Rage Against The Machine top UK singles chart

Rock band Rage Against The Machine have beaten Joe McElderry to become the UK’s official Christmas number one, following one of the biggest battles in the history of the UK Singles Chart. Their song Killing in the Name pushed the X Factor winner’s new single The Climb into second place.
A Facebook campaign backing the American band aimed to stop an X Factor winner reaching the Christmas number one spot once again. Artists from the TV talent show, owned by music mogul Simon Cowell, have taken the festive top spot for four years in a row. The group attracted over 900,000 members and widespread press attention, after it was started by Jon and Tracy Morter.
“Are you getting fed up about the possibility of ANOTHER X-Factor Christmas No.1? …us too…so we’re going to do something about it!,” they said on the group’s Facebook page. They decided to back “Killing In The Name”, first released in 1992.
Cowell had previously branded the campaign “cynical”, but on Saturday contacted the Morters to congratulate them on making a “very exciting race for the Christmas number one”. The campaign has also raised over £69,000 for homeless charity Shelter.
Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello had backed the campaign on Twitter. He announced that the band would play a free victory gig in the UK if they reached number one.
The result was announced on BBC Radio 1’s chart show this evening by Scott Mills. McElderry had been due to appear on the show, but did not arrive.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri dies

Iranian cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri died yesterday. Montazeri had been a key leader in the 1979 Iranian revolution and at one time was expected to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader of Iran, until he fell out with Khomeini. In 1987 Montazeri had advocated for the legalisation of political parties. He had also criticsed the post-revolution regime for its brutality and the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988.
After the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election, Montazeri supported the opposition and declared the result of the election fraudulent.
Montazeri’s grandson said that he had died peacefully in his sleep. In Najafabad, the cleric’s hometown, shops were closed and the streets full of mourners.
The Times and other news agencies reported that the Iranian authorities were concerned that the burial, due to start at 09.00 local time tomorrow in Qom, would be a focus for more opposition protests against the Iranian government. Supporters of Montazeri were reportedly already arriving in Tehran, and ParlemanNews reports that thousands of people would be attending the funeral.
The Telegraph reported that news of Montazeri’s death had sparked protests by students even before the burial, who filled university campuses chanting pro-reform slogans.

NASA flyby of Saturn moon Titan produces first image of liquid on another world

NASA have revealed that a flyby of its probe Cassini past Titan, a moon of Saturn, has produced a historic image: the first photograph showing liquid on a world other than our own.
The picture shows a “specular reflection” from an extremely smooth surface, in this case a liquid. Cassini has been trying to spot one since arriving in 2004, and in 2008 used infrared data to prove that there were liquid methane lakes down there. The northern hemisphere has only been visible since August 2009, as before then it was covered by winter weather. Most of Titan’s lakes are in the north.
“This one image communicates so much about Titan — thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an otherworldliness. It’s an unsettling combination of strangeness yet similarity to Earth,” said Bob Pappalardo, a Cassini scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Titan’s atmosphere is, like Earth’s, mainly nitrogen, but temperatures on the icy world are around -180°C. This reduces the prospect of life, although the presence of liquid does increase the likelihood.
The lake seen in the photograph is called Kraken Mare, and at 150,000 square miles (400,000 square kilometers), it isn’t the largest basin on north Titan, but it is bigger than the Earth’s biggest lake, the Caspian Sea.
Ralf Jaumann, another Cassini scientist, spoke of the team’s hopes for the future. “Next, we want to find out more about Titan’s liquid. Do we have some kind of weather there? Do we have changes with seasons? Does it rain? How does the liquid methane run across the surface?”
A team of scientists are due to propose to NASA that the agency drop a boat into a Titan lake, with Kraken Mare and the similarly sized Ligeia Mare being hot candidates. The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) is projected to be relatively low-cost at US$400 million and would investigate the composition, density and shape of a Titan lake. If launched in 2016 it could arrive in 2023 and spend several years floating on the moon. However, several other projects are also keen to get themselves the next opportunity NASA is offering for the launch of a new project other than its own.

