When David Cameron became PM, and announced his austerity plans — buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes — many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic. Pundits here urged Obama to “do a Cameron”; Cameron and Osborne were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere.

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.

Britain is also unique in having chosen the Big Wrong freely, facing neither pressure from bond markets nor conditions imposed by Berlin and Frankfurt.

Now, the defense I hear from Cameron apologists is that the austerity mostly hasn’t even hit yet. But that’s really not much of a defense. Remember, the austerity was supposed to work by inspiring confidence; where’s the confidence? Basically, the expansionary aspect should already have kicked in; it’s all contraction from here.

Needless to say, Cameron and Osborne insist that they will not change course, which means that Britain will continue on a death spiral of self-defeating austerity.

European judges will rule later whether six terror suspects, including radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, can be extradited from the UK to the US.

They include alleged terror fundraiser Babar Ahmad and two men accused of a role in two 1998 US embassy bombings.

The European Court of Human Rights has considered whether human rights would be breached if the men receive lengthy sentences in certain prison conditions.

The suspects say they could be held in solitary confinement.

They argue that they might be held in a high-security prison in Colorado, known as a “supermax” prison and claim that if convicted there is very little or no prospect of ever being released.

The six suspects, who have been indicted on various charges of alleged terrorism in the US, say conditions of detention at a so-called “supermax” prison would amount to ill-treatment under article three of the human rights code.

The European code states: “No-one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Just a thought: the latest conservative line is that America may be recovering, but the recovery would be much faster if it weren’t for Obama. Also, the same people believe that the Cameron government in the UK is wonderful, and we should be doing austerity here too.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, plans to run for the Australian senate in elections next year, despite being under virtual house arrest in the UK and facing extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, according to the whistleblowing website.

“We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run,” Wikileaks said in a posting on the social networking site Twitter.

The senate is the upper house of the Australian parliament and is made up of 76 senators representing Australia’s six states and two mainland territories.

The 40-year-old Australian citizen is on bail awaiting a British court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations.

He strongly denies the claims, saying they are politically motivated and linked to the activities of WikiLeaks, which has published thousands of confidential documents on the internet.

Assange has taken his legal battle all the way to the UK’s Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on his case imminently.

Assange has criticised Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s Labor government for failing to stand up for him against the potential threat of his extradition to the US for prosecution over WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.

John Wanna, an Australian National University political scientist told the AP news agency, it was possible for Assange to run for a senate seat if he had remained on the Australian electoral roll despite living overseas for several years.

“If he gets on the roll, then he can stand as long as he’s solvent and not in jail and not insane,” said Wanna.

Any adult Australian citizen can run for the Australian parliament, but few succeed without the backing of a major political party. Only one of Australia’s 76 current senators does not represent a party.

Human rights lawyers are to sue Foreign Secretary William Hague over the alleged use of intelligence in assisting US drone attacks in Pakistan.

The case is being raised at the High Court in London on behalf of Noor Khan, whose father was killed in a US strike.

Lawyers from Leigh Day and Co say civilian intelligence officers who give information to the US may be liable as “secondary parties to murder”.

The Foreign Office said it did not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

The lawyers, which include some from the international charity Reprieve, want to establish what official UK policy or guidance is with regard to assisting the US in such cases.

Leigh Day and Co says Mr Khan’s father Malik Daud was part of a council of elders holding a meeting in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, when a drone missile hit the group.

The firm said it had “credible, unchallenged” evidence Mr Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to US forces planning attacks against militants.

Iran ’s government ordered a halt to oil exports to Britain and France on Sunday, in what may be only an initial response to the European Union decision to cut off Iranian oil imports and freeze central bank assets beginning in July.

Britain and France depend little on Iranian oil, however, so their targeting may be a mostly symbolic act, a function of the strong positions Paris and London have taken in trying to halt Iranian nuclear enrichment and bring pressure to bear on Syria, one of Tehran’s closest allies.

Tehran may also be reluctant, when its economy has been damaged by existing sanctions, to deprive itself of revenues from its larger European customers. At the same time, it may be seeking to divide the 27-nation European Union between those who depend on Iranian oil and those who do not.

Sunday’s order, according to the Mehr News Agency in Tehran, came from the Iranian oil minister, Rostam Qassemi, who had warned this month that Tehran would cut off oil exports to “hostile” European nations. On Sunday, the ministry spokesman, Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar, confirmed that shipments to Britain and France had been cut off, and said on the ministry Web site, “We have our own customers and have no problem to sell and export our crude oil to new customers.”

At the same time, according to the Mehr agency, an official at the Oil Ministry said Iran was seeking longer-term contracts of two to five years with other European nations.

An immigration appeals judge ordered the government on Monday to release on bail a militant Islamic preacher who is considered a leader of Al Qaeda in Europe, despite government arguments that he is a threat to Britain’s security. The preacher, Abu Qatada , 51, whose real name is Omar Othman, has spent more than six years in British jails since his arrest after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, and had been described by a Spanish terrorism judge as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe.” Mr. Othman has been convicted in Jordan of planning two bombing attacks, but the European Court of Human Rights intervened last month to prevent Britain from deporting him to Jordan because evidence that may be used against him in a new trial there had been obtained by torture. Officials at the Home Office said they would comply with the court order to release him within a week, but would tightly restrict his movements and contacts.

