Tony Blair believes Iran wants to achieve an "early resolution" to the crisis over the Royal Navy crew through direct talks, Downing Street has said.

A statement was issued late on Tuesday after further UK contact with Iran, including directly with its chief negotiator Ali Larijani.

The UK had proposed direct bilateral talks and awaited a response, it said.

However, both countries continue to dispute whether the 15 crew were in Iran's waters when seized on 23 March.

Ukraine's PM Viktor Yanukovych has called the president's decision to dissolve parliament a "fatal mistake".
Mr Yanukovych spoke to members of parliament before addressing thousands of his supporters in central Kiev.

Members of parliament are also refusing to obey President Viktor Yushchenko's order to prepare for a snap election.

The pro-Western president accuses his pro-Russia rival of trying to usurp power by increasing his parliamentary majority in an unconstitutional manner.

Mr Yushchenko met Mr Yanukovych in his office, but failed to gain his agreement to implement the decree ordering an early poll on 27 May.

A ban on foreign nationals selling goods in Russia's popular retail markets has come into force, leaving many markets struggling to remain open.

A spokesman for the federal migration service, Konstantin Poltoranin, promised that enforcement would be carried out in an orderly fashion.

"This doesn't mean that from April 1 we will start large-scale raids and special operations. We view this date calmly and will check compliance with migration legislation ... as we did before," Poltoranin was quoted by Russia's Interfax news agency as saying.

The full text of the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court on the illegality of the audit of YUKOS by PricewaterhouseCoopers has proven to be unexpectedly sharply worded. The court called the auditor "practically a participant in implementing illegal tax schemes" and accused the company of violating professional standards.

The case is being watched closely. Alexey Miller, CEO of Gazprom, a PwC client, met with PwC representative Richard Patterson recently. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the case, U.S. Finance Secretary Henry Paulson spoke to Russian Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin (whose agency has the final decision on the relicensing of PwC) and U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns relayed Washington's concerns to the Russian Supreme Court of Arbitration and presidential administration.

Czechs sweeten welfare cuts with flat tax

By Jan Cienski in Warsaw

Published: April 3 2007 19:27

The Czech government yesterday presented a fiscal reform package intended to slash a growing budget deficit that threatens the country's hopes of joining the euro, while at the same time reducing income and corporate taxes and rationalising some social spending.

In order to make trimming the welfare state more palatable, the headline feature of the government's initiative is a plan to introduce a flat income tax rate of 15 per cent, compared to the current progressive system, where rates vary from 12 to 32 per cent.(snip)

Other tax cuts include lowering the corporate tax to 19 per cent from 24 per cent by 2010, raising the tax threshold and increasing the deduction for having children.(snip)

The flat tax scheme is less generous than it first appears. Because the tax will be imposed on gross income which includes employers social security and health care contributions, the true taxation rate would be closer to 23 per cent.

Benefits to be cut include a reduction in baby bonus payments, as well as the ending of some education subsidies and even a funeral subsidy. Some ministries will also have to cut their staffs.

Italian energy company Eni has won the second auction for Yukos assets.
Bidding lasted 7 mins
I bought the lot $5.8bn, just over the $5.6bn starting price
There were three bidders.
It took the 20% stake in Gazprom Neft (nee Sibneft)

This not really a surprise as the Kremlin's policy is to bring in minority foreign strategic investors into all its major industries. The international press will be struggling to explain this as it has sold itself on the "creeping statism" and "re-nationalisation" lines, which this result doesn't fit with. The point to take out of this result is there is a valid role for foreign investors in Russia and they can get access to very attractive assets. Just they won't be allowed to control these assets. Given the news on e.on's failure to buy Endesa yesterday because the Spanish government was "unhappy about a foreign company owning a strategic asset" is it any different anywhere else?

From Ben Aris [editor@businessneweurope.eu]

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

BANGALORE, India: Outsourcing is breaking out of the back office.

Until recently, the migration of service industry jobs from the West to places like India seemed to obey an unwritten law: Low-skill clerical and programming tasks would leave the developed economies, while high-end careers requiring graduate degrees and commanding six-figure salaries would stay behind.

