In 2010 Mr Romney and his wife Ann paid $3m for an effective tax rate of 13.9%, and he expects to pay $3.2m for his income in 2011, a rate of 15.4%.

According to the documents Mr Romney had a reported income of $21.7m in 2010 and $20.9m last year, an income that places him among the top earners in the US.

Since 2010 the Romney family has also given away $7m in charitable contributions, primarily to the Mormon Church.

Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, is a multi-millionaire businessman.

Virtually all of Mr Romney’s income is derived from investments, an income which under US tax law is usually taxed at 15 per cent, while wages – which represent the main source of income for a majority of Americans – can be taxed at up to 35 per cent.

The documents showed no declared wages on the 2011 estimate.

Mr Romney has been accused, by both Democrats and Republicans, of preying on companies during his years at the head of equity firm Bain Capital, and of reaping huge profits while destroying firms and jobs.

In the nearly 550 pages of tax documents there are also information about far-flung holdings in tax havens including Luxembourg, Ireland and the Cayman Islands. None of the offshore accounts showed much income.

Mr Romney argued that his business acumen makes him the most capable candidate in this period of economic downturn, explaining that while he was at Bain he has turned around several companies and generated tens of thousands of jobs.

‘Successful’

Mr Romney’s rival candidates have been putting pressure on him to release his tax returns in line with other presidential candidates past and present.

During a debate last week, Mr Romney said : “I know the Democrats want to go after the fact that I’ve been successful. I’m not going to apologise for being successful.”

While Republicans oppose any tax raise because they think it would stunt job creation, Mr Obama and his Democratic Party believe that millionaires and big corporations should pay more in taxes in order to help trim the United States’ massive debt.

In April 2011 president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle released their 2010 tax return which showed an income of $1.7m. They paid about $450,000 in federal tax, a rate of about 26%.

On Monday he also said : “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”

At first he said he would release his tax information after the April filing deadline for 2011 but he changed his mind following rival Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina vote.

Mr Gingrich released his tax figures on Saturday, saying he paid nearly $1m last year, a rate of about 31%.

And on the same day he won the vote in South Carolina, after attacking Mr Romney over his business and tax records.

The candidates are now in Florida, the next state to hold its primary on January 31. With its diverse electorate and a cash-hungry advertising market, the state is seen as a major battleground.

Mr Romney has asked Mr Gingrich to release documents related to his involvement with Freddie Mac, a federally backed mortgage guarantor who required millions in government aid after the 2008 financial crisis.

In the latest debate Mr Romney said Mr Gingrich was doing business with Washington’s “chief lobbyists”.

Mr Gingrich answered that he did not serve as a lobbyist, but as a historian and consultant for the company.

Mr Gingrich released his 2006 contract with Freddie Mac on Monday, although most of his multiple-year working relationship with the company were not covered by the document.

After months of Republican primaries and caucuses in every US state, the eventual winner will be anointed in August, at the party convention. The presidential election will take place in November.

“After having thoroughly examined all the evidence presented by the prosecution, the chamber decided to confirm the charges against four of the six suspects,” ICC presiding judge Ekaterina Trendafilova said before a public hearing held in The Hague on Monday.

Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta and cabinet secretary Francis Mutaura are accused of crimes against humanity allegedly targeting supporters of prime minister Raila Odinga, including murder and persecution.

Last September Mr Kenyatta, 50, denied the accusations at a preliminary hearing at The Hague-based court.

In a separate case because they were on opposite sides during the 2007 election, former education minister William Ruto and radio presenter Joshua arap Sang will also stand trial for crimes against humanity directed at Kibaki supporters.

All four of them deny the accusations.

Former minister of industrialization Henri Kiprono Kosgey was cleared of charges, as well as former police commissioner Major General Mohammed Hussein Ali.

Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are expected to run against each other in the next election.

‘Decades of impunity’

“It is our utmost desire that the decisions issued by this chamber today bring peace to the people of the Republic of Kenya and prevent any sort of hostilities,” judge Trendafilova also said.

She added that the confirmation of the charges was not a guilty verdict, but meant that there is sufficient evidence to send them to trial.

“We are not passing judgment on the guilt or innocence of the individuals.”

In March 2010 chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was given permission to investigate the six men, three of them aligned with president Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) and three others supporting the opposition Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga.

Due to the political and ethnic divisions behind Kenya’s post-election violence, Mr Moreno-Ocampo had asked to bring two separate cases.

In a statement Human Rights Watch welcomed the decisions : “Today’s decisions move forward the search for justice for those who lost their lives and their homes in Kenya’s 2007-2008 election violence.”