The government has rejected calls for computer pioneer Alan Turing to be granted an official pardon for convictions for homosexuality dating back to the 1950s.

An online petition of over 23,000 signatures had requested the pardon.

Justice Minister Lord McNally dismissed the motion in the House of Lords.

“A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence,” he said.

In 2009 former Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology to Mr Turing, labelling the treatment he had received as “utterly unfair” and “appalling”.

The government approved on Tuesday a controversial $51 billion high-speed rail line linking London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds with trains capable of running at 250 miles an hour. Transport Minister Justine Greening said the move would shift millions of passengers from commuter airlines and cars to trains. The project would be a major step toward matching Britain’s outdated rail network with those in France, Germany and Japan, leaders in high-speed rail travel. But it faces strong opposition from environmental groups, who say the trains would benefit mainly wealthy commuters and scar stretches of the countryside.

Sky has become the second internet service provider (ISP) to block the Newzbin 2 website in the UK after legal efforts by the Motion Picture Association.

Newzbin’s members-only pages provide links to pirated films and music.

Sky said it had acted after receiving a court order demanding it remove access to the site.

The broadband provider’s action follows a similar move by BT in November. The MPA says it wants other ISPs to follow.

A Sky spokesman said: “Sky is working with the rest of the industry to implement a sustainable framework for tackling piracy.

“When presented with clear and robust evidence of copyright theft, we will take the appropriate action in respect to site blocking, as we have with Newzbin 2.”

The MPA has vowed to implement similar blocks against other sites offering links to pirated films.

Iran enacted legislation on Monday to downgrade relations with Britain, in retaliation for intensified sanctions imposed by Western nations last week to punish the Iranians for their suspect nuclear development program. Britain promised to respond “robustly.”

Syria’s political opposition widened its outreach on Monday, sending representatives to Britain as the Syrian government withstood signs of further isolation over an uprising that is increasingly resembling a prolonged armed struggle to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

The British government agreed on Thursday to sell Northern Rock, the lender it nationalized more than three years ago, to Virgin Money, which is controlled by Richard Branson, in a deal that represents a loss for Britain’s taxpayers.

The government is to receive £747 million ($1.18 billion) in cash, and the total proceeds could reach as much as £1.03 billion if certain conditions are met. That compares with the £1.4 billion the government injected into the retail bank in 2010 after it split Northern Rock into two.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost a court battle to prevent his extradition from the United Kingdom to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault complaints, news outlets are reporting today.

Assange is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Sweden in August 2010, and though he has not been charged with a crime, prosecutors want to question him regarding the allegations. Assange attempted to stay in the UK, but appeals court judges rejected his arguments that it would be “unfair to send him to a country where the language and legal system are alien to him.” However, another hearing will be held this month to determine whether Assange, who is under house arrest, may appeal again. Assange’s extradition was previously ordered by a British court in February, but he quickly appealed that ruling.

"I have not been charged with any crime in any country," Assange said on the steps of the High Court in London, according to CNN. "Despite this, the European arrest warrant is so restrictive that it prevents UK courts from considering the facts of a case, as judges have made clear here today." A website set up on Assange’s behalf is seeking donations for his cause, and has posted a copy of the court judgment against him. The Guardian reports that in order to appeal again, “Assange must persuade the judges there is a wider issue of ‘public importance’ at stake in the latest decision.” If successful, the extradition case could go in front of the United Kingdom’s supreme court.

The home of World War II codebreakers at Bletchley Park has been awarded a £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The investment will enable the restoration of key codebreaking huts and create a world-class visitor centre at the Buckinghamshire site.

The HLF said new exhibitions and interactive displays will bring Bletchley's story alive.

Bletchley Park was the wartime home of the Government Code and Cypher School.

Months of wrangling at the Security Council over a resolution condemning Syria failed on Tuesday after Russia and China vetoed a resolution that contained a weak reference to the possibility of sanctions against Damascus.

Nine nations, including the United States and its Western allies, voted for the measure, while Brazil, India, South Africa and Lebanon abstained.

Russia, whose main ally in the Middle East is Syria, had said previously that it would not accept a resolution that included even a hint of sanctions. The wording had been heavily watered down in hopes of avoiding the veto.

“This does not support a move toward democracy that we have seen in the Arab Spring,” Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, said after the vote.

The resolution demanded the immediate end to all violence in Syria and accountability for those deemed responsible for it. It also called for a new political process to be conducted in an environment “free from violence, fear, intimidation and extremism.” It encouraged the opposition to take part.

The resolution condemned the “grave and systematic” human rights violations in Syria, listing “arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters.” All Syrians should be granted fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the release of all political prisoners, it said.

The resolution, which was proposed by the four European members of the Security Council — Britain, France, Germany and Portugal — in cooperation with the United States, was diluted in hopes of inducing Russian support.

In addition to the European Union’s single currency and its passport-free travel zone, Britain now faces a new and unwelcome test of its engagement with Continental partners, this time over defense.

In a letter to the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain have called on her to set up an E.U. defense-planning headquarters in Brussels, a move Britain views as a duplication of NATO facilities and a waste of money.

Though some diplomats doubt whether the push will succeed, especially in a time of austerity, it poses a challenge for Britain and threatens to highlight its growing detachment from a European Union preoccupied with the fate of the euro, the currency the British never adopted.

