It began near the end of the meeting, according to one participant, when Tuomioja said ministers were bound to be asked if they had discussed the issue of secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons for suspected terrorists and "rendition flights" to transfer prisoners to states where they may face torture.

Since the matter was not on the official agenda, he suggested they should all agree to say it had not been discussed and that they had agreed on all the points on the agenda.

According to the participant, Rice responded by saying all countries must keep up the fight against terrorism, noting that the discovery of an alleged plot in Britain last month to blow up transatlantic aircraft showed the persistent danger.

Tuomioja replied: "We all agree on the need to fight terrorism but we should do so in a way that does not create more terrorism in the future."

Rice shot back: "Let's deal with those who are trying to kill us now and leave the future for some other time."

Unwilling to leave her the last word as the meeting broke up, Tuomioja added: "The future is with us today."

Less than a year after Chancellor Angela Merkel came to power, all pretence at harmony in her left-right coalition has evaporated. Analysts are dismissing speculation that the deep internal rifts over her flagship healthcare revamp will bring down her government. But hopes for meaningful reforms have faded.

At the start of Chancellor Angela Merkel's reign last November, the members of her power-sharing coalition got on so well that they purred pet names at each other. Peter Struck, the grouchy, gravel-voiced chairman of the Social Democrat members of parliament, was fondly called "Strucki-Bear" by his conservative counterpart Volker Kauder, who in turn became "Kauderle", roughly translated as "Kaudiepie".

The two parties which had fought each other for almost 40 years promised to bury the hatchet, put their own interests aside and work together for the greater good of Germany. They hammered out a coalition agreement in four weeks of talks during which both claimed the working atmosphere had steadily improved. "As long as we trust each other personally, we'll make it," Merkel said at the time.

PM praises Brown as 'remarkable man' but aims to stay on for nine more months after Labour accords him rapturous reception

 Tony Blair won a rapturous response from the Labour Party faithful with an inspired farewell address that he hopes will enable him to remain in Downing Street for another nine months.

The Prime Minister began his intended "long goodbye" by warning Labour that it would lose power unless it kept up the pace of his reform agenda.

In his 13th and final speech to Labour's annual conference as party leader, the Prime Minister fired a powerful parting shot, urging his party not to retreat to the "comfort zone" which consigned it to 18 years of opposition before 1997.

Mr Blair hopes the enthusiastic response he won from emotional Labour delegates will give him the breathing space to remain in power until next July.

A LONG list of urgent reforms to combat persistent corruption, money laundering and human trafficking was demanded yesterday by the European Union as the price of its green light for the accession of Bulgaria and Romania.

The agreement to complete Europe's absorption of every Warsaw Pact country outside the former Soviet Union will take effect on January 1, bringing the EU's population up to half a billion, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, said yesterday.

But the threat of sanctions, including withholding a quarter of farm and regional payments as well as refusing to recognise court judgments unless judicial independence is guaranteed, will hang over the two countries from Day 1. Bulgaria was also told that its aircraft might not even be allowed to fly into the EU area unless rapid improvements were made to aircraft safety standards and flight crew licensing before the end of the year.

Workers from the two countries will face restrictions in many EU countries, with Britain confirming yesterday that it will allow only gradual access to jobs after the public backlash against the estimated 600,000 arrivals from the ten countries that joined in 2004.

It was not Bertie Ahern's first on-screen appearance of the day.

As part of a big-screen video presentation shown before Tony Blair's farewell speech at the Labour conference in Manchester, Mr Ahern paid tribute to the UK prime minister's efforts in Northern Ireland.

Over the years, the pair have developed a close political relationship as they have clocked up the miles on trips to Belfast and elsewhere to meet Northern Ireland's parties.

His later appearance, on prime time Irish television, was of much more importance.

For several days, opponents - and some allies - had called for him to make a full statement on the issue of payments from businessmen that has been following Mr Ahern every step of the way.

Over the weekend, at the biggest sporting event ever to come to Ireland, golf's Ryder Cup, reporters had tried to question him about the cash gifts he received back in the 1990s.

