div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/71/fd/0009fd71.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/71/fd/0009fd71_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_654705"//a/divbr/ bMustard Plug - Yellow #5/bbr/ WV+CUE+LOG or mp3 CBR 320 | Covers | 220 or 66 MBbr/ iYear: 2002 | Genre: Third Wave Ska Revival/i/div

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/19098?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Patriarch+of+Russian+Orthodox+church+Alexy+II+diesch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Russia+%28News%29%2CReligion+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Luke+Hardingc7=2008_12_05c8=1129446c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Russiac13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FRussia" width="1" height="1" //divpThe head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Alexy II, who played an influential role in denouncing the KGB coup against Michael Gorbachev, has died./ppThe church said the 70-year-old died at his residence outside Moscow on Friday. It did not give the cause of death, but the patriach had suffered from a heart ailment - and was known to be seriously ill earlier this year./ppThe outspoken cleric had led the world's biggest Orthodox church since 1990, presiding over a flock that by most estimates numbers two-thirds of Russia's population of 142 million./ppBorn as Aleksey Ridiger, from a family of aristocratic German immigrants, the patriach presided over some of the most tumultuous times in modern Russian history. He also faced persistent accusations - denied by the church - that he worked for the KGB./ppHe entered Leningrad theological seminary in 1947 and graduated in 1949. He served as a priest in Estonia - then part of the Soviet empire - and rose rapidly through the clerical ranks, becoming a metropolitan bishop aged 39, and winning election as patriarch in 1990, as the Soviet Union was collapsing./ppAs patriarch, Alexy II vigorously advocated the return of the Orthodox church to the centre of Russian life and spirituality. He oversaw a major religious revival in Russia, with hundreds of churches built or restored across the country./ppHe also denounced the coup plotters who tried to topple Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, in August 1991./ppThis morning, Gorbachev was said to be shocked by his death. "I respected him deeply," Gorbachev said, according to the Interfax agency, adding that he was "so shocked that it is very hard for me to find words on the spot". Russian television immediately began running excerpts from what it said was Alexy's last TV interview at the end of October./ppAccording to the British-based KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, Alexy worked for the KGB for over 40 years - and was mentioned in KGB archives under the codename Drozdov. The Moscow patriarchy has denied this claim - though Alexy II has himself acknowledged that under communism, bishops were forced to compromise with Soviet power./ppAlexy's funeral is likely to take place in the cathedral of Christ the Saviour - the monumental church opposite the Kremlin and next to the Moscow river, destroyed by Stalin but reconstructed during the mid-1990s under Boris Yeltsin. The cathedral was the venue for Yeltsin's own funeral last year./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia"Russia/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/religion"Religion/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/PifIKczqWzpvXz8WDV7XVbqDhCA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PifIKczqWzpvXz8WDV7XVbqDhCA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/34339?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+Sipson+can+define+an+erach=Comment+is+freec3=The+Guardianc4=Travel+and+transport+environmental+impact%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CActivists+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CHeathrow+%28Travel%29%2CPolitics%2CTransport+UKc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living%2CUK+Travelc6=John+Harrisc7=2008_12_05c8=1129133c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpOn the face of it, it's a struggle between the usual powerful suspects and an alliance that takes in everyone from Tories to anarchists. To many people, though, it is something even more important: a turning-point that will either prove that government doesn't always have to bow to a corporate version of the inevitable, or sorely test thousands of people's limited faith in politics. Bizarrely, the frontline is the nondescript Middlesex village of Sipson, a clump of postwar suburban housing that was famously visited last year by the Camp For Climate Action. A ruling in favour of a third runway at Heathrow airport will mean that Sipson will be concreted over. If - by some 11th-hour miracle - it survives, it will be transformed from a very noisy corner of west London into a byword for against-the-odds optimism./ppThe final decision was yesterday postponed until the new year. Though the Tories' recent manoeuvrings have suggested a bonfire of David Cameron's early progressive poses, his party is opposed. Since 2003, by contrast, the government line has been fervent support for the plan, with limp caveats on noise and pollution - though, according to a steady trickle of stories, a loose group of cabinet ministers have been expressing a mixture of unease and outright opposition, from the energised new climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, through his brother David, on to Harriet Harman, Hilary Benn and John Denham. Ranged against them, unfortunately, is a truly titanic alliance: among other ministers, the PM and the transport secretary Geoff Hoon, along with BAA, the airlines, the CBI, at least two of the big unions, and the relevant parts of the civil service./ppLower down the Labour food chain, plenty of MPs are terrified of the damage a pro-expansion decision will do to the party's atrophying vote in the home counties. Others cleave to that residual old Labour position whereby the promise of jobs - British jobs, to use the vernacular - trumps just about everything. /ppSome people claim that, despite predictions of serial loopholes, the inclusion of aviation in EU emissions trading from 2012 might somehow lessen a third runway's environmental impact. Maybe, they argue, the air industry can be treated with kid gloves as long as there is huge movement on low-carbon electricity generation and car technology. But much clearer arguments surely point in the opposite direction. What with the Climate Change Committee chaired by Adair Turner urging as much as a 42% cut in Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and the younger Miliband pledged to an 80% drop by 2050, how is the case for expansion credible?/ppA third runway will increase the number of Heathrow flights by almost a half. Every year, its CO2 emissions will equal those of Kenya. It would be completed just as the effects of climate change start to blitz the developing world, which will couch the story in a horrible poetry: Europeans blithely securing even easier global travel, while millions cope with food shortages, water scarcity, and a rather more nightmarish kind of population movement./ppThough only a fool would be optimistic, some rumblings from Westminster and Whitehall suggest that the delayed decision might denote at least a tiny shred of hope, and a belated realisation of how massively symbolic this story is. As with a proposed revival of coal-fired electricity, the third runway represents something truly era-defining: it may not have the iconic ring of your Caracases or Porto Alegres, but if we're going to have an even halfway progressive future, Sipson would be a great place to start./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/travelandtransport"Travel and transport/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonemissions"Carbon emissions/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/activists"Activists/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/heathrow"Heathrow/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/transport"Transport/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/8P6OxM44nMNMRmh5ovS7TdtCYng/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8P6OxM44nMNMRmh5ovS7TdtCYng/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

