Top Story –
New figures show an 80 per cent rise in breast reduction operations carried out on men. The annual audit by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) reveals its members carried out 581 male breast reductions last year, up from 323 in 2008. Five years ago just 22 such procedures were performed on men. The procedure is now the third most popular cosmetic operation for men behind nose jobs and eyelid operations to remove fat. [Daily Telegraph]

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"Whale Song" for Modest Mouse from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Top News –

• Extreme weather, including snow and wind, leads to “chaos” and as many as three deaths in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. (Deutsche Welle) (BBC) (The Hindu) (Press TV)
• The Togo national football team is banned for two tournaments and fined $50,000 for withdrawing from the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations after the fatal attack on their team bus in Angola. The Government of Angola and Confederation of African Football are both to be sued by the families of the dead. (BBC) (Xinhua)
• Aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake:
  • The United States suspends medical evacuations in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake due to a dispute as to who should pay for treatment. (New York Times)
  • Several Americans have been charged with child smuggling for attempting to take Haitian children to the Dominican Republic. (BBC)
  • Puerto Rico investigates a group of its doctors who took photographs of patients and performed operations in the earthquake zone while smiling, drinking and holding guns. (Primera Hora)(BBC) (CNN) (Miami Herald) (The Washington Post)
• Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who criticised the country’s leader and who is, according to Amnesty International, a “prisoner of conscience”, loses his appeal against a six-month prison sentence for assault. (BBC) (France 24)(Taiwan News)
• Authorities in China arrest two people after an incident on board a flight from Xinjiang bound for Wuhan in which a passenger set fire to some toilet paper which forced the plane to turn around. (Reuters)
• The leader of the Shia Houthi rebel group in northern Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, says they will accept a ceasefire if government actions against them cease. (Al Jazeera) (BBC) (AFP)
• Judges across Italy stage a walk out over Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi‘s proposed judicial reforms. (Reuters)(euronews) (BBC)
• 12 people drown and least 20 others are missing after a boat accident in West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh inIndia. (The Hindu) (RTÉ) (Sky News) (Taiwan News)
• The President of the Central Bank of Argentina resigns after a row with the country’s President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. (Buenos Aires Herald) (The Financial Times)
• China suspends military exchanges and reviews cooperation on issues with the United States after the latter agreed to a proposed weapons sale to Taiwan. (The Hindu) (Xinhua) (BBC)
• Google begins to phase out its support for Internet Explorer 6 after it was identified as a weak link in cyber attacks on the search engine. (BBC) (CNET)
• Honda recalls 650,000 of the Honda Fit (also known as Honda Jazz) vehicles worldwide over potential electrical faults.(The Guardian)
• Publishing company MacMillan said that on-line retailer Amazon.com, Inc. has removed all MacMillan print and e-booksfrom its site due to a dispute over the pricing of books sold through Amazon’s Kindle reader. (Wall Street Journal)

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