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AFP - Japanese Minister of the Environment announced Friday that he renounced his monthly salary of 15,000 euros after some employees of his ministry were thrown on a vacant contaminated soil sent by a resident of Fukushima for that it is tested. Goshi Hosono, a rising star of the Democratic Party of Japan (in power), said it would affect more than his salary for the duration of its mandate to assume the fault of his subordinates. The minister, who is also responsible for the management of the accident at the nuclear Fukushima, however, will continue to receive his parliamentary allowances, which amount to about 13,000 euros a month.

"I have a heavy responsibility as head of that department," he said, following the announcement of stupidity committed by an official. A resident of the city of Fukushima, located about sixty miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, sent last week to the Department of Environment package containing soil taken from his garden so that it is analyzed . The samples taken showed a rate of 0.18 mSv of radiation per hour, roughly the same as that tested in the vicinity of Tokyo.

After that discussion to the package, an employee offered to unload the contents of a vacant lot near his home in Saitama prefecture, northeast of the capital. The land has since been recovered and the employees involved and their superiors, have received disciplinary sanctions, including temporary salary reductions, transfers and warnings, said Hosono.

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that it is investigating a rash of unsolicited graphic images that hit some users' accounts this week.

The images, Internet links and videos depicting pornography and violence have hit some people's Facebook newsfeeds in recent days.

"We experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement emailed to Reuters. "Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible."

Facebook does not know yet who was behind the attack and a motive was not clear, Noyes added during an interview with Reuters.

Facebook users were tricked into pasting and executing "malicious" javascript in their browser URL bar, which led to them unknowingly sharing the content, Noyes explained.

Facebook engineers have been working to reduce this browser vulnerability, he added.

Facebook and other "Web 2.0" sites are easy targets for such attacks because they pull in a lot of content from outside sources, according to Paul Ferguson, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro Inc.

"It seems every other day there is some new Facebook 'threat,' but this is just the new reality of Web 2.0 and social networking," Ferguson said. "It is 'low-hanging fruit' for criminals."

AFP - The Communist mayor of Cabestany (Pyrénées-Orientales) Saturday celebrating the union of two men with the intention to impose the political campaign of 2012 the issue of legalizing gay marriage in France. No gay marriage have been officially recognized in France, unlike other countries, there will be a symbolic union, or a birth certificate will be established there, at the risk of invalidation later? "This marriage will be free of any cancellation, you will see on Saturday," answered Jean Vila, mayor of this town adjacent to Perpignan.

Former MP keeps the mystery about what would make this marriage unassailable. The only gay marriage to date has been celebrated in 2004 by Noel Mamere, Mayor ecologist Bègles (Gironde), but it was annulled by the courts. "We get married because we love each other, but also a militant act," announced the future spouses. William is a painter for 37 years. Patrick, 48, runs a photo lab and is the father of a girl born 22 years from a previous marriage. They decided to publicize their efforts to "very soon in France, two same-sex couples can legally marry. We are citizens like any others." Both from Nîmes, where they met eight years ago, they live in Paris, where they work, and Cabestany, where they spend their holidays.

If they chose to exchange Cabestany consent and alliances because they had heard that the mayor was favorable to their cause. For the mayor, "there are times you have to be off-the-law". "I appeal to all mayors to commemorate gay marriage is a struggle of society that are needed to advance the schmilblick. It is said that France is a modern, forward edge, but we will be the last European country to legalize ", after the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Spain and Portugal. "It's courageous. It is a strong signal that we send the mayor of this town," welcomes Gougain Nicolas, spokesman for the gay interassociation lesbian, bi and trans (Inter-LGBT). This reveals "the archaic French law and the need for legislation."

Counsel Mécary Caroline, who entered in 2007 the European Court of Human Rights on the marriage of Bordeaux, the mayor may inscribe the marriage in civil registry official. "If he does, that's fine. Otherwise, it will be a good way to challenge the political class", as was the case with a symbolic marriage celebrated in Montpellier in February, she said. "If there is a change of government in 2012, she said, Europe Ecology and PS are already agreed to file a bill to open civil marriage to all, heterosexuals and homosexuals."

