Nigel Evans is accused of two counts of indecent assault, five of sexual assault and one of rape

Nigel Evans, the former deputy speaker of the House of Commons, will enter formal pleas on Friday over allegations of sexual offences against seven men.

Evans, the MP for Ribble Valley in Lancashire, is to appear at Preston crown court for a plea and case management hearing.

The 55-year-old is accused of two counts of indecent assault, five of sexual assault and one of rape. The charges date from 2002 to last year.

He has previously emphatically denied all the charges.

A provisional date of 10 March has been set for his trial, which is scheduled to last up to four weeks.

What do Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill and Jawaharlal Nehru all have in common? They were (are) all fond of smoking.

Rates of cigarette and cigar smoking have been falling across the Western world as a confluence of health advocacy and advertisement restrictions have prodded millions of people to either quit or not take up the deadly habit in the first place.

But a surprising number of global leaders like to light up, although a great many avoid doing so in public.

In recent years, much discussion has been made about U.S. Presidents Obama and Clinton and their habit of smoking cigarettes and cigars, respectively.

© CBCFrom July to December of last year, Enbridge conducted hundreds of integrity digs for cracks, dents and corrosion on Line 9.

Oil giant says pipeline is safe, but activists remain unconvinced
In the last six months, Enbridge Pipelines Inc. has filed hundreds of maintenance notices for cracks, dents and corrosion on the controversial Line 9 pipeline that runs through rural Hamilton.

Activists and pipeline experts say it's a sign that the 38-year-old line is brittle, and strengthens their argument against the company's current plan to reverse the pipeline's flow and increase its capacity to carry crude.

But Enbridge says the wealth of maintenance digs are just further proof that the company is committed to keeping the line in good shape and that the maintenance attention is "prudent" preparation should its application be accepted by the National Energy Board.

From July to December of last year, there were 308 maintenance digs along line 9 - and the vast majority were for cracks in the line. In July alone, Enbridge filed 105 maintenance notices for digs on line 9, according to documents filed with the NEB.

An all-out drone war seems inevitable given the rapid rate at which battlefield technology is advancing in this day and age, but a United States Army commander expects an arsenal of robotic warriors could be but a few years away.

Gen. Robert Cone, the chief of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, said during a recent symposium that he thinks there's a chance the size of the military's brigade combats teams will shrink by a quarter in the coming years from 4,000 total troops down to 3,000. Picking up the slack, he said, could be a fleet of robotic killing machines akin to the ground versions of the unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, increasingly used by the world's armies.

The Military Times' Paul McLeary was the first to report this week on remarks that Cone, a four-star general, made during the Army Aviation Symposium January 15 in Arilington, Virginia.

"I've got clear guidance to think about what if you could robotically perform some of the tasks in terms of maneuverability, in terms of the future of the force," Cone told his crowd, according to McLeary, adding that he also has "clear guidance to rethink" the size of those infantry squads, which currently are manned by nine troops apiece.

The U.S. is assisting Russia in the search for a suspected terrorist who could already be inside the security zone set up for next month's winter Olympics in Sochi.

Fox News is reporting U.S. counterterrorism operatives are searching for Ruzanna Ibragimova, a "white widow," - the wife of a dead terrorist - who is believed to have traveled from Dagestan to Sochi and may have breached the 1,500-mile security area. Ibragimova's husband was killed during a previous terrorist attack on a Moscow theater.

Her photo was distributed to Russian and U.S. security officials last week. An accompanying memo said Ibragimova is believed to be associated with "illegal armed groups for the organization of terrorist acts in the zone of the 2014 Olympics."

A U.S. security forces memo said the notice "is the first sign that terrorists may have managed to penetrate the security cordon."

Russia has about 40,000 security and police personnel in the area to deter attacks.

The news of the possible terrorist breach is just the latest security threat to the Olympics which are set to begin next month. Terrorist groups have already made videotaped threats to disrupt the proceedings, prompting U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to offer security assistance to the Russians.

The 44th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) began Wednesday, bringing over 2,000 corporate executives, major investors, government leaders, central bankers and celebrities to the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos.

The annual celebration of wealth and avarice follows a bumper year for the world's super-rich. Stock prices and corporate profits surged to new record highs, swelling the bank accounts and portfolios of the financial elite, even as austerity measures, wage cutting and layoffs slashed living standards and threw tens of millions more people into poverty.

On the eve of the forum, the British charity Oxfam released a study documenting the staggering growth of social inequality. Oxfam reported that the richest 85 individuals possess more wealth than the poorest 50 percent of the world's population - 3.5 billion people!

