The British newspaper industry is on the verge of an historic schism, a fundamental split in beliefs that will set one part of the business on a collision course with the other.

I'm trashed," says Mika, flicking on the kettle at his London apartment. "I was given three days off and it's only when you stop working that you feel it."

NCRI- Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, mullahs’ former president and current head of the State Expediency Council expressed doubts that the mullahs’ regime “facing much public dissent can continue along its path,” said Hussein Marashi, the state run news agency ILNA reported on Friday.

Marashi, a former minister during Rafsanjani’s presidency, also warned that there is no hope that the regime can overcome the crises.

“The system [regime] must admit that there are serious public dissents to the extent of a crisis.  At least 80 percent of Tehran residents are protesting the current situation and there is no hope that the current government can solve the problems,” he said.

He warned that the demands of people are “gradually increasing” and “the movement is being more radicalized… Hence the system [regime] must take the issue seriously.”

Marashi stressed that only reaching a compromise with various factions can prevent the downfall of the mullahs’ regime

New book by Patrizia D'Addario adds lesbian dimension to alleged escapades at home of Italian prime minister

The call girl who says she spent the night with Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has claimed she became the target of a string of attacks and threats after releasing alleged recordings of their encounters.

In a book about her experiences to be published on Tuesday, Patrizia D'Addario adds a lesbian dimension to the allegations surrounding Italy's billionaire leader.

The 42-year-old said that after she made her allegations, a car tried to ram into hers on a road near her home town of Bari in the south of Italy. She said that she had accelerated and lost control of her car.

"I found myself on the other side of the road, facing the wrong way. It was only by a miracle that I survived," she wrote in an extract from her book published today by a recently launched leftwing daily, Il Fatto Quotidiano.

D'Addario said she had also been the target of an attempted rape and received numerous menacing telephone calls. In one the caller had threatened to abduct and rape her daughter. Her mother had been punched in the face in the street.

In the latest incident, her flat had been broken into. The thieves had taken much of her clothing, her diaries and her computer, but left behind a very expensive television set, she wrote.

The man who accompanied D'Addario to the prime minister's home is under investigation in Bari on suspicion of drug trafficking and aiding and abetting prostitution. Berlusconi is not a suspect in the inquiry and his lawyer has denied that the call-girl's recordings are genuine.

The publication of D'Addario's book will divert public attention back to the affair after a period in which the focus had been on another sex scandal involving the former centre-left governor of the region around Rome. Piero Marrazzo resigned after being filmed taking drugs and having sex with a transsexual.

Last week, a key figure in the affair, a transsexual Brazilian prostitute, was found dead in her flat in the capital. Investigators are treating her death as murder.

D'Addario claims to have visited Berlusconi's private residence in Rome twice last year. On the first occasion, she said, the other guests at the dinner included two lesbians. They "must be at home," D'Addario writes. "They kiss and stroke one another and address the prime minister in a very familiar way."

This has political significance. Many conservative Italians ready to forgive, if not endorse, heterosexual promiscuity will be disconcerted by a claim that their leader's private life extends to lesbianism.

In her book, written with a leading Italian journalist, D'Addario says that the two women were among about 20 at the first party. At one point, they were shown a political documentary including a sequence in which the anthem of the prime minister's party ("Meno male che Silvio c'e", which translates roughly "Thank goodness for Silvio") was played.

"Everyone in the room began to sing and do the [audience] wave. I looked on curiously and my first thought was that I was in a harem … Being an escort, I reckon I have seen a good few things. But I'd missed out on this — 20 women for one man."

Gradisca, Presidente. By Patrizia D'Addario and Maddalena Tulanti. Aliberti Editore.

Oregon Ducks are booed and attacked with flying debris as they exit the field after defeating the Arizona Wildcats. You stay classy, UofA!

Hand made bag

Cartoon depicts a turkey farm with a farmer smiling and singling out a turkey. The turkey pretends to be unaware and thinks, "Oh great, she's back...and defeathering me with her eyes!!!"

Fetem

• Chance to limit warming squandered, says scientist
• World needs to prepare to cope with at least 3-4C rise

Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.

His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.

In an interview with the Guardian, Watson said: "Those that have opposed a deal on climate, which would include elements of the fossil fuel industry, have clearly made making a 2C target much, much harder, if not impossible. They've clearly put the world at risk of far more adverse effects of climate change."

The decision of former US president George W Bush to walk away from the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on carbon emissions, sent a message to other countries not to act, he said. "The last decade was a lost opportunity. Elements within the fossil fuel industry clearly had major implications for the Bush administration."

He added: "I think they've clearly been partly to blame, without any question at all. But you have to say it is not just the fossil lobby. Within the US, there is not strong support for the Kyoto protocol in both parties. Even Obama now will have to persuade a still somewhat sceptical Senate that we should be doing this."

The Copenhagen talks are not expected to deliver a legally binding treaty as originally hoped, but could still make progress on issues such as emissions cuts for rich countries and financial assistance for the developing world. A strong agreement rests on how far Obama is willing to push towards strong carbon cuts in the US.