GENEVA, Sept 26: The United States fell to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness rankings for 2006, ceding the top place to Switzerland, as macroeconomic concerns eroded prospects for the world's largest economy.

In a report released on Tuesday, the forum said Washington's huge defense and homeland security spending commitments, plans for further tax cuts and long-term potential costs from health care and pensions were creating worrisome fiscal strains.

"With a low savings rate, record-high current account deficits and a worsening of the US net debtor position, there is a non-negligible risk to both the country's overall competitiveness and, given the relative size of the US economy, the future of the global economy," it said.

While stressing that US dominance in education and innovation should keep the country among the world's most competitive "for the foreseeable future," the report said economic concerns had made other countries more attractive for business leaders.

US Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said in Washington that the decline in America's competitiveness would accelerate unless the country made reforms.

"We need to clean up our own backyard to make sure our economic and legal policies welcome capital instead of drive it away," he said.

The conservation group WWF is calling on European consumers to think twice before they eat fish.

A WWF report says much of the fish sold in Europe is the product of illegal, destructive or wasteful fishing.

The report warns that continuing to buy it will bring many fish stocks to the brink of extinction.

One of the main casualties is plaice. The report says about half the plaice caught are too small and are thrown back - by which time most are dying.

Justin Woolford, of the WWF's European fisheries campaign, says such a buoyant market encourages unsustainable fishing practices.

"We've got too many boats chasing too few fish - there's a lot of illegal fishing going on as well," he said.

Overspending Britons are responsible for a third of all unsecured debt in Western Europe, according to a report.

Figures from analysts at Datamonitor found that the UK consumer credit market hit £214 billion last year, making it the most indebted country in Western Europe.

The average Briton owes just over £3,000, almost twice as much as his continental cousin.

The report's authors put the high figure down to the UK's "insatiable appetite for credit".

Major countries on mainland Europe have a culture of savings and frugality, with people in France and Germany particularly averse to debt, according to analysts.

But this situation could change, with consumer credit growth in Europe outstripping the UK and providing an opportunity for lenders faced with a UK market that is reaching saturation point, the report says.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had reached agreements with Iceland to turn over the U.S. Naval Air Station at Keflavik, which is to be formally closed on September 30.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization base, a listening post that tracked Soviet submarines during the Cold War, in recent years has provided air cover for Iceland as well as conducted search and rescue missions, a U.S. official said.

Germany hosts its first-ever "Conference on Islam" in Berlin on Wednesday and aims to improve interaction with Muslims living in Germany. But some Muslim groups have been critical in the run-up.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will welcome delegates from Germany's Muslim communities, as well as representatives from federal, state and communal levels to Berlin's historic Charlottenburg Palace on Wednesday.

"Three million Muslims live in Germany. They are a part of Germany's present and future, just as Islam is, after all, a part of Europe," Schäuble said in an interview published Tuesday in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "We have to and want to take note of this."

Over the next two to three years, the 30 participants taking part in the conference are supposed to address the major issues that affect the coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims in Germany.

Schäuble said the conference also aimed to find better solutions for integrating Muslims into German society, adding that he wanted Muslims in Germany to become "German Muslims," according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

A marathon is under way in Brussels. European officials have until 30 September to reach an agreement with their US counterparts on the personal data of passengers flying from Europe to the United States that airlines must supply. Otherwise airlines will find themselves caught between two stools. Either they continue to submit to US demands, in which case they will be breaking European law. Or they do not convey the disputed information, in which case they could be banned from landing in the United States or fined several thousand dollars...

....
Overall, the United States is demanding 34 pieces of information - and even more, in the future. There is no problem as regards civic status, nationality, height or profession. The so-called APIS (Advance Passenger Information System) data is shown on passports. The requirement for US addresses is no longer challenged either. But other strictly personal information is questioned by the European Court. For instance, ticket payment method, e-mail address, food preferences (which could indicate a religion or state of health,) private telephone number, and so forth.

There is also disagreement about how information should be conveyed. At present this takes place by means of the "pull" method: the United States seeks information on companies' databases. The EU wants to introduce a "push" method: airlines would send a selection of information compatible with EU laws. Last, negotiations also cover the financial aspect: the gathering and transmission of information costs money. It will of course be necessary to identify who should pay. If it is the airlines, these costs will be passed on to passengers...

