the library.” If convicted, however, Swartz could have been sentenced to upwards of 35 years in prison.

In a statement published shortly after his death, the family of the activist said, “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”

“Unlike JSTOR,” wrote his family, “MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.” Hours later, Anonymous hacked into MIT.edu and posted a statement on two pages echoing that sentiment.

“Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice the Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publically-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it,” the message read in part.

Through his alleged crime, wrote Anonymous, Swartz “enable[ed] the collective betterment of the world through the facilitation of sharing — an ideal that we should all support.” But while JSTOR elected to avert following charges against him — and even planned to release much of their library for free — the Justice Department soldiered on with plans to prosecute Swartz to the fullest extent.

“Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars,” said Carmen M. Ortiz, he United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, after an indictment was filed against Swartz in 2011.

In addition to staring at a possible 35-year sentence, Swartz also faced up to one million dollars in fine. After an indictment was filed against him in July 2011 for wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer and criminal forfeiture, he was released on $100,000 bond.

"The situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of US computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining,” the Anonymous-penned message said. “Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism, it had tragic consequences."

In addition to the unauthorized posts made in memory of Swartz, hacktivist took down MIT.gov and the website for the Department of Justice, DOJ.gov, using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Sunday. The White House has recently been petitioned to make that method of digital demonstration a protected form of First Amendment-protect protest.

Swartz, passed away Friday in New York. Services will be held Tuesday outside of Chicago.

Vegetarian-only colony on Mars

 

A US billionaire  Elon Musk, has made plans to build a settlement for 80,000 people on Mars when technology makes it possible for man to live there – as long as the inhabitants are vegetarians.

“I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there will be a space hotel within the next ten years, in orbit around the Earth,” he said in October.

Musk plans to take it a few steps further by building a city for 80,000 space explorers. The new city would use sustainable technology and send people to space on a rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane. The billionaire’s estate and prominence in the space industry could make his plans feasible, but the California-based engineer has not left behind his personal ideologies: Musk will only allow vegetarians to live in his settlement.

“The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip,” Musk said.

While 800,000 residents may seem like a large number of people to send to Mars, Musk explained that reducing the size would cause the gene and culture pool to be too small, while the risk for civil war would be too high.

“On Mars you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big,” Musk said.

But an undertaking of that magnitude would not eliminate the dangers: space exploration comes with the threat of deep-space radiation, bone-rot and toxic dusk, which space visitors and those constructing the settlement would have to risk acquiring. Still, Musk believes his goal is within a near reach.

And Anderson concurs: the space entrepreneur believes the commercial enterprise will far surpass the works of government-funded agencies like NASA and rapidly bring settlements to other planets.

“With my work, and many others working in the private section, the mission is coming closer to reality,” Musk said.

Greece's Samaras to visit Germany next week

BERLIN (AP) — The German government says Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Berlin next week.

Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said Merkel will welcome Samaras to the chancellery on Tuesday.

He said Friday that the informal meeting offers an opportunity for the two leaders to review progress that Greece has made in implementing reform plans. Samaras will be in Berlin to attend a closed-doors economic conference organized by a German newspaper.

Greece has been kept afloat since May 2010 by rescue loans from the other 16 eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. In return for the loans, the lenders — Merkel's Germany in particular — insisted on a series of economic reforms, tax raises and spending cuts.

Turkish PM Erdogan: Turkey Ready for War

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said Turkey has mobilized all its resources to build peace in the region but that it is also ready for war, with all its means at its disposal.

Speaking to Turkey's ambassadors serving abroad who were in the country to attend the 5th Annual Ambassadors' Conference in Ankara, the prime minister said Turkey will not remain indifferent to what is happening in Syria.

The protracted Syrian conflict constituted the main theme of his speech. Erdogan said Turkey prefers peace and is doing its best to preserve peace. But, he said, Turkey is ready to pay any cost to preserve that peace and is therefore even ready for war.