While call centers and software houses closed in the West, often leaving their workers scrounging for employment, professionals in fields like aeronautical engineering, investment banking and drug research likely believed they had nothing to worry about.

Quietly, but steadily, that is changing. High-skilled jobs in those very fields, which once epitomized the competitiveness of Western economies, are flowing to India. The pool of jobs once thought to be impossible to outsource is gradually evaporating.

NEW YORK: Holly Yasui was far away when a U.S. federal judge in Brooklyn ruled last June that the government had wide latitude to detain noncitizens indefinitely on the basis of race, religion or national origin.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants held after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Yasui, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, had reason to take it personally.

Her grandparents were among thousands of Japanese immigrants in the United States who were wrongfully detained as enemy aliens during World War II. And her father was one of three Japanese-Americans who challenged the government's racial detention and curfew programs in litigation that reached the Supreme Court in the 1940s.

Now, Yasui, along with Jay Hirabayashi and Karen Korematsu-Haigh, a son and a daughter of the two other Japanese-American litigants, is urging an appeals court in New York to overturn the sweeping language of the judge's ruling last year.

The ruling "painfully resurrects the long-discredited legal theory" used to put their grandparents behind barbed wire, along with the rest of the West Coast's Japanese-American population, the three contend in an unusual friends-of-the-court brief that was to be filed Tuesday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

LONDON -- The Iranian prisoner crisis revealed a widening schism between Britain and the United States yesterday as U.S. leaders called for tough action and British officials confirmed that they are trying to free their 15 imprisoned sailors by quietly reaching a compromise with Tehran.British officials believe that Iran is not seeking a prisoner exchange or other further bounty in exchange for the sailors, who have been imprisoned for 10 days, and they are hoping the crisis can be resolved peacefully in the next few days.

<...>

But Britain's delicate diplomatic efforts were set back by U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a statement Saturday in which he characterized the imprisoned sailors as "hostages" -- a phrase that Britain has been carefully avoiding to prevent the crisis from becoming a broader political or military conflict.

"The British hostages issue is a serious issue because the Iranians took these people out of Iraqi waters, and it's inexcusable behaviour," Mr. Bush said in response to a reporter's question during a press conference at the Camp David retreat.

He had reportedly promised not to raise the issue of the sailors, as British officials worry that the entry of the United States into this crisis could cause it to escalate into an irreconcilable confrontation.

Other U.S. officials have been even less amenable to the British approach. John Bolton, who until recently was Mr. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, has appeared on British TV describing the British approach as "pathetic."

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context.

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

ROME (AFP) - Despite projections of a bumper grain crop this year, 33 countries will not have enough food, with Iraq and Zimbabwe among the hardest hit, the UN food agency said Tuesday.

Countries with "widespread lack of access to food" include Afghanistan, North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger and Sierra Leone, according to the April issue of the Food and Agriculture Organisations "Crop Prospects and Food Situation" report.

Hardest hit, with an "exceptional shortfall" in food production and supplies, are Iraq, Lesotho, the Philippines, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, the FAO said.

In eastern Africa, millions "still depend on food assistance ... due to a combination of factors including conflict and adverse weather conditions," it said.

US agents visit Ethiopian secret jails : Mail & Guardian Online

US agents visit Ethiopian secret jails

Anthony Mitchell | Nairobi, Kenya
04 April 2007 09:10
CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by the Associated Press (AP). Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families. The detainees include at least one United States citizen and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP. Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighbouring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled the continuing violence in their homeland. Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa. US government officials contacted by AP acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said American agents were following the law and were fully justified in their actions because they are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism.

Africa aid stalls despite G8 pledge

By Alan Beattie in London

Published: April 3 2007 18:57 | Last updated: April 3 2007 18:57

Aid to Africa stalled last year and overall aid spending fell, jeopardising the Group of Eight industrial nations' commitment to double assistance to the continent and add $50bn a year to global aid by 2010.

At the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, Tony Blair, UK prime minister, extracted pledges from heads of government to spend $50bn more each year to 2010 on aid, with half the rise going to sub-­Saharan Africa.