The decision was taken after Berlin security officials warned that putting on the opera as planned would present an "incalculable security risk" for the establishment.

In the production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon and the Prophet Mohammad, which sit on chairs.

Two weeks ago Pope Benedict sparked outrage in the Muslim world by quoting, in a speech in Germany, from a medieval text linking the spread of the Islamic faith to violence.

Former U.N. weapons inspection chief Hans Blix says Iran should be given security guarantees in exchange for an agreement on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Blix, who headed the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, testified before a House subcommittee examining the current state of global nonproliferation efforts.

Well known for his criticism of what he calls exaggerated U.S. and British intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities, Blix told lawmakers he hopes similar mistakes are not made when it comes to Iran:

"One of the lessons of the intelligence in the Iraq affair is that one should take international verification and inspection more seriously," said Hans Blix. "I think there was a tendency to disregard what comes out of an international organization and to give automatic or much greater credence to intelligence."

Calling Iran and North Korea acute cases confronting the world, Blix nonetheless says he does not believe it can be concluded that Iran intends to build a nuclear bomb.

While the six-party negotiations with North Korea have included discussion of security guarantees, he suggests there have been no similar efforts by the U.S. where Iran is concerned:

The White House is further rewriting the torture and self-absolution legislation that is currently sailing through congress.

Now the real targets turn out to be you and me. The new version of the law would allow the CIA and the U.S. military:

indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its military allies.
....
We further learn:
The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.

....
But that is not what the law says. The law is about "hostilities against the United States and it military allies", not about "terrorism".

Referring to the recently appointed special US coordinator Gen. Joseph Ralston, Gul expressed his hope that a resolution would be imminent.

The threat was implicit and impatient. Washington was given to infer that Ankara is on the point of deciding whether or not to capture Kirkuk, a step that would undermine a pivotal political and economic base of the Baghdad government and harm US interests in Iraq.

This conversation, which was not nearly as amicable as it looked from the press photos, was clouded by a disturbing incident: A semi-official American military publication recently ran a new map showing parts of Turkish and Armenian territory marked "Kurdistan."

This map fueled suspicions in Ankara and the Armenian capital Yerevan that the US high military command was in on a plan for Iraqi Kurdish forces led by President Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani to help themselves to territory in Turkey and Armenia in a counter-attack to a potential Turkish-Iranian military move in Kurdistan.
This kind of mistrust has lent wings to Ankara's resolve to go forward against Kurdistan - the sooner the better.

The risk of economic recession in the United States in 2007 is increasing rapidly. Rather than overly tight monetary policy at the Federal Reserve, the declining value of US homes is undermining personal consumption expenditure. The decline in home values is likely to accelerate next year as housing oversupply is met by increasingly weaker demand for new homes.

....
How China can cushion the blow
A sharp slowdown or contraction of real personal consumption expenditure growth in the US in 2007 will lead to much slower economic growth in China. China's export growth could be flat or even negative while investment growth could be cut in half. In addition, rationalization in China's export sector could lead to much higher urban unemployment, especially among China's migrant workforce. This could heighten already increasing social instability, further undermining private consumption growth and economic growth in China.

A US economic downturn next year will undoubtedly have a strong negative impact on China's economy. However, this impact could be mitigated by the government's marshaling of China's considerable resources, including the country's nearly US$1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves. In addition to these reserves, China has enormous fiscal resources that it can employ to boost the economy either directly or indirectly through the country's massive state-owned banking system - not exactly music to the ears of foreign investors who have poured money into China's banks.

Though dependent on consumer demand in the United States, China's economy could easily withstand a US economic recession because of its vast resources and its ability to extend these resources through the still-dominant state-owned economic structures. As a result, slowing US economic growth does not imply a significant reversal in global commodity prices, especially oil prices. Even if economic growth in China slows to 5% in 2007, demand for energy and crude oil in China will remain quite strong.

George Bush yesterday suffered a blow to his argument that the removal of Saddam Hussein had made Americans safer after he ordered the release of an intelligence report warning the war in Iraq had become a "cause celebre for jihadists".

