Bernard Hogan-Howe say claims made by MP Tom Watson of paedophile network 'linked to No 10' are being taken seriously

Scotland Yard is to examine allegations that a child sex abuse ring was connected to a Downing Street aide.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said on Monday that the claims would be treated seriously.

Last week the Labour MP Tom Watson used parliamentary privilege to make the allegations. It is understood they relate to a past prime ministerial aide, and not to anyone who has recently served in Downing Street.

Hogan-Howe said a senior officer would look at the claims and that police were in contact with Watson to see if he could provide detectives with more details.

You may have noticed that Daniel Craig is back, rebooting the battered Bond brand after the dismal Quantum of Solace. And not only is Skyfall one of the best 007 adventures for decades, it is also the most personal and psychologically revealing to date. Maybe too revealing.

Stare hard into the dead-eyed, chillingly expressionless face of Craig's suave British assassin and what do you see? A man of culture and high intelligence, yes, but also a cold-blooded killer. A weapon of mass seduction to women everywhere, but a merciless attack dog to his countless unnamed victims. Armed with irresistible charm and charisma, yet zero empathy for his fellow humans, Bond has no equal in movie folklore.

Well, perhaps one equal. The name's Lecter. Hannibal Lecter.

James Bond has been the world's favourite screen psychopath for 50 years now. He is cinema's original serial killer, the pathological narcissist who came in from the cold. On one level, his suave mix of vigilante justice and sophisticated savagery appeals to us as pure fantasy: a comforting throwback to the old certainties of the British Empire, the Cold War and prehistoric notions of masculinity. More disturbingly, deep down, Bond's psychotically unhinged nature may lie at the root of his enduring popularity.

TUC describes new research that the standard of living in one of every five families is being hit as 'shocking'

One in five British workers and their families are likely to have inadequate standards of living because they are being paid less than the living wage, according to a study.

The research by the consultants KPMG found that 4.82 million workers have to survive on less than a living wage, currently £8.30 an hour in London and £7.20 in the rest of the country. The TUC described the findings as "shocking".

The government has resisted campaigns to increase the current minimum wage of £6.19 to living wage levels, fearing that it would hit employment figures. It argues that it is a poorly targeted poverty measure.

But an increasing number of employers, notably the London mayor Boris Johnson, have introduced a living wage rate for their staff. According to KPMG's study, the voluntary measure has helped 10,000 employees, and redistributed £96m to the lowest paid.

After saying on national TV that its "good" US troops have been committing suicide in record numbers, media mogul and billionaire Ted Turner has penned an apology to clarify his words.

Speaking to CNN's Piers Morgan this week, Turner said, "I think it's good" that American soldiers are turning their guns on themselves, insisting that it shows humans aren't meant to be put on the battlefield to bring death to others.

"It's so clear that we're programmed and we're born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other.That's an aberration. That's left over from hundreds of years ago. It's time for to us start acting enlightened," Turner told the talk show host after the topic of suicide was brought up during the broadcast.

Earlier in the interview, Turner said, "It's time to put war and conflict behind us and move on, and start acting like civilized, educated human beings." According to Morgan, his guest brought up suicide during a commercial break, prompting the host to ask on camera what he thought about more soldiers dying from suicide than in combat.

"That's shocking, isn't it?" asked Morgan.

"Well, what - no, I think it's - I think it's good," Turner told him before offering his explanation about the human condition.

After a backlash of negative press, Turner issued a statement to say he's sorry for anyone offended by his comment.

The woman alleged to be the leader of the ETA Basque terrorist movement's killer squads was arrested along with her number two in France yesterday.
The couple were detained at a hotel in Mâcon, north of Lyon, in a joint operation by French counter-terrorist intelligence officers and Spain's paramilitary civil guard. Both Izaskun Lesaka and her boyfriend Joseba Iturbe were armed but put up no resistance when a police swat squad burst into their room.

The pair are considered to be at the top of the hierarchy of ETA, which has killed more than 800 people over the past four decades in its fight for independence for the northern Spanish region.

Five years ago, Lesaka escaped before a house in the Loire valley was raided. The premises were described by police as being "a chemical experimental laboratory for the intensive production of pentrita", the principle ingredient of explosives used in 11 bombings by ETA in 2007 and 2008.