In January 2011, the Constitutional Council, a priority issue of constitutionality (QPC) on the initiative of a couple of women PACS, recalled that "under French law, marriage is the union of a man and a woman "and left to the legislature to change the law or not to allow gay marriage. Proponents of this union have since carried their hopes on the 2012 campaign.

The leader of a group of U.S. soldiers accused of having executed three Afghan civilians in 2010 was sentenced Thursday, November 10 to life imprisonment by a court martial of the State of Washington. Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 26, was convicted of 15 counts, including three premeditated murders. The military jury deliberated for five hours. Sergeant Gibbs can apply for parole after serving ten years in prison, the court decided. His trial began October 28 on the military base at Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle. Five other soldiers were charged in this case, three of them pleaded guilty and were sentenced to terms ranging from three to twenty-four years in prison. A fifth is awaiting trial.

During these procedures, and since the opening of the first trial in March, the young man tried unsuccessfully to refute the accusation of his fellow unit, which described him as the leader of the group. It would partly designed and directed the execution of "scenarios" play, which sought to disguise killings of Afghan civilians in combat operations. The soldiers and detonated grenades and weapons deposited close to their victims, later reported to their superiors of insurgent attacks. "TROPHIES" "to believe a legitimate intervention was part of the plan," said Attorney had in his indictment Wednesday. But these stories are "highly unlikely" he continued.

Gibbs was convicted of inciting two men to kill an agricultural worker of 15 years named Gul Mudin in a field. The sergeant gave a grenade at one of the soldiers under his command, Jeremy Morlock, who threw the boy. Then a second soldier, Andrew Holmes, shot him. Gibbs was also found to have shot dead a man asleep at the roadside, Marach Agha, and filing of a Kalashnikov rifle near his body. The third murder was that of a cleric, Mullah Adahdad, again performed with grenades and shot.

Some soldiers were photographed posing next to the corpses. They have taken parts, described as "trophies" by the prosecution. Sergeant Gibbs has admitted that he cut the fingers of his victims, pulled teeth and have subsequently used to intimidate another soldier. He acknowledged during the trial to be ashamed of these actions: "I was trying to be hard, real hard," he said during the hearing, while continuing to assert that the victims represented a real threat to its unit.

A SON OF THE MORMONS MONTANA

Montana Son of Mormon, poorly educated, Sergeant Gibbs joined his unit in the fall of 2009, several months after deployment of the brigade. He had served previously in Iraq. A tall (1.91 m), jaw powerful: it was described by his comrades as charismatic, experienced and with some intelligence tactics.

The New York Times, several soldiers from his company described the boredom dominant deployment, from the summer of 2009, a forward base in the east of Kandahar, the former capital of the Taliban in the Pashtun south. They also spoke of a lack of closeness and trust with Afghan villagers, fear of improvised explosive devices placed on the roadside, which exploded during their two regular daily patrols, and the expectation of direct combat that not come. "All other units had these super stories of fighting, said one of them on condition of anonymity. And we, we are here, it does nothing. We had to sit and wait to explode."

The first murder was linked in January 2010, the second in February, the last in May. One of the soldiers of the unit, Adam Winfield, who pleaded guilty, had complained to her parents on Facebook, not being able to pop the case. In one of these exchanges, he spoke of the death of young farm worker: "A guy innocent. They prepared it and they did. I knew. I thought they would not do it. And then it ' has arrived. Almost the entire unit knows, and it is OK for most. Except for me. I want to do something. The only problem is that I can not tell anyone. The type who did this is the 'golden boy' of the company, who can never do anything wrong, and that's my word against theirs, "he wrote. Sergeant Gibbs is the highest ranking officer to have been prosecuted in this case. Command of the brigade was withdrawn to Colonel Harry D. Tunnell IV, in the summer of 2010, after the start of the investigation.

New car sales in October recovered from a summertime lull, fueled by pent-up demand for new models and a better selection of Japanese brand cars following last spring’s devastating earthquake. If the rebound continues, car makers will finish the year with their best sales since 2008.