Representative Peter T. King testified about terrorism on Tuesday before a legislative committee, but the committee was in London, not Washington, and the New York Republican found himself the uncomfortable object of tough questioning. In a hearing on “Roots of Violent Radicalization,” Mr. King was asked about his own past support for the Irish Republican Army.

The radicalization of immigrants has been a matter of intense discussion in Britain, particularly after this summer’s riots. Parliament’s interest was drawn to Mr. King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, because of the high-profile hearings he has held on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans, some of whom bitterly protested that he was unfairly singling them out.

In London, before a House of Commons select committee, Mr. King defended those hearings, saying he “would not back down to political correctness” when dealing with “a dangerous problem.”

But then Mr. King found himself on the hot seat. A Labour Party member, David Winnick, asked about the period when Mr. King, a Long Island politician with strong Irish-American support, drew the attention of authorities on both sides of the Atlantic for his close ties to leading I.R.A. figures during its violent campaign against British control of Northern Ireland.

What’s needed, clearly, is for Europe — and ultimately that probably means the ECB — to provide for Spain and Italy the kind of backstop countries with their own currencies can provide for themselves. Without that, the whole euro system is at risk of unraveling, not over the course of years, but over the course of a few weeks.

he commander of anti-government forces in Tripoli says he wants an apology from Britain and America for his transfer to a prison in Libya in 2004.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj, then a terror suspect, says he was tortured after being arrested in Bangkok.

He says he was taken to Libya by a CIA and MI6 operation, allegedly confirmed by documents sent to Gaddafi's regime.

The Foreign Office said the government had a "long-standing policy" not to comment on intelligence matters.

Mr Belhaj told the BBC: "What happened to me and my family is illegal. It deserves an apology. And for what happened to me when I was captured and tortured.

"For all these illegal things, starting with the information given to Libyan security, the interrogation in Bangkok."

According to the Guardian, these documents were discovered in an abandoned office building in Tripoli by staff from Human Rights Watch.

Mr Belhaj said that MI6 and the CIA did not witness his torture at the hands of the former Libyan regime, but did interview him afterwards.

US and UK spy agencies built close ties with their Libyan counterparts during the so-called War on Terror, according to documents discovered at the office of Col Gaddafi's former spy chief.

The papers suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 and handed them to Tripoli.

The UK's MI6 also apparently gave the Gaddafi regime details of dissidents.

The documents, found by Human Rights Watch workers, have not been seen by the BBC or independently verified.

Meanwhile, the head of Libya's interim governing body, the National Transitional Council, said its soldiers were laying siege to towns still held by Col Gaddafi's forces.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Sirte, Bani Walid, Jufra and Sabha were being given humanitarian aid, but had one week to surrender.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Benghazi says there have been unconfirmed reports that Bani Walid has now been taken by anti-Gaddafi forces.

But witnesses on the edge of Bani Walid say the opposition fighters are still on the outskirts although our correspondent adds that it appears as if Gaddafi loyalists have abandoned many of their outlying positions.

The former News of the World editor Andy Coulson received hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance pay from his former employer after joining now-Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party as director of communications in 2007, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation report on Monday evening.

Archaeologists believe they have found the first pre-Roman planned town discovered in Britain.

It has been unearthed beneath the Roman town of Silchester or Calleva Atrebatum near modern Reading.

The Romans are often credited with bringing civilisation to Britain - including town planning.

But excavations have shown evidence of an Iron Age town built on a grid and signs inhabitants had access to imported wine and olive oil.

Prof Mike Fulford, an archaeologist at the University of Reading, said the people of Iron Age Silchester appear to have adopted an urbanised 'Roman' way of living, long before the Romans arrived.

The leaders of the US, UK, France, Germany and the EU have all called for Syria's President Assad to step down over his suppression of protesters.

US President Barack Obama said: "The time has come for President Assad to step aside."

It marks a significant increase in pressure on Mr Assad for sending in his army against the protesters.

Meanwhile, UN investigators say the use of violence in Syria "may amount to crimes against humanity".

In a report to the UN Human Rights Council, the investigators said the UN Security Council should refer the issue to the International Criminal Court.

Human rights groups believe about 2,000 people have been killed and thousands arrested since March as Syria's security forces - including tanks, helicopters, gunships and snipers - try to quell dissent that has broken out in much of the country.

President Bashar al-Assad has promised political reforms but has continued to clamp down on the protesters, blaming the unrest on "terrorist groups".

Soon it will no longer be illegal to rip CDs or DVDs for personal use.

The government is poised to announce the change as it accepts some of the recommendations of the wide-ranging Hargreaves Review of UK copyright law.

The review was intended to identify legislation that has been outdated by technological change.

As well as legalising "format shifting", it also suggested relaxing rules on parody and creating an agency to licence copyrighted content.

Business secretary Vince Cable is set to announce the official response to the Hargreaves Review at a press conference.

The government is widely expected to accept and pledge to implement many parts of the review.

Amazon.com, which has an estimated 70 percent of the online book market in Britain, got closer this week to controlling the rest of it when the Irish Competition Authority approved its pending purchase of a major rival, the Book Depository. But the blessing of the main regulatory body, the Office of Fair Trading, is no sure thing in a country that appears to be more concerned about media monopoly in the wake of the News Corporation hacking scandal.

