Fatness "can constitute a disability" for the purposes of European Union equality at work legislation, Europe's highest court has ruled.  The judgment means British companies will be required to treat obese workers as "disabled", providing them with larger seats, special parking spaces and other facilities.  “Obesity can constitute a ‘disability’ within the meaning of the Employment Equality Directive,” the European Court of Justice ruled. “While no general principle of EU law prohibits, in itself, discrimination on grounds of obesity, that condition falls within the concept of ‘disability’ where, under particular conditions, it hinders the full and effective participation of the person concerned in professional life on an equal basis with other workers.”  The EU court ruling, which is binding on British employers, follows a case brought by Karsten Kaltoft, a Danish childminder, who claimed he was sacked by his local authority employer because he was so overweight. ... Important to the ruling, is the EU court’s judgement that the origin of the disability is irrelevant even if someone's gross obesity is caused by overeating or gluttony.  “The concept of ‘disability’ within the meaning of the directive must be understood as referring to a limitation which results in particular from long-term physical, mental or psychological impairments which may hinder the full and effective participation of the person concerned in professional life on an equal basis with other workers,” said the court  “The directive has the object of implementing equal treatment and aims in particular to enable a person with a disability to have access to or participate in employment. In addition, it would run counter to the aim of the directive if its application was dependent on the origin of the disability.”  “This test could mean that businesses face claims from obese staff for failing to make reasonable adjustments to their role if the job entails tasks where they would be on an unequal footing with other staff – tasks that require full mobility such as stacking shelves in a supermarket for example." "Employers will need to consider whether they make any adjustments for obese staff to protect themselves from discrimination claims, but they also need to consider whether doing so could trigger employee relation issues and related claims from other members of staff who feel that their obese colleague is ‘getting away’ with doing less work or ‘avoiding’ manual tasks – and that they are doing more of this work as a result.” Vanessa Di Cuffa, employment law partner at Shakespeares, welcomed the judgement.  “It is right that the EU has moved forward with enshrining this into law,” she said.  “This is the right decision. Although previous legislation allowed for employees to be protected against other forms of discrimination, it is positive that obesity is now being seriously recognised.”  The EU court declined to define what level of Body Mass Index (BMI), the measure used to calculate the degree of obesity in an individual, would be required to class soemone as disabled, ruling that decisions would be made on a case by case basis.

Russia says it will not "cave in" to pressure, following a fresh set of US, EU and Canadian sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.  A spokesman said Moscow regretted "that the West is yet again displaying a complete lack of interest" in resolving the crisis in south-east Ukraine.  Russia was developing "retaliatory measures", the spokesman said.  The US sanctions focused on Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March.  US President Barack Obama signed an executive order to ban the export of goods, technology and services to Crimea, in addition to new sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian individuals and companies. Mr Obama said the move showed the US would never accept Russia's annexation of Crimea.  Similar measures agreed by the European Union earlier this week came into effect on Saturday. Canada announced its own sanctions on Crimea on Friday.  After the peninsula was annexed, pro-Russian separatists took control of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine in April, and later declared independence.  Some 4,700 people have died and another million have been displaced by fighting in recent months.  On Friday, five Ukrainian soldiers were killed in fighting - the highest death toll since the latest attempt at a ceasefire began on 9 December.  In addition to the goods, technology and services ban, US individuals or companies cannot now buy any real estate or businesses in Crimea or fund Crimean firms.

Demonstrators gathered in Brussels to rally againist painful austerity measures and the upcoming TTIP trade deal. Protestors managed to shut down one of the European capital's busiest districts. Tractors rolled into central Brussels Friday as more than a thousand people protested European Union economic policy and a planned free trade deal with the United States. The demonstrations brought together farmers, trade unionists and environmentalists, who burned bales of hay and an effigy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, long considered the driving force behind Europe's policy of reducing social programs in order to curb government debt. The protest was meant to coincide with the final day of the EU year-end summit, but the talks between European leaders wrapped up a day early. The police cordoned off the whole of Brussels' EU quarter, causing early morning chaos in one of the city's busiest districts.

Turning people in merchandise - "Merry Christmas and Happy Austerity," read one banner the protestors hung outside the European Council building. The D19-20 Alliance, which organized the demonstration, represents not only Belgian organizations but French, Dutch, and German ones as well. People came from all four countries to voice their outrage at "policies that do not work and keep accentuating inequalities," one of the organizers told German news service dpa.
The D19-20 Alliance denounces austerity as a means by which the government makes workers pay for the financial crisis and allows for a roll-back of important social programs forged over generations, like free medical care. The Alliance is worried that the upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade agreement between the EU and the US, will increase these inequalities and give American businesses too much power over European governments to the detriment of their citizens. Rudy Janssens, a senior official with Belgian socialist union CGSP, said the TTIP will turn people into "merchandise” and medical patients into customers.
At the summit, EU leaders reaffirmed their commitment to signing the TTIP by the end of 2015, ushering in the largest free trade agreement in the world.
es/tj (AFP, dpa)

Before the invasion of Afghanistan oil was $12 a barrel. It then shot up to over $148 a barrel by 2008. After falling back to around $25 it then climbed back to well over $100 a barrel.

