The EU has confirmed that Europe's highest court will rule on the legality of the controversial anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (Acta).

European trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said on Tuesday that the European court of justice would be asked to assess whether Acta "is incompatible - in any way - with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms".

This will include freedom of expression, data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property, he said.

Supporters argue that the agreement will help tackle piracy and illegal file sharing online, but there have been public demonstrations across Europe amid concerns over freedom of information on the internet.

Parliament's rapporteur on Acta, British MEP David Martin, welcomed the decision, describing it as an admission by De Gucht that "there are still many question marks about Acta and what the implementation of the agreement, as it stands, would mean for citizens and for the freedom of the internet".

A conference in Brussels was told that many companies 'don't help themselves' when it comes to combating piracy and counterfeiting.

The two-day conference, organised by the European commission, heard that 'financial incentives' could be offered to enterprises to help them deal with the growing problem of fake goods.

A scheme, piloted in Italy, was cited as an example of 'best practice' in tackling counterfeiting and also raising public awareness of the problem.

The initiative cited at the conference on Tuesday has been piloted by the Italian intellectual property office.

Gianluca Scarponi, representing the organisation, said, "What happens is that we make them an offer they can't refuse use the capital generated from applications for patents and designs and, basically, give it back to enterprises."

We apologize... normal service resumed asap etc...

Despite plenty of transatlantic tensions over the eurozone debt crisis, US President Barack Obama phoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel to congratulate her on concluding a new Greek bailout deal.

The White House said late Tuesday that "the president thanked the chancellor for her leadership and welcomed last night's agreement in Europe on a new rescue programme for Greece to help reduce its debt to sustainable levels."

"The president and chancellor agreed that the planned EU fiscal pact, recent actions by the European Central Bank and reforms by Spain and Italy have also been positive steps in addressing the eurozone crisis," White House spokesman Jay Carney added.

But back home the reaction to the new €130 billion Greek bailout deal, agreed by the eurozone's finance ministers Tuesday morning, has been less friendly.

Prominent Merkel-ally Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy parliamentary leader in the chancellor's Christian Democratic Union, has already announced that he would not vote for the new package.

"We're marching with great strides towards a union of liability, and we're burdening future generations with risks that I find unjustifiable," he told the Passauer Neue Presse.

The truth is no one really believes in this illusory firewall which sacrifices intellect on the altar of imagination. If they did, the European Union would not have decided to grant yet another colossal loan to Greece on 21 February, and there would be no talk of a new federal EU architecture, with nation states handing over more sovereignty to a European government. Progress has been slow, no one has tackled the crux of the problem (the issue of the EU resources required to conduct an effective investment programme).

At times you could be forgiven for thinking that the governments of "major" countries are waiting for Greece to go bankrupt before building the Union they want to construct. This is the thesis advanced by economist Kenneth Rogoff, in an interview with Spiegel: once Athens has been expelled from the union, the impetus of the crisis can be used to accelerate the construction of a United States of Europe. But can a new union be built on the ashes of Greece? And what kind of union would we have had without the pressure of the Greek crisis?

As a `coalition of the unwilling' meets in Moscow to debate retaliatory measures against the EU's inclusion of airlines in the Emissions Trading System (ETS), a senior Airbus executive has warned of a `trade war'.

"Certain countries are opposing ETS which could cause manufacturing industries problems in terms of future orders and you can see the potential for a trade war, specifically with the Chinese," said Paul Nash, head of environmental affairs for Airbus.

"We're obviously concerned because the big growth industries today are Asia and South America so it could certainly impact us," he told EurActiv.

But industry opinions are divided between short-haul companies that may charge customers as little as 30 cents a flight to compensate for carbon charges and long-haul carriers, which the EU says may pass on ticket price hikes of between €2 and €12, despite one US government-funded report predicting a potential €2 billion windfall from the ETS for airlines.