Copenhagen climate conference ends with “meaningful agreement”

President of the United States Barack Obama has announced that wealthy and developing nations have reached what he called a “meaningful agreement” at the UN Climate Change Conference. The announcement came in the final hours of two weeks of tough negotiations, but fell far short of what some had hoped for.
Agreement came late in the evening and after a day of intense negotiations.
President Obama announced what he called a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough. “For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” he said.
Negotiations stalled amid differences over mitigation efforts by cutting greenhouse gas emissions; verification; and funding.
That formed the core of discussions, said Mr. Obama. “Throughout the day we worked with many countries to establish a new consensus around these three points, a consensus that will serve as a foundation for global action to confront the threat of climate change for years to come,” he said.
Obama sat down with the leaders of developing countries at a multilateral meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and South African President Jacob Zuma.
The agreement requires countries to list actions they will take to cut gas emissions by specific amounts and allows for verification.
Obama noted in his speech, “And that’s where we agreed to list our national actions and commitments, to provide information on the implementation of these actions through national communications, with international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines.” Obama also added that the leaders “agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and importantly, to take action to meet this objective consistent with science.”
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who acted on behalf of the Group of 77 of developing nations blasted the agreement and the 2 degree mark stating to reporters, “The developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries is acceptable.” On the 2-degree mark he stated the mark would “result in massive devastation to Africa and small island states.” Mr. Di-Aping and various representatives of the most most vulnerable countries wanted a target of 1.5 degrees.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it a good first step, but said a binding treaty must follow. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also called it a first step and urged more action.
President Obama acknowledged that as well, saying this progress had not come easily, and alone is not enough. “Going forward we’re going to have to build on the momentum that we’ve established here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time. We’ve come a long way but we have much further to go,” he said.
The agreement is a far cry from what environmentalists and developing nations had called for. They wanted a legally binding treaty with much more specific commitments.
Some environmental groups criticized the agreement. Kim Carstensen of the World Wildlife Fund spoke of a non-deal that is not fair and does not meet the demands of the developing world. “It’s been cooked up by a number of big countries in a closed room, without any transparency, without any civil society engagement in this building (the conference), without much engagement of the vulnerable countries,” she said.
Climate talks are to continue. Germany is to call a meeting on the issue in the coming months and a climate change summit is also expected to be held in Mexico within the coming year.

US East Coast prepares for blizzard

Although the Winter Solstice is not for another couple of days, a major blizzard, potentially the most severe in years, is currently affecting the East Coast of the United States. What began as a low pressure system off the coast of Florida that resulted in widespread flash flooding is now on its way to the Northeast, where it is expected to dump over a foot of snow in many areas, such as in Washington, D.C., which was forecast to pick up as much as twenty inches of snow.
Despite the traveling frenzy of the ongoing holiday season, the impending inclement weather has prompted various regional airlines to already announce that many of their flights to and from various East Coast destinations in the storm’s path — such as in the New York metropolitan area, where over ten inches of snow are predicted to fall — will likely be grounded, or severely delayed at best.
“It’s going to be very challenging for people who weren’t able to get out today to rebook on flights this week,” said spokeswoman Tara Hamilton of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

As a result, blizzard watches and winter storm warnings have been issued all over the Northeast, from North Carolina to central and eastern New England. The National Weather Service warns that in some areas, “falling and blowing snow with strong winds and poor visibilities are likely. This will in some areas lead to whiteout conditions[,] making travel extremely dangerous.”
Some areas even declared snow emergencies, and strongly encouraged people not to travel and to remain at home. In Virginia, the National Guard rescued several hundred motorists who became stranded due to the heavy snows. A twenty-mile traffic backup on Interstate 81 miles was also reported. According to Bob Spieldenner, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Emergency Management, around a hundred people were moved to shelters.
“Some folks have decided to stay in vehicles, others have been taken to shelters. We’re definitely trying to keep people off the roads,” Spieldenner said.
The inclement weather also cut off power to many people in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia; the MSNBC news agency reported that a total of 136,000 businesses and homes were without power in those three states.
In more northern regions, unusual levels of uncertainty in the cyclone’s eventual track are making it difficult for forecasters to determine the exact conditions over the next couple days.
The snow is expected to taper off by Sunday evening for most locations, but another storm is possible next week.

Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Jones dies at age 90

Jennifer Jones, leading lady in two dozen Hollywood pictures and an Academy Award winner for her first major film, 1943’s The Song of Bernadette, died Thursday at her home in Malibu, California. She was 90.
Born Phyllis Lee Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma on March 2, 1919, her pursuit of fame as an actress took her to New York City at the age of 19, leaving for Hollywood one year later. She changed her name to Jennifer Jones while testing for a part in a David O. Selznick movie; in 1949, Selznick, who produced Gone with the Wind, would become her second and perhaps highest-profile husband.
Jones broke into dramatic film roles in 1943 as the lead in The Song of Bernadette, a movie about a nun who saw visions of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France in 1858. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, and became a star well in-demand, earning Academy Award nominations the next three years in a row for the films Since You Went Away, Love Letters and Duel in the Sun.
Jones was a popular movie actress well into the 1950s. She starred as a Eurasian doctor, Han Suyin, in the 1955 film Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, earning her a fifth and final Academy Award nomination. After a well-received turn in a film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in 1957, she started to take on fewer and fewer movie roles. She would make her final on-camera appearance in the 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno.
Jones was married three times and was survived by one of her three children, Robert Walker, Jr., from her first marriage to Robert Walker. She married for a third and final time in 1971 to industrialist Norton Simon, six years after the death of her second husband David O. Selznick. The couple’s collection of South Asian art, acquired while living in India, is now showcased in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. Jones was an active force behind the operations of the museum, serving as chairman from Simon’s death in 1993 to 2003, and as trustee emeritus until her own death.

Iraqi insurgents intercepted drone feeds using widely available software

United States defense officials acknowledged that Iraqi insurgents successfully intercepted live video feeds from U.S. MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles with widely available software. The story broke on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal with a defense official, anonymously, informing them it is an old problem, which has already been fixed.
The Journal says U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they seized a Shi’ite militant’s laptop containing drone video feeds.
Senior defense and intelligence officials say insurgents were able to take advantage of an unprotected communications link in the systems of the remotely-piloted aircraft. The insurgents used software that is available online and costs about $26.
While U.S. defense officials say the issue has been fixed, the Journal quoted senior intelligence officials as saying it was not yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.
It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet — no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content.
—Andrew Solonikov, SkyGrabber developer
U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants had been able to take control of the drones. But the intercepted video feeds could show where the planes are operating.
The Journal also reported that U.S. drone feeds have also been intercepted in Afghanistan.
Officials say the U.S. government has known about a flaw in the drone communication system since the NATO intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s. At the time, the military assumed local adversaries would not know how to exploit it.
The report says fighters in Iraq used software programs such as one called “SkyGrabber” from the Russian company SkySoftware, which is designed to intercept data transmitted by satellite Internet.
The Journal quoted one of the program’s developers, Andrew Solonikov, as saying it was designed to download legal content – such as music and video – and that it was never intended to intercept military data. Solonikov said in a email to the paper, “It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet—no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content