European officials fear the agreement could eventually do no better than return emissions in 2020 to 1990 levels; scientists say they must fall by 25-40% to have a good chance of staying within the 2C limit.

Watson, a former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "I think we will do well to stabilise between 3 and 4C. Even that is going to take strong political action to decarbonise the energy system and to require us peaking greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 or more years," he said. "We have to make sure we understand what it would mean to see 3-4C. How would we adapt our agriculture, our water resources, coastal protection and human health systems."

A Guardian poll this year showed that almost nine out of 10 climate scientists thought the 2C target would be missed.

The British government last month published a map that laid out the stark details of a world warmer by 4C. It showed that the rise would not be evenly spread across the globe, with temperature rises much larger than 4C in high latitudes such as the Arctic. Because the sea warms more slowly, average land temperature will increase by 5.5C, which scientists said would shrink yields for all major cereal crops on all regions of production. A 4C rise would also have a major impact on water availability, with supplies limited to an extra billion people by 2080.

Watson backed controversial calls for research into geoengineering techniques, such as blocking the sun, as a way to head off dangerous temperature rise – one of the most senior figures so far to do so. "We should at least be looking at it. I would see what the theoretical models say, and ask ourselves the question: how can we do medium-sized experiments in the field?"

Such an effort could divert attention and funds from efforts to cut carbon and switch to cleaner technology, he said. "I think it should be a real international effort, so it isn't just the UK funding it."

"...it's easy to identify cancer survivors whose tumors were caught by screening, but it's nearly impossible to put a face on the woman or man who is hurt by over-screening.

Patients are also reluctant to give up on the idea that they can control their medical destiny through proactive measures, said Nancy Berlinger, a healthcare bioethicist at the Hastings Center, a research institute in Garrison, N.Y.

'Anything that suggests that early detection might not save lives is going to be deeply disturbing,' she said. 'It suggests that we can't do much to help ourselves.'

• Special forces funding fighters in Afghanistan
• Fears strategy could further destabilise country

US special forces are supporting anti-Taliban militias in at least 14 areas of Afghanistan as part of a secretive programme that experts warn could fuel long-term instability in the country.

The Community Defence Initiative (CDI) is enthusiastically backed by Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan, but details about the programme have been held back from non-US alliance members who are likely to strongly protest.

The attempt to create what one official described as "pockets of tribal resistance" to the Taliban involves US special forces embedding themselves with armed groups and even disgruntled insurgents who are then given training and support.

In return for stabilising their local area the militia helps to win development aid for their local communities, although they will not receive arms, a US official said.

Special forces will be able to access money from a US military fund to pay for the projects. The hope is that the militias supplement the Nato and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. But the prospect of re-empowering militias after billions of international dollars were spent after the US-led invasion in 2001 to disarm illegally armed groups alarms many experts.

Senior generals in the Afghan ministries of interior and defence are also worried about what they see as a return to the failed strategies of the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said the US risked losing control over groups which have in the past turned to looting shops and setting up illegal road checkpoints when they lose foreign support.

"It is not enough to talk to a few tribal elders and decide that you trust them," Ruttig said. "No matter how well-trained and culturally aware the special forces are they will never be able to get to know enough about a local area to trust the people they are dealing with."

Another controversial aspect of the programme is the involvement of Arif Noorzai, an Afghan politician from Helmand who is widely distrusted by many members of the international community.

Although many western officials want to sideline Noorzai and give oversight to the Afghan army and police, some of the CDI militias will build upon the 12,500 militiamen in 22 provinces Noorzai helped to set up this summer in the run up to the presidential elections on 20 August, an official said.

Despite the lack of any announcement about the programme, which could radically affect conditions in unstable areas across Afghanistan, it has begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, but is expected to extend far beyond that.

Another diplomat in the south-east of the country said in the last six weeks special forces have held several meetings with elders in restive districts in Paktia, close to the Pakistani border, seeking to embed themselves with the local people.

The diplomat said: "It is not clear anything has happened yet, but the elders in the area are all seeing dollar signs and very much want to qualify for this programme."

According to some western officials, the US government will make a pot of $1.3bn (£790m) available for the programme, although the US embassy said it could not yet comment on CDI.

A US military spokesman also declined to comment saying the programme was still in its early phases and public discussion could jeopardise the lives of some of the Afghans involved.

The plan represents a significant change in tack from a scheme promoted just last year by General McChrystal's predecessor, David McKiernan. The Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF) was piloted in Wardak province and involved the rigorous vetting of recruits who were then given basic training, a uniform and came under the authority of the Afghan police.

"McChrystal was always quite dismissive about APPF," a senior Nato official in Kabul said. "It was too resource-intensive and so slow we would have lost long before it had been spread to the whole country."

He added: "He wanted to move to a much more informal model, which is far less visible and unaccountable, using Noorzai to find people through his own networks and then simply paying out cash for them to defend their areas."

The US has shared few details of its plans with its allies. The programme is controlled by a newly created special forces group that reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country, but which sits outside the authority of the International Security Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.