“The ICC trials will break with decades of impunity in Kenya for political violence, but Kenya should act to widen accountability by carrying out prosecutions at home.”

‘Carefully orchestrating’

Mr Kenyatta and Mr Kibaki’s right-hand man Francis Mutaura, 65, are accused of keeping Kenya’s ruling party at the time in power “through any means necessary”.

They face five counts among which are orchestrating murder, rape, forcible transfer and persecution in the polls’ aftermath, described as “one of the most violent periods in Kenya’s history”.

Prosecutors say Mr Kenyatta met members of a secretive criminal organisation known as Mungiki – which is known for skinning and beheading its victims – before the 2007 election in order to arrange some of the attacks against opposition supporters.

Mr Ruto, 45, and Mr Sang, 36, supported Mr Odinga in the election and they face three counts of murder, forcible transfer and persecution.

They are accused of “carefully orchestrating” attacks against ruling PNU supporters after Mr Odinga accused his opponent of rigging his way to re-election.

While the violence started as political riots, it than turned into a bloody round of score-settling and communal violence.

In the end Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner of the election and is serving his second term as president. Raila Odinga became prime minister under a power-sharing deal brokered by Kofi Annan in order to end the violence.

According to two recent opinion polls the majority of Kenyans back the ICC process as most citizens have little faith in their country’s judiciary, widely perceived as corrupt and choking on a backlog of cases.

According to the report, which was leaked to the BBC, a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is undermined by “the systematic increase in settlement activity”.

The text also talks about a “deteriorating situation on the ground”.

Israeli policies have also been criticised in earlier reports.

The EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem makes a long list of recommendations, including a suggestion that the Commission proposes “appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity”.

Israel is “actively perpetuating its annexation” of Arab East Jerusalem by “systematically undermining the Palestinian presence in the city”, said the EU report.

The document also talks about the problems generated by “the continued expansion of settlements, restrictive zoning and planning, ongoing demolitions and evictions, an inequitable education policy, difficult access to health care, the inadequate provision of resources and investment and the precarious residency issue”.

Since 1967, Israel has settled nearly 500,000 Jews in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settlements are considered illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this.

While the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of their future state, Israel says Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital.

‘Quickly shelved’

As the report has not been published, Palestinian officials do not want to comment it. But speaking on condition of anonymity, one told the BBC : “We think it shows facts on the ground that nobody can dispute. We now expect European capitals to implement the recommendations.”

According to Yigal Palmor, Israeli foreign ministry’s spokesman, the report is “the result of an extremely dubious methodology” because there hade been no consultation with Israel on the subject.

“The EU treats these serial reports in the best possible way – they are discussed briefly, their absurd recommendations are disregarded and the reports are quickly shelved,” he added.

In recent days, several strongly-worded European statements and reports have come to light.

On Monday settlements were described by Nick Clegg, UK’s deputy prime minister, as “an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise upon which negotiations have taken place for years”.

In response, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, who is visiting the UK, said Mr Clegg’s comments were “ill-informed” and “irresponsible” because they gave the Palestinians an excuse to set pre-conditions on negotiations with Israel on a peace settlement.

Last week an internal EU report was leaked. It criticised Israel’s policies and planning rules in “Area C”, meaning the 62% of the West Bank which is under its full control.

Also in a French parliamentary report, Israel’s water policies in the occupied Palestinian territories was described as a form of “apartheid”, because they give preferential treatment to Jewish settlers. The head of the Palestinian Water Authority welcomed these comments.

Last year Mr Walker and state Republicans curbed public sector union’s rights, leading to days of protest and also becoming a conservative hero and putting the Midwest state at the centre of the US labour rights debate.

Mr Walker’s opponents are also angry at the $800m in budget cuts to schools passed under him.

The recall effort could not be officially filed until governor Walker served a year in office, which happened earlier this month.

On Tuesday organisers from United Wisconsin submitted about one million signatures, when 540,208 signatures are required to force the governor into a special election.

If the minimum signatures are verified, Mr Walker, a first-term governor, could face the recall election by this summer.

The success of the signature-gathering effort “represents a crystal clear indication of how strong the appetite is to stop the damage and turmoil that Scott Walker has brought to Wisconsin,” said Ryan Lawler, a board member of United Wisconsin, a political action committee which organised the effort to collect signatures.

State Democratic party chairman Mike Tate told AP news agency that given the number of signatures, the governor should not delay a vote, adding that he did not expect a recall before May.

He also said :“We very clearly believe there is no challenge, legal or otherwise, that would prevent these elections from going forward.”

However Mr Walker thinks it will be in June.

While under regular law the verification of the signatures must be finished in 31 days, state officials are going to request a 60-day period due to the huge amount of signatures.

‘Accomplish nothing’

On Tuesday Mr Walker was hosting a fundraiser in New York City and he already has at least $5m in his election war-chest, half of it coming from out-of-state donors.

In a statement the governor expressed his confidence regarding the vote : “I look forward to talking to the people of Wisconsin about my continued promises to control government spending, balance the budget and hold the line on taxes.”

He also said that voters would reward him for balancing a $3.6bn budget shortfall without laying off state employees or raising taxes.

The recall effort was described as “shameful” by the chairman of the Republican party of Wisconsin Brad Courtney, who said in a statement that it would “accomplish nothing but saddle Wisconsin taxpayers with over $9 million in unbudgeted costs”.

The Democrat who will run in the expected recall ballot is not known yet, although Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett – who ran for governor against Scott Walker in 2010 – and Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette, have been mentioned as possible candidates.

Last year’s fight over union rights and other Republican-backed measures could lead 17 Wisconsin state senators – 11 Republicans and six Democrats – to face special recall elections this year.

And those elections could tip the balance of power in the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 17-16 majority.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the decision to black out the site was decided by voting within the Wikipedia community of writers and editors who manage the free service.

In an interview he said : “This is a quite clumsily drafted legislation which is dangerous for an open internet.”

He also told the BBC : “Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy.

“But that’s not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy.”

People visiting the English-language site of Wikipedia will only see information about SOPA and PIPA, urging readers in the US to contact their local congressman and ask them to vote against the bills.

According to comScore data, the English-language Wikipedia receives more than 25 million average daily visitors from around the world.

Other smaller sites have said they will take part in the “blackout”, including news site Reddit.com and the blog Boing Boing.

But Wikipedia will be the highest profile name to take part in the campaign.

Twitter has declined to join. Dick Costolo, its chief executive, tweeted : “Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.”

He later clarified, in a Twitter conversation with Mr Wales, that his comment was not meant to be read as a “value judgement” about other organisations’ involvement in the action.

‘Serious problem’

Technology companies are also against SOPA and PIPA. Google has said the bill goes too far and could hurt investment. Several Internet companies including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, have run advertisements in major newspapers in order to urge Washington lawmakers to rethink their approach.

These companies are opposed to those who support the bills, such as Hollywood studios and music labels, which say the legislation will protect intellectual property and jobs.

According to supporters in the House of Representatives, SOPA is designed to stop revenue flowing to “rogue websites”. Its aim is to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates US copyright laws.

PIPA, a similar law, is making its way through the US Senate.

On Saturday the White House appeared to side with critics of the bills. In a statement it said : “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet.”

Following the White House’s comment, Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation’s chairman and one of the anti-piracy legislation’s high profile supporters, tweeted on Saturday : “So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery.”

He later added: “Seems like universal anger with POTUS [President of the United States] from all sorts of normal supporters… Whole entertainment industry employs 2.2 million [on] average salary $65,000. Good jobs and expanding foreign earnings. Made in America, too!”

News Corp owns a vast array of media properties from Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal to Twentieth Century Fox studios.

Sites participating to the shutdown will go offline for 24 hours, starting at midnight Eastern Time (05:00 GMT).

He confirmed the news on public television on Friday evening, after emergency talks called by president Nicolas Sarkozy with the prime minister and other key ministers.

S&P is downgrading France by one notch, to AA+.

“It’s not good news, but it’s not a catastrophe,” Mr Baroin said on France 2 television. “It’s not ratings agencies that decide French policy.”

“I confirm that France has received, like most eurozone countries, a notification of a change of its rating,” he said.

“It’s a downgrade, a one-notch change, it’s the same agency that downgraded the United States. It [the downgrade] means we must follow and amplify reforms. We must be bold. We must preserve employment,” he added.

S&P declined to comment, but an announcement is expected later.

France still has a top AAA rating with Moody’s and Fitch.

Markets

Earlier on Friday world stock markets plummeted after a European Union official disclosed S&P’s decision.

While Austria is also expected to lose its top AAA rating, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands will not be downgraded.

Most of the other governments already have lower ratings but a number of other eurozone countries are also said to hove been downgraded further by S&P on Friday, including Italy, Spain and the Irish Republic.

S&P had warned last month that it was reviewing the credit ratings of 15 of the 17 eurozone countries, saying they were all at a risk of a downgrade because of the continent’s ongoing debt crisis.

The news that talks had been broken between Greece and its private sector lenders – including a 50% forgiveness – also scared the markets, because an agreement is a precondition for the country to receive its next round of bailout money from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Without that money, Greece would be unable to repay its debts.