Sir Terry Wogan leaves BBC Radio 2 breakfast show

Sir Terry Wogan has presented his final BBC Radio 2 weekday breakfast show after hosting Wake Up To Wogan on the station for sixteen years. Wogan originally presented The Terry Wogan Show on the radio station between 1972 and 1984, in which his supporters were “Twits” — the Terry Wogan is Tops Society. Since Wake Up To Wogan commenced in 1993, the listeners were referred to as TOGs — Terry’s Old Geezers/Gals. Now, after presenting the weekday breakfast show regularly for 16 years, Terry Wogan has left.
He first announced his departure from the show in September of this year. After playing “That’ll Do” by the Black Dyke Mills Band, Wogan made his final speech at 0926 GMT. He proclaimed these words: “This is it, then. This is the day I have been dreading — the inevitable morning when you and I come to the parting of the ways, the last Wake Up To Wogan.
“It wasn’t always thus. For the first 12 years it was the plain old Terry Wogan Show and you were all Twits, the Terry Wogan is Tops Society. When I returned to the bosom of our family, it became Wake Up To Wogan and you all became TOGs, Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals. It’s always been a source of enormous pride to me that you have come together in my name, that you are proud to call yourself my listeners, that you think of me as a friend, someone that you are close enough to laugh with, to poke fun at and occasionally, when the world seemed just a little too cruel, to shed a tear with. And the years together with you have not only been a pleasure but a privilege. You have allowed me to share your lives with you. When you tell me how important I have been in your lives it’s very moving. You have been every bit as important in mine. We have been though at least a couple of generations together, for many of you — your children, like mine, now have children of their own. And your support for Children In Need has been consistent and magnificent. You’ve baked the bakes, you’ve held the quizzes, you’ve sold the calendars, you’ve packed the CDs and the DVDs. You’ve answered the phones — always there when we’ve called on you, unheralded and unsung. And if anybody embodies the generous, warm spirit of this country it’s you, my listeners.
“I am not going to pretend that this is not a sad day — you can probably hear it in my voice. I am going to miss the laughter and the fun of our mornings together. I know you are going to welcome Chris Evans with the same generosity of spirit that you have always shown me. So, I am going to miss you, until we are together again in February, have a happy Christmas. Thank you, thank you for being my friend.”
After this speech, he played “The Party’s Over” by the late Anthony Newley. Wogan will be replaced by Chris Evans, who currently hosts Chris Evans Drivetime every weekday evening, in January 2010.

Suspected US drone strikes kill twelve in western Pakistan

Pakistani intelligence officials said earlier today that two suspected US drone attacks in Taliban-dominated tribal areas of the country have killed at least a dozen people, although some reports put the number as high as seventeen.
The first attack targeted a vehicle carrying two suspected militants in the town of Dosali, in the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.
Hours later elsewhere in North Waziristan, officials reported that several drones fired seven missiles into suspected militant compounds. They added that the death toll could rise. However, it was not immediately clear how many Taliban members were killed in the strikes.
“Seven missiles were fired. They hit a cave complex, a compound and a vehicle,” said a Pakistani official, as quoted by the Reuters news agency.

Bombings in Iraq kill eight; many wounded

Iraqi police say three blasts in Baghdad killed four people and wounded fourteen others on Tuesday. Three other blasts also rocked the northern city of Mosul on the same day, killing and wounding several dozen people. The explosions came as politicians continue to debate over who was responsible for the last wave of bombings, which happened exactly one week ago.
The Baghdad explosions struck at the Iraqi government’s nerve center, near the heavily fortified Green Zone. Baghdad’s security chief, General Qassem Mohammed Atta, reported that three explosive devices hidden in civilian vehicles blew up in parking lots in the Karrada District, close to the Green Zone. He noted that a fourth explosive device, hidden in a parked vehicle near the Iranian Embassy, was found and disabled.
The explosions were in the immediate vicinity of Iraq’s Foreign Ministry building, which is covered by a gigantic Iraqi flag on one side, as repairs continue on the structure that was gutted by a massive car-bomb explosion on August 16.
Mortar attacks and assassination attempts against several Iraqi politicians were also reported elsewhere in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the attacks in Mosul killed four people and wounded a further forty. They seemed to target a mosque and a neighbourhood, according to the Kurdish Globe, according to an unnamed doctor at a Mosul hospital.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombings.