Bernard Madoff has sought to spread blame for his $65bn Ponzi scheme to banks, regulators and some of his oldest business associates in a rambling jailhouse interview with the Financial Times.

The disgraced US financier offered little evidence for his claims and admitted he had lied to investors and relatives for at least 16 years before he confessed in 2008 and was sentenced to 150 years.

However, Madoff, 72, maintained that banks including JPMorgan Chase, primary banker for his firm, Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities, possessed sufficient account information to detect suspicious activity. He levelled similar accusations against regulators.

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Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw such events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message Mr. Obama introduced with his State of the Union address, exhorting the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

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MADISON, Wisconsin — The issues were serious but the mood was cheery on Sunday among demonstrators in Wisconsin protesting an effort by the Republican governor to reduce the bargaining power of public employee unions.

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Draped in a Wisconsin state flag, Pagel distributed pizzas paid for by a supporter in Minnesota and delivered to the Capitol where some 1,500 people were camped inside on Sunday.

A local pizza parlor called Ian's posted a sign listing where it was getting donations for pizzas to be delivered to the demonstrators -- 40 of the 50 U.S. states, Korea, Finland, Denmark, Australia, Turkey, Canada, the Netherlands, China, Australia, China, England, Egypt and elsewhere.

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(Reuters) - More than 10,000 union public employees and supporters packed the Capitol Square and the inside of the statehouse on Tuesday to protest Gov. Scott Walker's budget plan to strip many bargaining rights from state and local government workers.

Republicans legislators hope to get the bill, announced by the new Republican governor last Friday, to Walker's desk by the end of the week. The office of the Republican legislative leaders say they have the votes for passage.

Republicans took over majority control of the Wisconsin legislature and won the governorship in the 2010 election.

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Three WikiLeaks backers will seek to block the U.S. from reviewing their Twitter account data at a hearing today in federal court in Virginia, arguing that the government’s demands violate their constitutional rights.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in Alexandria will hear a challenge to her order requiring Twitter to give the investigators data on subscribers “associated with WikiLeaks,” including its leader, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning, a U.S. soldier charged with leaking classified information, according to court records.

The hearing is the first public skirmish in the government’s criminal investigation of Assange and others who may have helped leak diplomatic cables and classified military documents through the WikiLeaks website.

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CAIRO - For 11 days, Tahrir Square has been the canvas on which a revolution has unfolded.

At times, it has been an almost utopian scene of Egyptian joy, hope and community. But it has also become an inferno of smoke, strife and death.

As Egyptians vie over their country's future, the struggle to control the square has become the central battlefield, playing out for the rest of the world to see.

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Wal-Mart's lengthy struggle to open in New York City has hit fresh problems -- a controversial report that said America's biggest discounter does not just sell cheap, it makes neighborhoods poorer.

The report concludes that Wal-Mart, the biggest U.S. private employer, kills jobs rather than creates them, drives down wages and is a tax burden because it does not give health and other benefits to many part-time employees, leaving a burden on Medicaid and other public programs.

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The New York Times is considering options to create an in-house submission system that could make it easier for would-be leakers to provide large files to the paper.

Executive editor Bill Keller told The Cutline that he couldn't go into details, "especially since nothing is nailed down." But when asked if he could envision a system like Al Jazeera's Transparency Unit, Keller said the paper's been "looking at something along those lines."

"A small group from computer-assisted reporting and interactive news, with advice from the investigative unit and the legal department, has been discussing options for creating a kind of EZ Pass lane for leakers," Keller said.

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CAIRO — Egyptian opposition groups have launched a nationwide call for protests on Tuesday, in the hope that Tunisia's popular uprising will embolden crowds to take to the streets in support of economic and political reforms.

Inspired by a wave of street riots that ended the rule of veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, organisers have urged Egyptians to join the protest dubbed "the day of revolt against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment."

At least 87,000 people have said they will participate on a specially created page on the social networking site Facebook, despite interior ministry warnings that it will deal "firmly" if people behave illegally.

The call was first launched by pro-democracy youth group the April 6 Movement, and received the backing of others.

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Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), had suggested unprecedented compromises on the division of Jerusalem and its holy sites, the Palestine Papers obtained by Al Jazeera show.

Minutes of negotiations at the US State Department in Washington DC indicate that Erekat was willing to concede control over the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, to the oversight of an international committee.

The highly controversial issue of who controls the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), home of the Al Aqsa mosque - Islam’s third holiest site - has been a major sticking point during decades of negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians.

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Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents – memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations – date from 1999 to 2010.

The material is voluminous and detailed; it provides an unprecedented look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials.

Al Jazeera will release the documents between January 23-26th, 2011. They will reveal new details about:

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The lawyer for alleged government secrets leaker Bradley Manning is accusing military authorities of using punitive measures against Manning at the Marine Corps jail in Quantico, Va.

Manning, a 23-year-old Army private suspected of passing thousands of classified documents to the online site WikiLeaks, was placed on suicide watch for two days this week - against the recommendation of the jail's forensic psychiatrist, attorney David E. Coombs said.

During this time, Manning was forced to stay in his cell around the clock, stripped to his underwear, the lawyer said. His prescription eyeglasses were taken from him, except for the hour of television he is allowed to watch or when he was reading, Coombs added.

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TONY Blair finally apologised for the Iraq War yesterday – and was jeered by furious relatives of British soldiers who lost their lives.

After facing an official inquiry for the second time, the strained-looking ex-PM offered his “deep regrets” for the 179 troops killed in the conflict.

But his remarks sparked emotional scenes in the witness room.

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President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are moving in different directions on Social Security.

The president has indicated a willingness to make significant changes to Social Security, while congressional Democrats are wary of his striking a deal with the GOP on the popular entitlement program.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, is pressing President Obama to keep his campaign promise not to cut Social Security benefits in a possible deal with Republicans.

Sanders has joined a lobbying campaign by more than 200 labor unions and liberal groups pressing Obama to make a strong statement against cutting Social Security benefits in his State of the Union address, scheduled for Jan. 25.

These groups fear that Obama may agree to cuts to Social Security in exchange for Republican support for raising the debt ceiling later this winter or as part of a broad agreement to reduce the deficit.

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