h4Boy Genius cranks rumor mill/h4 pEvery December the rumor mills begin to churn with speculation about what Apple will reveal at January's a href="http://www.macworldexpo.com/" target="_blank"Macworld Expo/a. The first scintillating scuttlebutt of this year's rumor season, however, focuses not on Steve's traditional "And one more thing...," but instead on Wal-Mart's possible revival of the 4GB iPhone..../p

h4Boy Genius cranks rumor mill/h4 pEvery December the rumor mills begin to churn with speculation about what Apple will reveal at January's a href="http://www.macworldexpo.com/" target="_blank"Macworld Expo/a. The first scintillating scuttlebutt of this year's rumor season, however, focuses not on Steve's traditional "And one more thing...," but instead on Wal-Mart's possible revival of the 4GB iPhone..../p

The Philippines government is hoping to reinvigorate its science base by improving science education, expanding scholarship programs, and raising research spending. But will it be enough to lure back expatriate scientists?brbrAuthor: Dennis Normile

pI'm currently in Montréal, between two of a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/fmarguerie/archive/2008/09/25/speaking-at-devteach-montreal-in-december.aspx" mce_href="http://weblogs.asp.net/fmarguerie/archive/2008/09/25/speaking-at-devteach-montreal-in-december.aspx"my sessions/a. I'd like to take advantage of this break to introduce a little friend of mine: Clippy!/ppOk, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy"Clippy/a is probably not new to most of you... Except that this time, it is a brand new Clippy. This new Clippy is a WPF Clippy!/pimg src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy.png" mce_src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy.png" width="453" height="255"brpYou can get your own Clippy too by a href="http://madgeek.com/Samples/Clippy.081103.zip" mce_href="http://madgeek.com/Samples/Clippy.081103.zip"downloading the source code and the binary files/a.brI've (re-)created Clippy because I just happened to need an assistant for one of my sessions here at a href="http://devteach.com" mce_href="http://devteach.com"DevTeach/a. It's a simple WPF application that displays the lines contained in a text file in a balloon. You can even have Clippy speak by activating the speech mode (CTRL+S or option in the context menu)./ppimg src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy3.png" mce_src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy3.png" width="278" height="242"nbsp;/ppIt's also possible to move Clippy via dragamp;drop, and resize the balloon if you wish:/ppimg src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy2.png" mce_src="http://madgeek.com/dotnetweblogs/Images/Clippy2.png" width="656" height="314"br /ppIf you have no use for Clippy (I'd be surprised! Who doesn't love Clippy?), you can still have a look at the source code and play with it to get a feel for WPF with this simple app./ppEnjoy your new friend!/ppa href="http://madgeek.com/Samples/Clippy.081103.zip" mce_href="http://madgeek.com/Samples/Clippy.081103.zip"Download/abr/pimg src="http://weblogs.asp.net/aggbug.aspx?PostID=6764516" width="1" height="1"