Belgium's enterprise minister Paul Magnette criticised the European Commission for being "too tough" on his country and pleaded for more "margin of manoeuvre" for national governments to enforce EU budget discipline rules.

Magnette made these statements at a conference, auspiciously titled "Can one criticize Europe?", organized by the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

The minister, who is also a Socialist leader and high profile professor in the same university, was recently in the centre of a controversy, after he made comments critical to the EU executive, for which he was reprimanded both by Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo and Council President Herman Van Rompuy, a former Belgian Prime Minister.

Reportedly, Magnette said that the economic and budgetary policy, imposed on EU countries, condemned them "to a 15-year-long recession". He added that he doubted that the Commission had the democratic legitimacy to impose such policy.

The tone of the French presidential debate took a decidedly populist turn this week as incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy declared his intention to halve the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year.

Accused of populism and of trying to attract disillusioned voters back from the far-right National Front (FN), Sarkozy's announcement follows a campaign launched in February by the FN's Marine Le Pen against Islamic halal and Jewish kosher butchering practices.

One candidate for May's presidential election, the Green Party's Eva Joly, has spoken out against what she calls "latent xenophobia in the French political discourse".

Joly told FRANCE 24 that the current obsession with foreigners had eclipsed more important international issues.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said any tax changes in this month's Budget should mean "the wealthy have to pay more".

He repeated his call for any money George Osborne has available for tax cuts to be spent on raising the income tax threshold.

Mr Clegg's comments are the latest in a series of high-profile interventions on the Budget negotiations by Liberal Democrat Cabinet ministers.

Business Secretary Vince Cable has said there was an "understanding" within Government that if the 50p top rate of income tax was scrapped, as favoured by many Conservatives, it would be replaced with a levy on wealth, such as the mansion tax favoured by Lib Dems.

When Iveta Radičova's right-wing government fell last October after a dispute over Slovakia's participation in the financial bail-out of indebted eurozone countries, it seemed that the Europe issue would redraw the traditional political and mental map of the country.

...

But after a few months everything is different. Europe has been forgotten and life in the country is dominated by corruption scandals at home, whose unprecedented scale is corroding the very essence of politics. The published `Gorilla' file - a report from the SIS, Slovakia's secret service, on politicians' links to business - has turned traditional right-wing voters in particular towards new parties, which sprang up like mushrooms after a rain.

But, one after another, these have got caught up right away in their own scandals and scraps, from which they are emerging battered beyond recognition. The preliminary outcomes of this confusion are estimates of a frighteningly low turnout (45 percent), of which nearly a third do not yet know who they will vote for.

Greece claimed a major success for its bond swap offer to private creditors today (9 March) after it won heavy acceptance for a deal that averts the immediate risk of an uncontrolled default on its massive public debt.

The finance ministry said 85.8% of its €177 billion in bonds regulated under Greek law had been tendered, adding that the rate would reach 95.7% with the use of collective action clauses to enforce the deal on creditors who refused to take part voluntarily.

The result should clear the way for the European Union and International Monetary Fund to release a €130 billion bailout package agreed with Greece last month.

A Chinese diplomat said yesterday (8 March) Beijing is keen to avoid a trade conflict with Europe after Airbus accused the country of blocking purchases of its aircraft in retaliation for the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS).

The diplomat spoke hours after Louis Gallois, chief executive of Airbus parent EADS, had complained that the aircraft firm was suffering "retaliatory measures" from China including a refusal to approve orders for long-haul jets.

The controversial proposal is due to be presented by the end of March by Michel Barnier and Karel De Gucht, the EU commissioners for the internal market and trade.

Under the plan, seen by EurActiv, EU countries "will be given the possibility to reject foreign bids from third countries" that fail to open their own public procurement markets to European companies.

"If a third country repeatedly discriminates against European companies, the Commission will be able to take targeted restrictive measures vis-à-vis this third country and effectively close a part of the EU's procurement market," a Commission spokesperson told EurActiv.

Prime Minister Mario Monti held security talks Friday amid rising anger over the UK's failure to notify Italy ahead of a failed British-Nigerian mission to rescue an Italian and a Briton being held in Nigeria. Both hostages died in the attempt.

Syrian forces killed some 31 people across the country Friday, just a day before new UN-Arab League international envoy Kofi Annan was to arrive in Damascus to assess the situation. The resumption of violence followed a few days of relative calm.

