France is in shock after the "imagination-defying" discovery of an infant girl who was kept in the trunk of a car by her parents for about a year and a half since birth.

The girl was naked and dehydrated when she was found and rescued by the mechanics at a garage in the town of Terrasson, southwestern France, on Friday.

An ongoing effort to improve the soured Russian-Belarusian relations came under threat this week after reports that Belarus secret police tried to arrest a Russian citizen in downtown Moscow.

Igor Evstratov was apprehended by four men as he was boarding a train to St. Petersburg, a source at Russian potash producer Uralkali told Prime news agency.

Evstratov was a senior executive at Belaruskali before Uralkali terminated a cartel with the Belarusian fertilizer maker last summer.

Evstratov was freed by Russian police after a well-timed shout for help as he was being led away, Belaruspartisan.org news website said Friday.

Thousands of demonstrators have been protesting across Portugal against salary cuts and public sector reforms imposed by the government under the country's international bailout deal. Rallies were held in more than a dozen cities.

Sacramento, California - Gov. Jerry Brown will allow parole of a woman sentenced at age 16 to life in prison for killing a man who forced her into prostitution, his office said.

Sara Kruzan, 35, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing George Howard in a Riverside, Calif., hotel room. Kruzan has said he sexually assaulted her when she was 11 and forced her into prostitution when she was 13.

She was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in jail without the chance of parole, but a new law that went into effect in January has changed her sentence, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday

Sen. Leland Yee, D-Calif., started championing her case as an example juvenile offenders he thinks should have softer punishments.

Kruzan is the "perfect example of adults who failed her, of society failing her. You had a predator who stalked her, raped her, forced her into prostitution, and there was no one around," Yee told the newspaper.

The law allows new sentencing hearings for juveniles sentenced to life in prison with no parole. In September, Brown signed a second bill requiring parole boards to review the cases of juveniles tried as adults who have served 15 years or more of their sentences, the Times said.

Under the new laws, more than 1,000 prisoners currently in the California prison system are eligible for parole hearings.

From the "just wait until they hear about Al Gore's 24 hour demand for a carbon tax" department comes this story from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology

People don't put a high value on climate protection

Without further incentives selfish behaviour will continue to dominate

People are bad at getting a grip on collective risks. Climate change is a good example of this: the annual climate summits have so far not led to specific measures. The reason for this is that people attach greater value to an immediate material reward than to investing in future quality of life. Therefore, cooperative behaviour in climate protection must be more strongly associated with short-term incentives such as rewards or being held in high esteem.

Would you rather have €40 (about $55 USD) or save the climate?

When the question is put in such stark terms, the common sense answer is obviously: "stop climate change!" After all, we are well-informed individuals who act for the common good and, more particularly, for the good of future generations. Or at least that's how we like to think of ourselves.

Unfortunately, the reality is rather different. Immediate rewards make our brains rejoice and when such a reward beckons we're happy to behave cooperatively. But if achieving a common goal won't be rewarded until a few weeks have gone by, we are rather less euphoric and less cooperative. And if, instead of money, we're offered the prospect of a benefit for future generations, our enthusiasm for fair play wanes still further.

An international team of researchers led by Manfred Milinski from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology has shown how poorly we manage collective risk. "Our experiment is based on an essay which Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote back in 1995″, explains Milinski. Schelling pointed out that it was today's generation which would have to make the efforts for climate protection, while it would be future generations who would gain the benefits. So the people of the present have little motivation actually to do anything. Does this gloomy theory withstand experimental scrutiny?

