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UKIP have topped the European polls in the UK, with the Labour Party vying with the Conservatives for second place. Sources from the other main parties have conceded Nigel Farage's party will win, with the leader hailing an "earthquake" in British politics. It will be the first time a party other than the Conservatives or Labour has topped a nationwide poll for the first time in 108 years.

On April 8, 2014, Nikkei, the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal, reported that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Yokohama, Japan, plans to use low-energy nuclear reactions to clean nuclear waste. This patented LENR transmutation method was developed by Mitsubishi physicist Yasuhiro Iwamura. New Energy Times has translated the Nikkei story below. We have also placed online a copy of a recent slide presentation from Iwamura and an updated European patent specification from the company. The patent claims that the reactions occur not by fission or fusion, but by a two-step mechanism beginning with a weak interaction; a neutron is...

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of persons -- including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine -- that undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. I hereby order: Section 1. (a) All...

The anti-balaka have outgrown their name. These militias in the Central African Republic, once united under a moniker meaning “anti-machete” in the local Sango language, are exacting their own vicious revenge upon the mainly Muslim rebels who overthrew the government last March and waged months of terror against the Christian population. They are now accused of atrocities far worse than what first prompted them to take up arms. An Amnesty International report on Feb. 12 said attacks on Muslims in January by anti-balaka militias, made up of Christians and animists, had amounted to “ethnic cleansing.” Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor at...

10,000 African migrants stage demonstration in Jerusalem Knesset speaker nixes meeting between protest leaders and MKs; round them up and deport them, says ex-interior minister Protests by African migrants in Israel, unprecedented in their scope, continued for a fourth straight day Wednesday as about 10,000 people, many of whom come by bus from Tel Aviv, gathered at the Rose Garden in Jerusalem across from the Knesset. ... Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein bowed to pressure from within the Knesset and barred protest leaders from entering the building to attend a meeting with opposition MKs Dov Khenin (Hadash) and Michal Rozin (Meretz),...

Original title:Woman teacher, 27, who was found half-naked with pupil, 17, in lay-by could be allowed back to the classroom in just two years (trimmed to fit) A teacher who was found half-naked in a parked car with a teenage pupil could be back in the classroom in just two years. Eppie Sprung Dawson, 27, admitted having sex with Matthew Robinson – who was 17 at the time of the offence – and was found ‘unfit to teach’ by a disciplinary panel. Although the English teacher was placed on the sex offenders’ register after admitting her wrongdoing in court and...

A number of news outlets have reported that Angola has "banned" Islam and started to dismantle mosques in a bold effort to stem the spread of Muslim extremism. Weekly French-language Moroccan newspaper La Nouvelle Tribune published an article on Friday sourcing "several" Angolan officials, including the Southwest African nation's minister of culture, Rosa Cruz, who reportedly offered the following remarks, which have been translated from French: "The process of legalization of Islam has not been approved by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. Their mosques would be closed until further notice." The media reports have not described why Islam...

...Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law. Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

Until a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia was riding high. Its regional policies, based on countering revolutionary fervour and containing Iran, appeared to be bearing fruit. Egypt’s army ousted the Islamist president, to plaudits and generous funding from Riyadh; the Syrian opposition elected a new pro-Saudi leadership; and the US seemed poised to launch military strikes on the regime in Damascus that Saudi Arabia has tried to dislodge. ... As the challenges in Syria grow, there are fears in Riyadh that the war could drag on for more than a decade, draining Saudi coffers and destabilising the region. There are...

Norwegian centre-right leader Erna Solberg is set to form a new government after Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg admitted election defeat. Ms Solberg described her win as "a historic election victory for the right-wing parties". Her Conservative Party is widely expected to form a government with the anti-immigration Progress Party. It is oil-rich Norway's first general election since attacks by a far-right extremist left 77 people dead in 2011.

(original title, had to be shortened to fit):Bloodbath in Cairo: More than 120 dead and 1,000 injured after police 'shoot to kill' in violent clashes which have rocked Egypt More than 120 people are believed to have been killed at a protest in support of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi, according to the Muslim Brotherhood. Security forces are reported to have started shooting demonstrators shortly before pre-dawn morning prayers at a round-the-clock vigil in Cairo being staged by backers of Morsi, who was removed from power by the army three weeks ago. Makeshift field hospitals around the area near the...

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. ... “Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo...

An explosion in central Prague on Monday, probably caused by gas, injured as many as 40 people, officials said, and neighboring buildings - including the National Theatre - had to be evacuated. The explosion, in a building facing the Vltava river just a few dozen meters (yards) from the 19th-century theatre, was heard as far away as Prague Castle about a mile away. A police spokesman said the blast was probably caused by gas and that there had been about 15 people in the building, which included an office of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and an art gallery.

GENEVA (AP) - Physicists said Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson - a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is. They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card has called gay marriage 'the end of democracy' – and some comics fans want him fired Superman fans are up in arms at the decision of the publisher to appoint a noted anti-gay writer to pen the Man of Steel's latest adventures. Comic giant DC has commissioned Orson Scott Card, author of the award-winning and best-selling Ender's Game sci-fi series, to write for DC's Adventures of Superman series. The digital comic is set to be published in April. The news has sparked a furious backlash from Card's critics. Card is a long-time critic of...

Algerian bomb squads scouring a gas plant where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign workers hostage found "numerous" new bodies on Sunday as they searched for explosive traps left behind by the attackers, a security official said, a day after a bloody raid ended the four-day siege of the remote desert refinery. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the bodies were badly disfigured and difficult to identify.

Federal prosecutors have filed a fraud charge against Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway, just a few days before she leaves the state's highest court in a scandal involving the sale of a Detroit-area home and suspicious steps taken to conceal property in Florida. [...] Hathaway was halfway through an eight-year term on the court, the result of a major election upset over then-Chief Justice Cliff Taylor in 2008. Her victory put Democrats in control of the court for a two-year period. She was a Wayne County judge before joining the Supreme Court.

The Long Island mother of Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher told investigators her son argued with his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins over their baby’s paternity before he shot her dead and killed himself, The Post has learned. Cheryl Shepherd — who was in her son’s suburban Missouri home the morning he shot Perkins nine times — told investigators after the shootings that there were questions about whether the West Babylon, LI-raised linebacker was the father of the couple’s 3-month-old daughter, Zoey, said sources familiar with the situation.

Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars. (snip) New Scientist reports that a 2010 study found technology used by NGI to be accurate in picking out suspects from a pool of 1.6 million mug shots 92 percent of the time. The system was tested on a trial basis in the state of Michigan earlier this year, and has already been cleared for pilot runs in Washington, Florida and North...

(snip) But Mr. Draghi has lowered the gravest of risks to Mr Obama: a pre-election meltdown in the eurozone that would have blown up banks, pulverized Wall Street, and routed a fragile US economy back into recession.