Noting that the number of refugees who had fled war-torn Syria and sought shelter in Turkey has exceeded 150,000, Erdogan said it takes more energy to keep the peace than to go to war.

"War is the easiest option, while keeping the peace is difficult. We prefer the harder option here, to ensure peace rather than to go to war. We will pay any price to preserve the state of peace [in our lands], and we have already paid a heavy one," the prime minister said.

He stated that Turkey is ready for war and that it will not hesitate to defend its territory while seeking to preserve peace up until the very last minute.

Norway against private Islamic schools

OSLO – A rightist Norwegian party is spearheading new campaigns against private Islamic schools, claiming that they endanger the country’s integration.

“In Oslo, where applications (for Muslim schools) have come in, there are challenges with integration already,” Tord Lien, spokesman of Progress Party (FrP)n on education issues, told newspaper Aftenposten, News in English website reported on Friday, January 4.

“If you’re going to integrate into Norwegian society, it’s an advantage to go to school with Norwegian children.”

Current law in Norway allows for establishment of private schools based on religious belief.

The establishment of new Muslim schools, he claimed, could “further weaken integration” of Muslims into Norwegian society.

Yet, FrP spokesman confirmed that they oppose the establishment of Muslim elementary schools in Norway, same as the case in neighboring Sweden.

“It must be allowed to consider the need for integration when screening applications,” Lien said.

Despite his opposition to Muslim religious schools, Lien welcomed the establishment of Christian schools which has existed in Norway for 100 years.

Asked to explain why Christians and Muslims should be treated differently he said, “it’s difficult to see how they can hinder integration.”

Norway has traditionally been open to immigration, which has been criticized by the Progress Party, of which Oslo killer Anders Behring Breivik was a member for a short time.

Depending on an anti-immigration tone to draw supporters, the party rhetoric was damaged by Oslo attacks, seeing its support fall to 11.4% in local elections last September from 17.5% in 2007.

When Norway opened its doors to immigrants some four decades ago, Oslo began to change dramatically.

Today, 30% of the city's population is made up of first- or second-generation immigrants.

The number of immigrants, who make up nearly 11 percent of Norway’s 4.9 million population, nearly tripled between 1995 and 2010.

The Muslim community in Norway is estimated at 150,000. The majority of Muslims are of Pakistan, Somali, Iraqi and Moroccan backgrounds.

Syrian conflict could worsen Christian exodus

Fighting in Syria continues to put pressure on the minority Christian population, leading to fears that more Syrians will join the many Christians who have already left the Middle East.

 

Journalist Nasir Habish told Vatican Radio that Syria’s Christians are among those most affected by the conflict between rebel and government forces.

 

“The Syrian situation, right now, is very difficult, and I think in the future will be more difficult,” Habish said. “And I think the war will continue.”

 

He said Christians are “running away from Syria right now,” with many refugees fleeing to Lebanon and most proceeding to Europe.

 

“We don’t want to lose the Christianity in the Arab region,” he said. “This is the land of Jesus. I can’t imagine the land of Jesus without Christians.”

The United Nations has said that more than 60,000 people have died in the conflict. The latest fighting includes a repelled rebel attack around the Taftanaz airbase in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Government forces are seeking to recapture the Damascus suburb of Daraya, which hundreds of rebel fighters have held for weeks. Pro-government newspapers report that the latest offensive on Daraya inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, the Associated Press says.

 

The uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. More than half a million Syrians have become refugees.

 

The United States has been providing clandestine support for the rebels for months. On Dec. 11, President Barack Obama joined France and Britain in recognizing the rebel coalition, calling it “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”

The conflict has some sectarian aspects. Rebels tend to be Sunni Muslims, the majority religion in Syria. President Bashar’s government is mainly Alawite, a minority Muslim group. The government has support from some Sunnis and many religious minorities, including many Christians who make up only 10 percent of the population.

 

Many Christians in the region fear Syria will become another Iraq, where poor security after the U.S. invasion in 2003 has allowed militant Islamic groups to target Christians for intimidation, killings and kidnappings that helped drive hundreds of thousands of Christians out of the country.

