New York Times: Majority for Putin’s Party Narrows in Voters’ Rebuke
United Russia, the governing party of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, suffered surprisingly steep losses in parliamentary elections on Sunday and was barely clinging to a 50 percent majority, with nearly three-quarters of the votes counted.
The three minority parties that now hold seats in Parliament — the Communist Party, the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Just Russia, a social democratic party — all made strong gains, meaning that United Russia would have little choice but to forge a working relationship with at least some segment of the newly empowered opposition.
Critics of the government have said for weeks that they expected widespread campaign abuses, and reports of electoral violations streamed into online social networks during the early morning hours, as the ruling party’s vote tally edged upward.
BBC: We will 'get tough' on excessive boardroom pay - Clegg
The government is to publish new proposals to curb "unjustified and irresponsible" pay rewards in the private sector, Nick Clegg has said.
The deputy prime minister said ministers would announce plans to "get tough" on excessive boardroom pay in January and may legislate if necessary.
Among likely steps is widening the membership of remuneration committees, which set pay, to include workers.
Recent figures showed executive pay at the UK's top firms rose 50% last year.
Guardian: Obama offers Pakistan president his condolences over Nato air strike
Barack Obama has called Pakistan's president to offer condolences over the Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops and sparked a crisis in relations between the two countries.
Obama told President Asif Ali Zardari that the soldiers' deaths were "regrettable" and accidental, according to a White House statement.
He reiterated his call for a full investigation of the 26 November incident and said the US relationship with Pakistan was critical to the security interests of both nations.
The Nato air strike sparked fury in Pakistan and complicated US-led efforts to ease tensions in relations with Islamabad, still seething at the secret US raid in May that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and to stabilise the region before foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
Guardian: Afghan conference in Bonn as Nato troops eye exit
A major international conference on Afghanistan's future is due to open in the German city of Bonn on Monday.
It comes 10 years after a similar gathering held in the city, weeks after the Taliban fell from power.
Organisers want to bolster long-term international engagement with Afghanistan and support efforts to restore security.
Guardian: Israel abandons 'insulting' campaign calling on expats to return from US
Israel's government has cancelled a public relations campaign aimed at encouraging Israelis living in the US to return to the Jewish state after a wave of complaints.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered the campaign to be shelved after receiving a letter from the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) that said the message of the advertisements and videos was "outrageous and insulting".
Under the slogan "It's time to return to Israel", the campaign suggested that expatriate Israelis and their children were at risk of losing touch with their Jewish roots and of being assimilated into US society and culture.
One video showed a girl telling her grandparents in Israel she was celebrating Christmas instead of Hanukkah. The video ended with the words: "Before Hanukkah turns into Christmas, it's time to return to Israel."
BBC: Sarkozy and Merkel kick off week of euro crisis talks
An explosion near the British Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, today targeted the mission, the country's Interior Ministry spokesman claimed.
Salah Salem said security measures will be increased around foreign embassies in Bahrain. He was speaking at a news conference in Mananma today.
There were no casualties at the embassy or damage to the facility, British Embassy spokesman Altaher Al-Jamal said in a telephone interview earlier today. He said the blast occurred just after midnight.
The small explosion took place in a bus parked near the British embassy in the Bahraini capital on Sunday, the interior ministry said in the Gulf state swept by unrest earlier this year.
Guardian: Cambodian court to question ex-Khmer Rouge leaders
Three senior leaders of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime will be questioned at a U.N.-backed tribunal for the first time Monday over their roles in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people when their movement held power in the 1970s.
The long-awaited trial began late last month with opening statements, and this week the court is expected to focus on charges involving the forced movement of people and crimes against humanity.
After the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, they began moving an estimated 1 million people — even hospital patients — from the capital into the countryside in an effort to create a communist agrarian utopia.
The defendants are accused of crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture stemming from the group's 1975-79 reign of terror. All have denied wrongdoing.
New York Times: Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.
Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.
The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.
The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.
Guardian: Top British commander says west must see the job through in Afghanistan
The most senior British commander in Afghanistan says the Taliban cannot "assassinate their way to power" and too many lives have been lost over the last 10 years for the west to flinch in its campaign against the insurgents.
In an interview with the Guardian, Lieutenant General James Bucknall said the UK had made "an investment in blood" and that now was not the time for western nations to turn their back on the country.
He claimed that the Taliban had been pushed back everywhere and that relentless special forces operations are killing 130 to140 insurgent leaders every month.
He conceded that too often over the last decade the military had "over-promised and under-delivered".