Organizations of publishers, authors and booksellers have all come out against the deal, whose price was undisclosed but was probably less than $200 million, pocket change for Amazon.

France appeared on Tuesday to have persuaded Britain to support a shift in attitude toward Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, suggesting that he could be allowed to remain in Libya in return for giving up power in a broader deal including a cease-fire.

In talks in London late Monday, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, met his French counterpart, Alain Juppé, who said last week that “one of the scenarios” to resolve the conflict in Libya “is that he stays in Libya on one condition, which I repeat: that he very clearly steps aside from Libyan political life.”

Previously, Britain had insisted that Colonel Qaddafi leave the country as part of a settlement. That could expose him to arrest under a warrant on war crimes charges issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

But, adopting a newer formula used by the State Department in Washington, Mr. Hague said on Tuesday that “what happens to Qaddafi is ultimately a question for the Libyans.”

“What is absolutely clear is that whatever happens, Qaddafi must leave power. He must never again be able to threaten the lives of Libyan civilians nor to destabilize Libya once he has left power.”

“Obviously him leaving Libya itself would be the best way of showing the Libyan people that they no longer have to live in fear of Qaddafi,” Mr. Hague said. “But as I have said all along, this is ultimately a question for Libyans to determine.”

After Mr. Juppé raised the idea last week, an Obama administration spokesman, Jay Carney, said Colonel Qaddafi “needs to remove himself from power — and then it’s up to the Libyan people to decide.”

It was Prime Minister David Cameron’s turn to battle for his reputation, and potentially even his job, in the House of Commons on Wednesday in an appearance to address the phone hacking scandal that has convulsed Britain.

And when the daylong political street fighting with the opposition Labour Party was done, he appeared to have at least steadied support within his own party and, perhaps as important, within the ranks of the Liberal Democrats, his nervous partners in the coalition government.

The confrontation in the House of Commons — coming a day after appearances by Rupert and James Murdoch, whose News of the World, a now defunct newspaper, has been at the heart of the scandal — capped a difficult week in which the politically agile prime minister appeared to lose his normally assured demeanor, allowing Labour to get ahead of him in putting an end to the Murdochs’ bid for Britain’s top satellite television company.

Sean Hoare, a former News of the World journalist who claimed that Andy Coulson, the tabloid’s former editor, knew about and encouraged phone hacking, was found dead on Monday, The Guardian reports.

According to the newspaper, Mr. Hoare, who “worked on The Sun and The News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems,” was “said to have been found dead at his Watford home.”

Police officers in Watford, outside London, refused to confirm the dead man’s identity to The Guardian but said in a statement: “The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.”

Laura Kuenssberg, The BBC’s chief political correspondent, reported on Twitter that Mr. Hoare’s death was “confirmed.”

Mr. Hoare told The New York Times in 2010 that Mr. Coulson was aware of phone hacking at The Sun and The News of the World, which are both owned by News Corporation’s British newspaper division.

Two days before it emerged that The News of the World had hacked the cellphone of a murdered schoolgirl, igniting a scandal that has shaken the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, his son James told friends that he thought the worst of the troubles were behind him. And he was confident that the News Corporation’s $12 billion bid for the satellite company British Sky Broadcasting would go through, according to a person present.

Now, with their most trusted lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and paying the police for information, the broadcasting bid abandoned, the 168-year-old News of the World shuttered, and nine others arrested, Rupert and James Murdoch are scheduled to face an enraged British Parliament on Tuesday.

It is a spectacle that Rupert Murdoch’s closest associates spent years trying to avoid.

The commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Services, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned his post on Sunday just hours after his officers arrested Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of Rupert Murdoch’s media operations in Britain, as damage from a phone-hacking scandal moved to the highest levels of British public life.

In a news conference, Sir Paul said his position was “in danger of being eclipsed by the ongoing debate by senior officers and the media. And this can never be right,” according to a report by The Guardian.

The Metropolitan Police, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, has come under harsh scrutiny in recent days, accused in the press and by British politicians of currying too close a relationship with tabloid executives.

According to news reports, Sir Paul hired a former News of the World executive, Neil Wallis, as a public relations adviser. Mr. Wallis was arrested for questioning last week.

Mr. Wallis also worked for a spa where Sir Paul was treated for five weeks while recovering from a fractured leg this year, the Press Association news agency said. But Scotland Yard said Sir Paul did not know that Mr. Wallis worked there. Indeed, Scotland Yard said, Sir Paul’s stay at the spa, which totaled about $17,000, was arranged by a friend who was the managing director of the establishment.

Scotland Yard said the police paid for Sir Paul’s “intensive physiotherapy” to hasten his return to work.

Earlier Sunday, the British police took Ms. Brooks, 43, into custody after she arrived at a London police station by appointment. The timing, two days before a separate parliamentary inquiry into the crisis, drew a skeptical response from opposition lawmakers who said the arrest might inhibit Ms. Brooks’s ability or readiness to testify before the panel while she is the subject of police inquiries.

David Wilson, a lawyer representing Ms. Brooks, said she “maintains her innocence, absolutely.”

It was the latest twist in a series of events that has transformed Mr. Murdoch from a virtually untouchable force in the British media landscape to a mogul fighting for the survival of his power and influence.