Global partners should engage in diplomatic talks to solve the Iran deadlock as military action would have "devastating consequences" for the region, said Wu Hailong, the newly appointed Chinese ambassador to the EU.

This week, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton wrote to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, accepting an offer to meet to discuss Tehran's nuclear program.

"The best way forward is through diplomatic talk," said Hailong, a seasoned diplomat who has represented China in many international organisations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Speaking to a small group of journalists, Hailong argued that the issues remain unresolved to this day and sanctions have not delivered results.

Mercury News editorial: Why don't Democrats just make stuff up too? - San Jose Mercury News

The accusation advanced by Eric Bolling on Tuesday's "The Five," and given credence by most others in the Fox discussion, is this: President Barack Obama put Fluke up to creating a controversy over the all-male congressional committee's failure to let her speak at a hearing on birth control. It was an insidious plot to distract attention from the economy -- wait, isn't the economy improving? -- and to shore up Obama's flagging support among women. Naturally, they will be flocking to the party that conducts all-male hearings on birth control.

Oh, come on. The Democrats aren't that clever. Only people used to concocting crap themselves would come up with a theory like this.

The Drug War:

Foreign Policy: Vice President Joe Biden was in Central America this week attempting to staunch the hemorrhaging of regional support for the U.S.-led War on Drugs. His trip follows one last week by Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, who similarly decamped to the region to buoy a faltering U.S. flag as drug cartel-fueled violence continues wreaking havoc on Central American societies. What's caused this flurry of high-level administration attention to the region is a number of recent public statements by sitting Latin American presidents openly questioning the effectiveness of current counter-narcotics policies and calling for multilateral discussions on legalizing or decriminalizing the use of illicit drugs.

Colombia Reports: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Friday the United States announcement that it is willing to discuss drug legalization was "very important." Responding to a U.S. statement that it would participate in talks on drug legalization at the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Colombia -- the first time it has discussed the issue in a multilateral setting -- Santos told W Radio, "I believe this is something that has to be valued and channeled in a positive way, so that if this discussion takes place, it is something that really brings, if we find it, a better solution to the world to the terrible issue of drug trafficking."

See coverage by Democracy Now!

Boz debates drug policy.

Colombia Reports: Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro, several leftist congressmen and human rights defenders have received a letter notifying prominent leftist political politicians they have been "sentenced to death" in a letter signed by the Bloque Capital of neo-paramilitary group "Aguilas Negras." In the letter, partially shown on the socialist party's website, the alleged paramilitary group warns it "has the order to execute" "the FARC guerrilla bitches who oppose the policies of our government and brainwash the displaced to act as human rights leaders."

Colombia Reports: Cuba's foreign minister on Thursday thanked Colombia for its support, while blaming the U.S. for its exclusion from the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena next month. (...) Rodriguez added that the U.S. position "offends the dignity" of Latin Americans.

BBC: Indigenous protesters in Ecuador have begun a two-week march across the country against plans for large-scale mining projects.  Several hundred protesters set off from an Amazon province where a Chinese company has been authorised to develop a huge open-cast copper mine.

Amnesty International: The killing of 21 people by Jamaican police in just six days must be subject to a thorough inquiry, Amnesty International said as it called on the authorities to mount an effective investigation into recent and past police operations. Six of the killings took place during a single police operation in Denham Town, West Kingston, on 5 March. A 13-year-old girl died after reportedly being caught up in the cross-fire between police and criminal suspects.

Caribbean Integration Movement:

Miami Herald: Caribbean Community leaders kicked off a two-day meeting in Suriname to discuss the future of their organization's machinery, cricket. (...) A report commissioned by the body has raised serious questions about its existence and future, saying its Guyana-based secretariat has lived "hand-to-mouth" and "in the absence of fundamental change, it is more likely that Caricom will expire slowly, over perhaps four or five years," the authors wrote.

Venezuelanalysis: Professor Norman Girvan of the University of the West Indies, a leading scholar in Caribbean political economy sees the recent regional shift towards ALBA as the result of the organization providing a more dynamic alternative to CARICOM, remarking that "(ALBA) poses the urgency of revitalising CARICOM and if CARICOM continues to be relatively moribund in its economic integration aspect then inevitably ALBA will become an attractive alternative for more and more CARICOM states."

