Christine Lagarde: expected to be formally charged in connection with a £270million fraud

From the Mail, news that International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde is about to be “Roasted toasted, fried and grilled” by the courts:

The head of the International Monetary Fund appeared in court today where she is expected to be formally charged in connection with a £270million fraud and embezzlement case.

Christine Lagarde’s humiliation is not only a massive personal blow which could lead to her resignation, but one which will plunge the world’s banking system into further ignominy.

The clearly nervous 57-year-old said nothing to reporters as she entered the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal set up to judge the conduct of France’s government ministers,  shortly after 8.30am.

Lagarde faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail if found guilty of the very serious charges.

It was when she was President Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister that she is said to have authorised a 270 million pounds payout to one of his prominent supporters, so abusing her government position.

The money went to Bernard Tapie, a convicted football match fixer and tax dodger who supported Lagarde and Sarkozy’s UMP party.

Michael Mann: Look! Their bad stats support my bad stats!

Still hiding the decline there Mikey. PAGES uses a different ‘Nature Trick’ (Science Trick actually – Nature rejected the paper)

Michael E. Mann ‏@MichaelEMann7h

Original MBH99 #HockeyStick (blue) vs. recent PAGES 2k temp reconstruction (green) & instrumental record (red) #HSCW pic.twitter.com/9X00ffq2gx

 Retweeted by Steve Bloom

Huhne and Pryce released from prison after two months

Disgraced Former Energy Minister Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce have been freed after serving just under a quarter of their eight month sentences for perverting the course of justice in the matter of Pryce falsely taking speeding points for Huhne’s motoring offence in 2003. According to the Crown Prosecution Service: Perverting the course of justice is a serious offence. It can only be tried on indictment and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Clearly lying about a speeding offence isn’t so serious as some crimes, but this move will rankle with many people who have served a bigger proportion of similar sentences for misleading police about driver identity. Especially in this case where the deception was maintained for a sustained period of nine years.

Fat Cats Pet Rats Desert Sinking Ship of Fools

The prime minister’s adviser on climate change is quitting, Utility Week can exclusively reveal.

Ben Moxham, senior policy adviser on energy and the environment at Number 10, has become the latest in a line of key energy experts to leave government.

Moxham is understood to have become frustrated that climate change has slid down the government’s agenda.

Moxham’s exit is a blow to David Cameron and to his claims made shortly after the election in May 2010 – that the coalition would be “the greenest government ever”.

His exit from Number 10 comes as the departure of Ravi Gurumurthy from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) was officially confirmed.

The week in politics: Grassroots UKIP comes up trumps

On May second 1200+ UKIP local government candidates took the country by storm. More than half of them came first or second in the elections. Congratulations to them all. This has ignited debate in the media, primarily over EU membership. Lord Lawson write a strong article in the Times calling for a referendum giving the opportunity for Britain to get out. He has been followed by Bernard Jenkin, Sir Gerald Howarth and Lord Tebbit. Old Tory grandees are putting Prime minister David Cameron under pressure. Climate policy doesn’t figure high on the public’s radar these days, apart from those unfortunate to live close to (occasionally) spinning wind turbines which cause noise disturbance and flickering of sunlight. Party Leader Nigel Farage made it clear that although he wasn’t subjecting the successful new councillors to a party whip, he does “expect them to oppose every planning application for a wind turbine”. Go Nigel.

visit http://cartoonsbyjosh.com and buy something!

Judge gives energy firms the right to build 400ft Wind Turbines 1/4 mile from peoples homes

A Stihl saw and diamond wheel should sort this problem out:

Photo-Alamy

Energy firms will be allowed to build giant wind turbines just 350 metres from residential areas after a crucial ruling by a High Court judge.

The judge decided that a council’s attempt to impose a minimum distance of 1.2km (three quarters of a mile) between wind farms and people’s homes was unlawful, in a test case that could have far-reaching consequences for national planning laws.

Milton Keynes Borough Council in Buckinghamshire tried to prevent the wind energy firm RWE Npower Renewables Ltd from erecting 125 metre high turbines less than 1,217 metres from homes after it put in planning applications for two wind farms in the borough.

Public Safety Announcement: Ozone Friendly Coolant May Eat Your Face Off

Eek!

Gina McCarthy, who faces a hearing Thursday morning on her fitness to serve as EPA administrator, was primarily responsible for EPA’s promotion of an automotive air conditioning refrigerant that caused engine fires in Mercedes Benz testing, MailOnline can report.

McCarthy, EPA’s current air regulation chief, ‘provided the real forward motion’ for a plan to reward US automakers who used the new climate-change-friendly refrigerant known as ‘HFO-1234yf,’ according to an EPA staffer with knowledge of the agency’s internal processes who spoke on condition of anonymity.

When her EPA subagency, the Office of Air and Radiation, approved HOF-1234yf, McCarthy said that the chemical ‘helps fight climate change and ozone depletion.’

Read more:

Fire Hazard

In February 2011, McCarthy’s Air and Radiation office at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved HFO-1234yf for use in American cars.

It also offers incentives to automakers using the product — such as General Motors, which currently uses HFO-1234yf in its Cadillac XTS vehicles (and European Chevy Malibus) and plans to feature it fleetwide over the next five years.

In Europe, HFO-1234yf is the only product meeting new European Union “greenhouse gas” guidelines — meaning it could be standard in more than 14 million vehicles a year beginning in 2017 (which would be worth an estimated $1 billion annually to Honeywell).

“This new chemical helps fight climate change and ozone depletion,” McCarthy said of HFO-1234yf in 2011 while serving as administrator of the EPA’s Air and Radiation office. “It is homegrown innovative solutions like this that save lives and strengthen our economy.”

Is any of that true, though? Last August at Mercedes-Benz’ test track in Sindelfingen, Germany, engineers simulated a crash in which the refrigerant was sprayed onto the car’s hot engine.

The result?

An important post from Doug Keenan at Bishop Hill

This is an important post:

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/9/questions-to-ministers.html

Questions relating to the work of the Met Office on global warming are being put in the UK parliament, and the Met Office is refusing to answer them. Parliamentary Questions have a history going back centuries. Giving answers, or giving a valid reason for not answering, is required. The stand-off is yet to be resolved.

Sinister irony: Amazon uses whisper network to silently delete Orwell’s 1984 from customers Kindle e-readers

Backup early, backup often, and firewall your backup from the internet. This from io9.com:

Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.

In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they’d been downloaded.

Jeremy Corbyn MP: Dark days for British justice

Dark days for british justice
Tuesday 05 March 2013by Jeremy Corbyn MP

The House of Commons has many strange procedures, and one of them is the selection of amendments for voting on Bills.Monday saw a classic case concerning a major piece of government legislation, the Justice and Security Bill, which introduces the concept of secret courts through “closed material proceedings” (CMPs).We only voted on an opposition amendment requiring an annual review of the process, rather than on a much stronger amendment put forward by Green MP Caroline Lucas and supported by a number of us which would have removed the whole process of secret courts from the Bill.At the heart of this issue is the control of the security services.There has always been a legal process, known as public interest immunity, by which court proceedings can be held in camera or particular evidence withheld – but the general direction now embarked on is eminently much more dangerous than that.

Britain has been drifting away from open justice for a long time.Many of us opposed the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) introduced in 1974 after the Birmingham pub bombings, by which suspects could be held incommunicado and eventually brought to court.This was also accompanied by the use of confessional evidence (where a witness states that the accused has told them of his or her guilt) and huge miscarriages of justice resulted.