Ministers are facing fierce opposition from medical groups, teaching unions and children’s charities over plans to allow products to be used in television programmes for marketing purposes for the first time.

Critics claim the move, which broadcasters say will give them up to £140m a year in extra revenue, will fuel childhood obesity, exacerbate the problems caused by alcohol and gambling, and distort storylines by rewarding programme makers for deliberately giving certain items high visibility.

The British Medical Association has written to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) strongly opposing the plan. “The BMA is deeply concerned about the decision to allow any form of product placement in relation to alcohol, gambling and foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) as this will reduce the protection of young people from harmful marketing influences and adversely impact on public health,” says its…

In a clear signal of the declining influence of American capitalism, even in a country conquered and occupied by the US military, companies from China, Russia, Malaysia and Angola, along with several European oil giants, won most of the rights for exploration and development of Iraq’s oil fields.

The concessions were awarded Friday and Saturday by the Iraqi oil ministry, after a competitive auction in which joint ventures of European and Asian companies won the lion’s share. Of the ten concessions awarded so far, including in an earlier auction, US-based companies will play the lead role in only one, while getting a lesser share in a second.

The most aggressive bidder was the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), while Lukoil and Gazprom of Russia, and European firms like Royal Dutch Shell, ENI (Italy), British Petroleum, Statoil (Norway) and Total (France) all won bids. Petronas, the…

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

The finding is timed to boost the administration’s arguments at an international climate conference – opening Monday – that the United States is aggressively taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation.

Without a bill, the U.S. was heading into Copenhagen hard-pressed to explain exactly how it would reach the targets President Barack Obama is set to offer.

Under a Supreme Court ruling, the so-called endangerment finding is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released…

Police fired teargas at rioters who threw rocks and firecrackers in central Athens as thousands gathered to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager.

Clashes broke out as about 3,000 people, mostly students, anarchists and leftists, began a march to parliament. More protests were expected tomorrow. An evening memorial service was planned in the Exarchia district, where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead.

Violence also broke out in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, where demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police and smashed the front of a Starbucks cafe.

More than 6,000 police were deployed across greater Athens amid fears that the demonstrations under way in the capital and other Greek cities would turn increasingly violent. Concern was heightened by reports that far-left groups and anarchists from other European countries have travelled to Greece for the protests.

Grigoropoulos was shot by a policeman on the evening of…

Rwanda has been declared free of landmines – the first country to achieve this status.

The announcement was made at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World in Colombia. Hundreds of people have been killed and horrifically injured by landmines in Rwanda.

Landmines were laid between 1990 and 1994 in Rwanda and over the past three years more than over 9,000 have been destroyed by Rwandan soldiers.

Ben Remfrey of the Mines Awareness Trust, which supervised the clearance, says although other countries have had far more mines laid, this is a significant step. “Rwanda has made history by becoming the first country in the world to be officially declared free from landmines,” he told the BBC World Service…

Rupert Murdoch has today reiterated his belief that internet users will pay for content, saying they would be happy to shell out for “information they need to rise in society”.

Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, gave a wide-ranging address to US media regulators that attacked internet news aggregation as “theft” and claimed that advertising-only business models were dead.

“From the beginning on, newspapers have prospered for one reason: giving readers the news that they want,” he said.

He said newspapers should not blame technology if they failed. “If we fail, we fail like a restaurant that makes meals that no one wants to eat.”

His company’s customers were “smart enough” to know they had to pay for news, Murdoch told a US Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism in the internet age.

Referring to his much-criticised plans to…

Something Is Melting in Denmark: Dan Esty believes President Obama will bring a change in spirit to the United Nations Climate Change Conference.

This year was the first year that an American president has omitted a direct reference to God in the Thanksgiving proclamation:

The beneficence shown by God to America is a theme that traditionally defines the Thanksgiving holiday, and this theme is strongly emphasized in the original Thanksgiving Day proclamations and consistently acknowledged even by modern presidents.

Obama’s unprecedented proclamation, however, only makes indirect mention of God by quoting George Washington, stating: “Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed ‘by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.’”

The proclamation goes on to call Thanksgiving Day “a unique national tradition we all share” that unites people as “thankful for our common blessings.”

“This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and…

While the American corporate media has given little attention to it, an official British inquiry into the war with Iraq has brought to light damning testimony about the Bush administration’s deliberate launching of an invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein and subjugate Iraq to American domination.

Former British diplomats and security officials from the 2001–2003 period began testifying this week under oath before a panel headed by Sir John Chilcot, charged with examining the entire course of the war, from its origins to the final British pullout in June 2009.

More than enough evidence has already been produced to indict top Bush administration leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on the same charge for which Nazi leaders were convicted at the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal — deliberately waging an aggressive war.

Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, described the Bush administration as “hell…

The Obama administration has declared its support for elections being held this Sunday in Honduras, under conditions in which the regime that came to power in a coup last June has refused to cede power and is preparing intense repression against those who oppose it.

The action has placed Washington at odds with virtually all of Latin America, whose governments have refused to recognize the elections as legitimate.

The US endorsement of the elections represents the culmination of a policy that has lent political support to the coup regime headed by the Liberal Party leader of the national legislature, Roberto Micheletti, and the Honduran military, even as Washington has given lip service to the principle of restoring the country’s elected president, Manuel Zelaya, to power.

Zelaya was dragged from the presidential palace by hooded and heavily armed soldiers in the early morning hours of June 28, bundled onto…

The United States won’t join its NATO allies and many other countries in formally banning landmines, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said during his midday briefing Tuesday.

“This administration undertook a policy review and we decided our landmine policy remains in effect,” Kelly said in response to a question. “We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention.”

Opponents of the U.S. landmine policy said they were surprised. “It is a disturbing development,” said Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch. “The administration never said a policy review was under way.”

Goose said the decision to leave the policy in place is at odds with the administration’s professed commitments to international agreements and humanitarian issues. “The international treaty against landmines has made a a huge…