From the BBC:

"Charlie Hebdo must be veiled!" says the cover of the magazine

French interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has defended a weekly sued for printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Two French Muslim groups are suing Charlie Hebdo magazine for defamation over the cartoons, printed a year ago.

Mr Sarkozy's letter of support was read out in the Paris court hearing the case and prompted France's top Muslim body to call an urgent meeting in response.

Editor Philippe Val told the court the cartoons critiqued "ideas, not men".

The newspaper Liberation republished the cartoons on Wednesday in solidarity with the magazine.

The two-day trial is being seen as a test of the boundaries of free speech and religious sensitivities in France.

From the BBC:

An Italian judge has ordered a US soldier to face trial over the death of an Italian intelligence agent in a car at a checkpoint in Baghdad.

Nicola Calipari, 51, was shot in March 2005 as he escorted Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the airport after securing her release from kidnappers.

The soldier, Mario Lozano, will face a charge of murder in a case that put serious strain on US-Italian relations.

He will probably be tried in absentia as he has been cleared in the US.

To see my previous posts on the Sgrena shooting, click here.

From the Guardian:

Companies wanting to demonstrate corporate social responsibility by being a member of the FTSE4Good stock market index will be forced to show they are reducing their carbon emissions.

About a quarter of the energy-intensive users in the FTSE4Good are heading for removal unless they change their ways, according to the index's organisers.

Oil companies, airlines and mining firms will be told today they must deliver a 2.5% per annum reduction in carbon emissions and publish specific climate-change policies for which their boards must take direct responsibility under a first phase of the new initiative that will gradually be rolled out for all members.

You may be asking yourself, "what's the FTSE4Good index?" Find out here.

Fuel economy? Safety? Advanced technology? When it comes to selling its full-sized Tundra truck in the U-nited States of America, Toyota has essentially said, "fuck that shit." (my paraphrase)

From the NYT:

For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens.

In the last decade or so, as scientists came to agree that the number of objects in orbit had surpassed a critical mass -- or, in their terms, the critical spatial density, the point at which a chain reaction becomes inevitable -- they grew more anxious.

Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests.

Now, experts say, China’s test on Jan. 11 of an antisatellite rocket that shattered an old satellite into hundreds of large fragments means the chain reaction will most likely start sooner. If their predictions are right, the cascade could put billions of dollars’ worth of advanced satellites at risk and eventually threaten to limit humanity’s reach for the stars.

The European Commission wants to force the continent's carmakers to reduce CO2 emissions in their vehicles by 18 per cent by 2012 -- the year the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Needless to say, European environmentalists and the car industry are at war with each other over the legislative push to cut CO2 emissions from the transport sector, the one area where EU GHG emissions have been rising rapidly.

So, what type of legislation will ultimately emerge?

From the BBC:

Three-quarters of Europe's car brands are failing to improve fuel efficiency fast enough to meet a key European emissions target, a study has claimed.

The top performer on fuel efficiency was Fiat; while Nissan came bottom of the table.

The report is the first to show the progress of individual European car brands on meeting the commitment to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Improving fuel efficiency is vital in efforts to tackle climate change.

The more fuel a car uses, the more of the greenhouse gas CO2 is released into the atmosphere.

The story has a chart that ranks the automakers based on what percentage of their reduction target they managed to acheive.