Unlike in previous years, however, when import-brand vehicles dominated the list of best-selling cars in America, this year has seen a surge in popularity for domestic models. Six of the 10 most popular vehicles in America through October are made by General Motors, Ford Motor or Chrysler Group, compared to just three last year. Tumbling out of the Top 10 are the Honda Civic and CR-V, two perennial favorites whose sales have been hurt by natural disasters in Asia, and the Hyundai Sonata, which was nudged out by more popular vehicles from Ford and GM. Pushing their way into the Top 10 are the Ford Fusion and Escape, and GM’s new compact, the Chevrolet Cruze.

There’s no doubt the Detroit car companies benefited from the woes of their Japanese rivals. Toyota has been reeling for nearly two years — first because of quality recalls and then because of parts shortages caused by the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan last March. While Toyota was struggling, Honda seemed adrift, offering uninspiring vehicles that failed to capitalize on the market opportunity. Then, it too was forced to suspend North American production because of supply chain issues following the earthquake. The disaster struck just as Honda was launching a redesigned Civic. Now it’s getting ready to launch a new CR-V, but that could be delayed because of parts shortages caused by monsoons in Thailand.

Stepping into the void, of course, were GM, Ford and Chrysler, with fuel-efficient vehicles that had improved quality and more appealing styling and features. GM’s Chevy Cruze is a good example. It hit the market in late 2010 with a starting price of $16,525 and has turned into a barn-burner for GM, selling more than 202,000 so far this year. It features 10 air bags, stability control and traction control, and gets 38 mpg on the highway with its optional 1.4-liter turbo-charged Ecotec engine. Sales of the Toyota Corolla, meanwhile, are down 11 percent so far this year. Toyota’s compact still outsells Cruze, but only by about 1,000 vehicles, and the Cruze could overtake Corolla by the end of the year to become the country’s best-selling compact car.

Likewise, the Ford Fusion mid-sized sedan and even the Escape utility vehicle, which is due for a makeover next year, have found a larger audience during the market turmoil.

The seasonally adjusted sales rate for October was 13.3 million vehicles, according to Autodata of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., with strong double-digit gains posted by Chrysler, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Ford Motor and General Motors saw more modest gains (6 percent and 2 percent, respectively). Toyota Motor’s sales fell 8 percent, while Honda’s dipped 0.5 percent.

Ford’s F-series pickups (No.1), and GM’s Chevrolet Silverado (No.2) are America’s sales champs, as they have been for years. The best-selling passenger car remains the Toyota Camry, although sales of this aging model are off 8.5% so far this year because of earthquake-related disruptions. A redesigned 2012 Camry just went on sale, which could help Toyota get back on track.

NEW YORK (AP) — Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old.

Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary.

Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered.

Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important sounding names.

He won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith.

"I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that."

Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace."

More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days."

In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did."

"Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made — as a colleague and a friend — upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO.

Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much."

For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most.

"I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.

He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the truth."

True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.

Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and — with the bluntness millions of people learned about later — told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer.

He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women.

"The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer. They think I'm this guy on television."

He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever wonder ..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work.

Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it.

He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.

His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.

Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people.

The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to retire. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room.

"Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings — I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened."He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries.

"I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time.

Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes.

With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.

Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Rowayton, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The Greek crisis and the possibility of an output of Athens in the euro area have dominated discussions at the first day of the summit of the G20 countries in Cannes. The day ended with a press conference by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He felt that the message Wednesday night by Germany and France to Greece on his proposed referendum had allowed a "consciousness" which, "if it is confirmed, would be welcomed by everyone." Parallel to statements by French President Angela Merkel has warned it expected Greece's actions rather than ad: "For us, it is actions that count." For her, the stability of the euro is indeed a higher priority as ensuring the maintenance of Greece in the euro area.

During the day, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou suggested that his plan to submit to referendum the bailout of the euro zone could be abandoned. After negotiations within the government, Mr. Papandreou would eventually agreed to démisionner, under pressure from his Finance Minister, subject to obtaining the confidence of Parliament on Friday. >> Read our lights: Greece Can get out of the euro area? U.S. President Barack Obama devoted part of his discussions with his counterparts in French and German, as a prelude to the opening of the summit, the crisis in the continent. "The most important aspect of our work over the next two days is to solve the financial crisis here in Europe," he said.

