The most damaging blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy this week might appear to be the loss of his majority in the Senate. On September 25th control of France's upper house swung to the left for the first time in the Fifth Republic. This was not a direct test of popular sentiment: the senatorial electoral college is made up mainly of local and regional councillors, and the Socialists have won many local elections in recent years. But it was a symbolic knock for Mr Sarkozy just seven months before a presidential election, and it has crushed morale in his party.

Yet it is the fall-out from a slow-crawling corruption case that could prove more wounding. Over the past week, a judicial inquiry into what is known as the Karachi affair has closed in on allies of Mr Sarkozy. The investigation is linked to kickbacks on the sale of submarines to Pakistan in 1994, as well as to a 2002 bomb attack in Karachi in which 11 French naval technicians were killed. On September 22nd Nicolas Bazire, a senior executive at LVMH, a luxury-goods group, who was Mr Sarkozy's best man at his wedding in 2008 to Carla Bruni, was charged with "complicity in the misuse of public money". The previous day Thierry Gaubert, another businessman and former colleague of Mr Sarkozy, had been charged in connection with the investigation. Both deny the accusations.

The pair's links to Mr Sarkozy go beyond friendship. Between 1993 and 1995 Mr Bazire was chief of staff to Edouard Balladur, then France's prime minister, and campaign manager during Mr Balladur's (unsuccessful) bid for the presidency in 1995. During that time, Mr Sarkozy served first as Mr Balladur's budget minister and then as his campaign spokesman. Mr Gaubert was Mr Sarkozy's deputy chief of staff for part of the period. Investigating judges suspect that the Pakistani kickbacks helped to finance Mr Balladur's campaign.

NYPD officer Anthony Bologna faces two investigations as video emerges of a second pepper-spray incident

The senior New York police officer at the centre of the Occupy Wall Street pepper spray controversy fired the gas at protesters a second time just moments later.

After new video emerged on Wednesday showing the second incident, New York police commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters that the Civilian Complaint Review Board would investigate the officer, deputy inspector Anthony Bologna.

The New York Police Department's own internal affairs bureau also plans to open an investigation, the New York Times reports.

Major Unions Join Wall Street Protest

The Teamsters Union and New York Transit Workers Union have thrown their support behind the Wall Street protests.

Alexander Higgins - reporting live from the protests - notes that United Airlines pilots marched in the protest wearing their full pilot uniforms.

An anti-pornography campaigner, who heads France's broadcasting authority, has been accused of attending sadomasochistic orgies and conniving in the murder of a transvestite prostitute who threatened to expose him and other pillars of the establishment in the city of Toulouse.

So serious are the allegations against Dominique Baudis, 56, the former mayor of Toulouse, that President Jacques Chirac may be forced to sack him from his post as director of the watchdog Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovision.

Baudis, who was Toulouse's mayor for 18 years until 2001, has been accused by Patrice Alègre, a convicted serial killer, and two former prostitutes of leading a double life as a sadomasochist nicknamed Nenette.

Alègre alleges that Baudi and another man ordered him to retrieve videotapes of orgies that were secretly filmed at a chateau by Claude Martinez, a transvestite. Martinez is said to have planned to use the tapes for blackmail.

Even by French standards, the scandal is a lurid affair and it has reverberated far beyond Toulouse, the capital of cassoulet, aeronautics and French rugby. The whole country has been transfixed by every twist and turn.

The Republican-led Michigan House of Representatives is considering legislation that would prohibit public employees, such as teachers, from sending a political message using a publicly-owned email service.

Violating the law would result in a $10,000 fine for an organization, and a $1,000 fine and one-year imprisonment for an individual.

The House Oversight, Reform and Ethics Committee adopted the bill, HB 4052, by a 4 to 2 vote along party lines last week. It was first introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka in January, shortly after he was sworn in to his first term in service to the 79th House District.

The Michigan Education Association, a union representing the state's teachers, said the bill was "political payback" after a conservative activist lost a legal battle over the use [of] a school district's email service for union lobbying efforts. The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled the emails were not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

"This is more than just another blatant attack on public workers and their unions," the Michigan Education Association said in a statement. "This is an unconstitutional attack on every citizen's right to freedom of speech and freedom of association."