And finally... an interesting tale.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Berlusconi with Putin and Medvedev congratulating Putin on electoral victory. Hahahaha...
See how everything goes well when one cooperates. Italians couldn't get rid of Berlusconi for years. Then "they" stripped him of power over night. He was obedient and look everything is fine. Anyway he was western connection to Russia (Putin) all the time and is probably continuing to be. Deals have to be made...
If only Saddam, Gaddafi and now Syrian president were smart enough. They would now live on Florida and continue to do the "business"...

EU ministers are unlikely to agree draft rules to let countries decide themselves whether to grow or ban genetically modified (GM) crops, despite efforts by Denmark's EU presidency to reach a compromise.

EU environment ministers meeting in Brussels today (9 March) will vote on a Danish compromise designed to break a deadlock that has split governments since the draft rules were proposed in 2010.

The rule change was drafted by the executive European Commission to try to unblock EU decision-making on GM crop approvals, which has seen just two varieties authorised for cultivation in more than 12 years.

Hooray! And it was never a "compromise", it was a backdoor legislation.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Organisers of the two events say they expect thousands of people to gather 12-17 March for discussions that will present ideas on how to improve global access to an increasingly threatened natural resource.

But the main difference pitting the two sides over the 6th World Water Forum and its alternative centres is the role of the private sector in providing water in both developed and developing countries.

The Alternative World Water Forum - known by its French acronym FAME, or Forum Alternatif Mondial de l'Eau - says it offers a "democratic" choice to the other Marseille gathering they say represents an élite that ignores the need for affordable water.

Promoting a motto of "water belongs to everyone," the trade unions, corporate watchdog groups sand environmentalists behind FAME accuse the World Water Forum of "hijacking" their agenda with its calls for universal water access and sustainability.

European energy retailers resisting a mandatory 1.5% annual efficiency target prefer to find their own way to improve productivity - through higher electricity prices or subsidies from the public sector - EurActiv heard at an industry conference.

Ever since the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima power plant, many Japanese people have been living with the fear of cancer. Experts find it difficult to estimate how many people will actually fall ill, but they're more concerned about the psychological consequences of the catastrophe.

...Meanwhile, Japanese authorities have begun the first long-term studies to analyze possible effects of the disaster. In total about 2 million residents from the Fukushima area will be observed over the next 30 years. Those affected by the catastrophe will receive detailed questionnaires along with full-body scans and thyroid exams. The cost of the study will be exorbitant, and the analysis of the mass data immense.

A battle is brewing between the solar industry and utilities over "net metering," a popular policy that allows homeowners, school districts and businesses to offset the cost of their electric use with the rooftop solar power they generate and export to the grid.

Though wonky in name, net metering is a straightforward concept that has been in place in California for 15 years. Utilities give solar customers a credit on their monthly bill during sunny months when they generate more solar power than they use, and those credits can offset higher consumption of utility-generated electricity during the less sunny months of the year.

U.S. meat consumption has peaked. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that meat eating across the country fell from the 2004 high point of 184 pounds (83 kilograms) per person to 171 pounds in 2011. Early estimates for 2012 project a further reduction in American meat eating to 166 pounds, making for a 10 percent drop over the eight-year period. For a society that lives high on the food chain, this new trend could signal the end of meat's mealtime dominance.

THE enormous power tucked away in the atomic nucleus, the chemist Frederick Soddy rhapsodised in 1908, could "transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole world one smiling Garden of Eden." Militarily, that power has threatened the opposite, with its ability to make deserts out of gardens on an unparalleled scale. Idealists hoped that, in civil garb, it might redress the balance, providing a cheap, plentiful, reliable and safe source of electricity for centuries to come. But it has not. Nor does it soon seem likely to.

Looking at nuclear power 26 years ago, this newspaper observed that the way forward for a somewhat moribund nuclear industry was "to get plenty of nuclear plants built, and then to accumulate, year after year, a record of no deaths, no serious accidents--and no dispute that the result is cheaper energy." It was a fair assessment; but our conclusion that the industry was "safe as a chocolate factory" proved something of a hostage to fortune. Less than a month later one of the reactors at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine ran out of control and exploded, killing the workers there at the time and some of those sent in to clean up afterwards, spreading contamination far and wide, leaving a swathe of countryside uninhabitable and tens of thousands banished from their homes. The harm done by radiation remains unknown to this day; the stress and anguish of the displaced has been plain to see.