 

Syria's Christian youth taking up
arms against Assad

Sister Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, mother superior of the Greek Catholic Monastery of St James the Mutilated in Syria, has charged that the Syrian uprising has been “hijacked by Islamist mercenaries who are more interested in fighting a holy war than in changing the government.”

 

She said the conflict has turned into “a sectarian conflict” in which Christians are “paying a high price,” the Daily Mail reports.

She said at least 80,000 Christians have been forced from their homes in the Homs region. Over 300,000 Christian Syrians are believed to be refugees.

 

Sr. Agnes-Miriam, who is presently in Lebanon, said militants wearing the black bandanas of Al Qaeda laid siege to her monastery between Damascus and Homs for two days to try to prevent Christmas celebrations.

 

She is a critic of Western support for the rebels, saying this supports “extremists” who want to create an Islamic state.

Some Christians support the rebels. Aya, a 51-year-old Christian artist from Aleppo who opposes the Syrian government, told the Associated Press that Christian silence in the face of the abuses of the Assad government could make them more vulnerable to reprisals.

 

“Many Christians think that this regime is good for us,” she said. “They think that if they keep quiet, Assad will stay, and protect us. But this is an illusion.”

 

Aya herself fled to Beirut in October.

 

The plight of Syrian Christians is shared by many Christians throughout the Middle East. The British think tank Civitas in December released a report warning about violence against Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

 

It estimates that between half and two-thirds of Middle East Christians have left their homelands or have been killed in the past 100 years.

 

“There is now a serious risk that Christianity will disappear from its biblical heartlands,” the report said.

 

STRATFOR: 2013 is a critical year for Europe

 

The most important place to watch in 2013 is Europe.

Taken as a single geographic entity, Europe has the largest economy in the world. Should it choose to do so, it could become a military rival to the United States. Europe is one of the pillars of the global system, and what happens to Europe is going to define how the world works. I would argue that in 2013 we will begin to get clarity on the future of Europe.

The question is whether the European Union will stabilize itself, stop its fragmentation and begin preparing for more integration and expansion. Alternatively, the tensions could intensify within the European Union, the institutions could further lose legitimacy and its component states could increase the pace with which they pursue their own policies, both domestic and foreign.

The Embattled European Project

It has been more than four years since the crisis of 2008 and about two years since the problems spawned by 2008 generated a sovereign debt crisis and a banking crisis in Europe. Since that time, the crisis has turned from a financial to an economic crisis, with Europe moving into recession and unemployment across the Continent rising above 10 percent. More important, it has been a period in which the decision-making apparatus created at the founding of the European Union has been unable to create policy solutions that were both widely acceptable and able to be implemented. EU countries have faced each other less as members of a single political entity than as individual nation-states pursuing their own national interests in what has become something of a zero-sum game, where the success of one has to come at the expense of another. 

This can be seen in two ways. The first dimension has centered on which countries should bear the financial burden of stabilizing the eurozone. The financially healthier countries wanted the weaker countries to bear the burden through austerity. The weaker countries wanted the stronger countries to bear the burden through continued lending despite the rising risk that the loans will not be fully repaid. The result has been constant attempts to compromise that have never quite worked out. The second dimension has been class. Should the burden be borne by the middle and lower classes by reducing government expenditures that benefit them? Or by the elites through increased taxation and regulation?

When you speak with Europeans who support the idea that Europe is in the process of solving its problems, the question becomes: What problem are they solving? Is it the problem of the banks? The problem of unemployment? Or the problem of countries' inability to find common solutions? More to the point, European officials have been working on this problem for years now, and they are among the best and brightest in the world. Their inability to craft a solution is not rooted in a lack of good ideas or the need to think about the problem more. It is rooted in the fact that there is no political agreement on who will pay the price geographically and socially. The national tensions and the class tensions have prevented the crafting of a solution that can be both agreed upon and honored. 

If the Europeans do not generate that sort of solution in 2013, it is time to seriously doubt whether a solution is possible and therefore to think about the future of Europe without the European Union or with a very weakened one. If, however, Europe does emerge with a plan that has general support and momentum behind it, then we might say that Europe is beginning to emerge from its crisis, and that, in turn, would be the single most important thing that happens in 2013.

At this point, a reasonable person will argue that I am ignoring the United States, which has different but equally significant economic problems and is also unable to generate consensus on how to solve them, as we have seen during the recent "fiscal cliff" affair, which will have many more iterations. But as valid as the comparison is on the financial level, it is not valid on the political level. The United States does not face the dissolution of the republic if it follows contradictory policies. The United States is more than two centuries old and has weathered far worse problems, including the Civil War and the Great Depression. The European Union is only about 20 years old in its current form, and this is its first significant crisis. The consequences of mismanaging the U.S. financial system are significant to say the least. But unlike Europe, the consequences are not an immediate existential threat.

The Other Costs of the Crisis

It is the political dimension that has become the most important, not the financial. It may well be that the European Union is in the process of dealing with its banking problems and might avoid other sovereign debt issues, but the price it has paid is both a recession and, much more serious, unemployment at a higher rate than in the United States overall, and enormously higher in some countries.

We can divide the European Union into three categories by measuring it against the U.S. unemployment rate, which stands at about 7.7 percent. There are five EU countries significantly below that rate (Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands and Malta). There are seven countries with unemployment around the U.S. rate (Romania, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom and Sweden). The remaining 15 countries are above U.S. unemployment levels; 11 have unemployment rates between 10 and 17 percent, including France at 10.7 percent, Italy at 11.1 percent, Ireland at 14.7 percent and Portugal at 16.3 percent. Two others are staggeringly higher -- Greece at 25.4 percent and Spain at 26.2 percent. These levels are close to the unemployment rate in the United States at the height of the Great Depression.

For advanced industrialized countries -- some of the most powerful in Europe, for that matter -- these are stunning numbers. It is important to consider what these numbers mean socially. Bear in mind that the unemployment rate goes up for younger workers. In Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece, more than a third of the workforce under 25 is reportedly unemployed. It will take a generation to bring the rate down to an acceptable level in Spain and Greece. Even for countries that remain at about 10 percent for an extended period of time, the length of time will be substantial, and Europe is still in a recession. 

Consider someone unemployed in his 20s, perhaps with a university degree. The numbers mean that there is an excellent chance that he will never have the opportunity to pursue his chosen career and quite possibly will never get a job at the social level he anticipated. In Spain and Greece, the young -- and the old as well -- are facing personal catastrophe. In the others, the percentage facing personal catastrophe is lower, but still very real. Also remember that unemployment does not affect just one person. It affects the immediate family, parents and possibly other relatives. The effect is not only financial but also psychological. It creates a pall, a sense of failure and dread.

It also creates unrooted young people full of energy and anger. Unemployment is a root of anti-state movements on the left and the right. The extended and hopelessly unemployed have little to lose and think they have something to gain by destabilizing the state. It is hard to quantify what level of unemployment breeds that sort of unrest, but there is no doubt that Spain and Greece are in that zone and that others might be.

It is interesting that while Greece has already developed a radical right movement of some size, Spain's political system, while experiencing stress between the center and its autonomous regions, remains relatively stable. I would argue that that stability is based on a belief that there will be some solution to the unemployment situation. Its full enormity has not yet sunk in, nor the fact that this kind of unemployment problem is not fixed quickly. It is deeply structural. The U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression was mitigated to a limited degree by the New Deal but required the restructuring of World War II to really address.

This is why 2013 is a critical year for Europe. It has gone far to solve the banking crisis and put off a sovereign debt crisis. In order to do so, it has caused a serious weakening of the economy and created massive unemployment in some countries. The unequal distribution of the cost, both nationally and socially, is the threat facing the European Union. It isn't merely a question of nations pulling in different directions, but of political movements emerging, particularly from the most economically affected sectors of society, that will be both nationalist and distrustful of its own elites. What else can happen in those countries that are undergoing social catastrophes? Even if the disaster is mitigated to some degree by the shadow economy and emigration reducing unemployment, the numbers range from the painful to the miserable in 14 of Europe's economies.  

Europe's Crossroads 

The European Union has been so focused on the financial crisis that it is not clear to me that the unemployment reality has reached Europe's officials and bureaucrats, partly because of a growing split in the worldview of the European elites and those whose experience of Europe has turned bitter. Partly, it has been caused by the fact of geography. The countries with low unemployment tend to be in Northern Europe, which is the heart of the European Union, while those with catastrophically high unemployment are on the periphery. It is easy to ignore things far away.

But 2013 is the year in which the definition of the European problem must move beyond the financial crisis to the social consequences of that crisis. Progress, if not a solution, must become visible. It is difficult to see how continued stagnation and unemployment at these levels can last another year without starting to generate significant political opposition that will create governments, or force existing governments, to tear at the fabric of Europe.

That fabric is not old enough, worn enough or tough enough to face the challenges. People are not being asked to die on a battlefield for the European Union but to live lives of misery and disappointment. In many ways that is harder than being brave. And since the core promise of the European Union was prosperity, the failure to deliver that prosperity -- and the delivery of poverty instead, unevenly distributed -- is not sustainable. If Europe is in crisis, the world's largest economy is in crisis, political as well as financial. And that matters to the world perhaps more than anything else.

GREECE: Alternative Currencies To The Euro Are Springing Up All Over Greece

It's been a busy day at the market in downtown Volos. Angeliki Ioanitou has sold a decent quantity of olive oil and soap, while her friend Maria has done good business with her fresh pies.

 

But not a single euro has changed hands – none of the customers on this drizzly Saturday morning has bothered carrying money at all. For many, browsing through the racks of second-hand clothes, electrical appliances and homemade jams, the need to survive means money has been usurped.

"It's all about exchange and solidarity, helping one another out in these very hard times," enthused Ioanitou, her hair tucked under a floppy felt cap. "You could say a lot of us have dreams of a utopia without the euro."

In this bustling port city at the foot of Mount Pelion, in the heart of Greece's most fertile plain, locals have come up with a novel way of dealing with austerity – adopting their own alternative currency, known as the Tem. As the country struggles with its worst crisis in modern times, with Greeks losing up to 40% of their disposable income as a result of policies imposed in exchange for international aid, the system has been a huge success. Organisers say some 1,300 people have signed up to the informal bartering network.

For users such as Ioanitou, the currency – a form of community banking monitored exclusively online – is not only an effective antidote to wage cuts and soaring taxes but the "best kind of shopping therapy". "One Tem is the equivalent of one euro. My oil and soap came to 70 Tem and with that I bought oranges, pies, napkins, cleaning products and Christmas decorations," said the mother-of-five. "I've got 30 Tem left over. For women, who are worst affected by unemployment, and don't have kafeneia [coffeehouses] to go to like men, it's like belonging to a hugely supportive association."

Greece's deepening economic crisis has brought new users. With ever more families plunging into poverty and despair, shops, cafes, factories and businesses have also resorted to the system under which goods and services – everything from yoga sessions to healthcare, babysitting to computer support – are traded in lieu of credits.

"For many it plays a double role of supplementing lost income and creating a protective web at this particularly difficult moment in their lives," says Yiannis Grigoriou, a UK-educated sociologist among the network's founders. "The older generation in this country can still remember when bartering was commonplace. In villages you'd exchange milk and goat's cheese for meat and flour."

Other grassroots initiatives have appeared across Greece. Increasingly bereft of social support, or a welfare state able to meet the needs of a growing number of destitute and hungry, locals have set up similar trading networks in the suburbs of Athens, the island of Corfu, the town of Patras and northern Katerini.