But on Tuesday, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that - excluding one-off debt relief to Nigeria - African aid from rich countries was static in 2006.

Richard Manning, chair of the OECD's development assistance committee, said: "The promises will not be credible unless we begin to see substantial rises in 2007 and 2008."

The OECD said overall aid totalled $103.9bn in 2006, a 5.1 per cent fall in real terms. This was exaggerated by one-off relief to Iraq and Nigeria, which boosted the 2005 total and began to drop out of the calculation in 2006. But even excluding such relief, overall assistance fell by 1.8 per cent.

Granma: More than three billion people in the world condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst

THAT is not an exaggerated figure, but rather a cautious one. I have meditated a lot on that in the wake of President Bush's meeting with U.S. automobile manufacturers.
The sinister idea of converting food into fuel was definitively established as an economic line in U.S. foreign policy last Monday, March 26
....
I believe that reducing and moreover recycling all motors that run on electricity and fuel is an elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel.
It is known very precisely today that one ton of corn can only produce 413 liters of ethanol on average, according to densities. That is equivalent to 109 gallons.
...
Some people will be asking themselves why I am talking of hunger and thirst. My response to that: it is not about the other side of the coin, but about several sides of something else, like a die with six sides, or a polyhedron with many more sides.
I refer in this case to an official news agency, founded in 1945 and generally well-informed about economic and social questions in the world: TELAM. It said, and I quote:

"In just 18 years, close to 2 billion people will be living in countries and regions where water will be a distant memory. Two-thirds of the world's population could be living in places where that scarcity produces social and economic tensions of such a magnitude that it could lead nations to wars for the precious `blue gold.'

"Over the last 100 years, the use of water has increased at a rate twice as fast as that of population growth.

"According to statistics from the World Water Council, it is estimated that by 2015, the number of inhabitants affected by this grave situation will rise by 3.5 billion people.        ...

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

China boost for Sudan military

By Mure Dickie in Beijing

Published: April 3 2007 19:16 | Last updated: April 3 2007 19:16

China has offered to expand military co-operation with Sudan, although tempering its support by calling for Khartoum to be more flexible on a United Nations plan to end fighting in the African nation's western region of Darfur.

The mixed signals from Beijing reflect a desire to maintain close relations with the Sudanese government, despite western allegations that such moves stand in the way of international efforts to broker a peace deal.

In a meeting in Beijing, Cao Gangchuan, Chinese defence minister, told Haj Ahmed El Gaili, Sudan's joint chief of staff, that military relations had been "developing smoothly". The Chinese side set great store by the traditional Sino-Sudanese friendship, state media quoted Mr Cao as saying. "[We] are willing to further develop military co-operation between our two countries in all areas."

SAN FRANCISCO - A freelance videographer who has been jailed longer than any other journalist in U.S. history for refusing to testify to a grand jury is expected to be freed, his attorneys said Tuesday.

AARSCHOT, Belgium: During the week, Ivonne Janssens, 57, is a hospital cleaner. But come the weekend, she climbs the narrow steps of a three-story medieval tower and turns into a 14th-century duchess with a faux-emerald necklace, a linen headdress, a leather satchel full of fake gold coins, and a retinue of mercenaries to fend off invading French knights.

Her husband, Daniel Grandjean, a 50-year-old furniture maker with a pot belly and bushy beard, becomes an axe-wielding soldier-for-hire. It was he who convinced the council in this sleepy Flemish town to let the couple live part time in the 700-year-old Sint-Rochus tower, where guards once stood watch to prevent Aarschot, then built of wood and straw, from catching fire.

When not inhabiting the tower, the spouses sleep in a medieval-replica bed at home. They avoid eating tomatoes or drinking coffee because Columbus had yet to discover America in the Middle Ages and such foods were not available in what was to become Belgium. Carrots are also off the menu because they grow in the ground and the medieval church deemed them the food of the devil.