At its press conference, Nicolas Sarkozy also reiterated his confidence in the strength of the Italian economy, threatened with contagion. He said he "noted with interest" the new anti-crisis measures that the country has made on the sidelines of the G20, adding: "I would say my confidence in the Italian economy, which is one of the strongest economies in the world. C is the third largest economy in Europe, perhaps the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world. Italy is a truly remarkable tradition of entrepreneurs. " The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi came to the G20 without being able to validate the anti-crisis measures by the government, tried to reassure his country's ability to repay its debt.

According to a draft action plan for growth discussed at Cannes, Italy is committed to approaching a balanced budget in 2013 and rapidly reduce its debt ratio to GDP from 2012. At about 120%, the ratio of debt to GDP in Italy is the largest of the major European countries. "There are now discussions [G20] to erect a firewall around countries such as Italy and Spain", for his part, said an Indian official. >> Read our lights: debt crisis: how Italy got there? * Emerging markets and the question of changes in a draft final communique obtained by Reuters, indicates that the G20 is working on the establishment of an international monetary system (IMS), which would better reflect the weight of emerging economies.

The group also agreed on the need to adjust the basket of special drawing rights (SDR) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to better reflect the changing roles of currencies. This adjustment could be a step towards better integration of currencies, as the Chinese yuan. However, the draft statement says nothing greater flexibility of exchange rates requested by the United States but opposed by China.

The United States, and to a lesser extent Brazil, pushed for the adoption of a stronger vocabulary, equivalent to an implicit commitment of China to move faster to a flexibility of its currency, the yuan. Like last year in Seoul, China seems determined to resist pressure and to defend the management at their own pace in the exchange rate of the yuan. With the uncertainties that collect around the euro area and the desire of Europeans see China contribute to their emergency fund, the risk is that the issue of currency does not move. According to sources from emerging countries, the G20 should be satisfied with the words of the communiqué of the G20 Finance held last month in Paris.

At this summit, the G20 finance ministers had simply agreed to continue "their efforts to move towards systems of exchange rates determined more by the markets and achieve greater flexibility in exchange rates to reflect economic fundamentals ".

The G20 will accept in its final communiqué, a possible increase of IMF resources by the willing. "States that so request, to the fall of 2012, bilateral increase their participation in IMF resources," said a source close to the negotiations. The fund's resources have been increased by an agreement approved a year ago, through a permanent doubling of contributions of member states, the "quota". This Agreement shall enter into force as nominally one year, but we need a sufficient number of national parliaments ratify it. Meanwhile, member states have provided temporary resources to the IMF through the "New Arrangements to Borrow." It is intended to remove this temporary resources when the increase of their contribution will be permanently effective.

In addition, the final communiqué should mention a new SDR allocation, a kind of international reserve asset of the IMF. An SDR allocation is a distribution of the assets created for the occasion, the Member States of the IMF, which fuels their foreign exchange reserves. British Finance Minister, George Osborne, confirmed that the G20 was discussing an increase in IMF resources. "The international community agrees that tackling the global economic situation, and there is a debate that has begun but not completed, on how to increase IMF resources," he said. Moreover, the IMF is going to get the creation of new precautionary credit lines and cash. These are loans to help countries, particularly emerging to deal with shocks in a hurry without being subject to formal programs of the IMF, with the strict conditions they imply.

In addition, the final communiqué should mention a new SDR allocation, a kind of international reserve asset of the IMF. An SDR allocation is a distribution of the assets created for the occasion, the Member States of the IMF, which fuels their foreign exchange reserves. British Finance Minister, George Osborne, confirmed q * The tax on financial activities back in discussions G20 leaders should discuss the creation of a tax on financial activities. A subject on which the Europeans encountered the reluctance, if not the opposition of many of their partners in the G20. On this point, Nicolas Sarkozy praised the "understanding" of Barack Obama on this issue and reported a "joint analysis" on the need for a "contribution to the world of finance" to solving the financial crisis and international economic.

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