But Volos, the first to be established, is by far the biggest. Until recently the city, 200 miles north of Athens, was a thriving industrial hub with a port whose ferries not only connected the mainland to nearby islands but before Syria's descent into civil war was a trading route between Greece and the Middle East. Once famous for its tobacco, Volos was home to flour mills and cement factories, steel and metal works.

But, today, it is joblessness that it has come to be known for in a country whose unemployment rate recently hit a European record of 26%, surpassing even that of Spain.

"Frankly the Tem has been a life-saver," said Christina Koutsieri, clutching DVDs and a bag of food as she emerged from the marketplace. "In March I had to close the grocery store I had kept going for 27 years because I just couldn't afford all the new taxes and bills. Everyone I know has lost their jobs. It's tragic."

Last year, the Greek government stepped in with a law that supported finding creative ways to cope with the crisis. For the first time, alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development were actively encouraged.

Although locals insist the Tem, which is also available in voucher form, will never replace banknotes – and has not been dreamed up to dodge taxes – they say it is a viable alternative.

For local officials such as Panos Skotiniotis, the mayor of Volos, the alternative currency has proved to be an excellent way of supplementing the euro. "We are all for supporting alternatives that help alleviate the crisis's economic and social consequences," he said. "It won't ever replace the euro but it is really helping weaker members of our society. In all the social and cultural activities of the municipality, we are encouraging the Tem to be used."

Free Syrian Army claims it can make chemical weapons

A prominent member of the Free Syrian Army claims the rebels have all the components to produce chemical weapons and have the know-how to put them together and use if necessary.

“If we ever use them, we will only hit the regime's bases and centers,” the political adviser of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Bassam Al-Dada, was quoted by Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency. 

The adviser stressed that the Syrian opposition would only use chemical weapons if the ruling regime did so first. 

If President Bashar Assad threatens Syrian opposition fighters with chemical weapons, Al-Dada noted, he should know that the opposition “also possess them.”

In June 2012, Adnan Sillu was quoted by Al Arabiya that “probably anyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over”. He claimed that the stores of mustard gas and nerve agents — such as in Homs, east of Aleppo and east of Damascus – were not properly secured.

Earlier in December, he claimed that the Syrian regime's arsenal of chemical weapons almost matches Israel’s. 

The EU, US and allied nations have repeatedly expressed their concern that the main threat from Syria’s chemical weapons is that they could fall into the hands of terrorists who have infiltrated the ranks of the Syrian rebels.

The concern increased significantly last month after Syria’s United Nations ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, warned that the Syrian opposition might use chemical weapons against innocent civilians after they gained control of “a toxic chlorine factory” east of Aleppo, and try to blame President Assad’s regime. 

Fear that Syria could also use chemical weapons against its neighbors was cited by Turkey as one of the reasons why it requested six Patriot missiles from NATO to be stationed on its border with Syria. The alliance approved the deployment

UK: What is going on with our weather?

Scientists are trying to fathom what is causing extreme variations in British weather

The River Thames

The transformation of the British landscape over the last 12 months has been dramatic.

At the end of 2011, the nation was caught in the grip of one of the severest droughts on record. Low rainfall over the previous year had reduced water levels in rivers and reservoirs to exceptional levels. The year ahead promised to be one of parched landscapes, hosepipe bans and streams turned to trickles. There could have been widespread consequences for farmers, food production, tourism, industry and domestic life, warned officers from the Environment Agency.

Today, the country is in a very different state. Villages across much of the UK have been flooded and cut off; railway lines have been closed; hundreds of flood alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency; homes have been evacuated and commuters and travellers have been forced to abandon plans for the festive season as sections of the transport network have ground to a halt. Today, the UK is on the brink of having had its wettest year since records began in 1910.

It is an astonishing change of fortunes. Last year was the driest on record in England and Wales for 90 years. This year will be one of the wettest. The question is: what has brought about this remarkable transformation?