Geneticists have added an edge to a 2,500-year-old debate over the origin of the Etruscans, a people whose brilliant and mysterious civilization dominated northwestern Italy for centuries until the rise of the Roman republic in 510 B.C. Several new findings support a view held by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus - but unpopular among archaeologists - that the Etruscans originally migrated to Italy from the Near East.

Though Roman historians played down their debt to the Etruscans, Etruscan culture permeated Roman art, architecture and religion. The Etruscans were master metallurgists and skillful seafarers who for a time dominated much of the Mediterranean. They enjoyed unusually free social relations, much remarked on by ancient historians of other cultures.

Etruscan culture was very advanced and very different from other Italian cultures of the time. But most archaeologists have seen a thorough continuity between a local Italian culture known as the Villanovan that emerged around 900 B.C. and the Etruscan culture, which began in 800 B.C.

"The overwhelming proportion of archaeologists would regard the evidence for eastern origins of the Etruscans as negligible," said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts.

Even so, a nagging question has remained. Could the Etruscans have arrived from somewhere else in the Mediterranean world?

One hint of such an origin is that the Etruscan language, which survives in thousands of inscriptions, appears not to be Indo-European, the language family that started to sweep across Europe sometime after 8,500 years ago, developing into Latin, English and many other tongues. Another hint is the occurrence of inscriptions in a language apparently related to Etruscan on Lemnos, a Greek island. But whether Lemnian is the parent language of Etruscan, or the other way around, is not yet clear, said Rex Wallace, an expert on Etruscan linguistics at the University of Massachusetts.

SANJIAZI, China: Seated cross- legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly.

After several verses, the 82-year-old widow stopped, her eyes shining.

"Baby, please fall asleep quickly," she said, translating a few lines of the song into Chinese. "Once you fall asleep, Mama can go to work. I need to set the fire, cook and feed the pigs."

After 5 children, 14 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren, Meng has the confidence that comes from long experience. "If you sing like this, a baby gets sleepy right away," she said.

She also knows that most experts believe the day is approaching when no child will doze off to the sound of these comforting words.

Meng is one of 18 residents of this isolated village in northeastern China, all older than 80, who, according to Chinese linguists and historians, are the last native speakers of Manchu.

West Coast seabirds are dying, apparently from a lack of food -- and some researchers think the phenomenon may be linked to global climate change.

This is the third year that scientists have found unusually large numbers of marine birds -- mainly common murres, but also rhinoceros auklets and tufted puffins -- washed up on beaches in California, Oregon and Washington. In 2005, the first year of the phenomenon, large numbers of Cassin's auklets also died.

Hannah Nevins, the coordinator for Moss Landing Marine Laboratories beach survey program, said 253 dead murres were recovered on 11 Monterey Bay beaches during the first week of March. During the past nine years, an average of nine dead birds were collected on the same beaches during the same week, she said.

About 180,000 breeding murres live along the West Coast, so it is unlikely the recent spate of deaths is enough to drastically harm the overall population.

"But if this continues for multiple years, then we could have real problems," Nevins said.

Most of the casualties were young birds that had just gone through their first winter.

"They were all in poor condition, and generally had empty stomachs," she said. "Either they were not finding food, or they were unable to capture the food they did find."

European biofuel producers have complained about unfair competition from imports. In a letter to European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on 19 March, the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) noted that subsidised US imports have been flooding the European market. According to the EBB, "The US trade practice in fact is clearly breaching WTO rules and represents a serious threat to the fair trade of biofuels" at a time when a global biodiesel market is in its early stages of development.

Loophole encourages triangular trade

Under US policies to support biofuels, not only homegrown, but also imported biofuels that are blended in the US with as little as one percent mineral oil, enjoy a subsidy benefit of one US$ per gallon. This B99 biofuel blend can then be re-exported. When the B99 arrives in Europe, it again benefits from a tax brake on environmental grounds, and out-competes European-produced biodiesel. In practice, a triangular trade has developed, claims the EBB, with US biodiesel refiners importing biodiesel from Brazil, Indonesia or Malaysia, blending in small amounts of mineral diesel to benefit from the subsidy, and immediately re-exporting to Europe.

