divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/28566?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Hoon+delays+Heathrow+third+runway+decisionch=Politicsc3=The+Guardianc4=Transport+policy%2CGreen+politics%2CGeoff+Hoon%2CEd+Miliband%2CPlanning+policy%2CAirline+industry+%28business%29%2CTravel+and+transport+environmental+impact%2CTransport+UK%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CBusiness%2CPolitics%2CUK+newsc5=Climate+Change%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CEthical+Livingc6=Allegra+Strattonc7=2008_12_05c8=1129177c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Transport+policyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FTransport+policy" width="1" height="1" //divpThe government postponed the hugely controversial decision on whether to build a third runway at Heathrow yesterday, sparking speculation that cabinet divisions on the environmental impact of the third runway had persuaded Gordon Brown of the need for delay./ppBackbench Labour MPs, the opposition and environmentalists were all caught off-guard by transport secretary Geoff Hoon's announcement yesterday that a decision would be delayed until January 2009, 12 months after the initial consultation wound up. It is thought that the energy and climate change minister, Ed Miliband - a key ally of the prime minister for the past decade - persuaded him of the need for more consideration. /ppA decision had been expected in the next few days, leaving little parliamentary time for debate before Christmas. The government supported Heathrow expansion in its aviation white paper in 2003 and backed a third runway to that end, while Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and some members of the cabinet are thought to oppose it./ppHoon said yesterday he wanted time to give consideration to the 70,000 responses received when the government held a consultation on the issue./ppOpponents of the third runway said division at cabinet level on the environmental wisdom of the decision was making the government rethink. The government's position had also been exposed by the Conservative party's decision to oppose the plans, saying they would fund high-speed rail links instead./ppIn recent weeks Gordon Brown has held private meetings in No 10 with Labour backbenchers, including a ministerial aide and a vice-chair of the party, in an attempt to assuage their fears. One Labour backbencher involved in the campaign said: "[Lord] Mandelson [the business secretary] is key to this decision - his two priorities are getting re-elected and keeping big businesses onside and in this instance the two are in conflict. And that's why maybe he needs more time." The Conservative MP for Putney, Justine Greening, called the delay a classic example of what her party have cast as Brown's "dithering". London's mayor, Boris Johnson, has said he favours a new airport in the Thames estuary. /ppFriends of the Earth thought the inauguration in the last week of a new climate change committee to hold the government's sustainability record to account had changed matters. FoE campaigner Richard Dyer said: "Hopefully this shows that ministers are beginning to wake up to massive environmental consequences of allowing airports to expand. Under the Climate Change Act, which was passed last month, the government is legally required to slash UK greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 ... but building new runways will cause a huge increase in aviation emissions that will make it all but impossible to meet our targets for tackling climate change." /ppHowever, the chair of the committee, Lord Turner, said recently that he thought airport expansion was consistent with the sustainability agenda./ppThough Hoon has been only been transport secretary for two months, he has been happy to make controversial decisions. Only a few weeks into his job he gave permission for Stansted airport to increase flight capacity by 10%, overruling a local authority which banned the expansion on environmental grounds./ppHe said: "I know there are strong views across a range of interests. I will ensure that I give proper consideration to the evidence before me and will therefore take more time before making an announcement to the house, in January 2009." /ppA spokesman for Brown said the decision had "enormous" national and regional implications. "The delay is a reflection of the fact that this is an important decision," he added./ppLiberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: "Let's hope this is a belated sign that the government is finally paying attention to the massed ranks of the public and the Commons benches ... However, if this delay is just to wait for the aviation industry to rewrite its proposals in a way that suits it, then this is no cause to celebrate."/ppBusiness lobbyists expressed concern at the delay. /ppEd Anderson, chairman of the Airport Operators Association, said: "That month will not change the fundamental fact that Heathrow's expansion is urgent and necessary for the future of the country, for London's standing as a world-class city, and for our regional economies."/ph2Landing grounds/h2pstrongFor/strong/pp· Could contribute an extra pound;9bn a year/pp· Congestion has cut Heathrow's global routes from 220 to 180/pp· Thousands of new jobs created/ppstrongAgainst/strong/pp· Noise and pollution /pp· Gridlock on surrounding roads /pp· Loss of about 700 homes/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/transport"Transport policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/greenpolitics"Green politics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/geoffhoon"Geoff Hoon/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/edmiliband"Ed Miliband/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/planning"Planning policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/theairlineindustry"Airline industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/travelandtransport"Travel and transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/transport"Transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange"Climate change/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Ttf901_Hx-P-b-CjvneOdbTS3Nc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Ttf901_Hx-P-b-CjvneOdbTS3Nc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hinted on Thursday that he may return to his old job in the Kremlin, but not before his ally President Dmitry Medvedev's term expires in 2012.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=Hb15r5jT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=qFB8tBqf"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=qFB8tBqf" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=wXQDDOId"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=wXQDDOId" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/Xyztrs_iCV4" height="1" width="1"/