Last January a Paris court sentenced her in her absence to seven years in prison for her part in the bomb factory. She was named as the head of ETA's "military" section by Spanish intelligence in 2010.

Washington - Hurricane Sandy blew the U.S. presidential race off course on Sunday even before it came ashore, forcing Republican Mitt Romney to shift his campaign inland and fueling fears that the massive storm bearing down on the East Coast could disrupt an election that is already under way.

As he juggled his governing duties with his re-election effort, President Barack Obama said the heavily populated East Coast could face power failures and other disruptions for several days.

"Don't anticipate that just because the immediate storm has passed that we're not going to have some potential problems in a lot of these communities going forward through the week," Obama said after a visit to the federal government's storm-response center.

Romney rerouted his campaign from Virginia to join his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan in Ohio, one of the handful of battleground states that will decide the outcome of the November 6 election.

"You are the battleground of battlegrounds. You get to decide," Ryan told a crowd of 1,000 people who were not able to join 2,000 others in a high school gymnasium in Celina, Ohio.

Obama later flew to Florida for a campaign stop. Like Romney, he canceled events in Virginia, a battleground state that could bear the brunt of the storm's impact. Obama canceled plans to campaign in Ohio after Monday's event in Florida, opting to return to the White House instead.

A couple of days ago I learned that Andrea Fornella Abbott, 41, was found guilty on Tuesday of disorderly conduct after being arrested in July 2011 at Nashville International Airport. She had faced up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine, but the judge placed her on probation for a year because she has no criminal record. 'So what?', you may ask. The thing that bothered me was her alleged 'disorderly conduct'. Her 'crime' was to argue with TSA agents, insisting they don't touch her 14 year-old daughter's private parts during a 'routine pat-down', before refusing to go through with the invasive procedure herself. You see, the disorderly conduct did not come from a mother justifiably concerned about the privacy and intimacy of her daughter and herself, but from the agents and the TSA who have institutionalized 'disorderly' - let's be frank here - pathological conduct, all based on the Big Lie of the War on Terror.

Here is footage of the event. Although it has no audio, it is clear that Andrea Fornella was only arguing her point. So much for the illusion of free speech.


This case illustrates in micro-cosmos the situation in which we the people find ourselves at this point in time in relation to the holders of power and their agents. Things have gone far beyond basic management of the population you would expect from government. Similar to some of the darker moments in history, we are facing pathological extremes. Think of the systematic imprisonment and extermination of entire groups of people as "lice", to use Hitler's expression for Jews. Or the excesses of Roman Emperors. Or the Stazi in East Berlin suspicious of households which had their TV antennas facing west. Although the manifestations are not always the same, the nature and essence of the pathological conduct are. It is about treating people as objects. Nowadays, however, I think we are going through a particularly bad phase of the historical cycle of abuse. Some of the things being done to innocent people you would not even do to objects you value.

• 85,000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed between July and September raising the total to 5.78 million
• The figures brought the country's unemployment rate up by around 0.4 per cent to 25.02 per cent

The unemployment rate in Spain is above 25 per cent for the first time - with more than half of young people out of work, new figures have revealed.

Between July and September, 85,000 more people joined the ranks of the unemployed raising the total to 5.78 million, the National Statistics Institute said today.

The figures brought the country's unemployment rate up by around 0.4 per cent to 25.02 per cent.

... and if you question it, you are "a horrible moron," concludes Peter T. King, Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

This 2-minute video from We Are Change Luke Rudkowski powerfully captures what US "leadership" has become. The good news is their arrogance and evasion is only tragic-comic sideshows to the "emperor has no clothes" obvious facts of their massive crimes centering in war and money.

In the United States and abroad, independent and industry science battle it out on a playing field where testing protocols are still in flux despite a history of efforts to push for standardization.

French food safety officials have decided not to ban a Monsanto variety of genetically engineered corn after dismissing the findings of a recent study that linked the corn to massive tumors in lab rats and set off a firestorm of global controversy, but the announcement was not a straight victory for Monsanto and the biotech industry. The French authorities agreed with one of the study's conclusions - and Monsanto's deepest critics - that more long-term testing of genetically engineered food must be done (Genetically engineered products are also known as genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.)