"We rather regret the turn this [Moscow meeting] is taking because there are moves within the International Civil Air Organisation to find alternative market-based mechanisms," said John Hanlon, the secretary-general of the European Low Fares Airline Association.

"My understanding is that the Commission would be prepared to amend their legislation providing these alternatives achieved the same carbon reductions," he added. "The noises offstage are unwelcome and obstructive to that process."

Berlin says it does not want to discuss the merger  of EFSF funds and the ESM; Angela Merkel does not want any complications that might get in the way of the Bundestag's approval of the Greek programme; there is no likelihood now of a summit agreement on an EFSF/ESM merger, but Germany remains willing to talk abou this later in March;the Dutch have changed position, and now support the merger; Agustin Carstens calls for more rescue efforts, as a pre-condition for more IMF help;says a merger of EFSF and ESM would not be enough; CACs are approved by Greek parliamentary committee, and to be voted on by the full parliament later today; Antonis Samaris invites outsted MPs back in if they support reform programme; the Dutch finance minister expressed doubts about the Greek progamme; Clive Crook argues that the Greek deal will not stop the confidence crisis; Germany's tax revenues slow considerably in December; Werner Mussler says France will be the litmus test of the new EU budget rules; Wolfgang Proissl calls on Draghi and Weidman to repeat a Trichet-Weber type confrontation; Nomura explains the broken monetary transmission channel; a BIS study establishes a Reinhart-Rogoff type debt rule for the private sector; Wolfgang Munchau says it is ultimately not in Germany's interest to run excessive and persistent trade surpluses; Sebastian Dullien and Ulrike Guerot argue that the Germans are digging in over austerity, and the best way to coopt Germany is to advocate EU-level investment programmes, and a shift in taxation power to Brussels.

BRUSSELS - One of the many loose ends to the Greek bail-out agreed in the early hours of Tuesday (21 February) is the lack of a firm commitment from the International Monetary Fund, pending a decision by eurozone leaders next week to merge the firepower of two bail-out funds.

According to eurozone finance ministers, the IMF is expected to make a "significant" contribution to the €130bn bail-out. German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble on Tuesday spoke of €13bn plus another €10bn from the first Greek programme committed in 2010 that have not been paid out yet.

But IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Tuesday said "significant means lots of things" and that the contribution will be decided by the board of the institution mid-March. That means the final decision will be taken after an EU summit next week when eurozone leaders are to discuss raising the joint €500bn ceiling for the two bail-out funds - the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

"The IMF board will have in mind the overall programme but also additional matters such as the proper setting up of a decent firewall comprising of EFSF and ESM as considered today, but not concluded today," Lagarde said.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who called for the nation's wealthiest people to pay more taxes, should "just write a check and shut up."

"I'm tired of hearing about it," Christie told CNN's Piers Morgan in an interview that aired last night. "If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check. Go ahead and write it."

Christie, a 49-year-old first-term Republican known for a blunt and caustic style, has proposed a 10 percent income-tax cut for every New Jersey resident. Democrats who control the Legislature say his plan would favor the rich. A family with a $50,000 annual income would pay $80 less under his plan, while someone earning $1 million would save $7,200, Democrats say.

While Republicans promote themselves as the friendliest party for Wall Street, stock investors do better when Democrats occupy the White House. From a dollars- and-cents standpoint, it's not even close.

The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.

That's more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office.

China's manufacturing may shrink for a fourth month in February, indicating the world's second- biggest economy remains vulnerable to a deeper slowdown as Europe's crisis caps exports and the housing market cools.

The preliminary 49.7 reading of an index from HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Markit Economics today compared with a final 48.8 in January. A number below 50 points to a contraction. January and February economic data are distorted by a weeklong holiday.

China is cutting banks' reserve requirements from Feb. 24 to support an economic expansion that Nomura Holdings Inc. estimates may be 7.5 percent this quarter, the least since the global financial crisis.

