Judean Moumtains (photo: Maglanist/wikipedia)

The coffee’s freshly ground, there’s a wide variety of teas and the sticky buns are homemade.

  • “David Cameron has risked souring Britain’s relations with Berlin in the runup to next week’s crucial European summit by calling on Germany to play a larger role in safeguarding the single currency. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, the prime minister said resolving the ongoing crisis was not just the job of indebted countries such as Greece and Italy, which have been forced to adopt punishing austerity measures; “surplus” countries, such as Germany, should also have to play their part.”
  • “BP must cover some but not all of oil rig owner Transocean’s liabilities for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a US judge has ruled. US District Judge Carl Barbier said that Transocean was shielded by its contract with BP from having to pay many pollution claims.”
  • “One year into Egypt’s unfinished revolution, fateful questions loom here in the most populous nation in the Arab world as it leans forward into a new and uncertain future. How to square a hope for democracy with a history of autocratic rule? What will be the role of religion in shaping a new constitution and what will the sweeping victory by Islamist parties in recent elections mean for the rights of the Christian minority, women and so many who put so much on the line in this revolution to make Egypt a more democratic country?”
  • “Sam LaHood, the son of the US transportation secretary Ray LaHood, was turned back at the airport in Cairo on Saturday in a significant escalation of the diplomatic stand-off between the two countries. LaHood heads the Egyptian outpost of the International Republican Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank that had been monitoring the elections held in recent weeks in the wake of the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak.”
  • Amy Goodman: “Is this, finally, the moment Obama gets tough with Wall Street?”
  • “Three months after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, concerns are mounting about the mistreatment and torture of prisoners held by Libyan militiamen who are operating beyond the control of the country’s transitional government, as well as by officially recognised security bodies.”
  • “Iran is ready to revive talks with the West but tougher sanctions will not force it to give in to demands over its nuclear programme, its president says. On Monday, the EU banned new oil contracts with Iran, saying it was not confident Tehran’s nuclear plans were ‘exclusively peaceful’.”
  • “Itai Harel gazed across at the rocky wilderness of the Judaean Mountains and urged us to ‘look at all this wonderful, empty land all the way from Jerusalem, waiting for its sons to come to build and live in it’. It was one of the few moments that Mr Harel, a 38-year-old social worker, turned lyrical in helping to explain why he, his wife and six children are living with 50 other families in a fenced outpost on a remote hilltop east of the West Bank city of Ramallah.”

From Real News:

I saw this over at Wiki (at the end of the ‘Fiat standard’ section) and thought it was interesting: “In September 2004, it was estimated that if all the gold held by the U.S. government (287.13 million ounces = 8.14 million kilograms = 8,140 metric tonnes) were again required to back the circulating U.S. currency ($733,170,953,704), gold would need to be valued at $2,800/ounce ($90/gram)”

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.