According to experts, the key changes in Britain's weather occurred in early summer. The past couple of weeks may have seen momentous downpours across much of the country, with south-west England bearing the brunt of the grim weather, but it was record falls over the months between April and June that brought UK figures to their highs for 2012 and have raised river and reservoir levels to brimming point.

"The early summer months were the ones that turned drought to deluge in the UK," said Helen Roberts, a forecaster at the Met Office.

"As to the cause, the jetstreams that sweep high over the country were largely to blame. Jetstreams carry ribbons of air at high speeds and altitudes and normally trap regions of high pressure over Britain in summer," she said. "But this year the jetstreams trapped a region of low pressure over the country for several months in summer and that, in turn, brought all that rain to the country."

As to the reason for the change in jetstream behaviour, several suggestions have been put forward. These include the proposal that rising temperatures in the Arctic – triggered by increasing levels of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – could be destabilising jetstream patterns. However, scientists stress that more research is needed.

SWITZERLAND: Safe haven? Prosecutors have opened a number of cases linked to Switzerland

Switzerland has taken a major step forward in tracking suspected war criminals with the creation of a special task force this year, campaigners say. Prosecutors have opened a number of cases linked to Switzerland.

ex-Guatamalan police chief Erwin Sperisen 

They are homing in on two figures in particular: Khaled Nezzar, the former Algerian defence minister suspected of alleged civil war offences, and ex-Guatamalan police chief Erwin Sperisen, accused of human rights abuses.

“Switzerland is finally taking its international obligations more seriously,” said Trial director Philip Grant.

The legal requirement that the accused has close ties to Switzerland – family or secondary residence – were dropped, so now anyone accused of serious war crimes who travels to Switzerland or plans to travel here can be subject to a criminal investigation.

Swiss-Guatemalan

The Nezzar affair is not the only high-profile case in the public eye.

Sperisen, the former head of Guatemala’s police force from 2004 to 2007, and a Swiss-Guatemalan dual national, was arrested on August 31 in Geneva, where he had been living with his family since 2007, on suspicion of involvement in extra-judicial killings and other human rights abuses in the Central American country.

The ex-police chief, who vehemently denies the accusations, spent Christmas in Geneva’s Champ-Dollon prison, where he is being held in custody until February 26 amid on-going investigations.

A warrant for his arrest was issued in Guatemala in August 2010, along with that of 18 other former officials, including the former interior minister, Carlos Vielmann, who fled to Spain, and deputy director of police investigations Javier Figueroa, who was granted refugee status in Austria.

 

“Eventually there might be three trials running at the same time in three different countries and possibly others in Guatemala,” said Grant. The first “victim” of the new changes is Nezzar. The former Algerian defence minister travelled to Geneva in October last year for medical treatment.

Difficult Algerian case

Accused by Trial and two victims of serious international crimes, the 75-year-old was detained by Geneva’s justice authorities for questioning before later being released. He is reportedly now back in Algeria.

Last month the Swiss Federal Court rejected Nezzar’s claim that he could not be tried outside his country for crimes he allegedly committed during Algeria’s bloody civil war in the 1990s.

The historic decision from Switzerland’s highest court in theory clears the way for Nezzar to be tried in Switzerland. Swiss prosecutors now have the extremely complex task of gathering sufficient evidence where the alleged crimes were committed to present a case.

“There will never be cooperation from the Algerian authorities so it’s a very difficult case,” said Grant. “More and more victims are talking and willing to testify. You see their videos on Youtube, for example, but how do you access these people?

So how many other suspected war criminals actually live in or pass through Switzerland?

“It’s impossible to answer that as there are no statistics on the question,” declared Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Jeannette Balmer.

But the new war crimes unit is not idle. It is currently handling eight cases linked to Switzerland involving foreign nationals, but only two are living here, added Balmer. These concern events in former Yugoslavia, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Trial independently gathers information on specific cases from NGOs, diaspora victims’ groups or even private detectives, which it then hands over to the investigating authorities. Grant said the NGO had unearthed six cases but “we are only scratching the surface”.