The European Central Bank's second tranche of three-year loans next week may mark the end of its "generous" provision of long-term funding, according to Deutsche Bank AG. (DBK)

While markets are hoping for "a continuation of the program through the rest of the year," another large long-term refinancing operation, or LTRO, after this one "seems unlikely," London-based Deutsche Bank chief economist Thomas Mayer said in a note to clients today.

"We expect the more hawkish ECB council members, coming mainly from the AAA-rated countries, to oppose continuing generous LTROs on the grounds that these operations will reduce adjustment pressure on both governments and banks," Mayer wrote. "Unless the euro crisis deteriorates significantly further," Deutsche Bank expects the ECB "to wind down these operations" after the next three-year operation, he said.

To je već treća HNB-ova intervencija ove godine i to u nepuna dva mjeseca. Prva HNB-ova ovogodišnja intervencija bila je 4. siječnja, kada je središnja banka prodala 197 milijuna eura po prosječnom tečaju od 7,532527 kuna za jedan euro, čime je povukla 1,48 milijardi kuna.

This is the third intervention by the CNB this year in less than two months. The first was on January 4, when the central bank sold 197 million Euro at an average exchange rate of 7.53 kuna to a Euro, that is 1.48 billion kuna were withdrawn.

Eventually the unsustainable defence of the kuna exchange rate will stop and the kuna will collapse. This will happen no later than when the HNB runs out of Euro reserves, which may be in the process of happening. And then the HNB will have no reserves to help the country access essential imports.

Let's at least hope that they don't do as in Russia in 1998: get an expensive IMF loan and squander it defending the exchange rate for a couple of weeks so that wealthy people in the know can get their money out before the final collapse.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker

Two prominent Western journalists have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs in the latest violence which left 60 people dead across Syria on Wednesday.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, an American, and award-winning French photographer Remi Ochlik died when a shell hit a makeshift media centre in the Baba Amr district.

Troops are shelling opposition-held areas of Homs, besieged for weeks.

...Ms Colvin and Mr Ochlik were reportedly staying in a house in Baba Amr that was being used by activists as a media centre when it was hit by a shell on Wednesday morning.

Rockets were also said to have hit the building's garden when people tried to flee afterwards.

At least two other foreign journalists were wounded, activists said.

One was named as British freelance photographer Paul Conroy, who was working with Ms Colvin, and Edith Bouvier of the French newspaper, Le Figaro. Ms Bouvier was said to be in a serious condition. The dead and the injured journalists are said to have been taken to a field clinic in Baba Amr.

Australia's government faces a mounting crisis after Kevin Rudd, the country's foreign minister, said he was resigning from his post over a widening rift with Julia Gillard, the prime minister.

"The simple truth is that I cannot continue to serve as foreign minister if I don't have Prime Minister Gillard's support," Rudd told a news conference late on Tuesday in Washington, where he had earlier attended a meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

Gillard said she was disappointed by Rudd's resignation and planned to hold a press conference on Thursday.

"I am disappointed that the concerns Mr Rudd has publicly expressed this evening were never personally raised with me, nor did he contact me to discuss his resignation prior to his decision," Gillard said.

Speculation has been rife in Australia that Rudd is planning to reclaim the prime ministerial post almost two years since he was replaced by Gillard in June 2010 after losing the support of Labor Party leaders.

The former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has begun meeting politicians in Senegal in an effort to resolve the West African nation's political crisis, amid continued violence in the capital, Dakar.

Opponents of President Abdoulaye Wade want him to step down instead of run for a third term in the forthcoming weekend's election.

Obasanjo met Idrissa Seck, a former prime minister and one of the leading opposition candidates, on Wednesday at a hotel in Dakar in what was the first of several such planned meetings.

The African elder statesman is in Senegal as the head of a joint mission between the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

After his meeting with Obasanjo, Seck said the opposition remained steadfast in their effort to get Wade to stop his candidacy.