Oil is by no means a scarce resource, as is now evident by the fact that despite the massive concerted effort by the global energy monopolist Hofjuden over the last 15 years to artificially inflate the oil price by manipulating our puppet governments into illegal and senseless wars and scam us all via AGW fraud, the price of crude is once again in free-fall.

The world is awash with oil, always has been and always will be.

We all need to demand access to cheap reliable energy. As we have evolved to use energy as a fundamental part of our way of life, it is now a human rights issue.

Energy monopolists destroy regional and global economies with their untold, relentless greed and must be dealt with in the severest terms....OPEC has had a 'ball' at the expense of the planets population for decades by 'pushing the price higher & higher' ... now their days are over & to flog & transport their oil will cost them dearly! ... after all we are only talking 116 actual individuals that own 81% of the global oil stocks (then) & artificially kept the prices so high ... now there's black gold everywhere & their 'ransom days are finished!'. 

OPEC is a price-fixing cartel (an entity that is illegal in some of its member countries) and the United States has found a way to be less dependent on some of its more ........ objectionable members. Ergo, the price of oil has fallen and the OPEC members in the Middle East have less leverage in American politics.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind, eh?

It'll rebalance itself fairly soon as the global price of oil makes American fracking uneconomic. So wipe your tears with your keffiyehs, lads. It's only a temporary situation....Oil price falling ???...GOOD, Don't suppose it will last, but it may slow down the buying up of Central London by odious, over-privileged, non-working Arab parasites.

To be sure, the European Union is better prepared now than in 2010, when a 20 billion-euro hole in the Greek budget evolved into a continental crisis that claimed Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus as victims, and nearly splintered the now 18-nation euro.   Back then, aid funds like the European Financial Stability Facility and European Stability Mechanism didn’t exist. Neither did the European Commission’s intrusive monitoring system, designed to flash red when a country is headed for economic or fiscal trouble.   Most important, European leaders bred to see the euro as permanent and indissoluble were blindsided by the crisis. Don’t “overrate” Greece’s woes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in December 2009 as the budgetary bad news was trickling out of Athens. “There are deficits in other parts of the world as well.”   Europe’s stewards received a lesson in crisis management and the whims of markets, and can point to success stories since. Ireland, Portugal and Spain have been weaned off aid, and the sums in dispute with Greece -- roughly 7 billion euros -- are small change compared to what it swallowed before.

Speaking of the EU ....

The new European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, appears to be staking a lot of credibility on an ambitious €315bn (£250bn; $392bn) scheme to boost private investment in European infrastructure projects. It is the top item in the Commission's 2015 work programme, which he presented to the European Parliament on Tuesday.  But so far the reactions have been mostly cautious or skeptical.  There may be more enthusiasm for the plan at the EU summit on Thursday, where government leaders will consider how to make it work.  Many countries, including Germany, have delayed infrastructure improvements. There is an EU-wide need for better transport links, power grid connections, super-fast broadband, and school and hospital improvements.  The Commission is trying to allay any fears about expensive new EU "white elephant" projects, or special favors for pushy politicians. The Commission promises a rigorous cost-benefit analysis by investment professionals, in which growth potential - including job creation - will outweigh any special-interest lobbying.  One difficulty is that the Commission can put relatively little cash upfront, as national leaders are aware that most voters will not stomach much new EU-level spending in these times of economic hardship.  The "seed money" to launch the investment programme will total €21bn - that is, just €8bn of new EU cash, plus €8bn of existing EU budget funds and €5bn from the European Investment Bank (EIB).  The EIB, which has a top AAA rating, will use that money to provide guarantees to investors, the idea being that the EIB will cover the riskiest parts of any project. That is meant to reassure institutional investors and unlock some €315bn of private cash over three years.   The 28 member states have already submitted a huge wish list of projects totaling €1.3 trillion. Some of those submissions are not eligible. A project must be a public-private partnership, not one that is 100% publicly funded.  But at a time of national budget cuts some will ask whether the EIB should be doing this. Some national leaders might treat it as an excuse not to spend public money, relying instead on the EIB to do the heavy lifting.