p#149; Here's a contrast of two countries: Last week's U.S. new releases included two superstar albums (Kanye West, Guns N' Roses) that did not live up to expectations. In the U.K., Take That just set a record for first-day album sales. The album is dead. The album lives. (a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE4B146L20081202"Reuters/a)/p p#149; Amazon MP3 is now available in the UK. Songs range in price from 59p to over 80p. Some albums have been sale priced at £3. All four majors are on board. Not all indies have signed up yet. (a href="http://musically.com/blog/2008/12/03/amazon-mp3-goes-live-in-the-uk-with-3-albums-from-take-that-coldplay-kings-of-leon/"Music Ally/a)/p p#149; Here's a thorough overview of the efforts by UK stakeholders to implement some sort of ISP-based alternative to P2P and the actions/penalties against repeat copyright infringers. (a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081201-uk-consumers-big-content-battle-over-three-strikes-rules.html"Ars Technica/a)/p p#149; CBS Radio is taking over Yahoo Music's Launchcast internet radio operations. (a href="http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3ia662814697fe50166f7b1b98468880de"Billboard.biz/a)/p p#149; The city of Austin, Texas is taking steps to ensure it continues to be a music city: the creation of a city music department, the development of more music venues, incentives to lure music companies. (a href="http://www.telegram.com/article/20081203/NEWS/812030405/1102"AP/a)/p p#149; Musician Marnie Stern has set up a three-tiered kissing booth to help defray her band's touring costs: $1 for a peck, $3 on the lips and $100 for some tongue. No takers yet on the $100 option. (a href="http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2008/11/kiss_shred_marnie_stern.php"Express Night Out/a, via a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postrock/"Post Rock/a)/phr/[music jobs] a href="http://coolfer.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/job-details/43602"The Beggars Group Matador Records is seeking a Paralegal/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=bCSRo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=bCSRo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=x71jO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=x71jO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=wUKPO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=wUKPO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/coolfer/~4/473648956" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/23800?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+A+lawless+outcome+to+a+lawless+warch=Comment+is+freec3=guardian.co.ukc4=George+Bush+%28News%29%2CUS+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Martin+Kettlec7=2008_12_03c8=1128059c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpIs George Bush preparing to give himself a presidential pardon? On first hearing, the idea sounds utterly incredible and outrageous. How can the head of a state in which respect for the law remains an active part of the national DNA even contemplate such an arbitrary and shameless act of apparent lawlessness? Amnesties and pardons of this kind are the stock-in-trade of tinpot dictators, not constitutional leaders. And yet .../ppA Bush pardon would be a sensational final act to the most divisive presidency in modern America. But he certainly has the power to grant it. Article 2 section 2 of the US constitution gives the president the power to grant reprieves and pardons. The US courts have traditionally interpreted this power widely, to include amnesties, conditional pardons and blanket pardons. And all presidents have used the power – Harry Truman's 1,913 pardons is the postwar record./ppAnd these final weeks of a presidency have become, by convention, a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/26/bush-administration-presidential-pardons"the pardoning season/a. Compared with Truman, Bill Clinton was a light pardoner. He awarded just 396 of them in his eight years as president. But as many as 218 of Clinton's pardons were issued during his final month in office in 2001 – beneficiaries included his brother Roger Clinton and his longtime Arkansas politicial ally Susan MacDougall. This settling of accounts could be the pattern which Bush is about to follow./ppAs of now, Bush has issued just 157 presidential pardons in nearly eight years in the White House. They have covered crimes from the manufacture of untaxed whiskey to the sale of migratory bird parts. Most of the Bush pardons involve drugs, gambling and frauds. But Bush has not issued a pardon since March 24 – when the beneficiary was a South Dakota native American called Lonnie Two Eagle who was pardoned for an assault on a reservation. But in just under seven weeks Bush's power to pardon will expire./ppNot even Richard Nixon pardoned himself. It fell to his hapless successor Gerald Ford to announce, a month after Nixon's resignation in August 1974, that it was time to draw the line. Nixon had been at the centre of "an American tragedy in which we all have played a part", Ford announced in a broadcast. "It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."/ppBut can Bush rely on a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barackobama"Barack Obama/a to be so magnanimous? And can Obama be relied on to grant the wide-ranging executive pardons to the whole range of Bush administration officials that the outgoing White House may wish to protect? Maybe – but no, in the end, I don't think so either. Magnanimity is all very well when it comes to your defeated Democratic opponents. But it is a whole other ballgame when the petitioner is the outgoing president himself. /ppBe clear that this issue is without question in Bush's rapidly diminishing intray. Be clear too that Bush is fully prepared to protect his political allies and hitmen. He has, after all, made his own stance clear by using his powers to commute Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby's prison sentence for obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame affair in 2007. So, if the matter is on Bush's agenda then it is also, in some way, on Obama's too./ppThe possibility of a Bush pardon is not a conspiracy theorist's fantasy. It is a real and present political possibility – and Americans are beginning to wake up to it. This week, Human Rights Watch and eight other organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and the Open Society Policy Centre, wrote a public letter urging Bush not to issue a preemptive pardon of past or present officials implicated in torture or other abuses related to the "war on terror". The groups pointed out that formal legal investigations into US torture, rendition and other abuses have so far been only patchy – a reflection of the Bush administration's determination over several years to handle detainees outside the legal process. There is a very serious possibility that dozens of cases will make their way through the US courts in the coming months and years – and it is therefore possible that hundreds of administration officials will ultimately be forced to answer for their conduct./ppI do not know for certain that Bush is considering a comprehensive pre-emptive pardon for officials right through to his own Oval Office. Nor do I know for certain that the matter has been discussed with the Obama team. But common sense says these things must be taking place in some form or other. It says, moreover, that Bush and Obama may have a common interest in such an outcome. Bush wants it because it protects him and his lieutenants. Obama may want it too, because he wants a clean slate and does not want to have his presidency blighted by the legal cleaning-up operation that might ensue./ppIf that analysis is correct, then prepare for an unprecedented act of self-pardon by Bush that extends to dozens – perhaps hundreds – of civilian and military officials. It would be a stunning challenge to America's self-image as the upholder of law and freedom in the world. It would be a lawless outcome to a lawless war. For Bush, it would be a climactic act of the untramelled presidential authority that he and Cheney have so determinedly forged. It would send waves of outrage through America and the world. And yet, for Obama, it might nevertheless be the cleaner outcome./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/georgebush"George Bush/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/HkalzxwJtbYROwRX_YlCrr-hALk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/HkalzxwJtbYROwRX_YlCrr-hALk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p