CAIRO, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - The ongoing crackdown by Egypt's military rulers on a handful of civil society groups accused of receiving illegal foreign funds has far-reaching implications for the estimated 40,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the Arab world's most populous country.

Thousands of NGOs - engaged in everything from nature conservation to eradicating illiteracy and sheltering women from domestic abuse - are collateral damage in a row that threatens Egypt's longstanding relationship with the U.S.

"This dispute is affecting all NGOs in Egypt that rely on foreign donors for grants," the director of a Cairo- based non-profit organisation told IPS. "Unless it is resolved soon, hundreds if not thousands of NGOs will be forced to shut down."

EU commissioner Siim Kallas says that Europeans should break their "almost complete dependence" on oil to fuel road transport systems.

Speaking in Brussels, the Estonian official said this is all the more important as oil was "likely" to become more scarce in years to come.

Addressing a conference, he said, "Our transport system has developed against a background of generally cheap oil, expanding infrastructure and limited environmental constraints.

"We must now adapt to a very different set of conditions."

He added, "Oil is likely to become scarcer in the years to come, demand remains strong and markets as volatile as ever - just look at how little it takes to send oil prices shooting higher with events in a country such as Libya.

"So reliable alternatives need to be in place."

Goes on to "alternative fuels" but doesn't say what they are exactly. Erm, agrofuels?

Worldwide, smoke from landscape fires contributed to an average of 339,000 deaths per year between 1997 and 2006, according to new research published in Environmental Health Perspectives and released today during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia were the hardest hit by fire-smoke deaths, with an estimated annual average of 157,000 and 110,000 deaths, respectively, attributable to landscape fire smoke exposure, said researcher Fay Johnston, who represented a global team at the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

"It's time to look at deforestation impacts on fires, which in turn affect human health," said Johnston, a research fellow at the Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.

Johnston and her co-authors specifically assessed the health impacts of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, an important byproduct of landscape fire smoke.

A growing world population, mixed with the threat of climate change and mounting financial problems, has prompted University of British Columbia researchers to measure the overall 'health' of 152 countries around the world.

Encompassing both economic and ecological security, high-income countries were ranked among the least healthy overall. Many countries in South America performed well, offering future generations better financial, food, water, and energy security.

The top five performing countries are Bolivia, Angola, Namibia, Paraguay, and Argentina, while the bottom five performers are Jordan, the Republic of Korea, Israel, Kuwait, and Singapore.

"We hear that countries are suffering financially every day in the news," says Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Centre, "but that only tells half the story. Piling up ecological deficits is just as concerning as piling up financial deficits - both have consequences for future generations."

NUREMBERG, Germany, February 22, 2012 (ENS) - As of June 1, 2012, organic products certified in Europe or in the United States may be sold as organic in either region under a new partnership agreement signed last week in Nurember at the BioFach World Organic Fair, the world's largest trade show for organic products.

All products meeting the terms of the agreement can be traded and labeled as certified organic produce, meat, cereal, or wine.

The organic food sector in the United States and European Union is valued at roughly 40 billion euros (US$53 billion) combined, and rising every year.

This partnership between the two largest producers of organic foods in the world takes EU-U.S. agricultural trade relations to a new level of cooperation. It is intended to establish a strong foundation from which to promote organic agriculture and the growing organic industry.

Formal letters creating the partnership were signed by Dacian Ciolos, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development; Kathleen Merrigan, U.S. Agriculture Deputy Secretary; and Ambassador Isi Siddiqui, U.S. Trade Representative chief agricultural negotiator.

Ukraine illegally siphoned off up to 40 million cubic meters of Russian natural gas for Europe over several days this month, Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko said this January that Ukraine was seeking to cut Russian gas imports to 27 billion cu m from 52 bcm. Gazprom reacted then by saying the current contract did not stipulate unilateral changes in gas purchase volumes.