As my colleagues Alan Cowell and Ravi Somaiya report, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned his post on Sunday, “as damage from a phone-hacking scandal moved to the highest levels of British public life.”

Video of the commissioner reading his complete statement of resignation was posted online by Britain’s Channel 4 News. The the full text of the statement can be read on the Web site of the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly known as Scotland Yard.

Near the start of his statement, Sir Paul said: “I have taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level and in particular in relation to Mr. Neil Wallis who as you know was arrested in connection with Operation Weeting last week.”

Sir Paul has been under fire for accusations that he had compromised the investigation of phone hacking by his closeness to Mr. Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor, who was hired as a public relations adviser for Scotland Yard. Last week, Mr. Wallis was arrested for questioning in connection with the police investigation of phone hacking at The News of the World, which was owned by News International, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper division.

I’m aware that my little adventure in socialized medicine is no more than a trivial anecdote — one tourist’s experience with a minor affliction that was easily dealt with. I expect that many Londoners could furnish horror stories about their ordeals in the NHS. One renowned health-care expert who grew up in England recently explained the difference between British and American medicine to me by saying that if he was very rich and had cancer, he would rather live in the U.S. But if he was poor and had cancer, he’d rather live in the U.K. and be guaranteed at least B-minus care.

That’s the sort of nuance that gets lost when the framing of public debate on health care is socialized medicine versus free-market capitalism, the feds vs. private insurers, or the GOP vs. “Obamacare” — and when we allow the tone of that crucial national debate to be set by ill-informed voters yelling Fox News talking points in staged riots at townhall meetings.

...

The specter of Americans paying higher taxes to prop up a bureaucracy like the NHS is a dependable stockyard of red meat for the right-wing base –though Americans already pay billions of dollars every month to support a system in which they’re too often treated like interlopers and malingerers, and from which they’re liable to be exiled for the sin of quitting a bad job to try to get a better one. That doesn’t sound like a “free market” to me.

“If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state,” GOP kingmaker Karl Rove rumbled ominously from the pages of the Wall Street Journal in 2009. “The public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, imagine what happens when government is the insurance carrier, with little or no competition and no concern you’ll change to another company.”

Yes, imagine. Imagine a traveler from London coming down with a mysterious infection while on holiday in the States, waking up in a hotel room with burning eyes at 2am. Who does he or she call — 911? (You can imagine the response to a polite inquiry about a house call). Where does he or she go to find care with no insurance? I’ve waited in enough dingy stateside ERs with sick and injured people to know how being acknowledged after two hours in front of a blaring TV set can be the answer to a chorus of prayers.

Or imagine a society committed to providing access to health and wellbeing for everyone, rich and poor, rather than playing childish semantic games about “death panels” and “socialism.” The cost of calls to my insurance company to get permission to see an NHS doctor who didn’t charge me a penny will be six times what I paid for the medicine that cured my infection.

But that, I suppose, is the cost of living in a free country.

A key US senator has called for an investigation into whether reported hacking by News Corporation targeted any US citizens.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said the authorities should consider whether journalists working for the media giant had broken US law.

He warned of "serious consequences" should that be found to be the case.

The 168-year-old News of the World shut down on Sunday after numerous accusations of phone hacking.

Other papers owned by Rupert Murdoch have faced similar allegations.

Mr Rockefeller, a Democrat, was the first major voice in the US Congress to call for an investigation into the scandal, which has gripped Britain.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone in Washington says these are the first signs that the hacking story is extending across the Atlantic.

Britain is providing limited assistance to the Libyan rebels fighting the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, including protective clothing for police officers, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Thursday, a day after France acknowledged providing light weapons to the rebels.

The British military has furnished 5,000 sets of body armor, 6,650 police uniforms, and 5,000 high visibility vests and T-shirts, Foreign Minister William Hague said in a written statement to Parliament, adding that the supply of such equipment was “fully in line” with United Nations resolutions governing arms embargoes.

“This equipment will enable the civilian police to carry out their functions more securely and better protect National Transitional Council representatives and the significant international and NGO communities in Benghazi, Misurata and other areas of Libya,” Mr. Hague said.

On Wednesday, a spokesman in Paris said the French military had provided the rebels with arms and ammunition, including assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, the first Western government to acknowledge having done so. The aid, which was delivered along with food and medicines, did not include heavy weapons, he said, and was appropriate for civilians to use in self-defense.

France moved rapidly on Thursday to endorse President Obama’s announcement of accelerated American troop withdrawals, contributing to a growing sense of the tide turning in the Western military commitment to Afghanistan.

France said it would begin a phased pullback next month of the 4,000 soldiers it has contributed to the allied effort. But the government set no timetable or numbers for the withdrawals, saying they would follow a schedule similar to the one set by Mr. Obama.

The announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy had a faint but still significant echo in Britain. Defense Ministry officials there said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s government would consider whether to withdraw more than the 400 troops this year, from a total force of 10,000. They said the deadline for ending Britain’s combat involvement, the end of 2014, would remain.

People who use Twitter to breach privacy injunctions may face legal action, according to the government's senior law officer.

Attorney General Dominic Grieve said that individuals could be prosecuted for contempt of court for publishing sensitive material.

Enforcement was normally a matter for whoever had taken out a privacy order.