The Livingston Daily noted that the bill cannot be enforced without modifying the state's Freedom of Information Act, which lawmakers so far have not considered doing. Rep. Pscholka said the law would depend on co-workers who report violations by their colleagues.

At the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois' 2011 Bill of Rights Celebration in Chicago, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) applauded the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," but warned that other civil rights issues needed to be addressed.

"At the top of our list of priorities is protecting the right to vote," he said. "We have fought for that for decades in this country and we must continue. There is a concerted, coordinated effort in states as close as Indiana and Wisconsin to deny millions of Americans the right to vote. It is spearheaded by the Koch brothers, and their big money interest."

"Who do they want to keep out of the voting booth? Young people, old people, poor people, people with disabilities, people who live in rural areas - millions of Americans. Judson Phillips, leader of the tea party, thinks voting should be limited to, quote, those who own property, close quote. Isn't that were we started? And to suggest that in a time of record foreclosures."

"If we don't fight to defend the ballot, all of our rights are in jeopardy."

Watch video, courtesy of the ACLU of Illinois, below:

Hillary Clinton condemns expansion and EU calls for reversal of controversial plan to add 1,100 new homes to Gilou settlement

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, joined a wave of condemnation of Israel's approval of the construction of 1,100 homes in an East Jerusalem settlement on Tuesday, which puts at risk international efforts to persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to return to talks.

The move was "counter-productive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties", Clinton said. "As you know, we have long urged both sides to avoid any kind of action which could undermine trust, including, and perhaps most particularly, in Jerusalem, any action that could be viewed as provocative by either side."

Either the YesMen have infiltrated Italy's biggest, and most undercapitalied, bank, or the stress of constant, repeated lying and prevarication has finally gotten to the very people who know their livelihoods hang by a thread, and the second the great ponzi is unwound their jobs, careers, and entire way of life will be gone.

Such as the head of UniCredit global securities Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy, and former Chairman of the Hungarian stock exchange, who has written an unbelievable oped in the Hungarian portal Index.hu which, frankly, make Alessio "BBC Trader" Rastani's provocative speech seem like a bedtime story. Only this time one can't scapegoat Szalay-Berzeviczy "naivete" on inexperience or the desire to gain public prominence. If someone knows the truth, it is the guy at the top of UniCredit, which we expect to promptly trade limit down once we hit print.

Among the stunning allegations (stunning in that an actual banker dares to tell the truth) are the following: "the euro is "practically dead" and Europe faces a financial earthquake from a Greek default"... "The euro is beyond rescue"... "The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece's spirits."...."A Greek default will trigger an immediate "magnitude 10" earthquake across Europe."..."Holders of Greek government bonds will have to write off their entire investment, the southern European nation will stop paying salaries and pensions and automated teller machines in the country will empty "within minutes." In other words: welcome to the Apocalypse...

Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Markey have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into MSN.com and Hulu.com's installation of cookies onto users' computers that are unable to be deleted.

The two lawmakers asked FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz what the agency plans to do about the companies' use of "supercookies"

The supercookies are placed on a user's computer when they visit websites that want to collect personal data. The lawmakers said these super cookies are able to recreate a user's profile after less powerful cookies are deleted.

"We believe this new business practice raises serious privacy concerns and is unacceptable," they wrote in the letter.

It's not enough for the U.S. military to be able to monitor you from afar. The U.S. Army wants its drones to know you through and through, reports Danger Room, and it is imbuing them with the ability to recognize you in a crowd and even to know what you are thinking and feeling. Like a best friend that at any moment might vaporize you with a hellfire missile.

Of a handful of contracts just handed out by the Army, two are notable for their unique ISR capabilities. One would arm drones with facial recognition software that can remember faces so targets can't disappear into crowds. The other sounds far more unsettling: a human behavior engine capable of stacking informant info against intelligence data against other evidence to predict a person's intent. That's right: the act of determining whether you are friend or foe could be turned over to the machines.

That's a bit disquieting whether you are an insurgent warfighter or not. But back to the overarching topic at hand: The U.S. military is pulling in more ISR data than it knows what to do with these days, a lot of it useless noise that's inconsequential to ongoing operations. And, as DR notes, the strategy in Afghanistan has changed from one of winning hearts and minds through nation building projects to targeting specific bad guys.