"Ukraine kept up to 40 million cu m of gas for several days [in February]. This causes financial and reputational damage to Gazprom," Miller told President Dmitry Medvedev.

Several European countries said in early February they had faced shortfalls in Russian natural gas supplies, as a severe cold spell hit Europe, with temperatures plunging to below 30 degrees Celsius. Italy resorted to crisis measures to reduce the consumption of gas and maintain supplies to domestic customers.

Big stand-alone plants are to receive over 30% less in electricity prices, 15 percentage points more cuts than hitherto set. Medium-sized plant prices are cut 25% (-10 additional points). Small arrays: 20% (-5 additional points). ...

"The subsidy is still too high" says Holger Krawinkel with the Federal association of consumer advocates. "According to our calculations, roof-top arrays would still be profitable with 15 cents. For large plants 10 cents would suffice."

Despite spending more on teaching the language than the top four countries, Switzerland ranked only eleventh in an international survey comparing English proficiency levels among adults.

A study last year by Education First, a company specialised in teaching English across the world, compared results from 44 countries, with Norway achieving top marks, online news website 20 Minutes reported.

Switzerland was beaten by Poland, Malaysia, Austria and Germany, as well as by more obvious contenders such as the Netherlands and Sweden.

Europe's top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, has urged Germany to end the practice of surgically castrating sex offenders.

The council's anti-torture committee said such voluntary treatment, albeit rare in Germany, was "degrading".

In Germany no more than five sex offenders a year have been opting for castration, hoping it will lower their sex drives and reduce their jail term.

Russian scientists have grown flowering plants using seeds stored by squirrels 30,000 years ago and preserved by the Siberian permafrost, a new study showed, in what may become a key experiment in the race to revive ancient species.

The seeds of the herbaceous Silene stenophylla are by far the oldest plant tissue to have been brought back to life, according to lead researchers Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The latest findings could be a landmark in research of ancient biological material and the bid to potentially revive other species, including some that are extinct.

The scientists highlight the importance of permafrost itself in the "search of an ancient genetic pool, that of preexisting life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface".

Men may not become extinct after all, according to a new study.

Previous research has suggested the Y sex chromosome, which only men carry, is decaying genetically so fast that it will be extinct in five million years' time.

A gene within the chromosome is the switch which leads to testes development and the secretion of male hormones.

But a new US study in Nature suggests the genetic decay has all but ended.

The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University declared the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, which burned through the latex gloves of the researchers assigned to pick it, to be the hottest pepper on earth. "There will be a run on seeds and plants," predicted grower Jim Duffy. "Like Cabbage Patch dolls right before Christmas."

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}

Conservative filmgoers beware: Hollywood is after your children (again) with the release of two new films that shamelessly deliver a pro-liberal message.

The Secret World of Arrietty, Studio Ghibli's animated take on The Borrowers, is an insidious polemic that encourages class envy and redistribution of wealth. Meanwhile, Dr Seuss' The Lorax is yet another example of environmental radicalism, according to Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network.

'tis strange I should be old and neither wise nor valiant. From "The Maid's Tragedy" by Beaumont & Fletcher

Physicists had detected neutrinos travelling from the CERN laboratory in Geneva to the Gran Sasso laboratory near L'Aquila that appeared to make the trip in about 60 nanoseconds less than light speed.

[...]

According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed. Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos.

Former actress and model Brigitte Bardot has sent a letter to French mayors asking them to help far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen get the crucial 500 signatures she needs to stand in the country's presidential elections.

...She asked them to lend their support so that Marine Le Pen could be part of the elections, which are due to be held in two rounds on April 22nd and May 6th.

Bardot, who now devotes her time to animal causes, said Le Pen "defends animals and has the courage to give our country, France, its proper place in the world."

"I therefore ask them [mayors] to have a bit of courage for once in their lives and to do their duty," she wrote.

Mayors are reported to be delighted.