But Mr Grieve told the BBC he would take action himself if he thought it necessary to uphold the rule of law.

In an interview with Radio 4's Law in Action programme, the attorney general said that individuals who used Twitter or other internet sites to undermine the rule of law could face the consequences of their actions.

Deep funding cuts could put the UK's prominence in astronomy and particle physics at risk, MPs have said.

The Science and Technology Committee says astronomy funding will fall by 20% over four years - the science budget's average real-terms cut was 14.5%.

The MPs say some of the resulting cuts are likely to deter leading scientists from working in the UK.

The government says it has protected the science budget but cannot make individual funding decisions.

Committee chairman Labour MP Andrew Miller said: "If you don't invest in big science at the level it needs, it's going to have a big impact on our competitiveness and pre-eminence in areas that are important to the country."

The injunctions, intended to protect privacy, have become a scandal here in Britain. The BBC political editor Andrew Marr, who often grills Britain’s most prominent politicians on the Sunday show that bears his name, publicly admitted Tuesday that he, too, had used one to hide an affair.

And in recent weeks, the issue of the soccer player’s identity has become a matter of national debate, splashed across front pages and featured on television shows. Super injunctions have also been raised in the Houses of Parliament as an example of a curb on the freedom of the press by activist judges.

But in a world where millions converse on Facebook, Twitter and the like, the law cannot feasibly be enforced online. So the reporters listening to the soccer game were hoping that the boisterous fans of the rival team would have read about the affair on the Internet and then shout or sing the details to ridicule their opponents, providing a circuitous way of covering the story. But they were disappointed.

Britain’s press laws are widely seen as particularly restrictive, so much so that international celebrities and public figures often choose to pursue their libel suits here, in what is frequently referred to as “libel tourism.”

But the super injunctions offer a way of stopping stories before they come out and are frequently served on multiple newspapers to pre-empt any possible publication, said Charlotte Harris, a media lawyer who has represented public figures seeking injunctions and others arguing against them.

Almost half of British children aged 9 to 12 are using social networking sites, despite minimum age limits, a report claims.

One in five has a Facebook page, even though rules say they must be 13, according to EUKidsOnline.

The report's authors suggest that removing such requirements would make it easier to monitor online behaviour.

However, children's charity Kidscape criticised the idea and warned it would lead to more cyber bullying.

Comedian Stephen Fry has said he is "prepared to go to prison" over the "Twitter joke" trial.

Fry was at a benefit gig for a man who is appealing against his conviction for sending a menacing communication.

Paul Chambers had tweeted: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"

Fry argued that Chambers' tweet was an example of Britain's tradition of self-deprecating humour and banter.

Last year Germany ran a deficit of 3.3 percent of GDP; the United States more than 10; Britain similar to the US, but now embarked on a harsh austerity program. Very different, you might think. Yet as of the time of posting, US borrowing costs were within 3 basis points — .03 percentage points — of Germany, while Britain was about 20 basis points higher.

You might almost think that deficits aren’t making much difference here.

The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.

But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities.

Mr. Koussa’s close knowledge of the ruling circle, which he is believed to be sharing inside a British safe house, could be invaluable in trying to strip Colonel Qaddafi of support.

But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr. Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

God bless the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). This fearless defender of everything that’s right, moral and upstanding has allowed ISPs to advertise fantasy headline speeds and limited “unlimited” packages for donkey’s years, but when it comes to the really big issues, it’s not afraid to wield the big stick.

The latest victim of the ASA’s wrath is 3GA Ltd, the company that makes the Brennan JB7 – “a CD player with a hard disk that stores up to 5,000 CDs”.

The adverts for the Brennan highlight the convenience of ripping your entire CD collection to the device – much like we’ve all been doing for years on our PCs, iPods and other MP3 players.

However, somebody with nothing better to do with their life (or, more likely, one of Brennan’s competitors) complained that the “ad incited consumers to break the law, because it was illegal to copy music without permission from the copyright owner”.

This is, of course, technically correct: format shifting is indeed illegal in the UK, despite companies such as Apple making hundreds of millions of pounds by tacitly encouraging people to do just that.

When the mission was launched, it was largely seen as having a limited, humanitarian agenda: to keep Colonel Qaddafi from attacking his own people. But the White House, the Pentagon and their European allies have given it the most expansive possible interpretation, amounting to an all-out assault on Libya’s military.

A growing armada of coalition warplanes, armed with more precise information about the location and abilities of Libyan Army units than was known a week ago, have effectively provided the air cover the ragtag opposition has needed to stave off certain defeat in its de facto eastern capital, Benghazi.

Allied aircraft are not only dropping 500-pound bombs on Libyan troops, they are also using psychological operations to try to break their will to fight, broadcasting messages in Arabic and English, telling Libyan soldiers and sailors to abandon their posts and go back to their homes and families, and to defy Colonel Qaddafi’s orders.

The Obama administration has been reluctant to call the operation an actual war, and it has sought to emphasize the involvement of a dozen other countries, particularly Italy, Britain and France. In his speech on Monday night, Mr. Obama, as he has in the past, portrayed the mission as a limited one, and described the United States’ role as “supporting.”

But interviews in recent days offer a fuller picture of American involvement, and show that it is far deeper than discussed in public and more instrumental to the fight than was previously known.

