Sing Along With ek

Montazeri, an inspiration to reformists and human rights activists and a fierce critic of the clerical regime he helped create, died aged 87 on Saturday.

Opposition websites said hundreds of thousands of mourners poured onto the streets of Qom, many chanting slogans and displaying the green of Iran’s opposition — effectively turning the funeral procession into a massive anti-government rally.

While China’s Premier Wen Jiabao insisted his government had played an “important and constructive” role, Britain said the meeting had lurched into farce and pointed the finger of blame at Beijing.

And the summit host, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, rapped the lower-level negotiators for failing to make headway in nearly two weeks of talks and then leaving their masters with too much to do at the climax.

The LSE, led by Rolet since May, will take a 60-percent stake in the smaller pan-European Turquoise trading platform, currently owned by investment banks.

It added that it will invest up to 20 million pounds (22.5 million euros, 32.3 million dollars) in the electronic platform Turquoise, which will be merged with the LSE’s ‘dark pool’ Baikal business, named after a Siberian lake.

Dark pools are sites on exchanges where large trades can be executed for clients anonymously so as not to disrupt the market.

With no less than 2.4 million viewers in two months, “Nefes: Vatan Sagolsun” — or “Breath: Long Live the Motherland” — ranks third at the 2009 Turkish box office, far ahead of major new releases like “2012” or the sixth “Harry Potter” film.

The new-found urge to zoom in on the human aspects of the 25-year conflict, beyond cliches of patriotism and military heroism, comes against the backdrop of nationalist frenzy and violence in the streets.

Newspapers widely branded the accord a failure and experts such as the head of a Nobel Peace prize-winning climate panel said “urgent” action was now needed.

US President Barack Obama acknowledged that all of the world’s polluters would quickly have to do more, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the critics would only hold up the battle against rising temperatures that threaten devastating floods, storms and drought.

Montazeri, 87, a fierce critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, died of an illness on Saturday night and is to be buried in Qom, said his office in the central city where he was based.

“He was diabetic and had been using insulin for years… He had also some lung problems and asthma. In fact he was suffering from several diseases,” his doctor told state television.

Facing opposition from key lawmakers last week, the Senate version of the bill stripped any reference to a “public option” that would have expanded government-run health care for the poor, and then added restrictions on public funding for abortion in order to assuage conservatives.

With those changes, the Senate bill now appears to have the 60 votes needed to ensure passage, though it would still face a difficult task of reconciliation with a House of Representatives bill that has already passed.

Just days before the December 25 holiday, the eastern seaboard from North Carolina to New England was digging out Sunday from the worst blizzard in years, which closed train and bus service, paralyzed air traffic and left hundreds of thousands of residents without power in some areas.

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The storm was a blow to the already reeling retail sector, which had been counting on cash registers loudly ringing on the Saturday before Christmas — traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year — to make up for weeks of lackluster sales.

You said you didn’t need her

You told her good-bye (good-bye)

You sacrificed a good love

To satisfy your pride

Now you wished

That you should have her (have her)

And you feel like such a fool

You let her walk away

Now it just don’t feel the same

Gotta blame it on something

Gotta blame it on something

(Rain, rain)

(Stars, stars)

Whatever you do don’t put the blame on you

(Blame it on the rain)

yeah yeah

(Blame it on the rain)

that keeps falling, falling

(Blame it on the stars)

that did shine that night

Whatever you do don’t put the blame on you

Blame it on the rain yeah yeah

Blame it on the rain (rain, rain)

The Soyuz rocket blasted off on schedule from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in the barren Kazakh steppe at 3:52 am (2152 GMT Sunday) carrying Soichi Noguchi of Japan, US astronaut Timothy Creamer and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov.

Rain and then sleet poured down onto the sparse Central Asian landscape, quickly blanketing the site in a thick layer of ice, weather conditions which nonetheless helped create a breathtaking backdrop for the launch.

If tomorrow all the things were gone,

I’d worked for all my life.

And I had to start again,

with just my children and my wife.

And I gladly stand up,

next to you and defend her still today.

‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,

God bless the USA.

The pontiff simultaneously bestowed the same title on his beloved predecessor John Paul II and paved the way for the beatification of Jerzy Popieluszko, the activist priest who helped bring down Poland’s communist regime.

The triple announcement by the German-born pope “took everyone by surprise,” Vatican expert Bruno Bartoloni told AFP, adding: “There will certainly be negative reactions” from the Jewish community.

Andrzej Rokita, commander in the nearby southern Polish city of Krakow, told reporters that “from the information we have none of the five belong to a neo-Nazi group nor hold such ideas”.

The five suspects, aged 20 to 39 and with criminal records for theft or violence, face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, police said.

The meeting took place just hours before Spyker’s new bid was to expire at 2200 GMT on Monday.

“We have to try every possibility to save Saab,” Swedish Enterprise Minister Maud Olofsson told Swedish radio a few hours before the meeting, adding however that she was sceptical about Spyker’s chances of succeeding in saving Saab.

Japan logged a trade surplus for a 10th straight month, soothing fears that its economic recovery from the worst recession in decades is running out of steam due to a stronger yen and renewed deflation.

Exports slipped 6.2 percent in November from a year earlier — the smallest decline in 14 months — ending a string of double-digit falls. Imports dropped 16.8 percent, the finance ministry reported.