Chávez calls time on holiday booze

The trick is to look the barman in the eye and give a short, emphatic nod as you order a Coke. Discreetly the rum tumbles in and discreetly you toast the barman, your accomplice in crime.

The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, has banned alcohol in the week leading up to Easter Day to try to cut the number of drink-driving related accidents which soar during the holiday exodus for the beach.

For Venezuelans, by some measures Latin America's biggest boozers, the edict has resounded like a clap of thunder. "Revolution? Fine. But with this Chávez has gone too far. This is just crazy, it's extremism," said a 55-year-old who asked not to be named.

Normally the motorcycle courier embraced the president's efforts to usher in a socialist revolution, including land reform, the nationalisation of certain industries and rhetorical assaults against the United States. When it came to the dry law, however, this self-professed "chavista" was a counter-revolutionary. "It's the holidays and if I want to drink I'll drink."

Many view the ban as bold and enlightened. "I've never liked Chávez but this is a good move. Driving at this time of year is to take your life in your hands," said Veronica Castejon (32) a Caracas salesperson.

Others across the region urged their governments to follow suit. "I wish we could adopt the same measure in Colombia," one Medellín resident told the BBC.

The sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Day and between now and then it is illegal to sell alcohol after 5pm. Obtaining a drink after sunset, however, is not so hard. Many of the bars and restaurants still open this week continue service as usual, though with a wink.

The police, who also seem to have been surprised by the ban, have ensured that off-licences shut at 5pm but otherwise seem to have turned a blind eye to clandestine consumption.

In bars, wine and beer are liable to be served in coffee mugs or polystyrene cups. The atmosphere echoes the Prohibition-era US "speakeasies".

African growth 'steady but frail'

African economic growth will accelerate in 2007, though reforms are needed to underpin "very fragile foundations", a United Nations report has said.

According to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the continent's economies will grow by 5.8% on average in 2007, up from 5.7% a year earlier.

Better management and demand for commodities will boost expansion.

However, to keep growing, Africa needs to diversify its economic output and spend on infrastructure, the UN warned.

(snip)

The best-performing economy in Africa last year was Mauritania, which grew by 19.8% as it benefited from oil revenues, the UN said.

Angola was the second-best, expanding by 17.6%, and Mozambique was in third position, posting growth of 7.9%.

Zimbabwe was the worst performer. Its economy contracted by 4.4% in 2006 because of "political difficulties exacerbated by recurrent droughts", the UN said in its report.

19% growth - but who benefits?

Business of Global Warming Feels a Lot Like Inquisition
By William F. Buckley

This is William Buckley, the philosophical "father" of the modern (neo)conservative movement/coalition. In particular, he is the founder of National Review. Recently he spoke his discontent regarding the Iraq war. Now he speaks on Gloabl Warming... and it hurts him like Inquisition! Who would have thought that he knows that pain!

A CEO With A Spine
By ALICIA COLON

The New York Coal Trade Association, headquartered in New York City, recently held its 94th annual banquet and meeting at the New York Hilton. One of the guest speakers was Bob Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation and probably one of the few CEOs brave enough to challenge the militant climate control movement that threatens the future of America's economy. In his speech, he dared to say that he regards Al Gore as the shaman of global doom and gloom. He is not joking when he says, "He is more dangerous than his global warming."

What can you do with these heroes? Can I call them pathetic?

Please add in your news items...and have a good day! Thanks!!

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Nobel laureate for literature Nadine Gordimer, noted for her work about the inhumanity of apartheid, has become one of just a few South Africans to receive France's highest award, the Legion of Honor.

Gordimer was awarded the decorative medal on at a ceremony over the weekend at the Pretoria home of Denis Pietton, the French ambassador in South Africa.

Pietton said France wanted to pay homage to a "great writer" whose "work shines throughout the world."

"By making you an Officer of the Legion of Honor, we also wish to pay tribute to a symbolic figure of the fight against apartheid, that absurd and terrible system that sought, unrealistically to separate races," he said.

Gordimer, 83, who is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1991. Several of her novels were once banned in her own country.

Really, who need the article.  The headline says it all.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes