Brain surgery for a popular President – New details of spying against Brazil irks officials – Sarkozy is cleared of allegedly taking mony from an addled 90-year old – And a scientific breakthrough might be amazing.. you be the judge.

Contrary to earlier reports, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez will have surgery to drain a subdural hematoma, bleeding on the brain caused by bumping her head in a fall a few weeks ago.  The 60-year old experienced a “transitory and slight” loss of muscular strength in her left arm on Sunday, and doctors quickly decided that surgery would supplant a month’s rest as earlier prescribed.  Some experts wonder if the recover will take longer than a month.

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff tweeted, “The US and its allies must stop their espionage once and for all,” after Brazilian TV Globo reported that Canadian intelligence monitored communications of Brazil’s mines and energy ministry.  Canada is one of the “Five Eyes”, the Anglophone countries in a global intelligence sharing agreement, along with the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.  Earlier reports showed Brazilian lawmakers and Rousseff herself were targeted by the US National Intelligence Agency.  Brasilia has summoned the Canadian ambassador to explain.

Prosecutors have dropped the criminal investigation into former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly soliciting secret campaign financing from 90-year old L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.  Sarkozy is still under investigation for allegedly taking campaign cash from Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, since ruthlessly killed by rebels – Sarkozy denies those charges.

Divers report untangled a “wall of people” in the capsized ship off Lampedusa, the Italian island that serves as the entry point for African refugees seeking entrance to Europe.  The official death toll from the overloaded fishing trawler is 232 confirmed dead with about 200 persons still missing.  The 155 survivors are to be investigated for “clandestine immigration”, under a draconian law passed by Italian right-wingers in 2002.

At least nine Egyptian soldiers and police were killed in two separate attacks.  Masked gunmen attacked troops in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, killing six.  And a suicide bomber in the southern Sinai detonated a car bomb, killing four people and injuring dozens more.  It comes a day after at least 51 Muslim Brotherhood protesters were killed in street demonstrations in Cairo.

One step closer to turning a pipe dream into reality:  American scientists break a break through towards achieving self-sustaining fusion energy.  For the first time, the nuclear fusion experiment at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California produced more energy than it took to fuel it.  If it’s true, it’s a major step towards the type of power source needed for interplanetary space journeys, cheap power for the masses, flying cars, and all that other stuff science fiction has been promising me for decades but all I got was an Android tablet and a stack of bills.

Nepal troops and police have arrested fourteen alleged members of a Rhinoceros poaching gang.  The gang allegedly killed more than a dozen beasts over the past six years for their horns, which are used in traditional medicines even though there’s absolutely no scientific proof any of it is effective.

It’s Nobel Week, and the prizes for Medicine come first. Americans James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman, and German Thomas C. Sudhof were awarded the prize for their discoveries of how the body's cells decide when and where to deliver the molecules they produce.  Disruptions of this delivery system contribute to diabetes, neurological diseases, and immunological disorders, so understanding it could lead to cures.  The Physics Prize will be awarded on Tuesday.