Mr Bush's decision to declassify a small portion of a leaked National Intelligence Estimate, six weeks before the midterm elections, was seen as an attempt to get in front of Democratic critics, led by Bill Clinton, who accuse the administration of not doing enough to catch Osama bin Laden.

After five years of relative civility, the unspoken entente cordiale between the Bush and Clinton administrations to avoid assigning blame for the 9/11 attacks came to an abrupt end yesterday, with both leaders and their aides fighting for their respective legacies. But Mr Bush's "war on terror" narrative was contradicted by the report.

"The Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," it said.

The scourge of munitions from the cluster bombs now littering southern Lebanon, mostly American-made but some manufactured in Israel, will be a "lasting legacy," the United Nations has said. U.N. officials estimate that the Israeli military fired 90 percent of the bombs during the last 72 hours of the conflict, which began on July 12 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid and ended with a cease-fire on Aug. 14. As many as 1 million of the bomblets are unexploded, they say, wounding or killing three people a day. The threat of stumbling across a bomblet has paralyzed life in parts of the south that depend on the harvest of tobacco and now-abandoned groves of bananas, olives and citrus.

....
U.N. officials have said they are still grappling with a problem whose scope has grown by the day. About 100 de-miners on contract to the United Nations are trying to defuse munitions in which as many as two in five of the bomblets failed to detonate. They said many of the bomblets might have failed to explode because they struck soft ground, were snared in trees or other obstructions or were fired too low to the ground to detonate on impact.

Early on, officials estimated that cluster munitions littered 400 sites, anywhere from a house to an entire village. The number now stands at 590, and U.N. officials said they are dumbfounded by the intensity of the firing in the war's last days, when it was clear a cease-fire was approaching.

"It's impossible for me to work out what the logic was," said David Shearer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. "To me, it just seems outrageous that it would happen as it did."

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

editorial: the article is worth reading. I go back and forth on my guess as to what will happen when thinking about the players - Bush, in his own universe, thinking this will secure his legacy; hawks at the pentagon; realists at the pentagon; the democrats and some republicans who are opposed - ultimately there are too many unknowns.

you are the media you consume.

The article by Joseph Stroupe who recently published a book on energy security has three parts.

A new wide-field survey of the sky has made its first major discovery - two planets orbiting far-distant stars.

The SuperWasp project uses camera lenses and super-sensitive detectors to monitor stars for tiny dips in light that might betray a passing planet.

The UK-led project identified a number of "suspects" and then handed the data to a French observatory for checking.

It used an instrument to analyse the light from the stars in detail and confirm the presence of the planets.

"To get these two we had to survey about 1.1 million stars and then go though several stages of filtering. It's a bit like panning for gold," Professor Andrew Collier Cameron from the University of St Andrews told BBC News.

The two extrasolar (outside our Solar System) planets, now known as Wasp-1b and Wasp-2b, are in the constellations of Andromeda and Delphinus.

Watercolors supposedly painted by Adolf Hitler are to go up for auction in England on Tuesday. Some say they're forgeries, but collectors from around the world have apparently expressed their interest.

Adolf Hitler apparently painted the watercolors while he was serving in the German army during World War I, after which they were hidden away for more than 60 years.

The 21 paintings and sketches -- mainly portraying landscapes, churches, woodland and houses -- have attracted strong interest from collectors in Russia, the United States and South Africa.

Collectors are unlikely to be the only ones present when the works are auctioned off on Tuesday in the quiet town of Lostwithiel. Television crews ranging from the BBC to Al Jazeera have announced they will report on the event in Cornwall.

"People have been ringing up every day about it," Ian Morris, auctioneer at Jefferys, told Reuters news agency.

Expecting a large audience, the auctioning house switched the sale from its showroom to a local hotel to allow more space for bidders.

WWII Memory Film May Get Bleeped for F.C.C., Bush's Indecency Fines; Even Frontline Quivers; Oath Can Cost $325,000; Lowell Bergman Explodes

War can be hell on public television. It just can't contain any "fucks" or "shits" before 10 p.m.