The Davos conference embodies the emergence of a new global financial aristocracy. In attendance at this year's meeting are 80 billionaires and hundreds of millionaires.

The general tone on the opening day was one of "fragile optimism," according to a survey of attendees. There is a general expectation of more good fortune in 2014. But looming over the festivities there is also fear of the social and political consequences of the naked plundering of society by the elites represented in Davos.

The conference, which goes from January 22 through 25, has officially adopted the title "The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business." It will draw 1,500 business executives, 48 prime ministers and presidents, and the heads of twenty central banks. US attendees include Secretary of State John Kerry, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy.

Her Majesty to hand duties over to Prince Charles in an historic job share which experts say marks a gentle succession

It is being dubbed the "gentle succession" - as the Queen gradually begins to relinquish some of her traditional duties as monarch.

As she approaches her 88th birthday in April after almost 62 years on the throne, she has agreed to hand over part of her workload in a historic "job-share" arrangement with Prince Charles.

In a royal first, he will be taking on more head of state-style responsibilities as the Palace starts to make tentative plans for his eventual succession.

Courtiers yesterday described the softly-softly move as "wise" - and "just plain common sense".

The first sign of the partial power transfer will be the merging this week of the Queen and Charles's press offices.

In future any announcements concerning the monarch and her 65-year-old eldest son will now come from the same source. Palace sources insist the switch will be entirely seamless.

Pope Francis' newly chosen Spanish cardinal, 84-year-old Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, has described homosexuality as a "defect" that can be corrected with treatment, sparking condemnation from gay rights groups.

"A lot of people complain and don't tolerate it but with all respect I say that homosexuality is a defective way of manifesting sexuality, because that has a structure and a purpose, which is procreation," Sebastian told Malaga newspaper Sur.

The interview was published Sunday, a week after the Spaniard was named as one of 19 new cardinals chosen by the pope, to be officially appointed February 22.

"We have a lot of defects in our bodies. I have high blood pressure. Am I going to get angry because they tell me that? It is a defect I have that I have to correct as far as I can," said Sebastian, who is the archbishop emeritus of the northern city of Pamplona.

"Pointing out a defect to a homosexual is not an offence, it is a help because many cases of homosexuality can be recovered and normalised with adequate treatment. It is not an offence, it is esteem. When someone has a defect, the good friend is the one who tells him."

The archbishop was asked in the interview if he shared the view of Pope Francis, who said in July last year: "If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

A team of internationally renowned war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts has found "direct evidence" of "systematic torture and killing" by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the lawyers on the team say in a new report.

Their report, based on thousands of photographs of dead bodies of alleged detainees killed in Syrian government custody, would stand up in an international criminal tribunal, the group says.

CNN's "Amanpour" was given the report in a joint exclusive with The Guardian newspaper.

"This is a smoking gun," said David Crane, one of the report's authors. "Any prosecutor would like this kind of evidence -- the photos and the process. This is direct evidence of the regime's killing machine."

Crane, the first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, indicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Taylor went on to become the first former head of state convicted of war crimes since World War II. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the photographs, documents and testimony referenced in the report, and is relying on the conclusions of the team behind it, which includes international criminal prosecutors, a forensic pathologist, an anthropologist and an expert in digital imaging.

The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing, according to the report.

One of the most disturbing and relentless trends over the past several years has been the redirection of war technology and equipment from the battlefield abroad toward domestic use in the USA.

This has resulted in a militarization of police across the nation and has encouraged small towns to use Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants to purchase ridiculous items such as tanks.

Sadly, it appears this trend is only accelerating. With billions of dollars already spent, and failed wars abroad, the military-industrial complex needs to continue to generate cash flow. May as well just use it against the American people.

We find out from the Washington Post that:

They will look like two giant white blimps floating high above I-95 in Maryland, perhaps en route to a football game somewhere along the bustling Eastern Seaboard. But their mission will have nothing to do with sports and everything to do with war.

The aerostats - that is the term for lighter-than-air craft that are tethered to the ground - are to be set aloft on Army-owned land about 45 miles northeast of Washington, near Aberdeen Proving Ground, for a three-year test slated to start in October. From a vantage of 10,000 feet, they will cast a vast radar net from Raleigh, N.C., to Boston and out to Lake Erie, with the goal of detecting cruise missiles or enemy aircraft so they could be intercepted before reaching the capital.

Interesting, I didn't realize we were at war. When was the last time cruise missiles were shot into the United States?