Borrowing cost

Last August S&P downgraded the United States’ top-notch AAA rating.

The downgrading of a country impacts the population because banks and investors use credit ratings to decide how much money to lend to particular borrowers.

Also the cut in the sovereign ratings of governments usually leads to most other borrowers located in the same countries – such as banks and companies – being downgraded.

As a result the downgrade, even though it has been widely expected, is likely to make it more difficult and expensive for those countries borrowers – including the governments – to raise money.

After the rumours emerged, Italy’s 10-year implied cost of borrowing in bond markets jumped by a third of a percentage point, however it ended the day largely unchanged at just over 6.6%.

France’s borrowing cost also rose but slightly, from 3.03% to 3.07%.

Considered the safest borrower in the eurozone, Germany saw its borrowing cost fall from 1.83% to 1.76%.

And the downgrades of eurozone countries may also have an impact on the eurozone’s rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), because it is guaranteed by the eurozone governments.

Before the downgrades the EFSF, which has already been used to rescue Portugal and the Irish Republic and is supposed to help Greece, was already having trouble borrowing money in order to provide its rescue loans.

“Great leader Kim Jong-il will be preserved to look the same as when he was alive, at Kumsusan Memorial Palace,” the official KCNA news agency reported.

The body of Kim’s father, North Korea’s founding president Kim Il-sung, is already on view to favoured visitors to the building which was his home and was converted into a mausoleum after his death. He was embalmed with the help of a Russian team which still visits North Korea to renew the embalming, a process that takes about a month.

After his death in 1994, Kim Il-sung was declared North Korea’s eternal president.

Quoting a decision from the ruling communist party, which described Kim Jong-il as its “eternal leader”, KCNA said a bronze statue of their late leader would be erected.

The official news agency also said that smiling portraits “and towers to his immortality” would be built nationwide and his birthday on February 16, “the greatest auspicious holiday of the nation”, would be named the Day of the Shining Star.

Kim Jong-il died in December of a heart attack at age 69. His body was put on display at the palace before his funeral on December 28.

His son Kim Jong-un, who is in his late 20s, has been declared “supreme leader of party, army and people” and formally appointed as military chief.

On Monday troops held a rally outside the memorial palace in order to pledge loyalty to their new leader.

The origin of the video, first posted on the Live Leak website, is not known and it is not clear who posted it online.

The US Marine Corps issued a statement on Wednesday after the footage came to light saying that the matter would be fully investigated.

“While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the marines in our corps,” the statement said.

John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “Regardless of the circumstances or who is in the video, this is… egregious, disgusting behavior, unacceptable for anyone in uniform.

“It turned my stomach,” he added.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it “strongly condemns the actions depicted in the video, which appear to have been conducted by a small group of US individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan”.

In a statement on Thursday it called the actions portrayed in the video “inexplicable and not in keeping with the high moral standards” it said were expected of co-alition forces.

Former US Marine Corps pilot Lieutenant Colonel Jay Stout told Al Jazeera : “I am disturbed. Look, marines kill to win, and sometimes they kill a lot and that’s good, that’s fine, that’s war. But in victory we are trained to be compassionate, we are trained to be respectful and this incident was neither of those.”

‘Deeply disturbed’

The video has also been condemned by Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

“The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans,” said a statement from the Afghan president’s office on Thursday.

“This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms.

“We expressly ask the US government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

The video was described as “shameful” by the Taliban.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told the BBC that this was not the first time Americans had carried out such a “wild action” adding that Taliban attacks on the Americans would continue.

But according to Zabihullah Mujahid, a different Taliban spokesman, the video “is not a political process, so the video will not harm our talks and prisoner exchange because they are at the preliminary stage”.

Last week the Taliban announced in a statement that they were planning on opening a political office outside Afghanistan – possibly in Qatar – as part of peace talks with the Afghan government and its Western allies.

In the meantime as a confidence-building measure, Washington has been considering releasing several Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay jail, Associated Press news agency said.

Investigation

There are fears of a backlash against the foreign presence in Afghanistan once the video starts circulating.

“The US soldiers who urinated on dead bodies of Muslims have committed a crime,” Kabul resident Feda Mohammad told Reuters news agency.

“Since they’ve committed such a crime, we don’t want them on our soil anymore.”

The video would upset ordinary Afghans, regardless of how they felt about the Taliban, said Afghan Member of Parliament Fawzia Kofi.

“It’s a matter of a human being, respect to a human being,” she told the BBC.

“I believe that the brutal acts that the Taliban did here during their government and even now is condemned by Afghans. So is watching a brutal act by international forces. We condemn that as well,” she added.

In a separate case, the US military has been prosecuting five soldiers from the army’s 5th Stryker Brigade, who are accused of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians during their deployment in Kandahar province in 2010.

In this case, last March the magazines Der Spiegel and Rolling Stone have published photographs showing soldiers posing with the bloodied corpse of an Afghan boy they had just killed.

About 20,000 Marines are deployed in Afghanistan, based mostly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and in total about 90,000 US troops are in the country.

The US and its allies plan to hand over security in Afghanistan and withdraw combat troops by the end of 2014.

On Sunday the rear section of the Greek-owned and Liberian-flagged MV Rena, lashed by pounding seas, broke away, while the front section remains firmly wedged on Astrolabe Reef.

Between 200 and 300 containers out of 800 still aboard the Rena have been washed overboard.

“Of those 20% will float – the remainder will sink,” said Braemar Howells spokeswoman Claudine Sharpe.

“We have had a significant release of containers… and a significant release of debris from those containers,” said Maritime New Zealand spokesperson Ross Henderson.

“It doesn’t pose any health risk but if it does come ashore we are warning people to be weary that debris may come ashore.”

Among the debris that could begin washing ashore later on Sunday are timber, bags of milk powder and floating containers.

Mr Henderson also said that the storm which caused the ship to split will continue for another three to four days.

Maritime New Zealand salvage adviser Jon Walker said that the rear section of the ship will likely capsize and sink, making it considerably more difficult to recover any further containers.

‘Fragile state’

“While reports at this stage indicate there has not been a significant release of oil, with the Rena in its current fragile state, a further release is likely,” said Alex van Wijngaarden, on-scene commander for the national reponse team. He added that oil could come ashore around midnight on Sunday.

“Any oil coming ashore in the coming days is expected to be much less the amount that washed up after the Rena first went aground.”

Since it ran aground in October, the Rena leaked 350 tonnes of oil into the Bay of Plenty, one of New Zealand’s top tourist destinations which is home to whales, dolphins, seals, penguins and a variety of birds.

More than 1,000 sea birds have been killed by the oil leaked from the ship.

Although salvage crews have removed more than 1,100 tonnes of oil from the stricken ship, 385 tonnes remain aboard.

“The risk to the environment is a fragment of what it was, with at the most tens of tonnes of oil rather than hundreds of tonnes that potentially could be spilled,” environment minister Nick Smith told reporters in Tauranga.

Impounded in Australia

Last month investigators by The Associated Press revealed that the Rena had been impounded by Australian authorities only to be released the next day following an intervention by Liberian maritime authorities who essentially said that the ship was safe to sail and that the problems could be fixed later.

About 10 weeks later the Rena ran full-steam into a well-marked reef off the coast of New Zealand, causing what has been described as the country’s worst maritime disaster.

It is not clear whether the previously identified problems played any role.

The Filipino’s captain and the officer on navigational watch at the time of the incident have been charged with operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk, polluting the environment and altering the ship’s documents after the crash.

Therefore satellite broadcasters have cut entertainment TV by two-thirds, state news agency Xinhua has reported.

Now each of China’s 34 satellite channels will be limited to only two entertainment programmes each week, and a maximum of 90 minutes of entertainment content every day from 19:30 to 22:00.

This means that the number of entertainment shows aired during prime time each week has gone from 126 to 38, in the country that has the largest number of television viewers in the world : an estimated 95% of its 1.3 billion inhabitants.

The order, which was issued by the SARFT  in October 2011, also requires broadcasters to air at least two hours of news programming between 06:00 and midnight, and between 18:00 and 23:30 they must each broadcast at least two 30-minutes news programmes.

In a statement the SARFT said that : “Satellite channels have started to broadcast programmes that promote traditional virtues and socialist core values.”

Among the biggest casualties of the cuts are talent shows and reality TV, but talk shows and emotional stories are also on the list of restricted programmes that were deemed to be of “low taste” according to the Xinhua news report.

In September 2011 Hunan Satellite Television was told by censors to stop broadcasting the popular talent show Super Girl – which featured women of all ages in a singing contest – arguing that it was “too long”.

However on weekends popular dating shows, like If You Are The One produced by Jiangsu Satellite TV, as well as soap operas, like Li Yuan Chun produced by Henan Satellite TV, will still be on air during prime time, said the SARFT in its statement.

In 2010 If You Are The One broke viewership, which prompted copycat programmes by other broadcasters.

The satellite TV stations get bigger profits from those programmes due to their relatively low production costs and their high ratings. However regulators do not like the content both sensationalist and “vulgar”.