He said experts had recently interviewed victims in a undisclosed country who had all pointed to “overwhelming” numbers of suspected war crime offenders living in Switzerland, Italy, France and Britain.

International cooperation has also improved but agencies in different countries need to be better connected to share information, said Grant.

“Once it is accepted that there is a shared responsibility by states, politicians will have to give their investigations the necessary resources and in the next ten to 20 years this [kind of work] will develop into something that is widely accepted,” he concluded.

Goodbye 2012 in Great Cities of the World - Enjoy the New Year in these spectacular pictures

Fireworks shoot from Big Ben Clock Tower and above Westminster Palace (British Parliament building), London, January 1, 2012.

"Big Ben" is actually the name of the Great Bell inside of the Clock Tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, which houses the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Clock Tower -- which is also called Big Ben -- houses four quarter bells. Thus, there are five bells in all inside the Clock Tower.

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New York City ... 

The penultimate New Years Eve place on Planet Earth: Times Square, New York City, at the midnight hour, Jan. 1, 2012.

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A festive crowd at Times Square in New York City, New Years Eve 2012.

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More throngs of revelers amid a blizzard of confetti, New Years Eve 2012, Times Square, New York City.

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London ... 

Fireworks shoot from Big Ben Clock Tower at the stroke of midnight with part of the great London Eye Ferris wheel in the foreground, London, Jan. 1, 2012.

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Fireworks shoot inward from the London Eye and above Westminster Palace, London, Jan. 1, 2012.

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Another New Year Eve 2012 image of fireworks above Big Ben Clock Tower, London.

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Still more fireworks in interesting formation over Big Ben clock tower in London, New Years Eve 2012.

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Paris ... 

New Years Eve 2012 revelers in Paris amid a spray of champagne with the illuminated Eiffel Tower in the distance.

New Years Eve revelers in Paris on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées with the Arc de Triomphe in the background.

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Berlin ... 

Fireworks over the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Jan. 1, 2012

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Close-up of fireworks over the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Jan. 1, 2012

Germany and its frickin' euro and its self-righteous, probably racist-based, certainly doomed-to-fail deflationary economics / all-austerity-all-the-time as "punishment" for the peripheral countries of the EU are really getting on my nerves.

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Athens ... 

Speaking of one of the peripheral countries of the EU  (Greece) that Germany feels it needs to "punish"...

Fireworks over the Acropolis with the crowning nighttime-illuminated Parthenon in Athens, Greece, New Years Eve, 2012.

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More fireworks over the Acropolis with the crowning nighttime-illuminated Parthenon in Athens, Greece, New Years Eve, 2012.

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Moscow ... 

New Years Eve 2012 fireworks over St. Basil's Cathedral at the Kremlin, Moscow on what appears to be a cold winter's night. 

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Fireworks over the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower, New Years Eve, 2012

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And, Sydney ... 

Year after year, no one does it quite like Sydney with the great pyrotechnical fireworks display shooting from the Sydney Harbour Bridge with the iconic Syndey Opera House in the foreground, Jan. 1, 2012.

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Close-up view of New Years Eve 2012 fireworks launched from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and above Sydney Opera House.

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Still more spectacular New Years Eve 2012 fireworks images over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

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Seattle ... (A city I love) 

New Years Eve 2012 fireworks over the iconic Space Needle, Seattle, with silhouetted figures watching in the distance.

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More New Years Eve 2012 fireworks over the Space Needle, Seattle.

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Spectacular fireworks launched from the top of the Space Needle, Seattle, New Years Eve 2012.

Taipei ... 

Here is quite a fireworks display being launched from Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper in Taipei and presently either the second or third tallest in the world.

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Hong Kong ... 

New Years Eve 2012 revelers on Hong Kong, one carrying an interesting and hopeful message.

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Illuminated paper dragon lantern in Paju, South Korea near the Demilitarized Zone.

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