Officials in Brunswick County are trying to get the word out about changes that will affect food stamp recipients nationwide: Though benefits will go up in October, they will drop in November.Summary

Facts - Rise, then fall

Though social services employees cannot determine how much any individual will receive after food stamp benefit changes, they estimate the cuts for those receiving the maximum benefits as follows:

Household size	Prior to Nov. 1	After Nov. 1	Difference
1	$200	$189	$11
3	$526	$497	$29
4	$668	$632	$36
5	$793	$750	$43
6	$952	$900	$52
7	$1,052	$995	$57
8	$1202	$1,137	$65
Each additional member	$150	$142	$8

Source: Brunswick County government

In October, the program's annual cost-of-living adjustment will provide an increase in the amount of benefits program recipients see, effective Oct. 1. Reductions will follow in November as a result of the loss of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was put in place in 2009, Brunswick officials said.

"In other words, people will see an increase in benefits in October, but then see a reduction in November," said Cathy Lytch, Brunswick County's social services director, in a statement. "We know this reduction will create a hardship, which is why we want people to be aware that there will be a decrease, so they can plan ahead."

According to estimates, the change will cut a family of three receiving the maximum benefit by $29 a month, from $526 to $497.

Despite the cost-of-living boost some recipients will see this month, all will see cuts in November, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

British comedian, actor, writer and activist Russell Brand in the spotlight

But before we change the world, we need to change the way we think.

When I was asked to edit an issue of the New Statesman I said yes because it was a beautiful woman asking me. I chose the subject of revolution because the New Statesman is a political magazine and imagining the overthrow of the current political system is the only way I can be enthused about politics.

When people talk about politics within the existing Westminster framework, I feel a dull thud in my stomach and my eyes involuntarily glaze. Like when I'm conversing and the subject changes from me and moves on to another topic. I try to remain engaged but behind my eyes I am adrift in immediate nostalgia; "How happy I was earlier in this chat," I instantly think.

I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites. Billy Connolly said: "Don't vote, it encourages them," and, "The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever being one."

Thousands are marching on the National Mall in Washington, DC to protest covert NSA surveillance operations on the anniversary of the Patriot Act. The organizers are planning to present Congress with a petition which has acquired over 570,000 signatures.

Stop Watching Us is a collective of 100 public advocacy groups, among them the American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom Works, as well as individuals like Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who worked with Edward Snowden to expose many of the NSA's surveillance procedures. The began at 11:30 am local time on October 26 - the 12th anniversary of the US Patriot Act.

Two Chinese students who sold diet pills containing human flesh in the Jeju Province, have been arrested by Chinese police.

The Digital Journal has run several features on the risks associated with diet pills, but none so worrying and bizarre as this. The two students were studying in South Korea when they bought 3,000 diet pills and 500 detox pills off a Chinese website, according to Korea Times.

The two began selling the pills to other students. The two spent 20,000 won for each bottle of 30 pills, then sold each bottle for 60,000 won, a three-fold increase in profits.

When Jeju Maritime Police found and confiscated the pills at China's National Forensic Service, it was found that the pills contained human flesh. The Daily Mail notes that the pills also contained some nasty chemicals: sibutramine and phenolphthalein. Sibutramine is an oral anorexiant. It has been associated with increased cardiovascular events and strokes and has been withdrawn from the market in most countries and regions. Phenolphthalein is used in a test to identify substances that are thought to be, or to contain, blood. It is not suitable for human consumption.

Only the surnames of the two students have been revealed: a woman called Mo, aged 26, and man called Ahn, aged 21. As yet the story of how the pills came to contain human flesh is remains unknown. An even uglier side to this is the possibility that the flesh has been taken from babies.

Paris - A senior police officer, in charge of a road traffic division in the Paris area, has allegedly told his traffic officers to issue at least three tickets for driving offenses every day, or lose out on days off over the Christmas period.

According to a leaked document (in French), dated October 7th and published by AFP this week, the senior officer has allegedly told his officers to "be less lenient" with motorists.

He further ordered them to not "hesitate to give out more penalties." Europe 1 radio (in French) said on Friday that allegedly the police chief fixed an exact target of at least three PVE's (electronically processed fines) per officer, per day.

The officer is then alleged to have stated that the decision on the allocation of year-end holidays would be made depending on the "activities" of the unit, as well as any resulting drop in the number of accidents in the area.