Scenes of war on PBS in which soldiers use profanity have been cut or elaborately avoided in two upcoming Frontline documentaries. According to the journalists and PBS executives responsible, these edits have been made for one reason: fear of the Federal Communications Commission.

On Oct. 3, at 9 p.m., PBS will air Return of the Taliban. Its producer and writer, Martin Smith, is now sanitizing a sequence of the documentary.

"Some Canadian soldiers are fighting," Mr. Smith said. "They're in combat, and they're going, `Fuck!'"

After consultation with PBS executives and lawyers, Mr. Smith decided the scene is not worth "going to the mat for." Either he'll bleep the "fuck," or scrub the scene altogether, before the film airs.

"It's a really sorry state of affairs if we're Disney-fying combat," Mr. Smith said.

(A little late, but still worth remembering...)

Anyway, at 40 minutes past midnight on the 26th Petrov looked up and saw a missile launch from a United States silo had been detected by one of his satellites. Now you might expect panic at this point but missile command tends to attract the serious, sober type, probably the type of people who smoke a pipe and sew leather patches on their jackets, and Petrov kept his head.

He knew the satellite had been reported as suspect and decided to hold off on informing the high command. Then a second missile launch was picked up, and shortly after another, and another and another. Petrov knew that if he waited until he could confirm the launches with ground radar it would be too late for his country, he and his family would die and the Yankees would win the Cold War.

Thankfully for us he thought before acting. He reasoned that it was illogical for a surprise attack to launch missiles one after the other - instead you'd launch everything you had and hope to wipe out the enemy before they reacted. He left the launch button alone and thankfully the missiles proved to be ghosts.

Myself and millions other slept peacefully in our beds that night, blissfully unaware of how close we came to fiery death or a worse existence than we could imagine if we had lived. Had the missiles flown Britain would, according to government war plan projections, currently be at a medieval level of technology in most places, having lost 90 per cent of its population.

Petrov was reprimanded and now lives in the scientific community of Fryazino in Russia. He was honoured this year in a ceremony at the United Nations and has been honoured with two World Citizen Awards. So take some time out today and say your private thanks to the man who saved the world.

A study released this week by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute -- www.americancivicliteracy.org --  ... concludes that "America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions." In a 60-question multiple-choice quiz ,"college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale." And at many schools "seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy."

...

Among college seniors, less than half--47.9%--correctly concluded that "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" was from the Declaration of Independence. More than half did not know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the governmental establishment of an official religion, and "55.4 percent could not recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end" (more than one quarter believing that it was the Civil War battle of Gettysburg that had ended the Revolution).

The questions about more recent matters produced more accurate answers. More than 80% of students could identify Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs as the New Deal, 79% knew that Brown v. Board of Education ordered an end to racial segregation, and 69% were aware that GDP was the best measure of output of our economy.

...

As for the 50 colleges that participated in the program, the best-scoring students were not from the institutions one might expect. Rhodes College, Colorado State University and Calvin College were the top three, with senior students averaging between 9.5 and 11.6 percentage points higher than freshmen.

At the other end of the scale were 16 schools that showed "negative learning"--that is, seniors scored lower than freshmen. Cornell, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins were the worst three, their seniors scoring between 3.3 and 7.3 percentage points worse than their freshmen. And on the negative list were some other very prestigious universities: Williams, Georgetown, Yale, Duke and Brown.

How did these educational failures come to pass? ... Seniors at the top test-scoring colleges "took an average of 4.2 history and political science courses, while seniors at the two lowest-ranked colleges . . . took an average of 2.9 history and political science courses." Similarly, higher ranked colleges spent more time on homework, 20 hours a week at fourth-ranked Grove City College and 14 or 15 at low-ranked Georgetown and Berkeley.

...

The study found that "73 percent of seniors' families at Grove City and Harvard [ranking 4th and 25th, respectively] discussed current events or history on a weekly or daily basis," whereas only half did at low ranked Berkeley and Johns Hopkins.

The author prefaces his article with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

Thomas Jefferson    
letter to William Charles Jarvis    
Sept. 20, 1820

I'm afraid I would fail this test myself.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.