Identifying individuals using nothing more than their IP address has become a key part of anti-piracy and criminal investigations. But just how reliable is such IP address evidence?

British courts have recently begun to cast doubt over its validity. The use of IP addresses to tie individuals to illegal downloads was a tactic employed by ACS Law, which sent letters demanding up to £500 compensation on behalf of copyright holders whose intellectual property was said to have been stolen.

At a hearing where 27 of these cases came to court, Judge Birss QC suggested that ACS Law had "materially overstated the untested merits" of using IP addresses in this way, and questioned if the process of simply identifying an IP address could establish a copyright infringement by anyone related to it. "Even if it is proof of infringement by somebody," Judge Birss said, "the fact that someone may have infringed does not mean the particular named defendant has done so."

The ACS Law case would suggest that IP tracing is something of a double-edged sword: obtaining the required legal order to force an ISP to identify a customer from an IP address isn’t difficult, but proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was the same customer breaking the law certainly is.

A quarter-million mostly peaceful demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday against the toughest cuts to public spending since World War II, with some small breakaway groups smashing windows at banks and shops and spray painting logos on the walls.

Another group of black-clad protesters hurled paint bombs and ammonia-filled light bulbs at police.

Organizers of the March for the Alternative said people from across the country were peacefully joining in the demonstration, the biggest protest in London since a series of rallies against the Iraq war in 2003.

Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan Police confirmed that more than 250,000 people had marched peacefully, but said around 500 had caused trouble in London's main shopping streets.

He said nine people had been arrested, for public disorder and criminal damage. Police said 28 people had been injured during the demonstration, and seven were admitted to hospitals for a range of problems, including shortness of breath and a suspected hip fracture. Five police officers were also injured and one of those had to be treated in hospital for a groin injury.

Police said one group of a few hundred people broke away from the main march, scuffling with police officers and attempting to smash shop windows on two of London's main shopping streets. Others threw objects at the posh Ritz Hotel in nearby Piccadilly. Members of protest group UK Uncut later walked into the nearby luxury department store Fortnum and Mason and remained inside for a few hours. Police clashed with other demonstrators outside.

But the protests otherwise had a carnival feel. School teachers, nurses and students all marched through central London and rallied in Hyde Park, one of London's biggest public gardens, with banners, balloons and whistles.

Britain is facing 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) of public spending cuts from Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government as it struggles to get the country's large budget deficit under control. The government has already raised sales tax, but Britons are bracing for big cuts to public spending.

What do these events have in common? They’re all evidence that slashing spending in the face of high unemployment is a mistake. Austerity advocates predicted that spending cuts would bring quick dividends in the form of rising confidence, and that there would be few, if any, adverse effects on growth and jobs; but they were wrong.

It’s too bad, then, that these days you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe.

President Barack Obama has said the US will transfer its leading role on Libya "within days" to ensure the burden of enforcing a UN resolution against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is shared.

He said Nato would play a co-ordinating role but differences remain within the organisation, with France and Turkey opposed to Nato taking the lead.

The UN resolution was passed to protect civilians from Col Gaddafi's forces.

Fighting continues, with anti-aircraft fire heard in Tripoli late on Monday.

It followed large explosions, which some reports said had come from the direction of a Gaddafi compound that was hit the previous night. Libyan television reported "several new attacks".

On Monday, Mr. Obama sent Congress a two-page letter saying that as commander in chief, he had constitutional authority to authorize the strikes, which were undertaken with French, British and other allies. He wrote that the strikes would be limited in scope and duration, and that preventing a humanitarian disaster in Libya was in the best interest of American foreign policy and national security goals.

The White House also noted that Mr. Obama had met with Congressional leaders to consult about the Libya situation on Friday. On March 1, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution calling for the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. The Security Council approved such a measure Thursday night.

Critics say the merits of the operation and its legality under international law are matters separate from the domestic legal question of who — the president or Congress — has the authority to decide whether the United States will take part in combat.

Of course, Republicans believe, or at least pretend to believe, that the direct job-destroying effects of their proposals would be more than offset by a rise in business confidence. As I like to put it, they believe that the Confidence Fairy will make everything all right.

But there’s no reason for the rest of us to share that belief. For one thing, it’s hard to see how such an obviously irresponsible plan — since when does starving the I.R.S. for funds help reduce the deficit? — can improve confidence.

Beyond that, we have a lot of evidence from other countries about the prospects for “expansionary austerity” — and that evidence is all negative. Last October, a comprehensive study by the International Monetary Fund concluded that “the idea that fiscal austerity stimulates economic activity in the short term finds little support in the data.”

And do you remember the lavish praise heaped on Britain’s conservative government, which announced harsh austerity measures after it took office last May? How’s that going? Well, business confidence did not, in fact, rise when the plan was announced; it plunged, and has yet to recover. And recent surveys suggest that confidence has fallen even further among both businesses and consumers, indicating, as one report put it, that the private sector is “unprepared to fill the hole left by public sector cuts.”

Which brings us back to the U.S. budget debate.

Over the next few weeks, House Republicans will try to blackmail the Obama administration into accepting their proposed spending cuts, using the threat of a government shutdown. They’ll claim that those cuts would be good for America in both the short term and the long term.

