Big Bend National Park, Texas - The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence.

This hardly seems a time the U.S. would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this rugged, remote West Texas terrain where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade.

By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.

The crossing, which would be the nation's first such port of entry with Mexico, has sparked opposition from some who see it as counter intuitive in these days of heightened border security. Supporters say the crossing would give the isolated Mexican town long-awaited access to U.S. commerce, improve conservation efforts and be an unlikely target for criminal operations.

An acute butter shortage in Norway, one of the world's richest countries, has left people worrying how to bake their Christmas goodies with store shelves emptied and prices through the roof.

The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes, said Tine, Norway's main dairy company, while online sellers have offered 500-gramme packs for up to 350 euros ($465).

The dire shortage poses a serious challenge for Norwegians who are trying to finish their traditional Christmas baking -- a task which usually requires them to make at least seven different kinds of biscuits.

The shortfall has been blamed on a rainy summer that cut into feed production and therefore dairy output, but also the ballooning popularity of a low-carbohydrate, fat-rich diet that has sent demand for butter soaring.

"Compared to 2010, demand has grown by as much as 30 percent," Tine spokesman Lars Galtung told AFP.

Last Friday, customs officers stopped a Russian at the Norwegian-Swedish border and seized 90 kilos (198 pounds) of butter stashed in his car.

Muslim women will be banned from wearing face coverings such as burka and niqab veils when swearing the oath of citizenship, under new rules announced Monday.

"Starting today, any individual will have to show his or her face when taking the oath of citizenship," Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced in Montreal.

"Allowing a group to hide their faces while they are becoming members of our community is counter to Canada's commitment to openness, equality and social cohesion," he explained.

Currently at airports, veiled Muslim women may opt to show their face only to a female security screener. They may also vote in elections without showing their face. But Kenney said from today all women must remove any face coverings before crossing the final hurdle in becoming a Canadian citizen.

© ReutersHushed up: The Orthodox Jewish community has been reluctant to turn suspected child abusers over to authorities in the past but an initiative in Brooklyn aims to help victims come forward

117 alleged victims spoke out from tight-knit religious society

An Orthodox Jewish community has had to face up to claims of child sex abuse after 83 men and two women were arrested.

An initiative was set up to encourage victims to come forward despite pressure from the close-knit religious society to hush up the crimes.

Some 117 male and female victims have approached authorities in Brooklyn, New York since 2006.

According to the New York Post, one suspect Andrew Goodman, 27, worked with Jewish charities involving vulnerable young people and the disabled.

He was charged with sexually abusing two Orthodox boys at his home in the Flatbush neighbourhood last September.

One child was abused between the ages of 11 and 15, the other from 13 until he was 16 years old.

Goodman reportedly filmed sex acts with the boys on a webcam after plying them with alcohol in his bedroom and making them watch child porn.

Neighbours had filmed Goodman sneaking the children into the home he shared with his parents and sister between 3am and 5.30am.

Occupy Vancouver to join West Coast protests

Hundreds of Wall Street protesters blocked gates at some of the West Coast's busiest ports on Monday, causing the partial shutdown of several in a day of demonstrations they hope will cut into the profits of the corporations that run the docks.

The closures affected some of the terminals at the ports in Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., and Longview, Wash., though it was not immediately clear the how much the shutdowns would affect operations and what the economic loss would be.

From California to as far away as Vancouver, British Columbia, protesters picketed gates at the ports, causing longer wait times for trucks. There were no major clashes with police.

In Oakland, shipping companies and the longshoremen's union agreed to send home about 150 workers, essentially halting operations at two terminals. In Portland, authorities shuttered two terminals after arresting two people who were carrying weapons.

And in Longview, Wash., workers were sent home out of concerns for their "health and safety."

When Ritta Mikkonen learned she and her husband had qualified for a one-bedroom, $400-per-month apartment in Vancouver's Olympic Village, the formerly homeless couple rejoiced.

"I was so overwhelmed I started crying," Mikkonen told the Canadian Press. "I felt like we won the lottery."

Mikkonen had worked as a forestry engineer until a car accident prematurely ended her career seven years ago. Her husband, a former RCMP officer, is also unable to work due to blood clots in his legs. For over a year the couple had been unable to afford housing in Vancouver's expensive rental market. That changed in 2010, when the government pledged to convert a number of Olympic Village units once occupied by the athletes into low-income housing.

Though the number of units made available was slashed to recoup city costs, the couple managed to secure one of the rare vacant apartments just over a year ago. But now the Mikkonens fear that unexpectedly high utility bills may result in their eviction from the property.

The Swiss government is preparing for a collapse of the euro, according to Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf. She told parliament that a work group was studying the imposition of capital controls and negative interest rates to protect Switzerland from the capital flight that a euro collapse would engender (Handelsblatt). A tidal wave of euros would drive up the Swiss franc, devastate Switzerland's export economy, and devalue its vast wealth invested in other countries. Already in August, the Swiss National Bank instituted a currency peg and swore to defend it by acquiring "unlimited" amounts of euros, a risky strategy if the euro were to collapse (for the debacle leading up to the peg, read... Swiss Franc Wreaks Havoc In Switzerland).

Lierre Keith, co-author of the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, speaks at Occupy Oakland.

Stop the 1% Literally, Our Bodies Will Be Our Demands, Read Occupy the Machine here:

The Occupy movement is barely more than two months old and already showing signs of growing up. Seeing their encampments thwarted, they are responding with a coordinated counterpunch themselves. The Occupy groups in California, Oregon and Washington state are moving together against the US centers of the global economy - the ports of the West Coast that handle some 60% of the country's international trade - and their 1% owners.

Inspired by the massive participation that shut down the Port of Oakland during Occupy's "General Strike" Nov. 2, the movement's chapters in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle all plan port shutdown actions on Monday, Dec. 12. They hope to amass picket demonstrations so large that the dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), long the radical labor vanguard of the West, will invoke the part of their contract allowing them not to cross the line because it is a health and safety risk.

This type of community picket action for political purposes has a long and venerable place in ILWU history. Back in 1939 longshoremen honored a picket line set up at the Port of San Francisco by the local Chinese community to stop a load of steel being sent to then-fascist Japan for its war effort, at that time focused on mainland China, but soon crossing the Pacific. Again it was used in 1977 against a South African ship in protest of that country's apartheid policies, in 1997 against a ship loaded by scab labor in support of the dockers in Liverpool, England, in 2003 to stop a ship being loaded with war materiel bound for the just-declared war on Iraq, and most recently just a couple of years ago against an Israeli ship in protest of the Israeli military attack on the Turkish ship bringing medical and construction supplies to Gaza.

A police force has launched an investigation into its own officers after claims that they took cash from street beggars.

Four West Midlands Police officers were suspended and sent home on December 1 after suspicious colleagues raised concerns about their conduct.

The force's Professional Standards Unit was then called in to investigate claims that money was stolen from beggars, believed to be Eastern European, in the Bordesley Green area of Birmingham.

The allegations involve the mishandling of property taken from members of the public 'that could amount to theft'.