In one of Germany's greatest art scandals, former hippie and talented artist Wolfgang Beltracchi forged dozens of paintings over a period of 35 years, earning millions and fooling top collectors and museums. Now he's about to go to jail. In a SPIEGEL interview, he reveals how he did it and why he eventually got caught.

...The Beltracchi case is the biggest art forgery scandal of the postwar era, in terms of both the scope and perfection of the works, as well as how the paintings were marketed. The forgeries were sold as works by Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Heinrich Campendonk, André Derain, Max Pechstein, classic modernist paintings, most of them by French and German Expressionists. During the two days of interviews, Beltracchi said several times that he had forged paintings by more than 50 artists, although he was unwilling to cite the exact number. Under German criminal law, serious cases of fraud fall under the statute of limitations after 10 years, but injured parties can file civil suits relating to cases much further in the past.

Beltracchi's principle was not to copy the paintings of the Expressionists, but, as he says, to fill the gaps in their bodies of work. Either he invented new paintings and motifs, tying in to specific creative phases in the artists' lives, or he created paintings whose titles appear in lists of the respective painters' works but which were believed to have been lost -- and of which no images existed.

For 28 years, readers of Germany's top tabloid have enjoyed a titillating treat. Almost every day, the paper's front page has featured a different girl-next-door in the nude. But citing changing times, Bild has now ended the "Page One Girl" feature. The paper promises that things will stay "sexy" inside, though.

One dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the 1960s.

A study, presented in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at data from six trials and more than 500 patients.

It said there was a "significant beneficial effect" on alcohol abuse, which lasted several months after the drug was taken.

MIT physicists have managed to build a light-emitting diode that has an electrical efficiency of more than 100 percent. You may ask, "Wouldn't that mean it breaks the first law of thermodynamics?" The answer, happily, is no.

The LED produces 69 picowatts of light using 30 picowatts of power, giving it an efficiency of 230 percent. That means it operates above "unity efficiency" -- putting it into a category normally occupied by perpetual motion machines.

However, while MIT's diode puts out more than twice as much energy in photons as it's fed in electrons, it doesn't violate the conservation of energy because it appears to draw in heat energy from its surroundings instead. When it gets more than 100 percent electrically-efficient, it begins to cool down, stealing energy from its environment to convert into more photons.

In the next few weeks, and contravening recommendation from the European Commission stating that public deficit control measures should not affect Research and Development (R&D) and innovation, the Spanish Government and Parliament could approve a State Budget that would cause considerable long-term damage to the already weakened Spanish research system, contributing to its collapse. This would imply the maintenance of an obsolete economic model that is not competitive and is especially vulnerable to all kinds of economic and political contingencies. Given the above, we ask the political representatives:

• To avoid a new reduction of the investment in R&D and innovation. In the last few years, the investment in R&D (chapter 46 of the State Budget) has suffered a cut of 4.2% in 2010 and 7.38% in 2011; for 2012, a further 8.65% cut is being considered (where the percentages refer to the cut with respect to the previous year). If the budget cut for 2012 is ratified, during those years the Public Research Organisms would have suffered an accumulated 30% reduction of the resources coming from the State Budget. Investment in R&D was 1.39% of GDP in 2010 and it is estimated that in 2011 it was less than 1.35%. In the mid-term, it should reach the mean EU-27 value of 2.3% and converge toward the European Council goal of 3%.
  
• To include R&D and innovation among the "priority sectors" allowing hiring in public research organisms, universities and technological centers during the fiscal year 2012. This will avoid a "brain drain" that would take decades to reverse.
  

Campaigners are expected to gather tonight in protest against his appearance which, they claim, displays a "callous desire" by the student body to "exploit gender crime allegations in the service of controversy".

In a firmly-worded response to an open letter which accused it of seeking to titillate its members, the Cambridge Union Society said: "We must state that the Union will not be rescinding its invitation to Mr Strauss-Kahn.

"The Society has been inviting him to address our members for several years, given his economic knowledge as then head of the IMF, and his experience of French politics.

"He was not invited after or as a result of the circumstances surrounding his departure from the IMF.