But the truth is exactly the reverse: Republicans have managed to come up with spending cuts that would do double duty, both undermining America’s future and threatening to abort a nascent economic recovery.

A day after American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader delivered a fresh and defiant tirade on Sunday, pledging retaliation and saying his forces would fight a long war to victory.

The UK, the US and France have begun attacking Libya as enforcement of the UN-mandated no-fly zone gets under way.

More than 110 missiles have been fired by the UK and US, officials at the Pentagon say.

Earlier, forces loyal to Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi attacked the rebel stronghold of Benghazi despite declaring a ceasefire a day earlier.

Western planes bombed targets in the capital, Tripoli, said the AFP news agency, quoting witnesses and state TV.

A French plane fired the first shots at 1645 GMT, destroying Libyan military vehicles, according to a military spokesman.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has confirmed that British planes are in action over Libya.

A coalition of the United States and four other nations launched military action against Libya on Saturday, officials said, as the West tries to force Muammar Gaddafi from power.

A U.S. official told reporters on condition of anonymity that a coalition including the United States, France, Britain, Canada and Italy had begun launching strikes on Libya designed to cripple Muammar Gaddafi's air defenses.

Last month the second case against a UK-based BitTorrent site came to an end. Two administrators of FileSoup – the longest standing BitTorrent community – had their case dropped by the authorities and were free men once again. This week, personal belongings that were seized during the house raids were released and returned, but what should have been a celebration turned out to be a great disappointment.

When FileSoup administrator Geeker had his home raided in the summer of 2009, police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) literally trashed his place. In a previous interview Geeker vividly recalled the events.

“I got back home just before 8pm to find my belongings had been turned upside down, the dining room was a like a whirlwind had gone through..[]..they’d turfed out all the drawers of the desk, chucked back what was of no interest to them, left a pile of paperwork scattered across my desk and table with wires everywhere, talk about a nightmare!”

The police officers and ‘agents’ of the MPAA-funded FACT tagged everything with a chip in it, and bagged them as evidence. In the following weeks some items were returned, including a mobile phone, sat nav and video camera, but most of the hardware was kept under lock and key.

As Geeker and fellow FileSoup administrator Snookered were released from all charges by the Crown Prosecution Service last month, their belongings were finally returned this week. This final step in the dreadful legal proceedings should have been a day to celebrate, but the police once again trashed the party.

From the looks of it the police and FACT did not return all of the seized property, and the hardware that was given back appears to be completely trashed.

The way websites track visitors and tailor ads to their behaviour is about to undergo a big shake-up.

From 25 May, European laws dictate that "explicit consent" must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via text files called "cookies".

These files are widely used to help users navigate faster around sites they visit regularly.

Businesses are being urged to sort out how they get consent so they can keep on using cookies.

"Web lockers are a critical piece of our internet life, and an attempt to ban them is worse than misguided; it's actively detrimental to the UK."

"The president of Iceland blocked a $5 billion compensation deal with the British and Dutch governments on Tuesday, upending the precarious finances and politics of the island nation and further jeopardizing already frayed ties with Europe and international lenders." Say what?

"A man was convicted Wednesday of conspiracy to commit murder for his role in a plan to blow up trans-Atlantic passenger jets using liquid explosives, a plot that prompted sweeping restrictions on passengers carrying liquids and gels on flights."

"This year will be one of the top five warmest years globally since records began 150 years ago, according to figures compiled by the Met Office. The UK's weather service projects that, unless there is an exceptionally cold spell before the end of the year, temperatures will be up on last year. Climate sceptics had pointed out that the temperature rise appeared to have stalled in the last decade or so."

"About 300 protesters held a candlelit protest outside a Glasgow theatre over the staging of a play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual."

"Last week British Home Secretary Alan Johnson fired University of Bristol neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt as chairman the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for failing to recognize that "his role is to advise rather than criticise." Translation: Nutt made the mistake of publicly telling the truth about drugs. In particular, he noted that the hazards posed by marijuana pale beside those associated with cigarettes and alcohol, and he said the British government's decision to move marijuana from Class C to Class B, which is associated with more severe penalties, was based on political rather than scientific considerations."

"The scans have been temporarily stopped for young people while legal advice is sought, said the airport." Something I guess.

"History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent."

"I'll say it again: the public's deal with the BBC is: we pay you the licence fee, you give us programmes, we can do what we want with them within the confines of copyright law. The studios promised that they would boycott US free-to-air television unless they got a version of this (called the "Broadcast Flag"). They didn't get the Broadcast Flag, and they didn't boycott. They have shareholders to answer to, and those shareholders won't put up with corporate tantrums that promise no licensing revenue until the rest of the world rearranges itself to the company's convenience."

"Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has denied any deal was done to secure the release of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing."

"Right-wing groups who claim to oppose Islamic extremism are trying to provoke violence on Britain's streets, the communities minister has said."

"Extra university places should be funded as a way out of recession and unemployment, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. An annual international report comparing education systems says economies and individuals continue to benefit from higher qualifications. "The benefits clearly outweigh the costs in every country," says report author, Andreas Schleicher. " I agree higher education is the key to raising people's economic status.

"Three men have been found guilty of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes flying from London to America with home-made liquid bombs. A Woolwich Crown Court jury convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as drinks. Four other men were found not guilty of involvement in the suicide bomb plot."