“I feel like a guest,” said Cojochru. She had just emerged from Beato Angelico middle school where she took a language test to comply with a new law requiring basic Italian proficiency for permanent residency permits following five years of legal residence.

Italy is the latest Western European country turning the screws on an expanding immigrant population by demanding language skills in exchange for work permits, or in some cases, citizenship. While enacted last year in the name of integration, these requirements also reflect anxiety that foreigners might dilute fiercely-prized national identity or even, especially in Britain’s case, pose terror risks.

The renowned university has been in tumult for nearly two weeks, with students protesting a recent donation of nearly a half-million dollars to the school’s Global Governance program by a charity headed by one of the university’s graduates, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan dictator. The uproar grew on Thursday, after The Times of London reported on a leaked diplomatic cable posted on the WikiLeaks Web site noting that the university had agreed to run a training program for elite Libyan civil servants for $3.6 million.

The Seattle Times reports that 74-year-old James Fogle was sentenced Friday in King Superior Court for last May’s robbery in Redmond. The ailing man was brought to court in a wheelchair, breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank.

Fogle was armed with a BB gun, while his co-defendant, Shannon Benn, had a handgun. Benn pleaded guilty in September.

Fogle has spent much of his adult life in prison, which is where he wrote “Drugstore Cowboy.” Filmmaker Gus Van Sant turned the novel into the acclaimed 1989 film starring Matt Dillon. The work was loosely based on Fogle’s life robbing pharmacies to feed his addictions.

Viktor Bout, the Russian national accused of terrorism by way of his alleged arms dealing, has been in the Metropolitan Correctional Center since November. And his lawyer and his wife are now complaining that Bout is, as the NY Times reports, “suffering miserably in federal custody — largely because he was not getting enough food to satisfy his vegetarian lifestyle.”

Bout was extradited from Bangkok to the U.S. in November, two years after being ensnared in a U.S. sting where Bout allegedly tried to sell undercover agents “more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, 5,000 AK47 assault rifles, anti-personnel land mines, C4 explosives and ultra-light planes that could be fitted out with grenade launchers.” Bout’s wife Alla Bout has previously threatened to take legal action against the Thai government, because it’s suspected the U.S. and Russia pressured Thailand to turn over Bout.

Rajoelina’s aide de camp, Lieutenant Colonel Fidimalala Rafaliarison, told reporters they heard a loud explosion by the vehicle at a point on the president’s daily route home where his convoy usually slows down.

A senior officer said the convoy did not stop and there was no damage to the president’s armour-plated vehicle.

He said a team returned to the scene soon after and discovered a wire about 150 metres long and some explosive material hidden in grass by the side of the road.

“Given the political context, it could be have been a political assassination attempt. It could be intimidation. In any case, investigations will show what really happened,” said Prime Minister Camille Vital.

Critics of U.S. spending on the United Nations got a huge boost—and supporters of that spending, especially the Obama Administration, took a body blow—from an unlikely source this week: the British government, long one of the U.N.’s staunchest supporters.

In a sweeping and hard-nosed reorganization of priorities for its $10.6 billion multilateral foreign aid program, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pulled the financial plug entirely on four U.N. agencies at the end of next year, put three others judged merely “adequate” on notice that they could face the same fate unless they improve their performance “as a matter of absolute urgency;” and issued pointed criticisms of almost all the rest.

The major exception: UNICEF, the U.N. children’s aid agency, which got a strong endorsement and a funding increase.

A study of 143 overweight 14-18 year olds showed those with risk factors such as the precursor for diabetes and low levels of the blood-vessel protecting HDL cholesterol have less bone mass—an indicator of bone strength—than their overweight but otherwise healthy peers, according to researchers at Georgia Health Sciences University’s Georgia Prevention Institute.

Wal-Mart makes downtown areas more diverse and lively.

That was in 2001. Now, however, with an unprecedented number of major winter snowstorms hitting the northeastern U.S. during the past two winters, the alarmists are clamming up and changing their tune faster than Tom Hagen can fly in Vincenzo Pentangeli from Italy to aid his brother in his time of trouble.

Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, and Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, explained to the media at the UCS press conference why they believe global warming caused the heavy snowfalls in the northeast these past two winters. Masters and Serreze obviously are weather experts. They may be right. Other weather experts, such as John Coleman, co-founder of the Weather Channel, and Joseph D’Aleo, the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel, disagree with Masters and Serreze. It is also possible that Coleman and D’Aleo are right.

Nothing wrong with Solis speaking at the DNC, of course, as she is a former Democratic representative from a California district. The problem is that her DNC remarks made clear that Solis labors under the flawed assumption that she represents only the steadily dwindling sliver of the American work force that is still unionized. As a result, Solis is leaving the other 90 percent of American workers high and dry.

Here’s the key passage from Solis’ remarks at the DNC on public employee protests in Wisconsin and Ohio that points to her fractured understanding of whom she represents: “The fight is on. We work together. We help those embattled states right now where public employees are under assault.” She called members of the protesting public employee unions “our brothers and sisters” and pledged to help them against Republican Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio. With those remarks, Solis effectively put the federal government in the de facto position of aiding protesters opposing governors doing what they were elected to do less than five months ago.

But at the same time, the multifamily class is considered the one of the safest bets today for new commercial real estate investments, as its values have risen fast, and there’s even new development getting started — a nearly unthinkable concept at this point for office buildings.

What explains the mismatch?

In large part, the answer seems to lie in the type of apartment buildings that were getting CMBS loans. Back during the boom, the safest deals tended to be backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which maintained relatively high standards for what they lent out.