• Confidence votes on Friday and next week
• Govt seen winning easily, votes called to cut short debate
• Bill rushed through to face economic crisis

Italy's government faces a confidence vote in parliament on Friday, called to speed up approval of a 33-billion euro ($43 billion) austerity package intended to restore financial market confidence in the euro zone's third largest economy.

Prime Minister Mario Monti's cabinet of unelected technocrats has the support of an overwhelming majority of members in both houses of parliament. This means Friday's vote in the lower Chamber of Deputies, expected to be held sometime around 1230 GMT, should pass easily.

The austerity plan will then move to the Senate, where a similar vote is expected to be held before Christmas, marking the final passage of a decree law that went into effect on Dec. 4 but needed parliamentary approval within 60 days.

Monti's government was appointed last month to face a collapse in market confidence that put Italy at the heart of the euro zone debt crisis. He has raced to push through the package of tax increases, spending cuts and pension reform aimed at meeting Italy's goal of balancing its budget in 2013.

Luis Moreno Ocampo of the ICC said Thursday he sent a letter to the head of the National Transitional Council asking what the government's plans are to investigate alleged war crimes by all parties, including the rebels

United Nations - The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said Thursday there are "serious suspicions" that the death of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was a war crime.

Luis Moreno Ocampo told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council that he sent a letter to the head of the National Transitional Council asking what the government's plans are to investigate alleged war crimes by all parties, including the rebels.

The uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule erupted in February, quickly escalated into civil war, and ended in October with Gadhafi's capture and death in unclear circumstances. Witness accounts and video taken of the deposed dictator after his capture by rebel fighters show that he was beaten and abused by his captors, and there were strong indications he was killed in custody.

"The death of Moammar Gaddafi is one of the issues to be clarified - what happened - because there are serious suspicions that it was a war crime," Moreno Ocampo said.

He said what the ICC does on Gaddafi's death and other war crimes will depend on what Libya's interim government does because under the Rome statute that established the war crimes tribunal, the ICC only steps in if national authorities are unwilling or unable to act.

Chirac gets suspended sentence; Charges involve 'ghost employees' paid when he was mayor of Paris

Shamed former French leader Jacques Chirac was found guilty of corruption and given a suspended jail sentence on Thursday, becoming France's first expresident to be convicted for his crimes.

The 79-year-old statesman, who was excused from court on medical grounds, was found guilty of influence peddling, breach of trust and embezzlement between 1990 and 1995, when as mayor of Paris he employed ghost workers.

In their ruling, judges said Chirac's criminal conduct had cost Paris taxpayers the equivalent of $1.8 million.

"Jacques Chirac breached the duty of trust that weighs on public officials charged with caring for public funds or property, in contempt of the general interest of Parisians," the ruling said.

He is the first former or serving president of modern France to be tried, although Nazi-era collaborationist leader Philippe Pétain was convicted of treason.

Chirac lawyer Jean Veil said the former leader had received the judgment "with serenity" and added: "He's satisfied that at least the court ha s accepted that he did not personally profit from this."

Iraq took control of the last American military base in the country on Friday, a day after US forces marked the end of their mission, bringing a divisive war to a low-key conclusion.

The transfer of the sprawling installation on the outskirts of the southern city of Nasiriyah is a final step ahead of a complete US withdrawal from Iraq in the coming days.

The Imam Ali Base, known to the US military as Camp Adder, housed 15,000 American troops at its peak and was officially signed over at a ceremony attended by US Colonel Richard Kaiser and Hussein al-Assadi, the Iraqi in charge of base transfers.

"We proudly announce to the Iraqi people today the handover of the last American military base," Assadi said after the signing. "Today we are turning the last page on the occupation."

The base, which will now be used by Iraq's fledgling air force, lies on the edge of the ancient city of Ur, the Biblical birthplace of Abraham.

"It's an honour to have been the commander of this base, and to be the one to sign over the last large base in Iraq," Kaiser told AFP.

"It's truly an honour... I feel very proud of all the work we've done together" with Iraq.

Washington - The U.S. Congress has cleared a $662 billion defense bill and will send the measure to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The Senate voted 86-13 for the sweeping bill on Thursday. The bill would authorize money for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and national security programs in the Energy Department. The House had voted 283-136 for the measure Wednesday night.

The legislation is $27 billion less than Obama wanted for the Pentagon and other accounts.

The White House initially threatened a veto but dropped that warning, saying last-minute congressional changes no longer challenge the president's ability to combat terrorism.

The Senate passed a defense bill Thursday that authorizes indefinite detentions of American terrorism suspects, coincidentally acting on the controversial measure on the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, passed 86 to 13 and is expected to be signed quickly by President Obama, who withdrew a veto threat against the bill Wednesday. Six Democrats, six Republicans and one independent opposed the bill.

Though the legislation passed overwhelmingly, several senators argued that it was threatening fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, which is celebrated every Dec. 15.

"We as Americans have a right to a speedy trial, not indefinite detention," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). "We as Americans have a right to a jury of our peers, which I would argue is ... not enlisted or military personnel sitting in a jury. You cannot search our businesses or place of business or our homes without probable cause under the Bill of Rights."

Different people will take this different ways, but Jeffrey Goldberg tells us that six members of the Walton family (the original owners of WalMart) have more wealth than the bottom 30 % of Americans. Here's where he says it:

In 2007, according to the labor economist Sylvia Allegretto, the six Walton family members on the Forbes 400 had a net worth equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans.

And given that he quotes us here at Forbes on the point, he's almost certainly right.

The question is, what are we to make of this point? I think we all know what Mr. Goldberg wants us to make of it, it's a telling indictment of American wealth inequality, the world's going to the dogs and something must be done about rising inequality.

The Waltons are now collectively worth about $93 billion, according to Forbes.

Between recent legislation like the deceptively named "defense authorization act" and the daily police brutality that is occurring all across the country, things are looking pretty bleak for America and the values that it was apparently founded on.

Anyone who has studied history can see the writing on the wall, and can tell that these developments are eerily similar to actions that were taken by the some of the worst dictators that this world has ever known.

Regimes like Stalinist Russia, Maoist China or Hitler's Germany are among the worst offenders in recent memory, but if you look at their actual policies they aren't very far off from what we're seeing in the West today.

It is very common to offend people when you start comparing our current police state with governments that have been painted in a negative light by mainstream history. I would agree that all of the aforementioned regimes were absolutely horrible, but their transgressions were on par with the native American holocaust and the medieval torture that takes place at Guantanamo bay and many other covert military bases across the planet. This may be a controversial way of looking at things, but if we don't take a comparative look at history then we are inevitably doomed to repeat it.

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich stirred up plenty of controversy last week when he called Palestinians an "invented people" in an interview from the campaign trail.

"I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places,' Gingrich told the Jewish Channel last week.

All of which makes the above 1993 photo of Gingrich, then House Minority Whip, embracing the late Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, published by the Huffington Post's Sam Stein, perhaps noteworthy. Stein, who received the photo from a longtime political operative involved in Middle East issues, writes:

On Monday, a political operative who has been working on Palestine-Israel policy for the past 20 years sent The Huffington Post a picture of Gingrich, then the House minority whip, grasping the hand of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat immediately following the September 1993 Oslo peace accords.

The embrace, the source said, came after Arafat met with 20 to 25 House leaders over coffee. Jotting notes down in a yellow pad, Gingrich used the meeting to pitch Arafat on how best to actually construct a Palestinian state. "He said, 'Look, here is what I think you need -- an economic plan - and here is how it will work,' " the operative recalled. "It was a very positive contribution at the time and as they stood up, there were pictures." ....